For a complete brick cohesion, the school was never protected from the snow or the heat. It must have been the clay that invited the air in, letting it battle something as powerful as the rock. And the brick, as well, allowed it to victor.
An intercom rang as I strolled around the north wing of Genesis Catholic. The faculty behind the widely screened window assumed I was simply concluding the designated Eucharistic Adoration, running my own errands from the south wing to the east, or the west wing to the basement. But my rosary hung in my locker and the cafeteria, hidden in a lower level of the east wing, was too far from the basement. As I completed my forth stroll around the main floor, I appreciated the free period that excused my menacing loitering. We were, or I was, condemned to neutral acceptance. Father Cage was still in the tabernacle by the time I reached his office at the end of the hall. I was jealously impressed by how well he alienated humane hallucinations around him to devote the twenty minutes to silence. Even the content students who were ready to complain about their terrible mornings and groan about the sluggish end of the day didn’t rile his spirituality. His palms sat innocently on his plump thighs. It unbalanced his seating but he kept still in a position so askew yet so stiff. I expected him to tip at any five minutes, landing on his shuteyes but remaining starch until the twenty minutes were up.
His clock radio read six fifty-seven but the chatter behind it said it was the hour past noon. Seven minutes later and the cafeteria would have cleared into a sticky, muggy, washout unlike the courteous and starving setting beforehand.
“Cage in?” one peeked in.
“Fath?” another dropped by.
“He’s still meditating.” I told them and they entered for their compliments anyway, snatching his gum, his taffy, his tea bags.
The stocked tea weren’t as good as their alliterative titles but they were provided by the college branch and the junior high served them for breakfast so it must have been some kind of constructive. I felt mooching as I took his candy and packed Tisane Tea and Great Green into my purse but I felt more wrong visiting him because I took an interest in him. Visits weren’t innocent anymore since priests violated their ordination. He entered in casual priest wear, the roman collar choking a comfortable appearance from him.
“Good afternoon, Laz.” he said, reaching atop his shelf.
He retrieved a plastic bag, wrung by soiled fingertips, and wrestled a paper cup from it, rinsing it with air thereafter. He filled it halfway with water, still not aware of my face. His trophies, outlined on top of his wall, were his details. I didn’t actually observe its rank and worthiness; instead I assumed they were high enough on its elevation. His walls were as green as our emerald polo with a grandfather clock between the candy shelf and the junk shelf. Everything else was sort of thrown like improvisation. A wallet photo of Pope Benedict XVI pasted on the wall above his computer, a Biggie action figure out of reach on his shelf, an empty candleholder beside an exclusive bag of goodies. His indifferent connection would have wielded me worried the year before but I learned to appreciate out common sociality. After all, it wasn’t obtruding civility, nor was it all that I knew of domesticity. I quickly wondered if it was a sin to imagine indecency in his presence. I would have suppressed the instinct like I did reaction either way.
“I doubt you were at Friday F Me If They Violate Another One of My Alone Times.”
“Alright, Peter,” I began, “You didn’t even make the effort to confirm. Give proof and set if before thee? I do not work miracles for the lazy.”
“Thank God this being was conceived in a more tolerant time.”
The bell rang, then, summoning college-bound students to their college-preparatory classes. Honors, advanced placement, exclusive credits so impressive. Destiny knew that was never my benefit.
“You could have at least peeked in. Entered boisterously in teenage propensity to announce your existence. Just for the confirmation I’m supposed to expect.”
“Someone stole my rosary.”
He took the drink in one sip and set the cup aside for a later time.
“Lying isn’t a virtue of feeling preservation.”
“But it preserves feelings, doesn’t it.”
Otherwise, I’d have still considered myself prone to negativity. With the power of fibs for safekeeping and avoidances of the truth, I sustained short conversations, never banters, with my family. In other instanced, I achieved the polite impression that was precarious out of overdone cordiality but overall whimsical. Strangers boded a distant caution in me that didn’t want; never meant to offend them. But I always thought I did, especially when it was so. I was just the golden holder, too bright by vision and too gray in blurry contrast although I was merely yellow.
“At the cost of your life, missy.”
“At least I’ll feel good doing it,” I said, “Or be straight at all.”
He dropped his key chain at his borderline-cluttered desk as Zulu Mrs. Z assigned detention slips to students not ready to listen, brain-dead, in their cold seats. Collected wrappers were scattered about his calendar as visitors targeted his desktop as missed shots. Wiping it out with a waft of the arm would have distracted his plan to bookmark chapters in the five Bibles sprinkled about the calendar and on some of the wrappers. It was probably a sin the book to come in contact with garbage. Or maybe not since it sitting above the wrappers made it supremer. He sighed and waited a moment in the plain air before recalling and refilling his paper cup with water. He quaffed a small amount, set it down, and sat in his computer chair, delighted as all heaven that he didn’t hear a pop after the creaking.
“Do you know that boy with the braces? His teeth are indefinitely not the greatest. Neither is his head, I believe.”
“Mike?”
”Michael. Dinoto. I think I have him next period.”
“You’re subbing for McGoldie?”
“No, Mr. Crow.”
