Alternate Endings Page 17

  As she returned, a group of teenage boys slip-slopped across the street all wearing virtually the same uniform of knee-length shorts, one in that odd salmon color, together with boating shoes and no socks. Every one of them wore the same navy blue down jacket with a fake fur hood, and not one of them was zipped.

  She came through the entrance panting, wearing tiny beads of wet on her crocheted scarf near her mouth. She saw Belinda at the guard desk and Belinda saw her too, as Calyce pulled off her knit cap and shook it.

  Belinda started laughing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in response to Calyce’s eyebrows. “But you look like a Q-Tip, the top of your head is so flat from that hat.”

  “Jesus Christ, Calyce. You’re driving her out,” Simon said over the phone on her long commute home. “Mom just called. You want her to leave already? She’s just had surgery.”

  “I was just trying to get tickets. They’re cheaper if you buy them in advance.”

  Her mother was unctuous to her that evening, asking Calyce all about her day, then when that didn’t work talking about the slushy roads.

  “You know, there’s no snow in Florida. If you were down there with me . . .”

  Calyce sent her a sideways look. “I like it the snow. I walked outside today my whole lunch hour.”

  The next week Damion came back to Calyce with another apartment still in downtown D.C. but this one was very different. There was no guarantee requirement.

  “But it’s so run down,” she said as he showed her the place online. “And it’s in such a bad neighborhood. You’re asking for trouble.”

  “It’s all I can afford.”

  “But you’ll be robbed. And what about Selene? She’s going to be there, presumably. Why can’t she help pay for a decent place where no one will break in?”

  “She’s already contributing. She did the last set of repairs on my car. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to give you all that money at Christmas.”

  Valentine’s Day came and went without a whimper. This year even Damion forgot to give her his annual card. Maria sent a bouquet of flowers to her and Effie jointly. Calyce gave her mother nothing and Effie gave Calyce a long, squeezing, uncomfortable hug along with a gift certificate to Macy’s.

  The twenty-minute drive from the high school to the middle school took Calyce down the long incline from Upper Northwest to central Georgetown, where the school’s combined elementary and junior high campuses occupied an entire city block behind an encircling iron six-foot fence protected by cameras and uniformed security guards.

  As D.C. had grown, the wealth that had initially concentrated at harbor-level in bustling eighteenth-century Georgetown had crept first to higher ground and then up the hill to Northwest and beyond in a straight line to Bethesda, Maryland, though the state border was barely noticeable. The only difference, really, was the age of the houses from which the bulk of the school’s parents mailed their annual tuitions. Due north led eventually to Silver Spring, where Calyce and a diverse population lived, while far northeast and east housed communities that were nearly all black. If D.C. were a clock, morning would be white, darkening soon after lunch.

  As she drove, Calyce saw no other Camry’s. She noticed only one car as old as hers until she turned into the parking lot in front of the middle school, where a few teachers worked late. It had been years since she had spent any regular time there, so she had no idea which vehicle was Javier’s. She had emailed him a few days before to schedule the meeting, and she had dressed for it even more formally than usual, head to toe in black with black skirt and black opaque stockings. She expected him to dress more casually than she, as they all seemed to do nowadays.

  But she was wrong. Javier Contreras wore brown wool dress slacks, pressed and still without a wrinkle at the end of the day, along with a camel’s hair blazer and a silky, fine gauge turtleneck that looked like what Damion bought, only it was the color of wheat on a summer day. He stood for her as she entered his classroom – they had their own classrooms here, with no need to move around – so she saw the matching belt and shoes too, Oxfords with proper laces that echoed the wrapped leather buttons on his jacket.

  He smelled good. She got a whiff as he hugged her courteously.

  They sat. He said he was glad to see her and she said she was glad to see him. They danced for a moment, but it was her meeting, for she had asked for it, so finally she mentioned the departmental head-ship. She noticed he didn’t sit up straighter or shuffle his body but sat calmly with elegant ease. It confused her, so she pushed on, telling him in detail how the department had been consolidated and the middle and lower school English teachers now also had a vote.

  “We always had a vote,” he said. “We had our own department head here.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Not even a fly buzzed. Javier was a statue.

  She said in a rush, “So I wanted to tell you why I should have the job. I’ve worked here for twenty-six years. When I started you were a sophomore in high school. And I’ve worked at both campuses, in all three schools. I started out in the fourth grade, then eighth and then up to the high school. You’ll get there too, I’m sure.”

  She flashed him a smile. “I’m the only one in the entire department who’s taught at all three schools. I’m also the only one who’s ever served as Interim Head.”

  “I understand you asked to be Interim.”

  “You’re misinformed. John asked me, but that’s a common problem. This campus doesn’t always know what’s going on. That’s one of the things I want to work on, making sure we send you regular communications –”

  He put an elbow on a chair-desk near him.

  “ – because the ball gets dropped between the middle school and the high school. I want to streamline the curriculum particularly so we don’t have to re-teach, or rather teach in the first place, what should have been taught down here.”

  “We focus on content, Calyce.” His voice was monotone.

