Chapter 55
As Easter approached Ron felt very hopeful. His mother was home now and Lois was spending more and more time in Glen Ridge. George had moved back in and there seemed to be a silent, if angry truce between Marjorie and him. Ron tried his best to avoid George altogether. On the evenings that he knew George was working late, he would stop by after tutoring, or the other nights he would call.
The days were getting longer and the weather was turning mild. On some days Ron could get away with just wearing his sports jacket and some evening he would get home before it was dark.
The English Department at the school consisted of four teachers. There was Sister Ruth Dolores, the department chairperson, who was a thin brown-haired nun with dark rimmed glasses and a close to the vest voice that never rose much about a whisper. There were two lay teachers, Emily Spinoza and Holly Risotto. The one was a newly married girl from the neighborhood who talked to her kids about how much she wanted to get pregnant as she did about grammar. The other, Holly, was a tall, somewhat overweight woman with reddish blonde hair and tinted glasses. She also taught drama. And then there was Ron.
The department rarely met and Ron saw little of his department colleagues who were all located in the other building. To commemorate the coming of the most sacred day of the year, Sister Donna Maria announced that the meeting would be held in the convent to celebrate the mystery of Christ Risen.
They gathered on the Tuesday before Good Friday and the day before the last day of school prior to the beginning of the holiday. By now, Ron had noticed that his vacations were longer than those of the public school teachers. He had also figured out that it was another way that the school kept the loyalty of its students and faculty. They got more vacations.
Before the meeting, Bernadette, drew Ron aside and said, “Keep an eye on Holly. We had to cover one of her classes this morning. She has been in with Donna Maria praying for most of the morning.”
He gave her a look that said that he did not understand the import of what she was saying. She just put her finger to her lips, gave her head an almost imperceptible shake and used her eyes to direct his attention to Sister Cheesy.
Donna Maria was giving Holly a warm and benevolent smile. The teachers were filing in. Ron had lost his place card soon after the first meeting and had not seen the need to bring it again, but many of the teachers dutifully placed them on their laps and some of the more enterprising had found a way to attach it to their blouse collars.
“Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again,” said Donna Maria as a sign that the gathering was to come to order.
The faculty came to silence. Except for Holly who threw back her head and opening her mouth wide with her glasses askew on her face, screamed, “I see Him.”
Heads turned. Mouths opened. Donna Maria frowned.
Holly turned to the crucifix on the wall and looked up with a radiance of torment on her face. “He’s coming into me. He wants me.”
Sister Donna Maria moved to her and placed both of her hands on the crown of Holly’s head in an effort to soothe her. “He wants all of us,” she said rapturously and lifted her eyes upward and then closed them and began to whisper prayer.
“It hurts!” screamed Holly. “He’s coming into me.”
Bernadette rolled her eyes but her face showed concern and anger. Doris got up and moved next to Holly. This last statement caused Donna Maria to back up a step or two as if she had been repulsed by the unbridled electricity of what she heard.
The next scream was a wordless cry of anguish. It was feral and shrill. Ron was stunned. He waited for someone to escort Holly from the room or to call an ambulance but no one moved. The scream echoed in the room and when Ron looked at the faces of his colleagues he saw that they were swiveling between Holly and the crucifix.
Incredibly, Donna Maria tried to continue the meeting. “As we prepare students for these coming days, remember that our first consideration is…”
“He’s naked and he wants me,” yowled Holly. She began to pull at the collar of her white button down shirt and the top two buttons popped off and bounced across the top of the table that was in front of her.
Now two of the nuns jumped to their feet and Donna Maria said, “Sisters, please help Miss Risotto.”
When they took her by the elbows and tried to help her to stand, she looked at them wild-eyed. “He doesn’t want you. He wants me.” she said in tortured accusation. She stood and faced the faculty. “Can’t you see how he wants me?” She rolled her hips in grotesque invitation at the crucifix.
Ron looked around for Rita Julia, but the Mother Superior was not in the room. And then to his shock, Bernadette stood quietly and left. She must be calling the police or the hospital, thought Ron.
But now Holly was walking towards him, flanked by the two nuns, Ruth Dolores and Alma Mercedes.
Holly stopped in front of Ron. “Can you help me?”
“I don’t know how,” said Ron trying to meet her eyes. He sensed the sincerity of her pain and looked at her with a mixture of compassion, fear and revulsion.
“Please,” she said, lowering her head and crying. “Please take me out of here.”
Ron felt a rush a cold desperation wash through him like ice water. “Holly,” he said gently. “We need to get you some help.”
She cried harder. Her shoulders were shaking like a trembling dead leaf that clung to spring branch that was trying to get rid of its excess baggage to make room for new growth.
Abruptly, Doris stood up. “I’ll go with you,’ she said to Ron.
Ron felt himself go pale. They couldn’t be serious. This woman needed a hospital and a strait jacket and they wanted him to take her home.
“Please,” blubbered Holly and she began to get down onto her knees. The nuns held her up. Ron looked for Donna Maria, but she had shrunken into the corner of the room and was not looking at them.
Then Donna Maria rose out of her corner and walked towards them. “Mr. Tuck, you may be excused from the rest of the meeting so that you can take Miss Risotto home. She needs to rest.” Then she turned to Holly. “Please take tomorrow off, Miss Risotto. I will see that your classes are covered and then you will have the entire vacation to get your strength back.”
