Chapter 20
LEO
THEY TELL US NOT TO go to the school, but I’m going anyway. April says it’s reckless. But if I have to teach over Zoom, I want my materials—this closure could last weeks. April cites our daughter; I cite my students. She shakes her head and says, “I don’t know.”
The roads are deserted. Shops and restaurants are shuttered. Leaving my house seems like an apocalyptic trespass. But the early spring weather is defiantly beautiful. The air is filled with sickness while the roadsides are filled with wildflowers.
I admit I feel a sense of mission. Some of my students will barely survive quarantine.
Some don’t have food. Some don’t have parents.
I need to give them stories of survivors—there have been pandemics before, they need to know that.
They need to know what happened in the past so they can see a future beyond this.
When I arrive, the whole school is dark. As I walk to my classroom, there’s a clatter and I whip around. Someone else is in the building, so I step back instinctively. What if they’re sick? What if I am?
I squint down the long hallway and see Kim. She is wearing a mask and holding a stack of government books. I’m not the only rebel teacher.
Not wanting to yell down the long hall, I pull out my phone. I WON’T TELL IF YOU WON’T.
DEAL.
She adds, STAY SAFE.
YOU TOO.
A sadness gurgles in my chest, the distance between us like a premonition.
In my classroom, I find what I need and take a final look around. There’s an old food wrapper on one of the desks. A book across the room with its spine falling off. But I shouldn’t touch anything else, so I grab the bare minimum and abandon my classroom, having already risked enough.
When I pull back up to our house, April and Sadie are outside, and I take in the scene. Some people are locked down alone, yet here we are with each other and acres of open, verdant land. With our rosy-cheeked daughter, who is still young enough to smile just because someone looks at her.
I walk straight over to April as she pushes Sadie in her red plastic swing.
“I shouldn’t have gone. I’m sorry.”
She frowns at the possibly contaminated binders in my arms.
“I already used Lysol wipes.” I shift the binders. “God, I love you. Sorry I don’t show it better.”
She sighs. “I love you too.” She looks down the driveway toward the world beyond our four acres. “But I hate this.”
“I know.”
Except I don’t know. It’s not until the weeks gather into months that I understand just how much April hates this. She feels alone and purposeless. She misses her parents. Her past.
Life becomes a list of befores and afters.
Before, she was thinking about going back to work.
We were going to Lexington Avenue for regular family dinners.
Our problems were trivial. After, I exist inside my closet, where I jury-rig a desk.
Where I watch pixelated students slump into truancy.
Frozen screens and muted mouths. Glitches and troubleshooting.
Sadie struggles with speech acquisition.
We try to limit television, but still, she watches a lot of it.
“Maybe it’s time to give her a sibling,” I say one night, half kidding.
The windows are open to let in birdsong, and we’ve been laughing.
But we leave the suggestion floating aimlessly through the air, because surely this isn’t the time to bring life into the world.
April gets out of bed later and later. She pushes food around her plate with her fork, leaving most of it. I ask what she needs, and without turning her gaze from the blue light of the television, she says, “I don’t know, just a little space.”
We’ve been siphoned into our homes, everyone wondering how we got here. Not here as in avoiding sickness, but here, in our various homes and families and jobs and lives. There is a widespread buzz of individual reevaluation, and I watch it land directly on my wife.
My old beast raises its head, telling me April will get rid of me, warning me not to show need, which is difficult in such close quarters. So I give her as much space as I possibly can, and I touch the totem of my wedding band. I always become a burden eventually.
Come autumn, our family has managed to evade the virus, and Argyle High opens back up.
I’m relieved to be able to finally give April some real space, and to see my students.
There are strict protocols. Plastic shields frame each desk.
Kids are in and out with exposures and mandatory quarantines. Their grades are down. Their spirits.
One morning, a student comes in after losing her job at McDonald’s.
I don’t know why she was let go, I only know she needed the money.
It takes a minute to realize she’s crying behind her shield, her hair, her mask.
Another kid tosses a tissue over the shield for her, and it flutters downward.
She picks it up, pressing it to her eyes as her shoulders quiver.
Everyone stays distant like we’re supposed to, and I get a tickle in my throat, sorrow like the start of a sickness.
After that, I throw myself into teaching and open my classroom for after-school tutoring. We talk and read and work and test straight through those desk shields. Sometimes, we even laugh. At home, I’m a burden. Here, I am needed.