Chapter 3 Distractions #2
Paula had yelled first, added, “It was just a stupid joke,” and then thrown the wadded-up invoice into the trash, but she hadn’t apologized, even when the rest of the staff told her it hadn’t sounded like a joke when she’d done it.
“Again, why?” Roxy asked. “Seriously? I know how jealously you guard your crafting time. Why offer it to this guy?”
“His grandmother is lovely,” Isaac told her. “And his grandfather is lovely to her, so he also gets my approval as a nice guy. But it’s….” He let out a breath. “There I was, trying to knit that sweater Todd asked me to make him—”
“The shit-brown monstrosity,” she said.
Isaac bit his lip thoughtfully. “Did you ever see it?”
“No,” she said. “But Isaac, it’s been a year and a half.
It’s time to start speaking ill of the dead.
If I say nothing else about your late husband, I’ll tell you that his affinity for brown, tan, ecru, and crème was the least of his sins.
Why you would want to pull that out now to finish it is beyond me. ”
Penance, because I was thinking far worse before I reached for a new project.
“I don’t know,” Isaac told her. “Self-flagellation. Whatever. But Luca walked up and said, ‘Whatever is making your face do that, don’t,’ and I was so grateful I offered to make him something, and then he told me about his problems, which was nice—”
“Because you weren’t alone with the problems,” she said, and he nodded.
“And….” He sighed. “I don’t know. I guess anything was better than working on the shit-brown monstrosity.”
Roxy’s disappointment was palpable, and for a moment it was just the two of them in the cool of the early afternoon sunshine with the sound of kids’ shouts and the eternal hum of conversation, even if nobody was near enough to hear.
“That’s it?” she asked. “Was he even cute?”
“Oh yeah. I mean built, and with this sweet little face and brown eyes and—” He stopped himself. “He was pleasant,” he finished weakly, conscious that Roxy had perked up next to him.
“Pleasant?” she asked. “Pleasant?”
He let out a breath. “I,” he said, “am still grieving.”
“And I’m still a virgin with a twenty-eight-inch waist,” she retorted.
He glanced at her squishy, comfortable, happy body. “You never had a twenty-eight-inch waist,” he said critically.
Her laughter burbled into the early afternoon air, and he was reminded again of why he’d knit for her again and again.
“You bitch, I did too! Childbirth does terrible things to your body, trust me. But”—she sobered—“even if I was a size zero and had hipbones that could pierce steel, that wouldn’t change the fact that what you just said was a lie. ”
“I am too grieving.” But even the word was hard to say.
They neared the soda machine and waited patiently—and quietly—while a small group of students made their purchases. One of them—one of Isaac’s favorite kids, actually—glanced up as he grabbed his illicit soda and grinned.
“Hey, Brown-man. You coming to walk on the wild side?”
Isaac gave him a warm smile. “Caffeine and sugar—next it’ll be the hard stuff and a one-way ticket to the big house!”
Marcelle gave a delighted cackle and walked up for a fist bump, which Isaac happily gave.
Smallish—his freshman growth spurt had been more like a growth wave—and African American, with his tightly napped hair dyed blond, then purple, Marcelle had been out and proud practically since the cradle.
Isaac admired everything about the kid, from his enthusiasm about English lit to his dogged determination to pass pre-algebra, which he was fixing to do this year, as a junior.
He’d bonded with Isaac when Isaac had given him after-school help, a thing he did readily for any student who needed it.
But Marcelle had really put his back into math.
And Isaac had put his back into helping the boy learn math, pulling out every trick he had, from manipulatives to trips around the school looking for math examples, until Marcelle had not only passed pre-algebra, he’d determined to pass algebra in summer school so he could sneak one more math class in as a senior for better hope of a college admission.
This was the kind of kid teachers lived for.
“So what are you two gossiping about?” Marcelle asked, giving the girls with him a bawdy wink. “You got plans to go clubbing this weekend?”
That made Roxy laugh, and she said, “The closest thing I get to clubbing is chaperoning school dances, but nice try. I’m taking the kids to the park and hoping they take a long nap.”
“I will babysit anytime,” Marcelle told her. “I’ve got siblings coming out my ears—I’ve even got a first aid certificate so my mom doesn’t freak out when I’m in charge! And Sheryl”—he nodded at one of the girls—“and me, we watched Mrs. Halford’s kids last week, if you want a reference.”
