Love & Marriage
an excerpt

What was meant to be a romantic and picturesque sunset excursion down the Pacific Coast Highway deceptively turned into the sharp, splintering outreach of arms and hands disguised as the rock and slip of California coastline. Walls of meshed wire hoped to contain portions of crumbly landslide. There were no boulders or large rocks on this stretch of the nation’s edge. The jagged lines of the west coast drawn on maps and atlases are easily revealed on just an hour-long drive.

“Mother of!” Jake exclaimed as he pushed the toes of his right foot against the rubber grip of the left pedal, nearly meeting the pedal with the foot mat wedged in the hollow underneath the driver’s seat.

Startled, Tessa lifted her head and stared into the forward glare of the car’s headlights. Her neck was cramped and stiff from napping in the sitting position. Above the bright, concentrated wash of the head beams was darkness; on the other side of the sealed window glass of the passenger side was a deceitfully stifling void of blackness. A large sheet of black construction paper might as well have been covered the window – she would not have been able to tell the difference as the wafer luminescence in the sky became intermittently crossed by cottony haze, and the high rise and fall of the setting’s roller coaster copses of cypress and lone redwoods.

The weight of the mid-size compact fell forward as 300 lbs. of the metal vehicle struggled to follow the road around the sharp left turn bordering the cliff. Tessa held her breath and gripped the door’s interior handle. Jake strained his eyes past the distracting patch of ground distractingly illuminated by his high beams. Instead he tried to focus on the spectrum’s less-blinding periphery where the jutted shadow of crag weeds alerted him to the edge that separated the coast’s wall from the night.

He gripped his hands at 9:15 on the steering wheel as he forced the two front tires to follow the road’s quick decline. He could feel the 400 pounds of metal and steel struggle as the back end swung out, defying the car’s head. The road was narrow and had there been an oncoming vehicle, neither party would have survived. The mountain would have won and tossed the spoils to the clamoring ocean below.

When the road straightened and the hot pounding in Jake’s head and chest tapered, indicating that he and Tessa had survived the turn, he blinked on the high beams to confirm that there was indeed a dirt turn-out approaching on the right side of the road.

The crescent-shaped, unpaved haven was simple and complete with the rooted solitude of a mature cypress. Jake cranked the parking brake and gave the car a rest. Tessa, who had for once lost her words and train of thought, quickly pushed open the door that was nearly the length of her body and ran onto the gravel, solaced by the night air. The same unending dark sky that only seconds before suffocated her in the small space of their Volvo.

“Oh, my God! That was crazy!” she yelled.

Leaning on the open car door with his elbow, Jake rested his forehead on his upturned palm. “Can you please calm down?” he said.

Tessa filled her lungs with a deep, long, audible breath. She threw her head back and tried to similarly take in the surrounding vastness. “Look how many stars there are out here!”

Her husband did not answer. He felt dizzy and the scent and sound of the breaking, pulling waves below gave him a sensation of seasickness.

“Isn’t it beautiful, hon?” Tessa said, her back facing Jake as she walked to the tree that grew along the seam of damp, grainy dirt and intangible sky. The ocean’s presence could be heard but not seen. It might as well have been a nature recording blasting from the car speakers – the kind of recording sold at museum gift shops and card stores, marketed toward your hope of inner quietude. From where they were standing, the cliff could have been a lush plain – so hidden was its edge beneath a carpet of ankle-high shrubs.

“Don’t go there!” Jake said.

Tessa looked at him with a meek smile. She turned away from the tree and stood next to Jake, placed her hands on his cheeks. She could feel the stubble that had grown on his face in the days of their honeymoon. She kissed his lips then his forehead. Jake was a foot taller than Tessa but he made up for their difference in height by hunching forward and lowering his head, while she compensated with a straight posture.

“Let’s just camp out here til’ morning,” she said.

“We don’t have a tent.”

“That’s all right. We have blankets in the back. Or, we can sleep in the car but I think it would be nicer to sleep outside.”

“You’re crazy. It’s not safe to sleep out here,” he said.

“Why not? There aren’t any other cars and I don’t think there are big animals that venture out of the woods this far out.”

“I’m not sleeping in a fuckin’ road turnout,” Jake said.

