Life After Life (24 page)

“None taken.” Stanley acts like he’s shaking something, either a martini or a can of Reddi-wip since he’s so focused on that picture of a woman with a whipped-cream dress. “We all know we’re has-beens.”

“Speak for yourself,” Rachel says.

“I got all kinds of rules for good living and she doesn’t match any of them,” Toby says. “For instance, I say you should be kind to others. I say ‘’tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.’ I say your pee should always run clear, which means you got to drink a lot throughout the whole day to keep yourself pure and cleansed.”

“The question is
what
you drink,” Marge says, and gets several laughs from the peanut gallery. She has settled back into her big chair, scared to death someone else will sit there, and reopened her scrapbook. No doubt about it, she’s done some fine documenting of all the mayhem and murder in the county. She has a real talent, a real eye for the macabre, which Toby does admire, but that doesn’t mean she has to like her.

“Always take the stairs,” Toby says because Marge is always using the elevator, and then turns to Sadie. “Unless you can’t, of course. Let’s see. Stretch your spine each day like you’re wringing out a sponge—just sit in a chair and go from side to side like this.” She demonstrates and they hear her back pop. “And think of at least one thing that makes you laugh loud and long.”

“For me it’s just an orgasm a day,” Stanley says, and Sadie immediately puts a finger up to her lips since Abby is sitting there so he lowers his voice and whispers, which makes the girl laugh. “Rain or shine. Every day.”

“There you go,” Toby says. “That’s the kind of laughing I mean, but none of us want to dwell too long on that image, do we? No sirree, we sure don’t. But I’ll tell you, I was a good teacher and it only started getting hard for me when everything changed. Like one day I was a normal teacher . . .”

Marge sighs and shifts around in her seat until Stanley asks does she have to use the bathroom or does she have Saint Vitus? Sadie whispers something about worms and needing to check her bottom, which makes several people giggle and makes Marge rise up like a cobra, but Toby can’t even stop to laugh.

“Then next thing I knew the children were coming in with names like Bandana and Eurasia and Montpelier. And I said, those are things and places, children, and you are people. What on earth is going on? And there were names I couldn’t even pronounce and I can guaran-damn-tee you that you don’t readily go calling names you can’t say—I’m looking for the Johns and Bills and Toms and they just weren’t there anymore. I had Lucaramel and Tahitia only it was pronounced Ta-HI-shee-Ah. I had to write a phonetic spelling alongside almost every child’s name by the time I retired.”

“Got fired,” Marge says. “But I was a teacher long ago, too, and I so know what you are talking about. I hated multiculturalism.”

“That’s not what I said,” Toby says. “I don’t hate multiculturalism. You are worse than
FOX
News.”

“I think you do.”

“It was the white ones, too. It was equal opportunity weird names. I’d hear mommas calling them in and it sounded like they were hawkers for a law firm: Parker, Ramsey, and Tate! Parker, Ramsey, and Tate! And next thing you know up run three little towheads like dandelion puffs, all decked out in little sailor suits.”

“You are describing my grandchildren who were just here,” Marge says. “How dare you use their names.”

“I did it because their daddy is trying to get you to die early so he can have all your money. He wants to buy those children a boat to go with their outfits.”

“You did it because you are the word that means a female dog.” Marge is red in the face, jowls quivering. “People like you are always frustrated now, aren’t you?”

“Only by
people like you
—the judges and the juries. Nothing about me has slipped. I just decided to move on in here early and get a good hard look at where I’m headed.” She unzips her fanny pack but doesn’t reach in. She has got a little tin of Skoal in there and cannot wait to get a bit of it up against her gum. She will be buzzing like a cowgirl riding the range and she cannot wait.
Welcome home tapping cowgirl, where have you been?
“And when I look at
some
of you, I can tell it ain’t a pretty sight,” she says. Her hands are shaking and she feels like she might cry, which makes her furious.

“Be sure your sins will reveal themselves.”

“Good,” Toby says. “I hope so. I am so tired of people like you—snowflake, lily white, holy roller”—she pauses looking over at Abby but then deciding to go for broke—“
asshole—
who hear I did a little coaching and want to stick a great big stereotype on me, that I’m a certain way. You going to point to Rachel there and say she’s stingy or something about her
beezer,
her
schnoz
because that’s a stereotype or are you going to point over there at Suzie Mitchell and Mr. McIntyre and say they must be eating some fried chicken and watermelon all day while waiting on a welfare check? And Lottie there and Mrs. Locklear better stay away from the fire water. Mr. McIntyre has a tail and Rachel Silverman has horns on her head.”

“I would find that immensely attractive,” Stanley Stone says. “Her horns, that is, not his tail. No offense.” He nods at Mr. McIntyre who says none taken, all the while reaching his hand to rub the base of his spine to make certain there is nothing there.

“Well, first I am a person,” Toby continues. “I am a human, a woman; I was an English teacher and a bit of an amateur writer myself, but I’ll tell you things went so far off course I just didn’t even know where I was anymore. I think it was the beginning of the end, too. What once was generous compassion for high school students with all their angst and crap going on turned into pure agitation and fury. I didn’t get frustrated by who I am; I got frustrated by what they were reading and wanting to write about. I said, you’re too smart for all this shit. Dwarves and wizards and gnomes and vampires—big blue aliens with tails like monkeys. I said what I wouldn’t give for a good old-fashioned story about somebody losing his or her virginity or getting an abortion—Grandma died and for the first time I knew I was mortal or what about the one where the boy doesn’t want to kill a deer, but Granddaddy makes him so he can be a man. I was wanting to write something myself and it was dying to get out of my head but couldn’t find the door it was all so plugged up with that malarkey.”

“
Malarkey
is a fine old word,” Stanley says. “I want to know the derivation of malarkey.”

