Bad Apple (7 page)

After he’s gone, my mother appears at the top of the stairs again. She’s been working on her entrances and exits. They get more and more seamless, more and more dreamlike. Poof! Instant mom.

“He seemed like a nice young man,” she says, with an emphasis on the word
young
.

My hand tingles where Seven’s lips touched it; I don’t want to talk. I want to lie in my bed and replay that kiss in my head over and over and over again until I stop time.

She must know this. As she’s always telling us, she was once a teenager, too, even if we can’t imagine it. “I’m making that chicken you like for dinner,” she says, a truce. “The one with the apricot sauce and rice.”

“Okay,” I say. “Broccoli, too?”

“Of course.”

“Good.”

This is more code, more nontalking talking. The rules: She won’t mention that she believes I’ve had an affair with a teacher. She won’t mention she’s trying to ruin his life forever. I won’t mention that I hate her for it.

Later, during dinner, a fight breaks out between Madge and Mom over Madge’s therapist, a fight in which Madge wants to know why
I’m
not seeing a therapist, too, if Mom’s so convinced I’m a victim of abuse. Madge wants to know if Mom still intends to “out” me at the school-board meeting,
and how that would be abuse on top of abuse. Mom says that everyone knows who I am. And that it’s more important that she, Mom, fights for her daughter and everyone else’s daughters. Anyway, Mom says, the fight isn’t “about Tola.” My sister says that every fight is “about Tola.” Mr. Doctor asks if there’s any more apricot sauce for the chicken. Tola, who’s sick of being the subject of so many ongoing/online conversations that seem to have no relationship to what’s actually happened to her, to what’s actually happening, retires to her room with her crazy cat.

Besides Seven, only three guys have kissed me, and a fourth did something that resembled kissing but shouldn’t even count. The first guy, Raul, I met in day camp when I was twelve. I was almost normal then, way before I pierced my nose and dyed my hair and generally made everyone crazy. Every morning for a week, I stole two cigarettes from my mom, who was trying to quit at the time, and shared them with Raul at the end of the day, after most of the other kids had been picked up. His tongue was weird and gluey, and he tasted like burned toast, so I told him that the cigarettes had made me sick and I had to go to the bathroom to throw up, which I did, twice.

The second was a guy I met on the boardwalk one night when we were on vacation at the Jersey shore; he never told me his name. I went for a walk on the beach with him, and he picked me up and carried me around as if we were being
filmed for a deodorant commercial and then ended up making out on the beach. He reached under my shirt and tried to get into my bra, but I stopped him; now, I’m not sure why. It’s not like I had anything in there, anyway. We made out some more and then went home. The next day, I went to talk to him at the boardwalk game where he worked, the one where you put the little rubber frogs on a stand and pound a lever with a hammer and try to get the frogs to land on lily pads. He looked up and, with not one iota of recognition in his voice, said, “Three frogs for a dollar.”

The third guy, Billy, was this senior in my high school. I saw him playing football in the street with a couple of his friends and made sure that I intercepted one of the passes. What I mean is that I walked into the middle of the game because I was lost in a daydream and got hit in the head with the ball. We went out for two months, which was an eternity considering that the only reason we were attracted to each other was because he thought it was cool to go out with someone freaky, and I thought it was cool to go out with someone semipopular. It wasn’t long before he started complaining about my hair and my clothes, and I didn’t want to go to parties filled with the young and the witless. We got bored talking to each other on the phone, and he started telling me these involved, incredibly detailed stories about his favorite pastime, hunting. I mean, who hunts in New Jersey? I broke up with him after he gave me a forty-five-minute lecture on the proper way to gut a deer.

Which was partially the reason I made out with a girl. June and I were sitting alone in Mr. Mymer’s art room eating lunch freshman year, lamenting the fact that since I’d broken up with Billy, neither of us had boyfriends. And since we didn’t see any reasonable prospects around, we were destined to be alone and lonely for the rest of our lives, and wasn’t that completely pathetic? Then June suggested that maybe there was another alternative: girls. We listed the advantages. Girls are generally cleaner, safer, smaller, and can’t get you pregnant. Most of them don’t do stupid things like play Guitar Hero for fourteen hours straight or attach a chain to one of those huge blue mailboxes and try to pull it behind his dad’s car the way Miles Rosentople did, which got him arrested.

