He's going to die at home. It's what he wants. A hospice nurse is coming tomorrow. Aunt Whitney says they'll do whatever they have to to keep him comfortable until the end.
I wonder if there's a hospice for the family.
A
goddammit
sets my heart pounding. The clock reads two
AM
. I lie still and listen and piece together what happened.
Mom, yelling: “Why didn't you wake me up?”
Dad, crying: “I'm sorry.”
Mom, more calmly: “Just stop. I'll get it. I'll
get
it. Why didn't you ask for help?”
Dad: Incoherent.
Mom: “Oh, for God's sake.
Please
. Just
lie
down. I'llâ”
Dad:
“Leave me the fuck alone!”
Mom: Nothing.
I hear the hallway closet door open, then close, the kitchen faucet turn on, then shut off. A few minutes later the steam cleaner is roaring in their room. And then I get itâDad has knocked over his urinal again.
When it shuts off, I get up. “I'll put it away, Mom,” I tell her, taking the steam cleaner from her in the hallway. “Go back to bed.”
She's on the verge of tears as she bends over to wrap the power cord around the hooks. “It's okay, baby. I'm already up. You've got school tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
I let her take the steam cleaner back from me. “I'm sorry,” I say.
She smiles wanly and shoos me back to my room.
Â
I don't sleep a lot, but I do sleep. In the morning it's not my alarm that wakes me; it's Dad clanging this infernal bell Aunt Olivia gave him to summon us when he needs something. Aunt Whitney took his power scooter away weeks ago; yesterday she put his wheelchair in the garage so he won't attempt to use it alone. I don't really understand why they're trying to protect him anymore. A concussion seems like a pretty attractive alternative at this point. He's used the bell only a couple of times, but I have a feeling that's just changed.
When he's still clanging it a minute later, I get up and pad into the room to see what he needs. The running shower explains why Mom didn't heed his call.
The carpet is wet under my feet, and I'm suddenly reminded of last night. “What do you need, Dad?”
He pinches his face up when he speaks. “I need you to help me with the urinal.”
At least he asked, but I don't want to do this. I really don't.
He unsuccessfully tries to untangle himself from the sheet, and eventually I have to help him. With his good hand, he grips the side rail that Mom had me install a year ago, but he doesn't have the strength to pull himself up. I grab his other arm at the elbow and help him into a sitting position. When he's stable, I swing his legs around to the side of the bed. He's nude under the sheet, his skin an odd color, slack, bruised, his useless left leg thinner than the other by half and completely lacking in definition. I support him, then avert my eyes as he releases the rail and positions the urinal. It takes a while for him to get started.
When he's done, he hands the plastic container to me. He's got the handle, so I'm forced to take it by the main body before I can make the switch. It's warm, and the instant aversion I feel makes my skin crawl. He reaches for a tissue to catch the drip, then hands me that too. I help him back into bed, then dump the foaming urine and the tissue in my bathroom toilet, resisting the urge to gag.
I'm not remotely cut out for this kind of intimacy with my dad.
So when Mom hands me an external catheter as I'm getting ready to head out half an hour later and asks me to roll it on Dad's shriveled penis, I just can't. Apparently Dad made a pity call to Aunt Whitney in the middle of the night and told her what happened, so she stopped by on her way to the clinic, before I woke up, and dropped off the catheter.
“Can't the hospice nurse do this?”
“No, she can't. She's not even going to be here until this afternoon.”
“Mom, please don't ask me to do this.” I hold it back out to her.
She looks at me with a mixture of anger, frustration, and sympathy, then snatches the plastic bag out of my hand and rips it open. Tubing and something that looks like a condom with a funnel on one end spill onto the kitchen floor.
“I can't do this anymore, Robert,” she says through clenched teeth. She kicks the catheter out into the dining room with her bare foot, then kicks it again into the living room, then again into the hallway.
“Mom.” I get out in front of her and pick up the catheter and coil the tubing. I'm pretty sure it's no longer sterile, but I don't think anybody much cares anymore. I hold it out to her. “I can't do this either, Mom.”