“I think of my head as my apartment,” Toby says because she is on a roll now, oh yeah; full speed ahead and that Abby soaking it up like a sponge and that is good. She won’t hear any of this in school, which is a disgrace. “I have lived up here in my head my whole life. I climb those steps every day and there is always a little voice saying,
Welcome home, Toby. Come on in girl, you made it one more day.
”

“I do something very similar,” Sadie says, and Rachel nods. “You know I do. Why Stanley and I were doing it just recently, weren’t we?” She nods and finally Stanley looks up and nods back, smiles at her and then at Rachel. They look at each other a little longer than normal until he grins, which makes her turn away. There is some chemistry between those two and Toby is hoping to stir it even if he is demented much of the time.

“Which is why”—she glares at Marge—“it doesn’t really matter where I live. The building and walls where I stay is just the foyer to where I really live.”

“Foy
ay,
” Marge corrects. “Some English teacher.”

“Whatever, look it up. I say foy
yer.
But I didn’t want to have to give it all up. I had worked so hard and all I was longing for was some whining little boy who didn’t want to kill a deer. I was craving one in fact, would’ve loved him and given him an instant A. Where did all the orphans go? Jane and Oliver and Pip? It’s an honorable and very dramatic position. And the girl who is upset to have a period. Where did she go? Or the one all torn up about losing her virginity? Where did she go? If they’re still out there, they’re keeping a low profile and hiding from all those getting boobs for Christmas and graduation and making themselves up to look thirty.”

“Yes,” Abby says. “That’s all some girls talk about. That’s all they want, too, boobs and a boyfriend.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I wanted. I wanted dead deers and dead grandparents and busted condoms. I wanted anything other than a zombie or a shape-shifting demon wolf coyote bullshit. What am I to do with a bunch of aliens at Armageddon?

“I’d run like hell,” Mr. McIntyre said, and the sisters laughed and laughed, said they would run, too.

“Toby? Honey, I think you might need to settle down,” Sadie says. “This is not good for you. It’s in the past, remember? And now you are traveling all over the world on vacation and riding horses and such. Remember? And it’s recess now. Sit up straight and sip your tea.” Sadie is sweet and Toby loves her to death, but she still can’t stop. She has thought these things for a long long time and now it feels so good like opening Pandora’s box and getting rid of all that bad stuff.

“Some of them said about their papers,
I meant to be vague,
like that might excuse something that didn’t make a goddamned bit of sense. Or the one who said I just didn’t
get
what he was doing because it’s so brilliant. The aliens are from
Erewhon,
get it? And I said, Oh yeah, I get it and so did Samuel Butler who named a novel that over a hundred years ago and I suspect might have known how to write a sentence, too. Read and if you aren’t going to read at least do your Googling and maybe try to at least read
about
what has actually been written! I took my work seriously and where did it get me? Where? Where?”

“Fired would be my guess.”

“Yes, that’s right,” she turns, and steps toward Marge, Stanley meowing in the background. “Fired. There I was asking for a little reality and who wouldn’t be after Columbine? What teacher on the planet after Virginia Tech didn’t study her classroom windows and doors and the desk arrangements and hatch some plan for how she would protect all those young bodies, even the ones that got on her last goddamned nerve!”

“And then this one boy, meaning to push my button, this one boy named something like Montreal Fedora offered up some literary criticism on the death of Julius Caesar. He said and I quote: ‘Them dudes was mean as shit, weren’t they?’”

“And I said ‘
Those
dudes
were
mean as shit.’ That is what I got in trouble for. Some kid in there, probably Parker, Ramsey, or Tate went home and tattled,
not
about what was being discussed in class but that the teacher said
shit.
‘Ms. Tyler, come to the office, please,’” she mimics. “‘Ms. Tyler, please come to the office.’”

“This had happened many times. I made a notch on my desk in fact every time it happened and one whole side looked like a fine-tooth comb. My principal was about fourteen and had never read Shakespeare. How do I know? I asked him one day. In that moment when I needed him on my side, I almost wished that I had not done that or that I had been a teacher who did not argue against prayer in my class, which I had done for years, or did not allow hats, but what in the hell did I care if they wore hats? Some of them might have been sporting bad haircuts they were ashamed of or keeping their lice locked in, what did I care? I didn’t tell on kids who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance either. I figured we’d have plenty of battles to fight and I needed to choose the most important. I mean these are humans growing up and witnessing the Uterus as a competitive sporting arena. Who would’ve ever thought that? Irresponsible birth control will get you a TV show and a magazine cover. Octo, Sexto, Moron. Goddamn.”

“You should’ve been fired a century ago.”

“
Et tu,
Marge? I said to my principal, the boy king, I asked him, If I retire like you say I have to, who will teach these children? Who will guard the gate? Who can promise me they’ll tell the boys to keep their trousers zipped and tell the girls not to go promising things they do not intend to deliver. Who will teach birth control? Who will teach the value of literature? I said, Who will tell them nobody gives a shit about how dwarves and trolls have sex? If they had, the Brothers Grimm would have figured it out and already done it. They had every opportunity.”

“What I wouldn’t have given for a stained soul. One good stained soul story. Murder, suicide, adultery, a simple lie or betrayal. I wanted a stain or a tear in a soul and I wanted a vivid description of some place in the world that leaves me feeling like I was there. Like when Sadie tells us about her kitchen or when she takes us to places like India and Scotland. I mean we can all think of a place and we all have stains on our souls.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am. I am speaking for myself and you know what? I am proud to say that I have done so for most of my life. It might not have amounted to much, but I did my best. And these children with their new words and crazy names, God help them and love them, they are the next frontier and we have to trust that something good will happen. That someone like Abby there will remember me on this day and all that I have said.”