Alissa Nutting - Tampa

At home, Ford was noticeably reeling from our decrease in face time since school had begun. Due to a leap of fortune I never would’ve had the optimism to imagine, the second week in September he got reassigned to an afternoon shift with alternating weekends; it started around three P.M. and got him home near midnight, by which time I made every effort to already be, or appear, asleep. He often tried to wake me upon entering bed, and in the morning while I got ready for work Ford never failed to ask me a barrage of interrogatory questions, barking them out while he lay unmoving with his torso covered up like an invalid. Nearly every other day he threatened to ask for a reassignment back to his old shift, but I’d do my best to strike this thought from his mind.

“Now, honey,” I’d say, pausing from brushing my hair to walk toward him in the too-white early brightness of the bedroom. My hair was something he’d fixate on—I always joked he must’ve been one of those boys who would cut ponytails off of girls in elementary school. I’d take special care to be interested, bending down and sitting next to the blanketed worm of his shape, my hair falling next to his face like a scented curtain. “If you do that you’ll knock yourself out of line for that promotion you’re trying so hard for.” Ford wanted to advance but it didn’t seem to be in the cards; written tests in particular drew a poor showing from him. Still, I tried to keep the flame of hope going strong inside of him. The last thing I needed was for him to decide his job was a dead end and begin playing detective in our personal life. “It’s just temporary,” I’d coo, leaning down as close to him as I could manage—that horrible adult male sourness exuded from him most in the mornings—and kiss his temple. When he did intercept and make me kiss him on the lips, I had to be sure to get him squarely there and not a millimeter to the left or right. The feeling of my lips touching stubble brought an instant and dropping hotness to my bowels, a sensation I can only liken to a forced enema.

“You’re right, peaches,” he’d finally say. Then I’d smile and pat his form beneath the blanket, get up from the bed and start back toward the bathroom. He’d grab my hair when I did this, but he wouldn’t hold on—he just liked to feel it slip through his fingers as I walked away.

The night of open house we had to report for duty at six; rather than leave and return I stayed in the classroom and used a set of needle-nose tweezers to carve a message into the desk Jack Patrick sat at: YOU WANT ME, placed in small, squarish letters at the very top, a border that would hover above his textbook when he read and his notebook when he wrote. Around five I went to the teachers’ lounge to eat a quick bite; several of my colleagues were also there milling around, including Janet. The moment I arrived they wasted no time explaining to me how the evening’s events would be an Armageddon of parent ass-kissing. The feelings that would surface as I agreed to be complicit in such debasing events year after year, they warned, might eventually trigger a midlife crisis.

Daniel Tambor, a soft-spoken math teacher whose model of prescription glasses had not been manufactured for the past two decades, put down his Ziploc bag of Nilla Wafers and turned to me. “Well you’ve heard about Gary Felding, right?”

I shook my head.

“Oh. Well, that kind of shows you. We like to remember Gary each year today.”

“Complete crash and burn,” boomed Larry Keller, a speech teacher who wore splashy bow ties and liked to shake his right index finger with abandon. “The man taught biology for twenty-six consecutive years here, and the night of his twenty-seventh open house, he snapped.” Larry sat down on the corner of a table, his back straight with perfect posture and his eyes fixed ahead, as though he were being interviewed for a documentary film on the subject. “Went batty. Some parent was complaining that her son found the lectures in his class to be unintelligible. Gary just began screaming. Asked the mother if she was aware that her son had drawn an illustration of a hairy boner on his mitosis-video response worksheet.

“But Gary didn’t stop there. He lit up a Bunsen burner and began stripping. Set his tie and shirt on fire, then his pants. Parents ran from the room screaming. By the time the cops came, Gary had turned out the lights in his classroom and put on an old-school filmstrip about the atom bomb. He was sitting in one of the student desks, crying and watching mushroom clouds fill the screen.”

Mr. Tambor reentered the conversation, his eyes wide and his quiet voice imbued with the vibrato of the haunted. “The saddest memory I have is of Gary being taken away in handcuffs. Though they did let him put on one of those black chemical aprons the kids have to wear during experiments before they led him out. I guess he felt a little exposed when he realized his clothes were burned up.”

Janet slowly pushed herself up from the couch and made a frustrated groan. “We’re just circus animals here to give the taxpaying parents an entertaining evening.” She hunched her back over and bowed her arms into the shape of exaggerated parentheses. “Monkey dance for you,” she grunted in a low voice. “Me monkey. Monkey jump high if parent say so.” Encouraged by a light pattering of laughter from the other teachers, she shuffled over to the fruit bowl next to the coffeemaker and grabbed a banana. “Monkey ass itch,” Janet proclaimed in a throaty growl, “monkey scratch!” Her hands reaching backward, she began to laboriously lift each orthopedic Velcro shoe a few inches off the ground to mimic a dance.

“Stop… stop!” Larry hissed under his breath. Suddenly the cause came into view: Assistant Principal Rosen was standing just outside the doorway looking in. Janet removed her hands from in between her butt cheeks but did not turn around to face him.

“Ned,” Larry greeted him, extending his coffee cup outward in a type of salute. “Don’t mind us. Just blowing off a little steam before all the pomp and circumstance.” Ned Rosen nodded, then wandered away. He seemed confused and a little sad, the way the last caveman to accept the wheel might, wondering how others could possibly appreciate something he found to be so useless.

I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the parents for a different reason—to me they were libido kryptonite. I liked to imagine the students as an independent resource, new creatures of their own design. Day to day, it was easy to think of the junior high as an island of immortal youths who might never age, but seeing the parents killed that fantasy. Suddenly I’d be aware of what nearly all my students would look like two decades down the road. And after I’d seen them, it was impossible to get those images out of my mind.

For example, I learned that Trevor’s physical destiny involved the generous distribution of hirsute facial moles, in addition to a series of broken nasal capillaries that had a near-infected red glow. Michael Ronaldo in my fifth period, though currently lanky and weightless, was destined to inherit a third-trimester paunch. Though the night included a few creepy fathers ( I sure would’ve paid attention if my teacher had looked like you ) and overcomplimentary mothers who seemed to be skirting the line of possible friendship ( Dana told me after the first day, “Mom, my English teacher is the prettiest person I’ve ever seen!” Isn’t that sweet? You know, a few of us mothers have a scrapbooking circle on Wednesday nights …), the only bona fide nut who showed up was Frank Pachenko’s mother, who introduced herself simply as Mrs. Pachenko, though I knew she was Frank’s mother even before she spoke—the two of them had the same bulging eyes. Their resting expression was one of squeezed panic, like a ferret dressed up in a miniature corset. Frank was a hopeless dork with the haircut of a fourth grader; meeting his mother, it was easy to see why.