Holly’s shoulders trembled and she did not look up to meet Sister Donna Maria’s gaze. Muffled moans worked their way out of her mouth and nostrils along with mucus and drool. Her eyeliner had run in dark streaks down her cheeks and give her the appearance of a crying clown. Doris held her hand and Ron could see that Holly was squeezing it so tightly that her fingers were white. Tears that were blackened from the makeup under her leaking eyes dripped down onto her white shirt and left wet, black trails.
Doris spoke to Sister Donna Maria. “I’ll help him with her and make sure that she is alright.
The three of them made a slow, carefully watched procession from the convent’s meeting room and towards the front door. Holly looked up at a statue of the Blessed Virgin and wailed again. The sound pierced the silence of the convent like a muffled blade.
When they got to the car, Doris helped Holly into the front seat. Ron went and around to the driver’s side and flicked the lever that allowed the seat to move forward so that Doris could access the rear seat, but Doris didn’t get in. She looked at Ron with a defensive glare.
“My husband will be expecting me. I’m having a crowd for dinner on Good Friday.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You said that you would help.”
“This is as far as I go,” said Doris and without waiting for a reply turned her back to the car and quickly waddled away.
“You’ve been a big help,” said Ron.
He clicked the seat forward and slid in. Holly was holding her head and staring out the side window.
“Where do you live, Holly?”
“Bellville.”
Ron started the car. “Where in Belleville?”
“On Little Street. Upstairs from a family.” She began to cry again.
Ron put the car into gear and began to drive. He knew approximately where Little Street was and so he headed up towards the park thinking that he could save lights and time by winding along a road the rimmed the outskirts of the park.
After a few blocks, Holly said, “I have dreams about you.” Ron didn’t answer. “In the dreams I’m wearing a uniform and you are scolding me.” Ron began to perspire in the cold car. “You tell me that I am a bad girl but it feels good when you say it. Do you know why?”
Ron said, “Holly, do you have a doctor?”
“No.”
“Maybe I should take you to the hospital.”
Immediately, she turned to him and said, “No. no please. No hospital. I’ll do anything that you want me to do. I’ll be anything that you want me to be, but please no hospital.” Her voice was rising in desperation and Ron could see that the only way that he would get her into the hospital would be with the help of the police. He did not want to do that. “The girls are all in love with you,” she said as if she was revealing a dark secret. We talk about you all the time.” This idea was incomprehensible to Ron, but somehow the thought of their minds being entrusted to Holly made him angry. What kind of a role model was she for the nuns to put in front of his students? How could Irene Emanuel have hired this woman?
They came out of the park on Heller Parkway and Ron headed towards Silver Lake. Holly screamed like a siren. “No railroad tracks! No railroad tracks! No, no, I can’t ride over the crosses on the railroad tracks!”
Ron pulled the car to the side of the road. If he just drove ahead and crossed the tracks he could get her to Claara Maas Hospital within a couple of minutes, but then he felt guilty. He would just be dumping her like unwanted furniture on the street. He couldn’t do that. It would make him no better than Doris.
“OK,” he said. “No railroad tracks.” His brain began to run through the possible permutations. There were railroad tracks that separated Bellville from Newark with every route that his mind saw. He clicked in one route after another and the he saw it. Where Broadway became Washington Street there was an overpass. He could drive under the railroad tracks. He turned the car around.
She was silent as the streets passed and then in a very small, little girl voice she asked, “Where are you taking me?”
“I know a place where there is an underpass,” he said.
In the same small voice, she asked coyly, “Do you wear underpants?” Ron didn’t answer. “Sometimes, I don’t,” she said like she was confessing.
The image was not one that Ron chose to picture, but it set off a chain reaction in his brain that asked the question, “Would I be this anxious to drop her off if I thought she was pretty?” The fact that he even asked himself the question filled Ron with self-disgust.
“I could be your geisha and you could tell me to do anything and I would do it for you,” she said.
“Holly, you really need to see a doctor.”
Her voice shifted and became deep and almost menacing. “Why? Is it because I am a woman who is strong enough to say what it is that she really wants? Is that why you are pushing me away?”
“No, “said Ron quickly. He didn’t want to set her off again and they were coming up to the trestle now and he felt that if he just got under the railroad tracks that somehow things would be better.
“The girls told me that you don’t have a girlfriend when I asked them about you.”
Ron wanted to strangle his students. He wondered if they had fueled her fantasies. If they had used her vulnerability to get out of doing work or because they thought that she was amusing. For a moment he was very angry with them. He vowed to not tell them anything else about his life.
Now they were on Washington Avenue and heading north. It was then that she seemed to gather herself and began to calmly provide him with directions. Ron was hopeful. Maybe this episode was passing and he could just drop her off.
When they pulled up in front of her house, she said “Would you like to come in for some tea or a drink?”
“I don’t think so,” said Ron.
She began to cry quietly. “You think I’m disgusting and pathetic, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t,” said Ron. “I think that maybe you have been working too hard and need to get some rest and maybe see a doctor.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I need a man who isn’t afraid.” Then she opened the car door and said, “Thank you for getting me home, Mr. Tuck.”
Ron watched as she walked up to the house, took her keys out of her purse, opened the door and disappeared inside. As he pulled away her felt a twinge of concern but it was overcome by a huge wave of relief. Why did all the crazy women want him?
End of part 2