  “Well, that’s wrong.”

  “It’s a progressive school.”

  “Which as far as I can tell only means the kids call us by our first names. No, what they need is basic English, and that’s not being taught well at the middle school.”

  “So you’re giving us a critique now?”

  “Damion, it’s worse than the last one. It has to have rats.”

  “But it comes furnished.” He pointed to an old, used bed in the photo he had taken.

  “It’s filthy. Look at those walls. You can’t live in a place like that. You’ll get sick.”

  That next Saturday was blustery and cold, with a sky that looked like the sea, it had so many clouds scudding and rippling. But Effie wanted to go out, and not just out but drive three hours across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and over the farmland of the flat Delmarva Peninsula all the way to the Atlantic, to touch the water again after so long, she said.

  She had been asking Calyce for weeks, starting in her delirium after surgery but continuing even in her regaining lucidity so that now it was a drumbeat that throttled Calyce every evening during dinner. By that Friday, Calyce couldn’t stand it any longer, so the next morning she bustled her mother in protest at all the layers and plopped her impatiently into the car.

  An hour later, over the bay, after they had talked once more about the weather and Effie had re-re-assured Calyce that yes, she still wanted to go, Calyce waited intolerantly in dead-stopped traffic at a canted drawbridge for a cargo ship to pass languorously through. Effie said, to make conversation as they idled, “I really don’t need to be downstairs if he’d rather stay.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “I like it upstairs next to you.”

  When Calyce didn’t answer, Effie said, “He’s only leaving because of me. I could help with his rent.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Calyce swung her a look. “He has to learn to do this on his own. I did.”

  Effie didn�
��t say it, but then she did. “You think that’s the best way? Having to always do everything on your own?”

  Calyce parked the car as soon as she could, at the end of the first road off 50, at the root of the low bridge, where in season it would have been impossible because of the crowds. She pulled up to two white decorative towers above which a fancy metal Boardwalk sign arched. Through it, acres of beach stretched to a muddied horizon indistinguishable from the dark wash of clouds that fell to meet it.

  “Is there water out there?”

  Her mother peered through the windshield into the opening in the low, sparse picket fence that threw no jail shadows on the putty sand in the dull day. “I can’t see it. Can we maybe drive to where it’s not so far to walk?”

  A closer beach hugged the boardwalk farther north, so Effie finally got out. They stepped off the wood and began across the sand, their winter shoes sinking, their feet more heavy with each step. Calyce reached out to take her mother’s hand.

  “How great it is to be together,” Effie said, breathing hard but talking easier than she had in Florida. “It means as much as the beach.”

  But in the sharp wind she tripped, then couldn’t retrieve her footing. The old woman’s balance was momentarily gone.

  “I’m okay,” she said but she clutched Calyce’s fingers. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this yet. And it’s cold. Can we go somewhere and just look?”

  Calyce brought out her laptop and bade Damion sit next to her. She was Cheshire-cat smiling as she patted the seat of the dining chair.

  When he sat she made a show of turning the screen to reveal the apartment she had found for him. It was on the corner of Eighth and U, right by the Shaw/U Street Metro station, a one-bedroom in a brand-new building whose front was covered with scattered glass. On one side the façade slipped straight to the street. On the other, it stepped in as it rose to allow a block-long balcony and roof deck. It was urban hip between Florida Avenue and Logan Circle in the coolest, most upcoming part of an historically all-black section of D.C.

  “How much is it?” he asked with his mouth open.

  “More than anything you’ve shown me.” She told him, and she said the lease was twelve months.

  He was confused. “No guarantee?”

  She sat back. “Yes, I have to guarantee it. I called to ask.”

  She smiled wider. “I’m willing to do it on one condition. That we meet once a week like clockwork. Not once a month like you said. You come here and I’ll feed you, and you prove to me each and every week that you’re looking as hard as you can.”

  “But why?”

  She saw his euphoric confusion. “It was something your grandmother said. You have her to thank. I would have liked to have had some help myself when I was getting started, but I didn’t. Lots of parents help their kids with their first apartments. And this will give you a kick in the pants. It’s such a nice place that you won’t want to lose it, and I’m definitely not guaranteeing it a second year. To keep it you’ll have to qualify on your own.”

  Simon was in town for the night on a layover and he came all the way from his hotel near the airport in order to take their mother out for dinner. It was just the two of them, just Effie and “Samwise,” her grown-up little boy.

  In the front entryway, as Calyce arranged her mother’s coat and scarf and hat and gloves for her, Effie said, “I hate this weather.”

  “Don’t worry,” Calyce told her. “You’ll be home soon.”

  Once they had gone, Calyce sighed, listening to the silence. She mounted the stairs, leaving behind Damion’s room, from which he had taken the flat-screen TV. He had assured her that he would return to move down the one in Calyce’s bedroom, but in the week since he had left with his things he hadn’t called, hadn’t texted, hadn’t e-mailed. His closet and drawers were empty, left open when he departed and closed softly late that same night by a roaming Calyce. Early the next morning she had moved down her mother.

