In The Middle of Middle America Read online

  “I don’t,” I say, shaking my head at Mr. Chayton after pausing for way too long. “But rest assured, I — and indeed the rest of the staff at Median High — will be doing our utmost to ensure something like this never happens again. We love you Kai,” I say, stroking the top of the hand he still has placed inside mine. “And you need to know that. You need to know you are loved. We love you no matter what.”

  Mrs. Chayton places her hand on my shoulder again.

  “That’s what we keep saying to him,” she says. “He has so many people in his life who love him.”

  I lean down and kiss Kai on the forehead, something I would no doubt be fired for if any of those do-gooder school board idiots saw me do this. Then I stand back upright to re-fix the strap of my handbag onto my shoulder.

  “I’ve outstayed my welcome. I’ll phone tomorrow. And you can let me know when you are ready to return to school. We’ll tell the students you had a little illness of some kind.”

  I shrug, and as I do, Kai smiles a genuine smile at me, and in this moment I am finally certain that he will be okay. I’ll have a strong word with him when he returns to my class; let him know that he is as worthy of being who he truly wants to be as anybody else in this world is.

  “Have, ah… have you given me money for the trip to Europe?”

  Kai stares down the length of his bed and his nose stiffens.

  “What trip to Europe?” his mother asks.

  “Oh,” I say, “maybe I have spoken out of turn. But our school won the state lottery. We’re being subsidized for a trip to Europe on the thirtieth of October. Each student only has to pay four hundred dollars. Twelve days, we’ll be away for, traveling to London, Paris, Rome…”

  “Oooh, that sounds nice,” Mrs. Chayton says. “Perhaps it would do you the world of good to go. We’ll pay the four hundred, won’t we Nova?”

  She glances at her husband who huffs, puffs and then sits back in to the blue plastic chair beside Kai’s bed, lifting the steeple his fingers are forming towards his chin.

  “We’ll see,” he says.

  And then the ward falls silent. Awkwardly silent.

  I bend down to kiss Kai on the forehead again before leaving, and then find myself making my way around the maze of brightly lit hallways of the hospital. My head begins to spin. I lean over, resting my hands on my knees, and suck in a deep, deep breath. The guilt feels nauseating. A student of mine attempting to take his own life. It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, either. This kinda thing happening makes me feel inadequate; as if I’m a failure as a teacher.

  I listen to the local radio station blast out tacky boy band songs while I drive back to Lebanon, attempting to sing along, just so I can try, in some way, to lift my mood. But it’s not working. I’ve been feeling so down lately. Pathetically so. I think my self-pity is the reason I didn’t call Johnny back after he left a voicemail on my phone earlier. He’s nice. And he made me laugh on our date. A lot. But I don’t need the extra burden of dating somebody right now. I have too much going on. My priority is to get pregnant, not to get into a relationship. It’s not right for me to burden anybody else with my complications.

  I eyeball myself in the rearview mirror after turning off the button of my car radio, putting an end to NSync butchering an awfully repetitive pop chorus, and notice that my eyes look heavy. Really heavy. As if I’ve been crying, even though I haven’t. Then, I flick the turn signal, drive down the entirety of the 281 twenty miles over the legal limit, before reversing into an empty parking space. I open my purse, take out a tissue, dampen it with my tongue and then dab it all over my aging face.

  “Fuck it,” I say to myself. “Let’s do this.”

  I toss the tissue on the passenger seat, snatch open my car door, hook my handbag over my shoulder and dash straight across the quiet street. When I push open the door, the stale smell of beer mixes with the woman who is sitting by the door’s bitter perfume and I almost turn back around and race back to my car. But it’s too late. He’s already seen me. And his eyes have lit up.

  “Hey,” he shouts down the entire length of the bar.

  Everybody turns to face me, and so I offer an awkward smile to all eight folks in attendance at The Shamrock as I make my way toward him. He embraces me with an overly friendly hug, and as he does, I lean in and whisper in his ear, “Boy, could I do with a fucking drink.”