On paper, dating girls seemed to be a fantastic idea, much better and more practical than dating guys. June asked me if I’d ever kissed a girl before, which neither of us had, not for real. So, since there was no one around, and since we figured no one would care anyway, we tried it. Unfortunately, we picked the exact moment when the vice principal came looking for Mr. Mymer to discuss the reason he hadn’t turned in his grades yet. And, unfortunately, the vice principal
did
seem to care, a lot, and wasn’t at all reassured by June’s assertions that human sexuality is on a continuum, and that almost everyone, maybe even the vice principal himself, was bi, if they were only evolved enough to admit it.

Anyway, the last guy was John MacGuire, the one who shouldn’t even count. A couple of months ago, he invited me
over for a party. He was cute enough and played the drums in the school orchestra, so I thought he’d be okay. When I got to his house, I found out there wasn’t any party, or, rather,
I
was the party. I’m not sure what he was thinking. Maybe he’d heard about me and June and thought he was living life in the middle of a porno, or maybe he thought that since I was a social misfit, I must be desperate. He practically jumped me as soon as I sat down on the couch. The kiss didn’t even qualify as a kiss; it felt more like someone grinding a big raw steak into my face. After one and a half seconds, he was simultaneously jamming his hands up my shirt and tugging at my jeans. I clocked him with what I thought was a vase but turned out to be a fishbowl. Water spilled everywhere, and a single goldfish flip-flopped on the couch cushion. While John whined that I could have just said no and that he’d sue me if I’d given him a concussion, I found a Dixie cup, filled it with water, and plunked the fish in. Then I took him home and gave him to Madge. She named him John MacGuire. One day we came home from school to find that Pib had eaten him, leaving only the tail lying like a tiny fan on Madge’s dresser. We had a funeral ceremony, dropping the tail into the toilet bowl. “Poor John MacGuire,” said Madge as the tail swirled around the bowl. “Another innocent sacrificed for someone else’s sin.”

The moon watches over me the way she always does. I pop a fresh canvas on the easel under the skylight. I stare at
the surface, white as a sunspot. Pib lolls on my bed, blinking rhythmically. Like he’s trying to tell me something in code.

The canvas is clean and white. I look over my paints and start grabbing tubes, spitting little blobs onto my palette, mashing them with the brush. Raw umber, burnt umber, raw sienna, a tiny hint of red oxide. To that I add titanium and a wash of iridescent gold.

Yes. There it is. Glimmering. Liquid. Alive.

I fill a whole canvas with the color of his skin.

(
comments
)

The school-board meeting is held in a nondescript square building, the interior of which is painted a lovely shade of snot. We wander around until we find the right room, a small, dark auditorium that would seem more appropriate for hangings than for school-board meetings. In the front of the room is a long table with a series of microphones and some sweating pitchers of water on it.

Even the pitchers are nervous.

The whole place is packed with people who look like the parents on police dramas—pinched, confused, waiting for someone to tell them that it was all just a nightmare and they can go back to sleep now. They turn and look at me as we walk into the room.

There she is.

That’s the girl.

She looks so young.

The poor thing.

Is she wearing a costume?

Maybe she’s in a play.

They’re all so young.

What’s wrong with her hair?

We look for seats, but since the room is packed, we find ourselves squeezed into the back row. Mr. Mymer is nowhere to be seen. Chelsea Patrick is nowhere to be seen. The school board arrives one at a time, settling themselves in front of microphones, shifting papers around. After a while, the board president bangs his gavel for the meeting to commence. But they don’t want to tackle the hot topic up front. They want to ease themselves into it.

First, the school-board members discuss the school bus route and whether it should be expanded a quarter-mile to the west. Then there’s the matter of the after-school program, which leads to discussion of the costs of extra staff and supplies. An alarm system for the school. And then some talk about the budget in general, which won’t have to be approved for months. I yearn to stare out the window and appear stupid, but there are no windows. When I start to nod off, my mother elbows me.

Finally, the board president, a man whose huge head and stiff plastic hair make him look like a life-size doll, opens up the floor to the audience.

The crowd begins to buzz as a woman makes her way to the podium set up in front of the board. She does not men
tion me or Mr. Mymer. Apparently, there are other evils in the universe besides crazy kids and abusive teachers.

There are…

…books.

“My name is Serena Patrick, and I’m a parent and a taxpayer,” she says. She looks familiar. Serena Patrick. Patrick? Chelsea Patrick’s mom? She was always so nice, serving lemonade and cookies every time I came over.

But Father Time has pulled his tricks. She’s got those puffy cheeks and crazy trout lips that scream, “I HAVE HAD THE FAT OF CADAVERS INJECTED INTO MY FACE!” Plus, the Botox appears to have gone to her brain.

