Chapter 1
He was asleep in a small apartment where the window fan created a breeze. She sketched, eyes flicking between the paper and him. Zoë’s hair was a spectacular, straw colored mess. She drew with long, lean lines and remembered his fingers. Some of him leaked out of her. She stared at the curve of his hip and wanted him to turn so that she could draw his balls and penis.
Zoë’s thighs were sore. He had squeezed and pawed and humped her. She wanted him to wake up and do it again. She wondered about how she might need him.
Ron’s breath was dreamy and Zoë wanted it. The soft light of a feel good moon illuminated her. He had told her that he would start teaching at Our Lady of the Forlorn later in the week.
That morning, everyone met in the convent. At 10:15, they called Ron. “I must’ve written the date wrong,” he mumbled. “I’ll be there right away.”
He showered and dressed without looking at her. Then he said, “Please wait here until I come back home.” She smiled with the thought that she might not have to put clothes on at all today. She could look into everything that he owned, and when he came back home she would fuck him.
There were figurines and a red feather mixed with crumbs and ashes on a wooden desk that was covered with a paisley cloth. Some records were scratched and scattered in and out of jackets. An after-smell of tobacco and pot mingled with the ripeness in the sheets. Piles of books, some with papers wedged between their pages, were stacked on the floor. Unkempt plants that tangled and flowered reached out to watermarks on the wall and to a tin ceiling that was painted over.
He drove through Newark’s metal and concrete mix with a flood of hometown familiarity and in a panicky sweat. He was going somewhere that he’d been before. This was so very strange. He’d been sent to this school in 7th grade after being caught with a knife, now he was coming back to teach in the high school and he was late. He knew that wouldn’t go over all that well with the nuns.
Parking in one of the playground spots that were reserved for faculty, he looked over at the door of the church where he’d been marched with the rest of his classmates to pray during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He gazed at the towering oaks that lined the street and whose roots buckled the pavement. Looking up into the long comforting embrace of leaf lined branches, he tripped over the edge of an upturned sidewalk slab that sent him sprawling. His hands slapped down hard onto the stone and he snarled, “Fuck!” as he lay like some overly zealous penitent just as Father Joyce, who was carrying Communion wafers for the sick, came out of the church’s heavy door. Ron looked up in disheveled dismay as the veteran priest shook his head and walked around him. The fall had torn loose the sole of his shoe causing it to make a double slapping sound as he tried to walk.
“Great!” he said to himself, “I’m going to walk in and announce my presence with the authority of a clown. Maybe I can find a rubber ball to wear on my nose.”
The great room had a low ceiling, passageways that led off like spider legs. Crucifixes and portraits of saints with a variety of lighted halos hung on the walls over cut flowers. The incensed aroma was cool in contradiction to the temperature. The nuns were in their summer linen whites. One or two still wore the full headpiece that included the face frame and bib, but most had moved to the revealing below the knee hemline and abbreviated cap that the older nuns sneeringly referred to as “stewardess’ outfits.” They sat in the room with the empty cups of coffee that had been provided for those who had been on time. About twenty-five of them seated and everyone one of their heads turned to watch Ron limp into the room with his slapping heel.
He entered with a stumbling burst that reset one’s equilibrium. Sister Irene Emanuel looked at him over the top of her glasses and thought that he looked healthy in an annoying kind of way. Then she realized that he also smelled of smoke.
Sister Vincent Salvatore, seeing a man enter the room, could not help but get to her feet and move to bring him coffee. Irene Emanuel noted the gesture… “Mr. Tuck, thank you for coming” she said in her unmistakable tone. Then, knowing that it would be expected that she make some note of his tardiness added, “Not a particularly auspicious beginning for you.”
Automatically, Ron said “Good morning. No, not at all, Sister.” The tone in his voice put the room at ease. It was masculine but contrite and respectful, or at least it seemed so. He took a seat and was handed a folder. He took it with his scraped and bleeding hand. The nun that passed it to him looked at the traces of blood that had smeared onto the freshly copied white paper with a look of repulsion that she normally reserved for vomit.
The rest of the day was a blur except for when he saw his classroom. It was wooden; there was a podium; it had long and wide windows; there was a flag and a cross. He was attracted by the smell of chalk and the feel of slate. After the windows went up on their clicking chains, the city birds called in from branches and porches. He lit a cigarette before he thought about it, tossing the match out the window.
Sister Juliana Marie looked up from her student’s new baby and saw him standing in the window smoking. A scowl of disapproval crumpled her face. This lout was standing in his classroom smoking cigarettes. What was next? Was he going to strip down to his underwear to escape the heat? She rose and silently walked down to the principal’s office fingering the beads that belted her habit.
Ron stood under the Lincoln portrait that he’d hung next to a crucifix in the room. Even though it was 90 degrees and he was dressed in a sports jacket and tie and the heat was plastering the cotton shirt to his back, he felt that he was where he belonged and where he wanted to be. He raised his eyes to the Lincoln and the crucifix and said to neither in particular, “Please don’t let me screw these kids up.”
By mid afternoon, Ron noticed that the school had emptied. He’d been copying the names of the 117 students that would be in his classes. He’d thought about what he needed to accomplish on day one. He wanted to read the stories for a 3rd time before he began them tomorrow. He wanted a cigarette. He wanted to stop being Mr. Tuck for the day.
One by one, the nuns with whom he’d be teaching had come to the door to introduce themselves. Ron inhaled the fresh clean smell of their linen. He appreciated the quiet invitations that they offered. How could he have forgotten that he’d need paper? They would show him where the books were stored. Neatly stacked towers of white pages and blue covers, red covers, and sleek silver gilded pages that Ron wandered through; fingertips sliding across the books, mind trying to imagine who would open them.
He drove back to Elizabeth in silent reverie. Zoe was sitting naked in the middle of a floor that was filled with charcoal sketches. Fleeting portraits of him as he slept that featured just a line or two of detail. Still life drawings of his plants woven into self portraits of her face and the massive tangle of thick blonde hair that was smudged with charcoal and fastened with rubber bands.
She crawled to the door when she saw him and nuzzled his feet and calves. She didn’t say words. She uttered soft sounds that pled for attention. He felt and saw her crawl around him and wanted nothing in the world more than to have her for his own.