  MERIC MILLER

  I really should bring a bottle of water out with me when I go on long rides to nowhere. I could click it to the underside of the crossbar like I see cyclists do when they’re in races on the TV.

  I stop pedaling, lean my bike against the wall at the side of a gray-bricked building, and then put my hands on my hips so I can suck in a deep breath. As I’m looking around, I notice, across the street, a small grocery store. Damn it! I prolly shudda reached into Momma’s oversized pink purse before I came out for a ride, just for some loose change… enough to buy myself a drink. I shove my hands into the pockets of my jeans, just to check, even though I know I don’t have a cent in there. I’m a frickin’ idiot. I should know better. This is literally all I do when I’m not at school. Ride. Though maybe now, for the first time in my life, I might have other things to do. I can’t believe I have girlfriend. At least I think I have. I dunno. The date on the weekend went okay, I guess, even if there were lots of awkward silences. But she was just as silent as I was, I guess, and… well… I dunno. She didn’t say much to me at school today, though. In fact, she didn’t say anything but nod and smile at me as we passed each other in the hallway. But we didn’t have American History today, so we didn’t get a chance to sit next to each other. We’ve American History on Thursdays and then again on Fridays. We can speak then. I prolly shudda asked her for her phone number when we were on our date, just so I could call her up and we could talk. But if we didn’t have much to say in that lovely restaurant for an hour and a half then a phone call might be pretty meaningless, I guess. It’d prolly be just the two of us standing in our kitchens with our phones pressed to our ears, listening to each other breathing. But listening to her breathing would even sound good to me.

  I push open the door to the grocery store and when I glance at the woman behind the counter I see that she’s reading a newspaper. So, I take a look around the different aisles, until I come to the fridge. I lick my lips as I stare at the drinks, and then turn to the woman behind the counter again. She glances up at me, then back down at her newspaper. I edge open one of the fridges, and snatch a cold bottle of purple Gatorade, then pull at my sleeve so that there’s enough room for it to slide up into.

  “Hey,” I shout out to the woman behind the counter. “You sell any alcohol?”

  She closes her newspaper, slides down her glasses on the bridge of her nose and stares up over them at me.

  “You’re too young to buy alcohol, boy,” she says.

  So I just shrug.

  “I’ll go home and get my ID then, I guess,” I say.

  I leave her store with my arm down by my side so she doesn’t see the bulge in my sleeve. And as soon as I’m outside, I race across the street, and grab at my bike.

  “You!” I stare back across the street, and see the woman by the door of the grocery store, waving both hands at me. Damn it! I jump on to my bike and begin to pedal as quickly as I can; so quick that the fuckin chain snaps from the cog and hangs low to the sidewalk. “I wanna speak with you,” she says, pacing across the street toward me. I don’t know what to do with my arm, so I just hide it behind my back and smile up at her as she approaches.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  “I know your face.”

  I squint at her.

  “What?” I say, shrugging.

  “You’re that boy. That silly boy.”

  I look up and down the street hoping nobody else comes along; certainly not the cops. I don’t wanna get in trouble. Momma would go nuts if the police brought me home for stealin’ from a store.

  “I... I... I wa
s just thirsty, is all. I’ve ridden my bike all the way from Lebanon and―”

  “Don’t you know who I am, boy?” she says.

  She’s starting to creep me out now.

  “No. Should I?” I say, shaking my hair.

  She looks up and down the empty street just as I did, and then stares back at me.

  “I’m Madam Aspectu in the evenings, boy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Remember, you came to me to lie to a girl so she’d fall in love with you?”

  “You’re not Madam Aspectu!”

  I stare into her face, my mind spinning like it can do sometimes. She just looks up and down the street again, sucking on her lips.

  “Ahhh... pull the curtain over and come right in,” she says, her voice all crazy high-pitched. “Ma crystal ball is bubbling just for you.”

  Holy shit! She looks so different. No makeup. Different hair. Her eyes aren’t big and black no more.

  “But you... you...’

  ‘I wear a wig,” she says, “and contact lenses when I’m being a medium in the evenings.”

  “What? And… and you work in the grocery store in the day?”