She wipes her eyes on her robe, and I hate myself that I can't do more to help her. She snatches the catheter from my hand and fires off a string of curses. I wince at the onslaught. Then she composes herself and heads to her room. I grab my backpack and get the hell out of there.
Chapter 3
Andrew
Â
My freshman Algebra kids surge into the room Thursday morning on a tide of whining.
“Are we doing anything today?”
“Can we just have a free period?”
“I don't know why we have to come to school these last two days. We don't do anything anyway.”
God, two more daysâtwo more daysâtwo more days.
It's this way right before every long holiday. We intentionally schedule final due dates and tests a few days before a break or the end of a grading period so we have a couple of days for makeups or redos or whatever concessions we have to make to get those sixty-ninersâthose kids right on the borderâover the hump. And there's no point starting something new with a two-week break coming up.
And with boring regularity, some smart aleck argues that we should cancel those last two days. I remind this current smart aleck that no matter what day we end on before a break, there will always be a last two days.
I don't think they really grasp that logic though.
Anyway, the best we teachers can hope for is to keep the kids contained until we can dismiss at two thirty on that last day (in this case, Friday).
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say over their grumbling. As they settle in, I turn on my projector and a collective groan rises in the room.
“What?” I say, clicking Play on my tablet screen. “You're going to love this movie.”
Stephen Newman picks up the DVD case as he passes by my computer cart in the front of the room. “
Stand and Deliver
?” He rolls his eyes and tosses it back on the cart.
“Why so cynical, Stephen? How do you know you're not going to like it? You haven't even seen it yet.”
“I saw it in Spanish last year. Lame.”
“Yeah, Mr. McNelis,” Kristyn Murrow says. “That movie's like a million years old.”
“It was released in 1988,” I say in its defense.
“We weren't even born. Can't we watch
Scream Three
?”
“No. And don't get on my nerves, or I will get on yours. And, Stephen, don't get too comfortable. You won't be watching the movie anyway, pal.”
He looks at me in disbelief.
I motion him to my desk. He sneers, and for a moment, I think he's going to refuse, but then he slouches over.
I hold out his last test. “You didn't do any test corrections yesterday. As I recall, you chose to use that time to entertain Kristyn. Yet, despite your fascinating performance, she managed to complete
her
corrections.”
“So? I didn't want to do them.”
“You don't do them, you fail the nine weeks, and that leaves you very, very borderline for the semester. Your choice, but you fail, you won't be participating in athletics when we come back from the break.”
I open my hand and let his test drop to my desk, then turn my attention to the attendance screen on my computer.
After a moment, he snatches it up and makes his way over the kids stretched out on the floor to the hallway, intentionally nudging a few with his foot and sending up a chorus of
hey
s.
“Let me know if you need some help,” I call after him. I can't help smiling to myself. God bless coaches and their policies.
I open an e-mail from Jen.
Showing a movie?
“Stand and Deliver,”
I reply.
You?
So you're the one who rented it. All I could get was “Shrek the Third.”
Oh. I'm sure that has a strong correlation to our math standards.
Yes, in fact. Mathematical logic in sentences. Pinocchio and Prince Charming. Hold on.
A few minutes later she e-mails me a scene from the movie, a scene where Prince Charming pushes Pinocchio to tell him where Shrek is and Pinocchio answers with a bunch of rhetorical mumbo-jumbo:
I'm possibly more or less not definitely rejecting the idea that in no way with any amount of uncertainty that I undeniably . . .
I chuckle at the exchange. Now that I read it, I remember it well. It's a stretch, but I concede the point.
Is that your kid sitting in the hallway?
she writes.
He's looking in my door window and mouthing something to one of my girls.
I sigh.
I'll get him.
I step over the kids and open my door, catching him red-handed.
“Stephen, what the L-M-N-O-P are you doing? Can I assume you've finished your test corrections already?”
“I'm working on them.”
“Looks to me like you're working on something else entirely. Look through the window again. Go ahead.”
He looks suspicious but does what I say.
“You see Ms. Went over there at her desk? If I get another e-mail from her or anyone else in this building telling me your face has been anywhere other than hanging over that test, you will spend your last day sitting next to me. You will be teacher's pet for the day, my friend. Me and you.” I give him my brightest smile.