“I’d like to read you a list of profanities that appear in this book,” she says. “Twenty uses of the words
bastard
or
bitch
, forty-nine uses of the S-word, and thirty-four uses of the F-word. And that’s just one book in the stack I pulled from the library shelves. The
school
library shelves. We don’t allow children to use this sort of language in the school hallways, so why are we allowing them to read books laced with obscenities?”

A man in a rumpled suit whispers, “What the goddamn kind of crap is this? Shee-it.”

Someone else hisses, “That’s not funny, you know. The world is going to…”

“Hell?”

Ms. Patrick taps the stack of books she brought to the podium with her. “Some of these also contain drinking, drugs, violence, sex—the book I talked about earlier mentions
oral sex eleven times! I don’t know about the other parents in this room, but I think it’s hard enough dealing with the likes of MTV without having the school participate in the degradation of our culture.”

I have to wonder if she’s met her own daughter. Chelsea Patrick is walking proof of the degradation of our culture.

Snarky guy in the rumpled suit, louder now: “These are high-school kids, not kindergartners.”

The president bangs his gavel: “Please, sir. If you’d like to speak, you’ll have to take a turn at the podium.”

Ms. Patrick aims a hot glare over her shoulder. “A quarter of the children attending the school are only fourteen or fifteen years old.” She turns to face the board again. “Fourteen-year-olds simply don’t have the critical-thinking skills to digest this sort of material. They want to try out everything they read.” Her voice quavers and I realize that she’s absolutely terrified. All the parents look like that. And I think: Why are they so scared of us? What do they think we’re going to do? What did
they
do when they were our age?

Mom’s mouth is tied off in a smirk, but she must be terrified, too. Otherwise, why would she do this to me?

“If you’ll let me interrupt for a second,” says the president. “Did you find all the books in your daughter’s backpack, or did you simply start pulling books off the shelves and reading them at random?”

“Well, no. I found a website. Concerned Parents for Control of Our Libraries. CPCOL.” CPCOL: It’s a phar
maceutical company! It’s a decongestant! It’s an antibiotic for Botox-induced brain infections!

The board president rubs his face so hard it’s as if he’s trying to scrub his whiskers off. “Oh. Well. We appreciate your comments and we’re going to take them all seriously.”

“Very seriously,” adds another board member, a woman wearing a shade of yellow normally found only on tropical fish. “Can I see that book about the oral sex?”

The president frowns at her.

“What?” says Tropical Yellow. “I’m concerned, too.”

The president shakes his head and turns back to Ms. Patrick. “What we need you to do is give us a list of the books you’re having trouble with, and we will reevaluate their inclusion in the school library.”

A sharp voice knifes the air. “Oh, for the love of Jesus!”

The crowd turns. Ms. Esme, our high-school librarian, is standing in the middle of the aisle with her hands on her hips. She stares at each of the board members in turn, then at Chelsea Patrick’s mom. She turns and strides from the room, the
clip
of her heels on the floor telling us exactly what she thinks of us.

“There’s a novel in the school library about a student having an affair with a teacher!” Ms. Patrick shouts after her, holding up yet another book with an apple on the cover. Bad apples everywhere. “Now we have a problem with a student and a teacher.” Her eyes drift around the room until she finds me and my mom. “There’s
surely
a parenting problem
there,” she says, “but, still, how do you defend this? How? I really want to know. I do….” Ms. Patrick trails off, absently patting the stacks in front of her. “I really, really do.”

That’s enough excitement for one school-board meeting, right? No. There’s more to come.

Next up, Mom.

Yay.

“My name is Anita Riley Baldini, and I’m the parent of a student at Willow Park High School. Recently, my daughter, who is a junior, was involved in a questionable relationship with her art teacher.

“All due respect to Ms. Patrick, but I can’t blame books for my family’s situation. And I don’t blame my daughter, who is young and confused and can’t be held entirely accountable. I
do
blame myself—for not noticing the problem soon enough. I
do
blame the teacher in question, who shouldn’t be allowed near students under the age of eighteen. I
do
blame the school board for keeping this man on staff. And I
do
blame the teachers’ union for defending him.