“He’s new.”
“Indeed,” he said, “Doesn’t know what to say to these kids. Jesse want me to discuss the majority of turning to homosexuality.”
“Why can’t he just sit in the back of the classroom? They’ll listen all period.”
“Because us faculty have lives, my darling.”
“Don’t break your mediation on my behalf.”
His mouth didn’t bellow but instead his face did and he beamed urbane. He had a soggy laugh that was attracting in a poignant, cordial way.
“Whenever you get the chance, too, Laz,” he said before he trailed his embonpoint off, “Tell me when you’re planning on serving that detention.”
“Just in case I don’t graduate.”
He eyes moved about the ground.
“Serious matters,” he commented as he spun around, “Vital.”
His attention was caught on another tangent, foraging for something for seven yellow sheets of paper. A pen, an eraser, white out. It was hole-pun repair stickers. He lightly placed them on each hole like the most delicate of art but it wasn’t even used for its benefit.
“Where are you supposed to be, anyway?”
“Western Civilization.” I pronounced.
“No interest in the Aztecs ad industrialization?” he mocked specifically.
“Never,” I said, “They’ve definitely thrown some leaders and heroes under the bus with their lack of reference.”
“It’s not Biblical, you know.”
“Well, then amputate the chapter reviews and the so-fun crosswords. How do you think that one guy who started the Boston Massacre feels?”
“Isn’t that American History?”
“Doesn’t matter! Imagine being known for the rest of generations as an unknown person.
Meanwhile, they’ll quick-fill every corner with a key term the reader can pick up on his or her own, like you never even existed, resulting in the turgid book that really resembles the Bible when it’s a degree just over full of shit!” I exasperated, “Excuse me, Father.”
I was never perfectly in touch with my opinions and state of mind. They were always an inch too far to grasp and I never clutched it until I no longer needed to state them. I figured it was destined not to expressed; not to be in mind’s hand, perhaps on account that it was out of hand.
“You are aware that the names mentioned in the Bible are merely for mentioning. They say so-and-so, the son of this guy, who married her, who had her who married him and bore him as well as him who died like so and who—they’re simply stating the chain so you can become familiar.”
“At least they get commended one way or the other.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he cheered, “You won’t make history, anyway.”
His computer screen saver slid another photo of loitering students into view. They were in the middle of a joke. The photo captured an awkward silence, paused at the midpoint of a pun and a reaction. A lanky athlete, one of thirty most valuable players, one out of other sports-based schools namedropped on ESPN, hunched over to fit his hands in his pockets. Beside him, an eager freshman girl perturbed her lips and her eyes, surprisingly partaking in how off-guard the upperclassmen were. But before I grasped to notice the other student, shortest and closest to the candy shelf, his head aiming; arm reaching, the slide moved on to a photo of two girls and I sitting on the couch. I was lightly laughing about something hilarious in comparison to their solemn expressions. Perhaps I comprehended the joke too early. Our tops never looked so white. I inspected it as the next slide transitioned.
“Tell me about your closet.”
“My closet?” he asked, glidingly lumbering his computer chair to the shelf, “My closet is morbid. Black. Just black, black. I might have a pair of jeans in the back but that’s reserved for future rebellion.”
“Go on with your bad self.”
“Speaking of jeans, how’s home?”
He was preoccupied, still, by browsed books.
“It’s straight.”
“Still sleeping the beautiful afternoon away?”
“Hey, it’s a sufficient way to grow. Not to mention the replenishing recharge,” I said.
“Suppress it until it’s vertical, Laz.”
He rolled back to his desk for more hydration.
“You know, there are two sides to everything. Yours just happen to be on a longer end.”
I didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t party. My nerves didn’t even know how to function fun. I boded a distant caution to never mean to offend.
“This morning I contemplated a death scenario for my sister. Saw her stabbed in both of her temples.”
“Well, stop fibbing, then.”
“I really wish it didn’t bother me when I did.”
“Oh, God, assign me substitution for this child’s class, please” he proclaimed, “We need a prayer lesson here.”
“Sermon me, Father but hoping for communication is hopeless.”
A knock on his door sent my blood and body rushing erectly.
“Who dares to trespass?”
“It’s James, Father.”
“Ah, Jesse. Enter!”
He trotted in, tangled in the same brown corduroys and peach sweater vest as September. Anything in his fingertips always seemed on the brink of falling as his swaying ID tags and keys clung strongly to his turbulence. At least he was from New Jersey with the accent to attest to it.
“What’s this?”
“I was just teaching Miss Laz here about the Lord and all.”
He scrupled so I couldn’t identify nervous pupils behind the glare on his glasses. He wasn’t lying, I hoped, but I was curious of his conscience. He kept his focus on Jesse without a smudge of impressionable guilt.
“I was kicked out.” I tainted for the sake of myself.
“Shouldn’t you be in the office?”
“No one was there.”
“No one was there.” he confirmed.
“What with your busy lives and such.”
It was probably true. If the school wasn’t plotted and frazzled in the middle of the woods, a breaking and entering would be otiose. The slide passed a few members of the art club, the senior class president, and an exchange student I recall was denied French class because Mr. Jesse called it a free throw.
