Works and Days

Three

Odysseus

About five o’clock Monday afternoon, Jeff Cordino drove up to 1421 Curtain Street. It appeared to him to be a pleasant enough place, though in need of weeding, and when he knocked, the teacher heard a shout from the roof, and then saw a bespectacled, brown face that soon disappeared and was shortly at the door.

“Come in,” Chayne welcomed Jeff into the house. “We’re still moving in, and there isn’t that much furniture. I just got back, you see.”

“I’ve heard,” Jeff said, which called Chayne back to the obvious question, heard from whom? Followed by Who are you? Instead—the model of courtesy—he offered Jeff Cordino something to drink.

“Oh, I insist,” Chayne chatted on. Identity did not matter. Hospitality was all that remained when everything else perished.

“Well, then, just water,” said Jeff, making to sit on a crate, and then getting back up.

“Oh, no,” said Chayne. “Sit. Sit.”

Jeff sat.

“Mr. Kandzierski—”

“Chayne,” he heard Chayne shout from the kitchen, over running water.

“Everyone calls me Chayne. With a name like that someone better use it!”

“Chayne,” Jeff Cordino tried it out. “I’m looking for Russell.”

Chayne came out with the glass of water and an uplifted eyebrow.

“Are you a friend of Russell’s?” Chayne asked. This hardly seemed likely. But if Russell did have any friends, then they’d be in the over twenty range.

“Yes, actually,” Jeff Cordino realized. “I am his history teacher—”

“Mr. Cordino!”

“Yes!” Jeff’s eyes lit up.

“I really need to talk to Russell. I know he hates school. I understand all that, but we’ve been covering for him—”

“We?”

“A few teachers. A few friends of mine. You see,” Jeff looked a little embarrassed, “we’ve been saying Russell’s in attendance when he isn’t, stuff like that because if we don’t he’ll fail. He’ll be marked truant. And it’s something we’re not supposed to do and can’t really keep doing. I don’t know why I’m doing it now except that Russell’s a special kid. You know?”

“Yes,” Chayne nodded. “I do. I’ll go get him.”

Russell was down in a few seconds, only half startled to see Mr. Cordino.

“I went to your house first,” Jeff said. “Your mom told me you were here. She didn’t tell me everything that was going on.” Jeff’s dark eyes lowered a second. “I didn’t guess it was my business.”

“My dad hasn’t brought it up?”

Thom and Jeff did spend a great deal of time together.

Jeff shook his head.

“They’re getting a divorce.”

“Aw God, Russell—”

Russell waved the sympathy away with a tired hand

“That’s not what I came to tell you anyway, Russell.”

And then Jeff told him what he had just told Chayne.

“I don’t even know Mr. Shrader.”

“Chuck’s a good guy,” Jeff said.

“I—” Russell said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“Russell, it won’t be so bad. I promise. And if I can do anything to help, you know I will.”

“Yeah, Mr. Cordino, I know. Thank you.”

“No problem, Russell.”

Jeff Cordino smiled bravely, nodded, and hooking his jacket over his shoulder, left escorted by Chayne who, having closed the door on Jeff, reflected: “I should have invited him to stay for dinner.”

“He’s probably going out with Miss Castile, anyway.”

“Oh,” said Chayne. “Well, next time we’ll have to invite her too.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Russell said. “People care about me.”

The Happy Place!

“Let’s go to the Happy Place!”

Thom did not know exactly who had called out to go to the Happy Place, but he felt deliciously lost in the crowd of people. They were all skipping and laughing. The sky was black like a stage set, but like a stage set everything was filled with light. Everyone was perfectly visible. Thom loved the green tights he had on, and the feather in his cap, and it was so good to dance and dance as he and the Stuffed Cat and the Tin Cup and the Talking Pumpkin skipped along the yellow brick road.

Suddenly the Pink Fairy was laughing. Well yes, she was the one trilling, “The Happy Place! Let's go the Happy Place!”

Thom laughed idiotically—no—laughed like a child as the Pink Fairy pinged him on the head with her star wand and trilled, “Thhhomasss! The Happy Place!”

He’d know that pink ball gown, those gossamer wings, that tiara, those curls anywhere. It was Patti, laughingly leading, pinging him on the head again as he skipped in his green tights to the Happy Place.

There was something wrong with this. Something he had forgotten, but Thom couldn’t... well, couldn’t remember it right now.

Beyond them the bright blue cartoon birds sang, and the music box melody wound on.

“The Happy Place!” He sang. “The Happy Place!”

