The Measures Between Us (22 page)

But now the meeting seemed tiny compared to everything else. After they dropped Cynthia off, his wife went mute for the ride home. Whatever came out of her mouth, she had determined, would be a lie. The words for her grief and guilt hadn't been invented. It was something in her blood, the valves of her heart, and to name it would be to wrench it out of her body, and that wasn't possible yet.

As the traffic on Storrow Drive ebbed and flowed, he considered moving his hand from the stick shift to her leg, lodging it
there like it would keep her safe. He could pull to the shoulder, let the other cars and their drivers pass. Everyone who hadn't just handed over a child. He wanted her to feel that his blood was still flowing, his heart was still beating, and he wanted to know whether hers was too. Yet he did nothing—he stayed silent, and he didn't touch her—because he thought her response, her unwavering gaze out the windshield at the blooming trees and snaking power lines, her unmoving body, was more true and right than any sound or touch he could muster.

The morning of his meeting, Vincent wondered if Dr. Howard knew about Cynthia, and whether that was why he had summoned him. The idea scared him because he didn't want to talk about his daughter's situation, particularly with the principal, whom he didn't feel close to. He hadn't told anyone, except Henry Wheeling, and he didn't want to start now. Since Dr. Howard was his boss, though, he thought he would feel pressured to spill details, lay out the troubles right there for a stranger to pick over. The hoarded bottles of aspirin, the college difficulties, the heartbreak over boys. The jokes but maybe not jokes about harming herself. He didn't think the principal had any cruelty in him, but, still, it was his daughter's life. And how, when he arrived home that evening, could he explain the trespassing to his wife? While she had been studying her recipes, he was slicing Cynthia open, leaving her vulnerable.

As he shaved, the steam from the shower slowly evaporating, he thought up possible responses to likely questions. If the principal asked how Cynthia was, Vincent would tell him, “Fine. Thank you for asking. And how are your own children?” If
the principal wanted to know what led to the hospitalization, Vincent would say, “She has depression. We're trying to determine how serious it is.” And if the principal inquired whether Vincent wanted to take some personal leave, he would politely decline: “I don't think that's necessary. But thank you for the offer. I'll let you know if I decide otherwise.” He hoped the principal wouldn't push, because taking time off was the opposite of what he wanted to do. How would he fill his time? Spend the days orbiting Mary and her cookbooks, both of them pretending nothing was different? Both of them pretending they weren't terrified? That sounded like a jail sentence.

As it turned out, the meeting had nothing to do with Cynthia, which was a relief and not, since it was the only scenario Vincent had prepared for. He arrived at the appointed time, and Dr. Howard waved him into his office. He pressed a button on his phone and asked his secretary to hold his calls. The phone had more buttons than seemed necessary. Everyone used to manage just fine without such technology, Vincent thought.

Seated on the couch was the vice principal, Roberta Sackett. She was a trim, officious woman in her late forties. Her short and precise haircut, along with the fact that she wasn't married, ignited a rumor several years ago among the students that she was a lesbian. They revived the gossip from time to time, especially when she meted out detention and suspensions. Vincent thought it much more likely that she had merely entered the time in her life when she no longer wanted to spend much time thinking about or tending to her hairstyle, a choice many women seemed to make past a certain age. They leave the futzing and worrying to the younger women, those with more energy to devote to
things like hair and fancy shoes. Of her being single, he had no similar explanation, though maybe that too had to do with a certain kind of resignation.

“Vincent, thank you for coming,” said Dr. Howard, returning to his seat behind his desk. Its surface was covered with papers, magazines, and a laptop computer. “Of course, you know Roberta.”

Vincent nodded, and Roberta said, “It's nice to see you.” She smiled warmly, and Vincent thought for a moment that kids can be so cruel.

“Sometimes we fear you're buried under a mountain of sawdust down there,” said Dr. Howard.