  “Listen, boy,” she says, taking a step closer to me. “You owe me. That sweet little red-haired girl came back to me and was asking more questions. I told her that the boy with the two M’s also had long hair that hung over his eyes.” She reaches a bony finger toward my face and brushes my bangs aside. “I know she is going to come see me again. Do you want me to tell her I got everything wrong, boy?”

  “No. Jeez. No. Don’t do that!” I say. “Here, here, you can have the Gatorade back.”

  I slip the bottle from my sleeve and hold it to her. She tilts her head, looks at it, then back at me, before snatching the bottle.

  “Did you just take this from the store, boy?”

  “I was thirsty,” I say. “And I had no money.”

  She leans closer, so close I can feel her breathing on my face.

  “Listen to me clearly, boy. If you want me to keep up the lies with your little girlfriend, you’re gonna have to pay me.”

  “Pay you? But I don’t... I mean... I have no―”

  “One hundred dollars.”

  “One hund… I mean, where am I supposed to get one hundurd dollars from?”

  “I don’t care, boy. All I know is that if you don’t bring me one hundred dollars by this weekend, the next time the little red-haired girl pays me a visit I’mma tell her I got it all wrong; that she’s supposed to fall in love with a boy whose name begins with B, perhaps.”

  “No. No. I’ll get you the money. I’ll get you the one hundurd dollars. I will. But… but...”

  “But what, boy?”

  “What will you tell Caoimhe if I do get you the one hundurd?”

  She looks up and down the empty road again.

  “Whatever you want me to tell her.”

  My stomach rolls itself over.

  “Okay. Okay,” I say, sweeping my hair back down over my eyes. “Tell her this. Tell her that the boy with the two M’s might be quiet, but that’s not a bad thing. Tell her what she must do to find love is to get him out of his shell. Once she does, she’ll fall in love with him. And I’ll fall in love with her. And we’ll…. you know, we’ll be together and… and…. but she needs to give him time, okay, tell her she has to give him time, won’t you?”

  “Whatever you want, boy. I’ll say exactly that. But it’ll cost you one hundred dollars.”

  “Yes. Perfect,” I say. “Of course. I’ll get you the one hundurd. I’ll take it to the tent you do your readings in this weekend.”

  “Good boy,” she says. Then she twists the cap off of the bottle, takes a large swig of purple Gatorade, burps loudly into my face, and then slaps the bottle to the ground.

  “Tastes like piss,” she says.

  CAOIMHE LARKIN

  It’s a good thing the roads round here are flat, because I’ve been running nonstop for about a mile now. If I had to run a mile back in Tipperary, up and down all the little hills and across the cobblestones, I certainly would’ve had to stop by now. Probably with a twisted ankle.

  When I finally reach our pathway, I skid into it, sprint to the door and begin slapping my hands against it.

  “Jeez, are you okay?” Mam says to me, when she pulls the door open.

  I hunch over and take in a few sharp breaths.

  “Mam, Wendy, in school, y’know the black girl I was telling you about? Well her… her...” I bend over, panting some more, “her mam is dying. Literally dying right now on a bed in the living room of their house. It’s not even a bed. It’s a fold-down mattress.”

  “What?” Mam says, pushing the door wide open.

  I step inside and as soon as I do, the tears immediately begin to stream down my cheeks.

  “She is dying in front of her two daughters. One of them is only eleven. Same age as Aine.”

  “What do you mean dying? Has she had an accident? Did you ring the paramedics?”

  “Not an accident, no. She has cancer. Stomach cancer.”

  Mam’s face looks the same way mine must’ve looked when Wendy invited me into her home. I couldn’t believe it at first. I genuinely thought Mrs. Campbell was a dead body when I stepped inside their tiny living room. Her eyes were closed. Her face was pale; pale for a black woman. And three feet away sat little Sally, watching cartoons as she shoveled spoonfuls of cereal into her mouth.

  “What’s wrong with her, Wendy?” I whispered.

  Wendy blew out her cheeks.

  “Take a seat.”

  So I did.