For a moment Roxy’s face was taken over by wistfulness, and Isaac felt for her. He’d babysat for her plenty, but usually for family stuff or work things, and Roxy was careful not to impose too much. A date night probably sounded like the ultimate in luxury.
“You should do it,” he said quietly. “You and Brian could go see a movie or, you know, have an uninterrupted meal.” Marcelle threw a friendly arm around his shoulders, and Isaac returned the move so they could stand together in brotherhood.
“I’ve got Marcelle’s digits, if you want to call Brian and then call him up.
I’m a reference. I guess Kim Halford’s a reference.
” Kim Halford was a science teacher—nice lady, they agreed, but her room was on the other side of their large campus.
“Come on, Roxy,” he said quietly. “You deserve a weekend out.”
“We come fully equipped,” Marcelle said. “First aid certificates, cooking classes—Sheryl here even took some childhood ed classes this year so she could look after her sister’s kids.”
Which was impressive, because Isaac was fully aware that usually the only requirement to babysit for family members was a pulse.
Roxy laughed, the sound full of a sort of relieved joy. “Let me call my husband,” she said. “And Mr. Browning can give me your number.” She nodded. “Thanks, Marcelle. I promise, we’ll pay you right.”
Marcelle waved a hand. “For Mr. Browning’s friend here, we’ll do it for free.”
“Hey!” protested Sheryl. “I’m trying to go to college here!”
“We’ll pay you right,” Roxy repeated. “But let me double-check. Now move so we can get our soda fix before the bell rings!”
The students departed, laughing, and Isaac gave her a fond glance as she used her phone to buy them both a Coke. “Thanks for that,” he said. “Marcelle’s a great kid.”
“I know Sheryl,” she told him. “And you’re right—they’re both awesome kids.” You couldn’t know Marcelle without knowing Sheryl, Isaac was well aware. “But the real question is…,” she said, raising her eyebrows, “is he gayer than you?”
Isaac snorted. “No boy’s gayer than this boy,” he told her, allowing some of the vamp and swish he’d so carefully squashed over the years to escape.
Roxy laughed, and then, as she handed him his soda, said, “You wouldn’t have done that two years ago.”
He swallowed, knowing it was true. “It would have gotten me fired in short order before I got tenure,” he said evasively.
“But you had tenure eight years ago,” she told him, unrelenting.
“And you wouldn’t have done it at home, and you wouldn’t have done it when you and I were taking the kids to the park, and you wouldn’t have done it when watching television.
You….” She sighed. “I don’t want to be a bitch, Isaac.
I want you to have a healthy grieving period for your late husband.
He died too young, and it’s not fair.” High blood pressure wasn’t called the silent killer for nothing.
Todd had been so arrogant—the simultaneous stroke and cardio infarction had dropped him dead at fifty.
“But sometimes,” she continued, her voice terribly gentle, “I think the worst thing about his death and its timing is that you were just starting to realize how… how wrong he was for you.”
Isaac stared at her, his tongue cleaved to his mouth with two impulses—the impulse to deny it and the impulse to burst into tears and bless his friend, bless her with his whole heart, for saying what he hadn’t been able to, not even in a year and a half of supposed grieving.
For a moment they stood locked in a gaze of tortured understanding, until the bell rang.
She sighed, and they both started to move toward their building. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was real personal in a real bad place.”
“It’s fine,” he murmured.
“No, it’s not,” she said, as always, harder on herself than any student or administrator could be. “Just know that… that if you’ve got a chance to be happy, or even to make a new friend, do it. The only thing that should hold you back is whether or not this guy is worth your time.”
“I like him,” Isaac admitted painfully. Roxy’s squeeze to his shoulder grounded him, made them human and okay again.
“Good, Isaac. Even if it’s just a friend—or even if it’s just a date—this whole ‘teach a stranger to crochet’ thing sounds like moving on.”
ISAAC’S SIXTH period pre-algebra class was unusually quiet today.
Part of it was that they were nearing finals, and all the work was review, absolutely dedicated to helping the kids know what they needed to have learned for the last big test before finals, and part of it was that Isaac let the kids listen to their music on their AirPods or do other homework if—and only if—they’d finished their seatwork for the day.
He considered a really good day the kind where every kid had five minutes at the end of the day to breathe and call their own.
It didn’t happen often, but when it did, he’d walk up and down the aisles, often with a knitting project in his hands, stopping to chat quietly with whoever had questions or sometimes just wanted to talk.
Marcelle always wanted to talk.