Paula DeBoard - The Fragile World

I flinched at each of his statements. It was like getting a glimpse into my private file, seeing all the evidence that had been amassed against me.

“Now, I’m not trying to downplay in any way what you’ve been through, Curt. I can’t say I would handle this situation any better than you’ve done, but I think it’s time you faced certain realities. You’re not giving one hundred percent—” He raised a hand to cut off my protest. “It’s true. You’re not giving one hundred percent to your students, to yourself or to Olivia.”

I set the mug on the trunk that served as our coffee table. I must have set it down harder than I thought, because some tea splashed over the side, and Bill reached forward, dabbing at the spill with a napkin. It was an old steamer trunk, transportation stickers still affixed to the side. Olivia, her stocking feet on its surface, had once wondered out loud if it had belonged to someone from the Titanic, if somehow a trunk had survived but its owner had not. Impossible, I’d said. But it’s an old trunk, anyway, she had pointed out. The owner is probably dead, shipwreck or otherwise.

“Don’t bring Olivia into this,” I said now, a note of warning in my voice. Maybe he was right about things at school, but that didn’t mean he knew a thing about Olivia and me.

Bill raised his hand again, as if I were a dog who needed to heel. “It’s only because I like you and respect you that I can say this, Curt. But Olivia’s floundering, too.”

“What do you mean? She’s doing fine.”

“She’s failing P.E. I talked to Jessie Ryan only yesterday, and she says Olivia has missed at least a dozen classes since January.”

I shook my head. “She’s only been sick once this entire semester.”

“Well, she’s not sick. She’s skipping class, Curtis. Hanging out in the bathroom, the library... We all know she’s bright. We’re all rooting for her, and that’s why Jessie came to me, to figure out how we can help her. You must have seen it. She’s lonely. You never see her talking to another kid.”

“Wait,” I said. “You might be right about P.E. I don’t know. I’ll talk to her today and get to the bottom of things. But Olivia is not lonely. She has that group of friends.” I didn’t add, the ones who wear all black and call themselves the Visigoths, the ones who scare the hell out of me half the time.

“She eats her lunch in the library.”

“Sometimes,” I felt myself being too defensive, but couldn’t stop it. “She eats there sometimes.”

“Every day,” Bill countered.

I closed my eyes, fighting off a sudden stab of pain. Olivia, eating alone in the library, taking a listless bite of the egg salad sandwich she’d made the night before, peeling a mozzarella stick in tidy, industrious strokes. “I’ll talk to her,” I said. “And Monday, when I’m back at school—”

“Let’s talk about that, too,” Bill said. He leaned forward in the chair, a hand on each of his knees. Dress slacks, a button-down shirt, a sports coat with leather patches on the elbows—that was part of his style. No khakis and polo shirts for this man, ever.

Here it comes, I thought. Maybe I’d been waiting for it. Maybe I’d known since the moment Bill Meyers had appeared on the cafeteria roof. He was going to do it—he was going to release me, quickly and painlessly as pulling off a Band-Aid.

But instead, Bill laid out a rationale over the next hour or so, and everything he said made perfect sense. I was struggling. I wasn’t giving one hundred percent. The state testing—that grasping, insatiable god all public school teachers worshipped—was over, the year was winding down. It was nearly May, so I could limp through the last month of the school year, doing right by no one. I could keep going through the motions. But it wasn’t fair to my students. It wasn’t fair to my own sense of integrity. I stiffened again when he mentioned that it wasn’t fair to Olivia—but I was starting to see that he was right. What was Olivia doing at this very moment? Probably freaking out about what I’d done.

On the other hand, Bill pointed out—I did have plenty of sick leave accrued. I’d taken two weeks when Daniel died, and the odd day here and there during my annual bout with laryngitis, but I had more than enough days banked to take the whole rest of the year. I could start fresh in the fall, and my job would be waiting for me.

As for Olivia, Bill continued—something could probably be worked out if we wanted to take a little time off. Independent study packets, an incomplete that could be amended later, a summer class at a community college to fulfill the P.E. requirement. There were options; it just required a little creative thinking. “She’s a good kid,” he said. “She’s going to come through one way or another.”

Of course, I thought. Of course she’ll come through.

Then Bill said, “Forget about school,” with a little flick of his wrist as if school had no significance at all. “Forget about students and responsibilities to the job. For now, just forget about all of that. What you need is to figure out what you really want to happen in your life, Curt. What is it that Curtis Kaufman needs to do right now, more than anything else in the world? What’s going to be the best thing for Curtis Kaufman and his family?”

His question startled me, even though it was one I’d been considering in a subconscious way, all week.

My eyes flicked to the print on the wall. It was a vintage Jefferson Airplane poster, hand-lettered. Kathleen had found it at a store near Haight-Ashbury on a trip to San Francisco early in our marriage, then mounted and framed it. It had hung in our first apartment, and later in the two-bedroom house we’d rented until Olivia was born, when we’d offered our meager savings for the down payment on this house, which Kathleen had dubbed the “funky fixer-upper” and I’d fondly referred to as “the money pit.” I’d half expected Kathleen to take the frame off the wall when she went, but maybe it was more significant that she’d simply left it behind.

And maybe it was significant that behind that particular frame I’d taped the letter from the Lorain County D.A. Although we understand that such a notification is not welcome to families of victims...

“Curt? Are you listening? It’s important to rediscover your purpose. I know that must sound like a bunch of New Age bullshit, but—”

“No, you’re right,” I said. The tightness in my chest, which had been there all day, was releasing, like the loosening grip of a blood pressure cuff.

My purpose.

One single act could set everything right, reestablish the balance in our lives.

Deep down, of course, I had known this all along.

I needed to kill Robert Saenz.

olivia

At 3:15 p.m., Mrs. Silva and I got into her little red Volkswagen Beetle and navigated our way through Sacramento. I tried very hard not to grab on to the door handle every time we turned, and it seemed that she was trying very hard not to appear annoyed with the situation—angling the A/C vent directly toward me, turning the radio station to something fast and upbeat. It was a relief to see Dad’s SUV in the driveway, to feel for a second that everything might be normal. We parked on the street, and Mrs. Silva followed a few feet behind me. I was shaking as I let myself in the front door, not sure what I would find inside.

Mr. Meyers met me in the entryway, stooping to avoid our overhead light fixture. “Hey, Olivia. I think your dad is going to be fine, but just in case, I’m going to leave this with you, okay?” He passed me a slip of paper with a phone number and his name printed in block letters: BILL MEYERS—HOME.

I folded the paper and pushed it deep into a pocket. It was uncomfortable and strange enough to have my school principal in our home—I couldn’t imagine calling him at his.