The Sharp Time (25 page)

Authors: Mary O'Connell

BOOK: The Sharp Time

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I walk to the back of the Pale Circus and take yet another good look at myself in the three-way mirror: the lavender-gray shadows under my eyes, my banged-up mouth. Beneath my fanciful dress, the bruise on my ribs—Monday’s surprise—has faded to a shadow. It has been a long week, and there’s still work to be done. Along with my dress and Bradley’s shirt, Henry Charbonneau left a very long list of Sunday chores written out in pastel-colored pencil: marshmallow-pink, mint-green and baby chick–yellow, as if this would make scrubbing the toilet and changing out the roach motels Easter-sweet. I bitched a bit about the work; I inquired about what Henry Charbonneau might be doing with his free Sunday: refinishing the white pine floors of his loft? Scrambling eggs and chopping fresh chive? Balling melon? Brewing jasmine tea? Bradley smiled and shook his head. He put his hands together, crucified thumb to his heart, and said: “On the seventh day, he rested.”

And now Bradley is walking back into the Pale Circus. His eyes are a bit bloodshot and he’s forgotten to stamp his feet at the door, tracking in a dusting of snow that would make Henry Charbonneau weep. Bradley rubs his hands together and makes a blustery
brrrr
sound before he looks at me and says, “Sandinista? What? Why are you smiling?”

I can hardly get the words out. “My English teacher called me.”

“She did?” Bradley packs the two words with all the tenderness the world has ever known. “She did?”

* * *

I’m Windexing the windows, the Pale Circus filling with that clean, aqua-blue smell, when I see a monk walking down the street. He walks with great purpose, cradling something in his brown robe like a baby. When I lean closer to the window, my forehead resting on the cold pane, I see that it is Brother Bill of the Dixie Cup humor. He stops to look at the crunched-up front end of my Taurus, which is parked right outside the Pale Circus. He brushes off the snow, fools with one of my windshield wipers, and puts something on the hood of my car.

Just as I’m about to open the door and yell out: “Brother Bill, can I help you?” or “Dude, what the hell are you doing to my car?” or some amalgamation of the two, he looks up, twists his head around, then racewalks back down the street to the monastery, his hands tucked up in the folds of his robes.

“I’m stepping outside for a minute,” I call out to Bradley, who is dusting, or about to start: he rolls the wooden end of the feather duster between his palms so that the feathers do a slow fan dance. Bradley stares down at the duster with a shy smile, as if he’s holding his bridal bouquet. His cell phone is sandwiched between his head and bent neck.

“What?” Bradley startles and drops the feather duster. “Sorry! I’m going outside.”

“ ’Kay,” Bradley says amicably, offering up a little wave. He smiles, then curls his head down like a cat and whispers something into his phone. Whoever he is talking to makes him laugh, soft and slow. I won’t ask.

I pull open the door of the Pale Circus and walk across the snowy sidewalk to my car, cold in my bare dress and holding out one hand for balance. I visor my other hand over my eyes and take a long look at Brother Bill scurrying down Thirty-Eighth Street. And then, when I look down at the hood of my crushed car, I see the monk’s gift.

It nearly blinds me.

The sun flares off the brass lid of a mason jar of red jam. I pick it up and look at the jam sparkling beyond the glass, the seeded clots of berry like a chambered heart. There is no label on the jar, no price or bar code, no list of ingredients. There is only a preprinted note card attached to the jar that says
LOVE AND BLESSINGS TO YOU FROM YOUR FRIENDS AT ST. JOSEPH’S MONASTERY
. The label smells hotly of glue. I brush the lid against my mouth, the ridged metal gold and sweet as a kiss.

I close my eyes for a second, savoring this day of gifts, and for once I do not see Catherine Bennett. I only see Alecia Hardaway under the fluorescent lights in the school corridor, the brilliance of her puzzled smile as she closes her locker and turns to look at me. She’s waving, pleasantly at first:
Hi, Sandinista! You’re a real cool person, Sandinista! You’re a real cool person every day!
But then she starts to wave as if she’s drowning:
Look at me, Sandinista! Help me, Sandinista!

And so I imagine myself showing up on the Hardaways’ doorstep. Her mother answers the door and it’s me, the real me, resplendent in a white angora sweater and pencil skirt, a lipsticked pinup saint spilling God’s truth.
Your daughter is being tormented at school. And not by some random bitchy girl, Mrs. Hardaway. Not by a student. By a teacher. Everyone acts like it doesn’t happen. But I have seen it. I’ve seen it many times, Mrs. Hardaway
. The pinks and purples and wild navy blues of Mrs. Bennett’s slip exit my brain, my eyelids. Birds of peace appear on the telephone wires above our heads.

But the valiant holiness of my confession is lost on Mrs. Hardaway.
Tell me how long this has been going on. Tell me!

All year
, I tell her, my voice loud as dinner theater.
Since school started
.

At first her face falls. Mrs. Hardaway chews her lip, maybe thinking of the days when Alecia was at school and she was at work, or sipping a latte or playing computer solitaire or listlessly wandering the aisles of Target, whatever mothers do in those long, lost hours without their children.

But then Mrs. Hardaway says:
And you’re just telling me now! You let her suffer
just like everyone else
for all this time?

I try to be plucky.
Better late than never! I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about the teacher. I had a pink gun, but now it’s gone. If I get another one, I will take care of Catherine Bennett for you
.

Mrs. Hardaway screams it loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear:
JESUS CHRIST!

And of course it’s Jesus I’m thinking about as I stand on Thirty-Eighth Street, how all of Christianity seems a cautionary tale, a bleak epiphany visited upon the King of Kings himself as he was nailed to the cross:
What the hell? I guess you can’t save anyone else without crucifying yourself
.

But what can any of us do but try? In the morning, I will go to school and talk with Lisa Kaplansky. I will tell her about Alecia. About me.

I stand here on the street for another moment, shivering in my ball gown as I watch Brother Bill trudge up the steep, frozen steps of St. Joseph’s. I press the jar of jam to the deep V in the front of my dress, to my bare and bony sternum. It’s still warm.

I don’t think he sees me.

I
know
he doesn’t see me. But then, just before Brother Bill disappears into the monastery, he turns around. He raises his hand, and he waves.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A world of gratitude to Sara Eckel, Lisa Bankoff, Michelle Poploff, Rebecca Short, Angela Carlino, Mary Wharff, Lucia Orth, Laura Moriarty, Judy Bauer, Andrea Hoag, Sharon Zehr, Kellie Wells, Jerald Walker, Whitney Terrell, Jennifer Lawler, Laura Kirk and Stefanie Olson.

And thank you to my family, my parents, my siblings, my husband and my children: I love you all.

MARY O’CONNELL is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author of the short-story collection
Living with Saints
. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in several literary magazines, and she is the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship and a
Chicago Tribune
Nelson Algren Award.
The Sharp Time
is her first novel.