    

“The Happy Place?” a disharmonious voice shouted incredulously. “The Happy Place?”

 

They all stopped, staring; a little afraid.

Chayne Kandzierski entered in jeans and a tee shirt, carrying a rubber chicken. His disgusted face was framed by a red and yellow jester’s wimple, bells jingling from the points of his felt crown.

“The Happy Place?” Chayne demanded.

“Oooooooh no!” Patti quailed, protecting her face with the star wand.

“The Happy Place?” he challenged Thom.

“FUCK—The Happy Place!”

And as he hit Thom in the head with the rubber chicken, Thom Lewis started awake on a sofa on Royal Street only to be hit again, presently with a pillow.

“Thom!” Jackie cried, laughing. “Wake up! I’ve got dinner ready.”

Thom shook his head and sat up, running his hands through his his now sticky up hair.

“You were just laughing and grinning to yourself. What were you dreaming about?”

“You’d never believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Well, I’ll tell you over dinner.”

Dinner was macaroni and cheese from the box along with warm ginger ale and toast while they sat on milk crates either side of the old steamer trunk. Thom told her the whole dream while Jackie laughed and said, “It figures that’s how Chayne would come in.”

“Jackie, whaddo you think of Chayne?”

“That’s a random question.”

“Not really,” Thom shrugged. “I mean, my son is staying with him.”

“Well, Chayne—you can’t really say a whole lot about him,” Jackie said. “But if you could—if I could—I’d say something like 'wow'. Or watch out.”

“Watch out is not what I wanted to hear.”

“But listen,” Jackie said. “Remember he didn’t even start college till he was about twenty. He was aimless and all that, kind of like Russell. And then he was in junior college and now he’s sort of well known and has money and he’s done all this crazy shit. All sorts of crazy people everywhere really love him—”

“You keep on saying the word crazy when you bring him up.”

Jackie chuckled and said, “But the word fits.”

“Yeah,” Thom said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“You’re pretty amazing too, Thomas,” Jackie said, placing a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “And you got your own special crazy.”

Thom smiled at his sister, then asked: “Why did I dream of Patti, though? That way?”

“She’s your wife.”

“Not really,” Thom said. “Not really. And I haven’t dreamed of her in sixteen years. I dream of her now?”

“Thom, did you ever think there was any truth to what she told you?”

“Um?”

“That you did ignore her?”

“Jackie, do you know what she said to me?”

Jackie’s eyes waited.

“She said,” Thom’s brows knitted and he took a breath. His voice was thick. “She said she didn’t love me. She looked at me and said that.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Thom added. “I’d never been hurt like that. It was like she just—kicked me in the stomach. I wish she’d kicked me in the stomach.”

“Thom, you need to talk to Patti.”

Thom sat back and looked sullen. Eternally youthful and five foot five, to Jackie he looked like a little boy.

“You’re telling me that what Patti said hurt you, but I’m telling you that she probably didn’t know she hurt you when she said it. Did you react? What did you tell her?”

Thom didn’t answer.

“Whaddit you tell her, Thom?”

“Jackie, I don’t need you to be my therapist.”

“Fine,” she dropped the subject, exasperated. They kept eating.

“I told her,” Thom’s brow knit, “I told her we’d talk when I got home. I didn’t want to listen to her. I planned to come home and just keep on going. Like it hadn’t happened. I... I didn’t know what to say. I never do.”

“Do you want to be back with Patti?”

“I wanna be back in my own goddamn house!”

His eyes flashed. It scared Jackie a little because Thom was always so in control. He was never unpleasant. He never lost his temper. He never reverted to his West Virginia accent.

“House,” Thom pronounced again, pulling the twang from the word.

Because Jackie loved her brother, she ignored her fear of his temper and said, “But do you want your wife again? That’s the question?”

Thom blew out his cheeks and pulled his hands through his brown hair until it stood up again.

He did not answer.

“I talked to Patti this morning,” Jackie told her brother. “She told me something that I wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not. But since you can’t answer the last question I suppose I’ll tell you this and you can decide what to do with it.”

“Yes, Little Sister?”

“She got a phone call from Liz.”

“Liz?”

“Liz Parr? Don’t act like you don’t know—”

“Liz! What did—”

“She wanted to talk to you. Patti told her she could have you for all she care—”

“Good God!”

“But Liz left her number and I had the sense to take it down because I didn’t think you’d want to have to call Patti to get it.”

“Why not?”

Jackie eyed her brother narrowly, speared a clump of macaroni on her fork and said, before biting into it, “Now, who’s being stupid?”