  “Why isn’t she in a hospital or something like that?” Mam asks, just as Dad jogs down the stairs to find us both stunned in the hallway.

  “That’s the thing,” I say. “The hospital said Mrs. Campbell didn’t have enough money to take a bed in there... so they sent her home.”

  “What?!”

  Dad looks even more confused than Mam. And that makes me more confused than I’ve ever been. Because Dad is never confused.

  “Wendy told me,” I say, “that her Momma could afford one round of chemotherapy, which she had a couple weeks ago. But that was it. She was just sent home to die after that in front of her daughters.”

  Dad squeezes my shoulders, because he can hear in my voice that I’m about to cry again. And so, I wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze him as tight as I can. I’m so lucky. So, so lucky. And there I was, complaining all summer and acting like a diva because I didn’t want to move to America with my perfectly still intact and perfectly healthy family. America is so weird. I asked Wendy where her dad was. She told me her and her mam left her father when she was barely two years old. Said her mam was sick of all of his cheating and stuff. His name was Tyrel Nelson, she told me. They all used to live in a place called Black Pearl in New Orleans. When Wendy’s mam had enough of her husband’s cheating, she packed their bags and moved up to Kansas where she got a job as a waitress. Her younger sister, Sally, doesn’t share the same dad. She was only born after they had moved to Kansas… but Wendy isn’t sure who Sally’s father is because she doesn’t remember her mam ever having a boyfriend. I’ve never known anything like it. I asked Meric about his parents, too, on our date at the weekend — just to fill an awkward silence — and he said his dad up and left, then divorced his mam when Meric was only two years old as well. He’s only seen him on two occasions since. Twice… in the past twelve years! What is it with America? Why are there so many split-up families? I don’t know one family back home in Ireland who are split up. Not one. Divorce was actually illegal in Ireland until last year. It should still be illegal. It should be illegal here, too. It should be illegal all over the world.

  I sob, a proper big sob, into Dad’s chest as he squeezes me tighter.

  “Wow,” I hear Mam say. “What a welcome to America, huh? Teenage boys in her class trying to kill themselves and now we have cancer patients dying at home in front of their own kids.�
�

  “Let me eh…” Dad says. And then he stops to think, while still squeezing me tight. “Let me call the paramedics to your friend’s home and we’ll see what we can do from there.”

  “No,” I say, leaning away from him. “You can’t. Wendy made me promise we wouldn’t get anyone involved. She’s scared, Dad. Really scared. She says her and her little sister will be taken away when her Mam dies. And that they’ll probably be separated from each other.”

  Dad releases me from our hug, sighs, then washes his hand over his face before, through my tears, I watch him and Mam hold each other’s stares.

  “We gotta do something,” Mam says.

  JOHNNY EDWARDS

  “You two okay?” the bartender asks, interrupting us as we were ribbing each other, by twitching his outstretched finger between our two glasses.

  “One for the road?” I ask her.

  “No, no. I really must get going. It’s a school night and I―”

  “One more won’t hurt,” I say, placing my hand on her knee before moving it as quickly as I can away. Shit. That mighta been too forward.

  She pretends not to notice though, and instead glances at the near empty glass of wine standing tall on the bar in front of her, before looking back up at me and sucking on her own lips.

  “I’ve already had three glasses. I can’t―”

  “One more. Go on. We’re having fun. Or, at least, I’m having fun.”

  She sighs, with a smile.

  “Go for it,” she says nodding at the bartender, “one more for the road.”

  I turn away to try to hide my smile. I’m enjoying her company. And I’m pretty sure she’s enjoying mine. Or at least she’s not as down as she was when she first walked in here. She whispered in my ear when I hugged her to welcome her to The Shamrock, “Boy do I need a fucking drink.” Then she sat down, huffed and, almost in tears, told me that she had come here straight from the hospital. She says she can’t tell me exactly what happened, but it’s got something to do with one of her students. She was down. No doubt about it. But she’s been giggling for the past couple of hours, even if we haven’t quite agreed on one single talking point that has been brought up she sat down.