Bridge of Clay(113)

    I met again with Claudia Kirkby.

This time her hair was shorter, just noticeably, and she wore a beautiful pair of earrings, formed into lightweight arrows. They were silver, slightly hanging. There were papers all strewn on her desk, and the posters remained intact.

The trouble, this time, was that a new teacher had arrived—another young woman—and Rory had made an example of her.

“Well, apparently,” explained Ms. Kirkby, “he was swiping grapes from Joe Leonello’s lunch, and lobbing them at the whiteboard. She was hit when she stopped and turned. It went down the front of her shirt.”

Already, her grasp of poetry.

I stood, I closed my eyes.

“Look, honestly,” she went on, “I think the teacher may have overreacted a little, but we just can’t keep putting up with it.”

“She had a right to be upset,” I said, but soon I started to flounder. I was lost in the cream of her shirt, and the way it had waves and ripples. “I mean, what are the odds?” Could a shirt be somehow tidal? “Turning around at that exact moment—” It jumped from my mouth and I knew it. What a mistake!

“Are you saying it was her fault?”

“No! I—”

She was giving me a hiding!

She was holding those papers now. She smiled gently, reassuringly. “Matthew, it’s okay. I know you didn’t mean it that way—”

I sat on a graffitied desk.

The usual teenage subtlety:

A deskful of Goddamn penises.

How could I possibly resist?

It was then she stopped talking and took a silent, brazen risk—and it was that that I first fell in love with.

She laid her palm down on my arm.

Her hand was warm and slim.

    “To tell you the truth,” she said, “so much worse happens here every day, but with Rory, it’s one more thing.” She was on our side, she was showing me. “It’s not an excuse, but he’s hurting—and he’s a boy,” and she killed me, like this, in an instant. “Am I right, or am I right?”

All she’d had to do was wink at me then, but she didn’t, for which I was grateful—for she’d quoted something word for word, and soon she’d stepped away. She sat now herself, on a desk.

I had to give something back.

I said, “You know,” and it hurt to swallow. The waters now still in her shirt. “The last person who ever told me that was our dad.”



* * *



—

In the running, something was coming.

Something sad, but mainly for me.

Through winter, we stayed consistent; we ran Bernborough, we ran the streets, and me then to coffee and kitchen, and Clay gone up to the roof.

When I timed him, the problem was awkward.

The runner’s most dreaded dilemma:

He ran harder, but wasn’t getting faster.

We thought it was lack of adrenaline; motivation was suddenly thin. What else could he do but win State? The athletics season was still months away; no wonder he was feeling lethargic.

Clay, though, wasn’t buying it.

At his side, I talked him on.

“Up,” I said, “up. Come on, Clay. What would Liddell do, or Budd?”

I should have known I was being too nice to him.



* * *



—

When Rory was suspended that last time, I had him come to the job with me; I fixed it with the boss. Three days’ worth of carpet and floorboards, and one thing was certainly clear—he wasn’t allergic to work. He seemed disappointed when each day ended; and then he left school, it was final. I ended up almost begging them.

We sat in the principal’s office.

    He’d snuck in and stolen the sandwich press from the science staff room. “They eat too much in there, anyway!” he’d explained. “I was doing ’em a bloody favor!”

Rory and I were on one side of the desk.

Claudia Kirkby, Mrs. Holland, the other.

Ms. Kirkby was in a dark suit and light blue shirt, Mrs. Holland, I can’t remember. What I do remember is her silver, sort of slicked-back hair, the softness of her crow’s feet, and the brooch on the pocket, on her left; it was a flannel flower, the school’s emblem.

“Well?” I said.

“Well, um, what?” she asked.

(Not the answer I was expecting.)

“Is he getting kicked out for good this time?”

“Well, I’m, um, not sure if that’s—”

I cut her off. “Let’s face it, he bloody deserves it.”

Rory ignited, almost with joy. “I’m sitting right here!”

“Look at him,” I said. They looked. “Shirt out, sneer on. Does he look like he cares even remotely about this? Does he look repentant—”

“Remotely?” Now it was Rory who interjected. “Repentant? Shit, Matthew, give us the dictionary, why don’t you?”

Holland knew. She knew I wasn’t stupid. “To be honest, um, we could have used you last year in our, um, year twelve cohort, Matthew. You never looked that interested, but you were, weren’t you?”

“Hey, I thought we were talking about me.”

“Shut up, Rory.” That was Claudia Kirkby.