“So instead you’d rather risk getting into a car accident?”

“We’re not going to get into a car accident. My head does hurt though. Can you drive for a little bit?”

Tessa pulled away from their embrace and her patient, compromising mood suddenly changed. “You should have told me you wanted me to help drive before I had a martini with dinner! I can’t drive.”

“That was hours ago,” Jake said.

“Fine. Whatever,” she said grabbing the keys from his hands.

“Forget it, forget it. I’m fine. Let me just break for a little bit,” he said. With this having been said, Tessa seemed happy again and she resumed her loving lean next to Jake. The moon was big and in the absence of a television, they stared at its brilliance instead.

Jake knew of his newlywed’s Jekyll-and-Hyde attitude way before the date was set, the vendors were booked, and the invitations mailed. He was not easily jostled and those who knew him well would use the recognizable description of saying that he had a thick skin. Jake was of a calm and even temperament and while he, himself, would never be found guilty of such shifts in emotion, he understood it well enough and he did not take it personally.

His uncle Sid, whom he lived with during his teenage years, was more volatile than Tessa could ever be. And while Jake despised his uncle while growing up, he appreciated the stonewall approach to discipline that he was raised under. As Jake walked across stage after stage to shake and smile for the photograph while reaching for a fake diploma with the other hand, he appreciated his uncle and missed him. It made Jake sad that all his gratitude and understanding filled him at a time when his uncle was gone and buried. Of all people, Jake was the only one who still could not believe that he had actually graduated college and graduate school, and now held a position as a teacher.

There was a time when it was doubtful that he would even see his name on a high school diploma. Like many of the kids of his age around his neighborhood, Jake started experimenting with drugs before he even reached eighth grade. By the time he was a freshman, he was not only using but helping to deal as well. There were few substances at this point that he had not tried, and while the teachers and other adults in his life considered his path as degenerative, his peers viewed him as daring and fun to be around – including those who did not use. He had become friends with kids at the high school, went to parties while other thirteen year-olds in his class watched sitcoms at home with their families. He was envied throughout his early teenage years, and he knew it. But then his close buddies started to move away – some were sent to live with other relatives, and for those whose families could afford it, sent to rehab; Jake’s mother follow suit with the former.

Jake never sought professional treatment or help, nor did he believe that things would have been better if he did, despite the fact that even now he needed to taste the minty herb and fill his head with THC in order to unwind. It did not phase him that doing so was illegal and not fully acceptable behavior. He considered himself to be a responsible, functioning adult. What did it matter how some people judged him? And as for the illegality of it all, he rationalized to himself that the ever shifting laws and rules of conduct were social constructs anyhow. He regarded them more as guidelines and customized the rest of his life to what suited Jake, as an individual, without too much regard of the warnings and consequences around him. The only problem was that eventually this pleasure that he allowed and justified to himself quickly made itself a necessity.

In a way he preferred Tessa’s outspoken, albeit fickle, personality. He did not admire those who suffered silently. At least she made clear her wants and dislikes. He did not have to worry about having to weed out the meaning or motivation of her words. Most of the time it was the exact opposite, in which he had to brace himself against the bluntness of her tone and speech.

“You ready to go?” he asked, petting her straight black hair. Tessa had worn her hair in a jumbled bun during the day and although her hair fell about her face and shoulders about as limply as floss, it was matted in spots. His fingers became entangled in a clump of her hair. He held the dark strands up to the moonlight and gently worked his hand free.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive?” she asked.

Jake snorted. “Yes, sweetie. I’m sure.”

* * *

The first thing they did was to box up all the clocks in the rented beach house and temporary store them in the pantry. Some mornings they awoke with the sun sitting high and shining through the beach mist, and other days they got out of bed to walk on the cold sand with the dark surf beyond.

Tessa and Jake could hear the edge of the ocean whipping the shore from their bedroom. It was a never-ending nature track that lulled them at night, and could be heard in the snagged moments between consciousness and sleep. Tessa wished that she could wake up every morning to the crash and pull of the seaside. Maybe her nerves would even out and not cause her to be so jittery. Of course, maybe limiting herself to two cups of coffee a day instead of the four she usually had could serve the same purpose, but she doubted it. She had always been a nervous and hyper child. Her mom used to always call her ‘malikot’, which roughly translated into one who fidgets in Tagalog.

