Lori Ostlund - After the Parade

Aaron found his students huddled at their desks, bundled up in coats and scarves so that he could not make out who was who at first. They peered at him, sure that he had rectified the problem because they believed he would not let them freeze. “It’s time to start class,” he said, echoing Marla without realizing it, and his students opened their notebooks and prepared to learn. Soon, Bart, a work-study student from Ukraine, appeared with a space heater in each hand. He plugged in the heaters, ceremoniously, one on each side of the room, and then loitered for a moment, like a luggage porter expecting a tip. The heaters’ singular effect was to remind the students that they were paying tuition to freeze. And they were freezing. Each time they answered a question, their words crystallized in the air, shocking the Brazilians and Thais in particular. After an hour of this, Aaron tossed his chalk on the desk and went back downstairs.

“Come in,” Marla called when he knocked at her office door. As he opened it, a wave of heat rolled out.

“I’m glad at least one of those space heaters works,” he said.

In response, she flapped her arms, a gesture he interpreted as “shut the door and stop letting out the heat.” She had not yet taken down the Christmas lights above her desk, and they blinked off and on, making the sweat on her brow and nose glisten. He shut the door but remained standing, despite her suggestion that he sit, while he described the impossibility of teaching under such conditions. “They’re trying to take notes with mittens on,” he said. “It’s like watching some silly party game.”

“Do something that doesn’t require writing,” Marla said. She sounded tired. “It’s supposed to warm up again by Wednesday.”

“What are you saying? That Mr. Pulkka won’t turn the heat back on?”

He knew that she had not asked. Taffy had told him that when Pulkka and Marla looked over the books together, Pulkka questioned each expense and hinted that he could always find a new director, someone less blind to waste. Their work relationship was complicated by the fact that they had dated briefly, years earlier. “She dropped him,” Taffy said, “so he enjoys making her feel insecure about her job, especially now that she’s divorced with two kids to support.” It shocked Aaron that Marla had confided in her employees about such things.

“It’s more than just the wasted time,” he declared. He was still wearing both sweaters and the corduroy jacket and could feel the sweat pooling under his arms.

Marla looked up, responding to his tone, but he did not know how to explain to her that it made him feel foolish, like a failure really, to stand there before his freezing students blowing warmth into his cupped hands as he scribbled sentences on the board, aware that they were all watching him, watching him accept these conditions. He looked at Marla, her desk piled high with papers, photos of her children on the walls, a sprig of mistletoe — he noticed it only then — hanging over her head.

“Never mind,” he said. “The students are waiting.”

* * *

Lila was leading the class in calisthenics. She had become interested in what she called “American-style fitness” during the year she worked at Disney World. He waited for the class to complete a round of jumping jacks before announcing, “The heater is very broken. It cannot be fixed today.” He wanted to tell them the truth — that the owner had locked up the controls — but he maintained an old-fashioned belief in basic workplace loyalty, even when it seemed so obviously misplaced.

They spent the rest of the morning playing the Culture Game, which he had invented when he was teaching at the community college in Albuquerque. The game, which required them to discuss questions that focused on small cultural differences between their countries and the United States, had started as a way to fill leftover minutes at the end of class, but his students had begged to play it at other times because they knew firsthand that the small differences were what bred confusion and distrust. Over the years he had created a lengthy list of questions, which he added to constantly:

What should you do if you see an old man kicking a dog?

When someone on the street asks for directions, should you make up directions if you are not sure how to get there, just to be polite?

If you are invited to a friend’s house for dinner, should you help with the dishes?

The rules were simple: he read a question aloud, blew his whistle, and the students rushed to discuss it with someone who was not from their country. Four minutes later, he blew the whistle again and the class reported their responses. Of course, they liked this part of the exercise, enjoyed explaining how things worked in their countries, but soon enough someone always asked, “What is the correct answer here in America, Aaron?” They liked to believe there was a correct answer.

The cold had made the students listless, so Aaron began with this question: Is it okay to ask someone how much money he pays for rent? He had found that money questions had an energizing effect. Their answers were nuanced, most of them having to do with the motivation behind the asking. “Is not okay if you are just being nosy,” said Pilar, though she pronounced it “noisy.”

When it was Aaron’s turn, he told them that once when he hosted a class party in Albuquerque, a Vietnamese student had inquired how much his house cost.

“Were you embarrassed by this question?” Katya asked.

He admitted that he had been.

“This I do not understand,” said Katya. “Americans are thinking all the time about money but always they are saying it is bad manners to talk about money. Maybe if they are talking about money more, they will not be thinking all the time about it.”

The others nodded.

“Maybe,” Aaron said. He knew they were expecting a better answer than this, but he put the whistle to his mouth and blew. “Next question: Is it okay to drop in on a friend uninvited? ” They had just learned the phrasal verb to drop in on, and he noted their excitement at encountering it.

Ji-hun, one of the Korean students, began the group discussion by acknowledging that it was best to call ahead, his reasoning practical: one should not waste time driving to visit a friend who was not home. Beyond that, everyone agreed that it was okay — not just okay but a happy surprise. They seemed perplexed that it was even a question.

Finally, Diego asked, “And for Americans?”

“It depends on the person,” Aaron said, an answer that always displeased them. They wanted a set of rules that they could draw upon without having to consider individual desires or preferences.

“Is like this in London,” said Neto, one of the Brazilians. He had studied there for two years and claimed to miss it, but now he told them a story about an elderly couple who had lived in the apartment above his and invited him for dinner once a week and on holidays. “They were my family there,” Neto said. “But one day I received good news at school, and when I arrived at my apartment that night I went up to tell them. It was ten o’clock, and they were wearing their robes and watching television, which I knew because I can hear the television from my ceiling. I only go because I know they are awake and because I am very exciting, but they told me it was too late, that I should not come to their door like this, unannounced.”

The others listened, but Aaron could tell from the way they shook their heads that this made no sense to them.

“The next day,” Neto continued, “I told my news, and they made a special dinner. I did not tell them, never, that I felt so sad when they scolded me.”