“Many of you are probably wondering why I broke my silence here. Why I brought my daughter with me. What I hope to prove by going public. Well, my daughter’s and my family’s privacy has already been compromised by scandal-hungry newspapers and amoral teenagers blogging online.
We have been exposed to the most vicious sort of gossip and innuendo. I can’t safeguard my child’s privacy as much as I’d like to. But what I can do is tell people to pay attention to the signs of trouble in your own children. My daughter got more and more secretive. She paid less and less attention to her other classes. She got more defiant at home. I told myself that this was normal, that teenagers dress in ridiculous outfits, dye their hair funny colors, and defy their parents. I told myself to be patient; I thought this was the way of things. I was fooling myself. Let’s not fool
ourselves
.

“I’m incensed that this teacher, Mr. Mymer, is living off of my tax money after he took advantage of my daughter, a vulnerable young girl. I demand that this teacher, Al Mymer, who has been on suspension with pay, be fired immediately before he hurts anyone else. Thank you.”

When my mom sits down, she doesn’t even look at me. She’s as rigid and virtuous as a nun.

Three other parents get up and denounce my art teacher. One of them says that his T-shirts are suggestive, especially the one that said
SQUIRRELS CAN’T BE TRUSTED
. (What is
squirrel
a euphemism for? Only the teenagers know for sure.) A single guy stands up to defend Mr. Mymer, but the board quickly realizes that he’s gotten Mr. Mymer mixed up with Mr. Mason, the shop teacher.

“Oh,” the guy says. “Well. Maybe you can give him a
raise or something. He helped my son make a really great bookcase. We use it for all our videos.”

“What are you doing?” my mother hisses when I stand. The audience buzzes. Blood beats in my ears; my stomach feels like someone poured concrete down my throat. I wish I were six hundred feet tall. I wish I’d saved the “pixie” haircut till senior year. I wish I could fill the room with my presence, make people forget how small I am.

I bend the microphone as far as it will go and clear my throat. “My name is Tola Riley, and I’m a junior at Willow Park High School,” I say.

“Could you speak into the mic, please?” says one of the board members. “We can’t quite hear you.”

The mic is already as low as it can go, so I stand on tiptoe to get closer to it. “My name is Tola Riley,” I say, louder. “I’m the girl who is supposedly having an affair with Mr. Mymer.” I take a second to let that sink in. “But I’m not having an affair with Mr. Mymer. We never met in his office or his car or his apartment the way people are saying we did. We haven’t been dating for years. We just happened to go to the same museum on the same day, the way you bump into someone at the mall. I don’t know what your ‘witness’ says she saw, but she’s lying. We weren’t holding hands or whatever. We never exchanged any presents. He wasn’t doing anything but teaching me about art, and I wasn’t doing anything but learning. This isn’t Mr. Mymer’s fault. He’s a great
guy and a great teacher. He never did anything to hurt me. And I don’t know why everyone keeps saying he did.”

I stop talking and wait for the response.

There is nothing.

No group exhalation. No sigh of relief. No oh-my-god-we-were-wrongs. It’s so quiet that I can hear the low hum of the microphone and the hush of my own breath.

The school-board president: “I’m sure that took a lot of courage, Tola. We’ll certainly take your comments under consideration.”

“Wait,” I say. “What do you mean, you’ll take my comments under consideration?”

“We’re going to give this a lot of thought. And we’re going to sort through your and others’ statements, the police reports, et cetera. All of it’s important.”

“But I’m supposedly the abused party. And I’m telling you that I wasn’t abused. Shouldn’t my comments count more than everyone else’s?”

The board members glance at one another, at the papers in front of them. They shift and squirm. Some take sips of water.

The board president: “Thank you very much for speaking with us today.”

I find my chair and sit down.

Mr. Mymer isn’t at the meeting, but his union rep is. The union rep says:

1. The teacher denies that there was an affair.
   
2. The student denies that there was an affair.
   
3. The school administration and the police didn’t find one shred of proof of an affair.
   
4. Ergo, there was no affair.
   
5. Ergo ergo, this is nothing but a witch hunt designed to besmirch the reputation of a committed, talented teacher with fifteen years of experience.
   
6. Triple ergo, the board has no choice but to reinstate Mr. Mymer and issue a formal apology.
   
7. Period.
   
8. End of story.
   
9. Finis.
   

By this time, the crowd is ready for the finis. But the school board has other ideas. They vote to consider the comments from the community and the most recent information and announce their decision at the next school-board meeting, or maybe the one after that, or maybe during the next ice age. They wish us a happy Thanksgiving and tell us all to drive safely if we’re traveling.

When the meeting is over, the people file slowly out of the building. Ms. Patrick glares at my mom as if it’s her fault that I went so wrong. But the other women give my mom smiles of encouragement; they grip her arm or pat her shoulder.

They are mothers, and they understand.