Apparently the thought of sitting with me is so humiliating that he actually sits his butt back on the floor and finishes his test corrections.
I congratulate myself on winning another round.
The whining continues through fourth period. It's a relief to get to fifth and my calculus kids, and a real pleasure to see my sixth-period AP Calculus class.
I'm especially pleased to see that Robert is more himself today. He gives me a shy smile when he enters the room, and I give him one back.
Â
Robert
Â
I half expect Mr. McNelis to show us
Stand and Deliver
the last two days before Christmas break. It's this movie, a true story, about a California teacher who takes a bunch of low-achieving Latino kids in an equally low-performing high school and turns them into calculus superstars. I've already seen it four timesâtwice in eighth grade (Spanish I and Algebra), once in ninth grade (Spanish II), and once in tenth grade (with my testing group during state testing week). It's actually the perfect movie for Calculus because it's, well, about calculus, or cal-CUL-lus, as Lou Diamond Phillips calls it in the movie. But there's no movie. Instead, he passes out pages of math puzzles.
Some of them are pretty challenging and they take my mind off the long Christmas holiday coming up. Others are easy, like this one:
A teacher writes the Roman numeral IX on the board and asks students how to make it into 6 by adding a single line, without lifting the dry erase marker.
I copy the IX, then add an S in front of it:
SIX
.
The next question involves matches.
Sixteen matches are arranged in the five-square pattern below. Reduce the number of squares to four by moving only two matches. You cannot remove any matches or leave any loose ends.
I study the figure a moment, then look up and see that Mr. McNelis has returned to his desk. He's kicked back in his chair, his ankles crossed on his desk, and he's looking at his phone. I let my eyes trail along his gray corduroys to his feet. He's wearing loafers, these two-tone brown and gray leather things with a slot for a penny on top and a rubber outsole. I'm trying to guess his shoe size when he lifts his eyes and catches me.
I quickly return to the puzzle, but I'm thinking about all the things I like about Mr. McNelis, besides the shoes.
For one thing, he cusses in class. He doesn't use real cuss wordsâyou can't do that in public school if you want to keep your job. Instead he says stuff like,
What the L-M-N-O-P are you doing?
Or
Son of a bit-my-finger. Just sit down.
If you're chewing gum, he'll say something like,
Get rid of the gum, or I'm going to kick you, then I'm going to kick your dog.
And if you get on his nerves, he'll get on yours. He can be kind of weird, but he makes us laugh.
And he's a super math nerd. Fridays are jeans days for teachers, and he always wears some funny math T-shirt. He must have a dozen or more. Last Friday it was a black T-shirt with this slogan:
Ï
IRRATIONAL
BUT WELL-ROUNDED
And then there's thisâhe's gay. He thinks we don't know; we do. And it's not because he's an impeccable dresser; he's not, although he does look damn hot in those cords. It's not because his nails are always clean and neatly trimmed; they are, but that's not it either. And it's not because he sashays around the classroom; he doesn't.
It's because he follows AfterElton on Twitter. It's amazing what girls can dig up when they're motivated. And when it comes to Mr. McNelis, some of them are pretty damn motivated.
The girls think they can change him; I know they can't.
The solution to the puzzle suddenly presents itself in my mind. I use my pencil to scratch out then redraw two of the matches. Then I outline the new squares again with heavy lines.
Mr. McNelis gets up and moves down the side of the room. He's allowed us to work in pairs or small groups, but I've chosen to work alone today. There's something about being in this room with him that makes me feel good, normal, relevant, but that doesn't mean I want to interact with any of my classmates. Not this week. He stops at a small group in the backâtwo girls and a guy in a football hoodieâand looks over their shoulders.
“Are there any days you can eliminate?” he asks.
They all look back at the question, then one of the girls offers up a Hail Mary answer. He smiles and tells them to keep working on it.
I scan the page and find the question they are on. It's a logic question. I think about what Mr. McNelis just said to the group and begin working my way through the problem backward.
I'm writing out the explanation when I feel his hand grip my shoulder. I look up and he winks. Something inside me shifts.