Vincent smiled. “It does pile up awful fast, even with a shop vac,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He never knew what to do with his hands when there wasn't something in them—a tool, a key, a fork, a pencil even. He eyed some stray ballpoint pens on the principal's desk and decided it would be inappropriate to reach or ask for one. Often he carried something in his pocket, like a paper clip or a silver dollar, for just this purpose, but today he had forgotten. He was also uncomfortable because moments before, he had changed shirts into one stiff from the dry cleaner. He didn't want to show up at Dr. Howard's office with the dark half moons of sweat that sometimes stained his shirt after a day of classes, so he grabbed an extra one that morning, still sheathed in plastic. The starched fabric didn't have the soft, knowing contours of his everyday clothes.

“Your classes are going well?” asked Dr. Howard.

Vincent nodded. “No complaints, unless you count the whine of the band saw.”

“Good, good.” The principal turned toward Roberta. “If only all of our faculty were as agreeable as Mr. Pareto, we'd be home free.”

“Our jobs would be much easier,” Roberta said. “We could take longer lunches.”

Dr. Howard touched his temple. “I would have far fewer headaches,” he said. “My wife would be grateful.”

“I could do some training, if you like,” Vincent said.

The principal laughed heartily, more than the joke merited. It was at that moment that Vincent realized he was about to deliver bad news. Poker players, they say, have a tell, a gesture or tic that indicates when they are bluffing. The best players train their bodies to collude with their lies, to not reveal they are holding nothing. They can sit there with not even a pair, and their heart rate and breathing will be exactly the same as if they were staring at four aces. Most people, though, can't control it. Honesty bubbles up in them.

“Roberta and I wanted to talk to you because we've received word from the superintendent's office of some proposed budget cuts.” He took one of the pens Vincent had been wanting and tapped it, still capped. “I don't relish having to tell you this, but one of the areas they're considering cutbacks to, unfortunately, is the woodworking program.”

Vincent nodded.

“It's not just woodworking, of course, by any means,” Roberta chimed in. “You're not the only one under the gun here.”

“Yes, yes, of course not,” agreed Dr. Howard. “All of the ancillary programs—those not classified strictly academic—are being scrutinized. These are trying times, economically. Though I'm sure I don't need to tell you that.”

“I thought Proposition 8 was defeated,” said Vincent. Proposition 8 was a county-wide referendum that would have slashed the school's budget. Vincent had joined other teachers to hand out leaflets and hold signs outside the voting precincts, careful to stand at least seventy-five feet from the entrance, as the law dictated. A group of them had gathered at a local bar to watch the returns on TV, and when the numbers came in they cheered loudly and toasted with pints of beer.

“It was,” said the principal. “These are unrelated cuts.”

“Do they include the sports programs?”

The principal stopped tapping his pen. He avoided Vincent's gaze. Framed photos of his wife and children rested on the windowsill, shaded by a potted plant. Behind him hung a shot of the governor, the two of them shaking hands.

“The programs being most closely examined are woodworking, home economics, and art,” said Roberta. “That's where we stand right now.”

Vincent knew better than to push. He considered manners, deference, composure, and tact to be of the utmost importance. He thought outbursts were often a sign of weakness and rarely accomplished much, sometimes leaving you further behind than if you simply smiled tightly, kept proud, and absorbed the blows. Perhaps they provided some sort of stress relief. He believed that the adage about squeaky wheels getting grease applied to inanimate objects, not human beings.

But this was a time unlike any other in his life. His daughter was in a mental hospital, surrounded by strangers, doctors telling her God knows what. She was there on faith—and not even necessarily her own but more Vincent's, Henry Wheeling's.

Had he been summoned to the principal's office two weeks
earlier, when he could still hear Cynthia's footsteps above the bedroom ceiling, he would have said nothing more. He would have ignored Dr. Howard's pen tapping and family portraits and let the principal steer the conversation where he wanted it to go. He would have nodded at all the appropriate moments, taken the jargon not as jargon but as unalloyed sincerity. Yet it wasn't two weeks ago, and when you have consigned your only child to an asylum, to the mysterious but perhaps essential directives of doctors and drugs, you are allowed to transgress, maybe even required to.