“I’ll call Terry.” he assured.
“No, she’s fine.” he lied.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Besides, we got, what… twenty minutes until seventh.”
“No, Father, she needs to be held against her will. It’s not about what she wants.”
“Jesse,” Cage said, “It’s okay.”
Mr. Jesse sighed, setting the papers down without comment and tolerating Father for his position. He had to express his caution in risen eyebrows before he left, uneasy for Father when he did. Father smiled at the situation, laughing at me. I shouldn’t have cosigned. I duplicated yet another verging failure.
“I almost thought you shouldn’t have but I understand the routes you construct out of spoiled cheese and stone.”
“That was good. You make that up right now?”
“No, it came to me yesterday.”
“Lucky timing.”
“I’m just brilliant.”
I laughed at him, holding an overdone interest in the instance without my add-on. Father would have let righteousness take it course, helping hands up from contemptuous restrain. I doubted he would have processed another student’s becoming reserve for we were subjected to discipline. Inured as all hell; it didn’t faze us; complains eventually explicably useless to us and he failed to judge such issues in all. Although, I figured he partially needed to help me, judging I felt he felt I stood out. Or perhaps the moment would have passed without my input, depending on Jesse’s power-stricken extent.
“I understand your sacrifice, Laz,” he glanced at me, then, seeing my eyes; looking at me, “But there comes a time when you realize using the cigarettes are far more a gradual destruction than that one time you don’t. It takes gradual healing a school of spoiled Greenwich kids to distract you from the nicotine.”
He returned to his papers, instead choosing to pick at the wrappers and toss them at the trash, on by one, missing as well. As he reached for one beneath the Bible, his office phone gobbled an obnoxious, silent-cutting cacophony I couldn’t bear. I promised myself I’d never buy a house phone, as if they were popular, anyway.
“Liz?” he asked, “Terry,” he corrected, “Yes, she’s here.”
I waited on-edge.
“No, she didn’t but what is the issue? She’s not disrupting anyone.”
He shifted his chair from a pi to two-pi arc length.
“Oh, your statistics,” he cackled, “God forbid a straight-B student brings you down. Plus, who cares about Western Civ? There’s always a story everywhere and do we scrutinize every war in Haiti or the leaders of that one revolution in Australia? Don’t correct me if I’m wrong.”
I couldn’t hear her but her voice raised a decibel higher than the telephone and she ranted about what sounded like a complaint. It was probably simply a story, the prophet, her. No one forgot her face from the numerous commercials, sponsored by various car dealerships, which advertised our annual Easter Auctions and Christmas Giveaways.
“Terry, while you’re at it, track the sophomores who vandalized my desk with Tootsie Rolls down. I ought to make them clean it up with their teeth.”
They hung up in unified conclusion and he moved back to the yellow sheets.
“I have an A in Algebra.”
“Good job, Laz.” his back answered.
“Thanks!”
“Let me just call her back before she spreads that piece of information.”
I watched him as he contemplated the next thing to write. He wasn’t uncomfortable in the least; he didn’t pause to notice if I was watching or not. The person he knew, sitting on the couch in silent fidelity, was busy daydreaming at the floor. But I was consciously observing him. His skin was brighter than it would have been without the nutritious glow. His lips were dark but small so it didn’t matter. His hair was thick toward his widow’s peak and bald in the back but he sported it securely. His body language was one that was notably careless, as if he was just getting things done. He usually held stacks of paper close to this bloated chest, stopping to bandy with undivided attention and unanticipated legs until the conversations drifted to nothing. He was an everyday type of guy. Courteous, by himself, and completely, carelessly aware. Without the consideration that priesthood was open to everyone, he was unlike any strict devoted Roman Catholic.
“Lazarus.” a voice behind his door beckoned.
I was caught off guard and shocked straight up, knocking a throw pillow down. Mr. Liz picked it up and replaced it.
“Three minutes, Lazarus. Come with me.”
“Come on, Tony.” Father said, turning his chair around.
“Lazarus, this isn’t an argument.”
Cage watched as I stood in immune humiliation.
“You all wonder why she’s bringing cocktails of medication to class.” he warned.
“Come on, Lazarus.”
“God doesn’t ask for all of that,” he pleaded.
I noticed Father Cage’s verging craze, and then Mr. Liz’s morally tired eyes, his outstanding opinions devoted to his tasks; sacrificed, better yet. I submitted to him, willingly understanding Cage’s disappointment, but the time when cigarettes gradually lynched absently arrived. And timing had its damned reasons.
***
Sarah Estime
Sarah was born in Stamford, Connecticut where she couldn’t be planted into her peers’ prestigious and materialistic roots. It took her a reluctant move to Florida and two years of homesickness to view the world as a relevant reality and apply her evidently aberrant potential to actual works of visual arts and literature. She hopes her creative writing teacher is right when he says she’s a good writer. She hopes she’s not as transparent as she expects she is. She hopes her family didn’t have a conflicting propensity for half of her life so she’ll confirm if anyone’s listening once she has a relationship with them.
