As he passed, Brad knocked my bag to the floor.
Then it was quiet. The secretaries were gone. After a while a janitor came in pushing a cart. He was tall and veiny thin and had the unkempt graying hair and beard of people who did too much acid back in the day. He emptied the wastebaskets one at a time into the big trash can on his cart, moving with no hurry at all, as if there were absolutely nothing troubling in the world, no hysterics or bullies or injustice anywhere, as if even the thin layer of dust covering the school were of no concern to him, though it was right there in his job description.
I had to admire that.
* * *
—
My father finally arrived, three whole hours after school had ended. I was the last student in the school—the sports teams had finished practice, and other kids in the yearbook office or the weight room or just smoking out in the parking lot, uneager to go to their homes, had in fact left for those homes. Even the unhurried janitor had finished and gone home. Dr. Rathschild, the principal, wasn’t too happy to wait through dinner for my father, and in glimpses of her behind the desk in her inner office, I could see the thoughts she was having about what kind of influence I would be at her school.
Dad’s hands materialized in front of me holding a cup of coffee and his keys. His jeans were streaked with oil and dirt. The smell of cigarettes was so strong I sneezed.
He picked my chin up in his rough fingers and turned it to the side so he could get a better look at my developing black eye. “Nice work,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “You should see the other guy.”
“I don’t see another guy. You get him worse?”
“No. He must be six-five, two-fifty. I mean that you should see him.”
Dad snorted. “I’m glad you think this is funny. You know this is the worst time for me. Right after we get to a new place. Hoch is busting my ass, and it’s not funny to me when I’ve got to leave work early and pick you up because you can’t behave. On the very first day.”
“Not really feeling the love and concern, Dad,” I said.
“Do you feel the aggravation?”
“Yeah.”
He dropped my chin. “Right next to it.”
“That’s the contempt, I thought.”
“Wallace.”
When he said my name that way it meant: Shut up, idiot.
“He insulted Ma,” I said.
“So? Who cares?”
I didn’t expect that. I thought he’d care about that. “So? So that’s not right. He crossed a line.”
He sighed. “The world is full of people and their lines. It gets to the point where that’s all they can see. Lines all the way to the horizon. Don’t be like that, Wallace. The best way to survive is to get rid of your lines.”
“So Ma is just a line?”
“Everything is just a line.”
I stared up at him. A wave of fear rippled through me.
* * *
—
Dr. Rathschild appeared in the doorway of her office. She was tall and wide. Her pantsuit was a study in shades of intestinal distress. Her haircut said: I have more important things than this haircut. Her face said: I should be home by now, ffs.
“Eleanor Rathschild,” she said. She held out a hand to my father. “We spoke on the phone.”
My father shook her hand and unlocked his face into something intended to resemble a smile.
“Ronald Cole. I am sorry I couldn’t get off work until now. Busy times at the plant.”
“Perhaps Mrs. Cole could have come for Wallace in that case?”
“She’s dead.”
This caught the principal up short. She blushed, pulled her hand back.
Yes, she’s dead, Principal Who-Already-Thinks-I’m-a-Problem. How’s that feel?
“I’m so sorry,” Dr. Rathschild said. “I didn’t know.”
Dad said nothing. Loudly.
“Okay. Yes. Wallace’s transcript hasn’t arrived yet. I will make sure that it’s faxed here first thing in the morning.”
“Great,” my father said. “We done?”
“Well, no. Your son’s perfunctory disruptiveness concerns me.”
Dad glared at me without looking at me. “He’s sorry.”
“It’s not about being sorry. It’s about being smart.”
“It won’t be an issue again.”
“I don’t like this any more than you do,” Dr. Rathschild said. “I want to get home and see my children before they go to sleep. But your son started a dangerous altercation. His actions indicate a reckless self-disregard, which can be a symptom of deeper emotional issues. I’d like to understand this better. We should have a follow-up, just the two of us. Thursday? Is this time the earliest you can do? I can make plans to come back to the office to meet you, if that’s the case.”
“No.”
“No, there are other times?”
“No, I can’t meet you,” Dad said, his eyes blank and expressionless.
Cold. Ice-cold. Thanks, Dad. For sure, this principal will love me now.
“Mr. Cole.” Dr. Rathschild dropped all pretense of being pleasant. “I don’t know how they do it where you’re from, but here in my school, I find my students behave better when they care what happens to them. But it’s hard for them to care if nobody else does. So let’s just say you come in Thursday or you go down to the district and fill out the paperwork to take over Wallace’s education full-time.”
My father said nothing. Then he nodded once, the muscles in his jaw wrestling with each other, signaling he was pissed. Didn’t she understand that he had to get to the plant? And more important, did I, Wallace Cole, understand that this whole mess was my fault? He would check later to make sure I did understand.
* * *
—
We drove to the apartment in silence. Night had fallen, clouds covered the stars, and in the darkness the roads of the town seemed, like the hallways of the school, deserted and vaguely haunted.
It was a quick five-minute drive, but my father managed to smoke three whole cigarettes while also radiating epic displeasure. I’d like to say that he was only like this when I had done something necessitating a trip to a principal’s office, but truthfully he was always like this. Work consumed him, and the rest of the world was an annoyance. And by being part of the rest of the world, and a part that needed a tad more attention than most of it, I was a special annoyance.