  Above the first-floor rooms the house was hers again, and she was alone this night for the first time in months. As she went up the stairs, she felt the smooth banister under the palm of her hand. She inhaled as she crossed to her kitchen, smelling her Chinese takeout in her microwave. She poured herself a glass of soda, then thought, then went to the dining room to dig out from her sideboard one of the two champagne flutes she and Damion’s father had received for the birth of their son.

  She poured her ginger ale into it and raised her glass to toast her freedom. It surprised her, this sudden elation. She hadn’t felt her son’s confining.

  As she laid a placemat for herself, she began to sing. For the first time in years, she sang full-throated, a lofty tenor from her tall frame that filled her house with her happiness.

  Calyce made sure to park her car in the underground garage on days when snow was predicted before dismissal. In the cement gloom of the weak lights spaced too far apart, she didn’t see DeGroot until he caught up with her. She asked about his brother but he asked about “this dinner meeting at Javier’s” for that coming Saturday.

  “What meeting?” she said.

  “He’s invited every English teacher at both the lower and middle schools to his house. Something about egalitarianism, not having the middle school dictate to the lower school but being collaborative from now on. Know anything about it?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t tell him about their recent meeting.

  A minute later he asked, “Did you read Persepolis yet?”

  “The comic book?”

  “Graphic novel. Dan suggested it for next year.”

  She said too quickly, “Is that how you found out about the Javier meeting? From him?”

  John frowned. “I got an email directly from Javier. He wanted to keep me in the loop.”

  “We’ll see you at six,” Calyce said into her phone as she pulled up to her curb. Two large cardboard boxes sat by her front door, one of them already open, its top flaps wings.

  She knocked on what used to be Damion’s door. “Mom, what are these boxes addressed to you?”

  Effie came out wearing a caftan Calyce had never seen, its fabric black and teal paisley sateen. “My clothes. Can you help me bring the rest in?“

  “But you’re going home. None of that’s changed just because you’ve got a temporary balance problem.”

  Damion and Jimmy arrived then, bounding in together, uncle and nephew, having spent the day together. After Jimmy hugged Gammy and Great-Gammy, the two “men” dragged Effie’s heavy boxes over the threshold, after which they tangled like puppies up the stairs with Damion making sure the ricocheting boy climbed safely. Jimmy went on and on to the women about all the cars they had just seen at sooo many dealerships. They had even been on a test drive.

  “You brought his car seat from home?” Calyce asked.

  “You bet.”

  “You’re buying another car?” Effie asked him.

  “No, but it’s fun to pretend, isn’t it Jimmy?”

  Calyce said, “Aren’t you misleading the dealers?”

  Jimmy told her, “We even went to Toys R Us and he bought me the same cars. You want to see?”

  The child dug in his pockets as Effie asked Damion, “Do you do this often, spend time alone with Jimmy?”

  Damion smiled sincerely, genuinely.

  “Every chance I get.”

  Damion came into the kitchen where Calyce was cleaning up after dinner. Effie sat in front of the TV with her great-grandson, where they were both nodding off.

  Calyce asked Damion, “Are you coming back for dinner tomorrow, for our meeting?”

  “I’ve got to work late,” he said.

  His mother spun around. “Already? Have you done anything at all this week?”

  “What about you? You’re trying to throw her out now too. She just got me alone. What are you going to do, rent out my empty room for extra money?”

  “Yes, he’s available for work i
mmediately, Mr. Sherson. Yes, I understand you have to meet him. I’ll make sure he gets there. Thursday? How about lunchtime?”

  When Calyce’s phone rang, it was someone who had never called her before, but she recognized the prefix. It was the only one assigned to every teacher at the high school for each of the landline phones on their departmental office desks. But it wasn’t anyone in the English Department, and it wasn’t Belinda from her new extension.

  “I couldn’t stand the awkwardness anymore,” Roger said in a voice she had never before noticed. It was honest and wholesome with open vowels. “We see each other every day. We should at least be friends.”

  She hesitated.

  “Friends, right?” he prodded. “Because you don’t want to go out with me.”

  She didn’t speak.

  “So . . . if I asked you out again, you’d say no again? And rudely like before, without giving me any explanation whatsoever?”

  He paused and let it grow and she did too, neither one of them talking as it stretched to become an ‘I-dare-you” mutual silence. She breathed, he breathed, and then he breathed harder, a horse snort. She laughed out loud, giving in, and the weeks of oddness flew away.

  “You don’t give up, do you?” she said.

  “I heard you’re training for a trip back to Zion over Spring Break. I hear you’re going with your sister.”

  Calyce made a mental note to shoot Belinda. But when she asked who told him, he said, “Dan. I confess, I asked him how you were. I want to volunteer. If you want to head out with me once this weather gets better, we can hike along the Potomac. I know this great trail.”

  She asked her mother that night whether she had checked messages lately on her answering machine in Florida. Effie asked how she could, since she wasn’t there in her condo to push the button on the box next to her telephone. Calyce explained that the phone company had a way to let you access them remotely.