Debacle, Part II

He begins teaching the class the following Monday. Only it's not a theatre class at all. It's after-school babysitting. A cafeteria full of 60 kids, all yelling and playing and chasing and hitting. He is the only adult in the room. He tries to get their attention. It does not work. He yells, "Hey, everyone, free ice cream!"
The room is silent. They all turn to him. A little Asian Indian girl with sincere brown eyes says, "Really?"
"No, but --" and it's too late, they're all running and bellowing again.
He is uncertain what to do, until he sees the microphone. He goes over to it, next to an old piano that looks just like the piano from his elementary school; he taps the mic twice. It is on. He picks it up. No one has noticed the sounds. He takes a breath, and lets out a long, slow, "Moooooooooooooooo!" into the mic. Some of the kids pause.
He moos a second time and more of the kids pause. He moos a third time and they are still, silent, staring at him. He says, in a thick German accent, "You vill all be sittink DOWN or you vill all be fed to ze ogre I have HIDDEN in my plasticken tubben."
They sit, silent, wherever they are, he replaces the mic and reaches into the tub. They all gasp, sitting back, terror in their faces. He grasps something soft and flings it into the air. The children, frozen, are at once delighted: he's thrown the entire contents of a jumbo bag of cotton balls, and they are falling over the assembly like giant Charlie Brown Special snowballs. The noise level starts to rise and he shouts, "HALT!"
They halt.
"You vill each grab ONE cotton ball. You vill take this cotton ball to a table and sit, silent, pretending this cotton ball is your baby tyrannosaurus. IF you are silent, it vill not eat you and poop you out like so much poo." A few of the kids giggle. They are shushed by the others.
They move immediately to the tables, cotton balls in hand. There are only a few cotton balls left. They are all staring at the cotton. The little girl with the sincere, serious eyes is quietly whispering to hers.
"You vill tell me your NAMES vehn I point to you. Your NAMES und ONE szing about yourself zat nooooobody knows, as lonk as it does NOT involve creepy personal details."
In this way he goes around the room and gets them to say their names and he learns that this is a room full of exceptionally smart young people. As the last boy finishes talking about his pet tadpoles that are turning into frogs that make his mother "uncomfterble b'cause of Darwin", he prepares to talk about theatre. But the girl with the serious eyes says, softly, "What's your name?"
He is at a loss. What does he say? A title? A professorship? He remembers an instructor from Arkham: "Tell the truth about yourself to everyone except the Press; those fuckers don't deserve it."
"My name," he says, "Is Mr. X. I am here to teach you about Theatre."
Almost every hand in the room shoots up.
He points to a Chinese-American boy named Dean with a round face and a penchant for fossils; the boy says, "Like movies?"
And the room is full of questions: "Are you a Movie Star?" "Do you know Harry Potter?" "Why are you so fat?"
Then a bell rings and they all run out of the room to their parents' waiting cars. He is alone. Two hours have somehow passed. He is exhausted. He's just putting the lid on the plastic tub when the door opens and an Asian Indian man in his forties comes in.
"Mr. X.? Hello, I am Sanjay Singh, the Principal. I wanted to come talk to you earlier, but we had an altercation with a parent in the front office."
"Everything okay?" he asks as they shake hands.
"It's fine, just some philosophical differences. We're a private academy and we teach science in our science classrooms, not theology. Some parents are angered by this. When this sometimes happens, my motto is, 'Show 'em the fine print and if they don't like it, show 'em the door."
"That's a superb motto."
"How did it go today?"
"They seemed to have a great time."
"That's good. One of our teachers peeped in earlier and came running to tell on you, you know."
"What did I do?" he asks, thinking of the microphone.
"You managed to get an entire room of sixty children silent and attentive for two hours. Keep this up, and we'll try to hire you." Mr. Singh laughs and waggles a finger at him. The PA crackles, "Mr. Singh to the Office, please."
"Oh God, I have to go, we'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. X."
Singh was gone, the room was silent.
He realizes suddenly that Miss Smith has never shown. He hopes to see her the next day. Which reminds him of the check. He takes the tub to his sister's car, drives back toward his parents' house in Rowell's Corner before heading to the bank.
It's under the shade of the oak trees in their front drive that he first searches the tub for the check. It's there in the drive that he meticulously empties and reorganizes the tub. It's there that he sits, sweating and a little panicky, against the right front tire as he dials LouAnne's number. Busy signal.
He dials again.
Busy signal.
He dials again.
He searches the car.
He searches his clothes.
He goes into the house and searches his suitcase, sleeping bag and the entire area around the den where he's been living since he came home (they'd turned his old bedroom into storage).
He walks out to the car and sits down in shock. The check is gone.
"I'll just ask for another one," he says, putting the tub into the passenger seat and locking the car. He heads inside and starts making a salad for his family, turning on 91.1 FM for jazz instead of 88.5 FM for news and information.
So it is that he misses the news story about the Mexican family in Hayward who experienced a miracle: they were in danger of losing their house and on their way to ask family for a place to stay when an envelope containing a cashier's check for an undisclosed amount flew into their open car window as they drove South on 880.
"It's a miracle from Jesus! We can make our payments! We can live at home! Oh, thank you, thank you whoever you are!"
His salad is acclaimed that evening as one of the finest his parents and sister have ever had.

© 2010, Edward Hightower. All Rights Reserved.