“So the sports programs will remain intact as they are?” Vincent asked. “Mr. Hennessy and his coaches won't be coming here to meet with you and Vice Principal Sackett?”

Dr. Howard sighed, avoided eye contact. The pen stopped, then started up again. Most of the days on the blotter were dirty with appointments. “The prevailing wisdom seems to be that sports and athletic training are more integral to a child's development and education than … than some of the programs in which it's more difficult to measure the impact.”

“Not that we are necessarily in accord with the superintendent on this matter,” said Roberta.

“Absolutely,” Dr. Howard agreed. “Trust me, we have no doubt about the value of your classes to our students, Vincent. Many of them see you as an important mentor. Year after year you score extremely high on their evaluations.”

“I meet with parents all the time who report how fond of you their sons and daughters are,” said Roberta. “They bring your name up frequently, always in a positive light.”

The word
daughter
made Vincent think of Cynthia again, and how insignificant this conversation suddenly seemed. He was
tempted to stand up, extend a hand across the desk to Dr. Howard, then to Roberta, and calmly leave the office. He would remember to say good-bye to the secretaries typing at keyboards and cradling phones in their ears, glimpse their own family photos on their desks. Then he would walk out into the sunshine of the parking lot, get into his car, and drive to Rangely. When it came to directions, he had always been a quick study. It had taken him no more than two trips to learn the route to the hospital. The phone number he had memorized even more rapidly. Unfortunately, forgetting took longer, and he knew he would be plagued with this information, and the month in his life it measured, long after Cynthia was released. Was it even visiting hours? He didn't know. Maybe they would let him in anyway if he was an hour late or an hour early. They must have some compassion.

“This is by no means a done deal,” said the principal. “Nothing's set in stone. What we're looking at is a meeting a couple weeks from now, a public forum the superintendent is holding, at which we expect he'll hear arguments both in support of and against these cuts.”

Vincent calculated the dates in his head: The meeting would coincide, roughly, with Cynthia's discharge, if all went according to plan.

“We think it would be helpful if, between now and then, you could prepare some remarks that speak to the importance of woodworking, of its sustained existence in our curriculum.”

“Give a speech?” Vincent asked.

“We very much do not want this to become a reality,” said Dr. Howard.

“It would be a real shame,” said Roberta. “We would hate to lose you.”

Dr. Howard shot her a look, as if she had said something she wasn't supposed to. “One step at a time, Roberta. I don't think that's a contingency we need to be discussing now.”

“Any notion about what I might say at this forum?” Vincent asked. “I'm not so comfortable with public speaking. I doubt I could be as smooth and intelligent sounding as many of the other teachers.”

“I'd focus on the positives,” said the principal. “The important lessons our students are learning through their experience in the woodworking classroom, and which would be difficult to replicate should those classes be discontinued. You could—and I'm just extrapolating off the top of my head here—talk about how students have been able to tap into their self-confidence through their work with you.”

“Should I bring some of their projects to show the superintendent?”

Dr. Howard shook his head. “Might just muddy things up. Let's stick to words.”

“It could be helpful as well to enlist the support and testimony of current and former students,” said Roberta. “They could speak firsthand of the impact you've had on their lives.”

“That's absolutely right,” said Dr. Howard, rising from his seat and heading toward Vincent. “The more advocates you have, the better. This is all about marshaling support.”

Roberta stood, and Vincent realized he was expected to as well. He and the principal walked to the office door. “These are hard decisions,” said Dr. Howard, his hand brushing Vincent's
elbow. “No one is taking them lightly. I want to personally assure you of that.”

Vincent nodded, and he almost corrected the principal. He knew exactly what a hard decision was, and this did not come even close.

“If you have any questions, please, Roberta or myself will be happy to try and answer them. We all want to beat this thing.”