Tessa regretted leaving her cameras at home and not bringing them along on their honeymoon. They had decided that they wanted to be as free from the chains and gadgets of everyday life as possible; they joked about reaching back to their native roots and instincts. Before they found the house in San Simeon, they considered going camping and staying in a cabin, spending the day swimming naked in the lake, fishing, and going on nature trail hikes. But it seemed too much like a retreat than a honeymoon so they put off the mosquito repellant and compasses for a different trip. Instead, their honeymoon brought sex in the warm afternoon, midnight swims in the ocean, lost drives to shops in nearby towns, naps under a sail, and breakfast at sunset. Tessa committed these moments to memory.

Since Tessa’s occupation required her to notice a good picture even before she looked behind the lens, she initially had no second thoughts about leaving the camera behind. She had forgotten that she might actually enjoy taking pictures in her leisurely time. Over the years her job had soured the pleasure of photography for her, in general. She had studied fine art photography until taking a job as an assistant to a wedding photographer; until she had built enough of a network and reputation for herself to go out on her own and start a business specializing in celebrations and events. But before all the bar mitzvahs, baptisms and birthdays, she had lived outside of the U.S., traveling throughout Asia, Africa and South America and gathering photos for an international portfolio. But when she returned to the country, what publishers and magazines could offer for her photographs was not enough for her to afford the rent in the cities she lived in. In a way, it was easier to live in economically depressed countries because she could find a roof and a meal for very little; but being back in the U.S., she found that with the sparse and unsteady income she made was just enough for her to stay in the city as a homeless itinerant. So she found a job that paid.

Tessa secretly laughed while she worked, especially when clicking and snapping away at a wedding. A higher-than-average proportion of the weddings she was contracted to work would end in divorce. It became an effort for Tessa to garner a believably new excitement and enthusiasm for a young bride who wanted to feel like she was as rare as a princess and that her wedding was unique, although in actuality they were nearly as commonplace as birthday parties. Tessa slapped herself when she saw a couple who she thought would not survive the first year, much less five, ten, or eternity.

It was a blessing and a reason that she was sociable and a ‘people person’, as Jake referred to her. She would show up at the bridal suite and get wrapped up with this new person and would focus on capturing them, independent of the wedding, which helped keep her cynicism at bay. Tessa was a good events photographer – comfortable with being in charge while friendly and animated at the same time. Another trick of hers was to treat the bride and groom like they were models and the backdrop of the ceremony and the reception were mere sets for this photo-taking opportunity; which in a way was not completely off base from the reality of some situations.

Her clients always thought that they were being captured in moments of unbridled happiness. They posed as if the joy that they were experiencing and/or exhibiting was the most natural air in the world. In fact, it was almost the exact opposite. Tessa was thankful that she came into the profession at a time when digital photography was fast becoming the norm because she needed the advantage of being able to shoot hundreds and hundreds of pictures. She needed to have an over reserve to sift through and select from because experience had taught her that the most difficult part of photographing a wedding was having enough happy photos to frame and put in the album. After developing the film, Tessa had to take great care to weed out the shots that inadvertently captured a dirty glance or that slightly snarled lip; the fallen smile or the right smile at the wrong person.

With all the ideas, theories and philosophies that she kept throughout the years, it was a wonder that she believed in marriage. In all fairness, she did not always believe in the institute of marriage, and she was still of the belief that the expectation of committing and legally binding yourself to one person til’ death do us part was only a good model for a tiny percentage of the population. For herself, throughout her twenties and thirties she thought she would never get married – not for lack of someone she wanted to marry but because she did understand why she needed to have society and the state bind her to another person. If she loved a person and wanted to be with him for the rest of her life then she could just do so; what was the purpose of all the fanfare? And yes, from what she saw people were getting married left and right so that they could be in that photo shoot, be the center of celebration, drink the night away with friends and family, and have something to talk about for the months building up to the actual event. Not to mention, the motivations of money, sex, looks and status.

Then she met Jake and all her philosophies melted and stank of shit. All she wanted to do was marry him and make it official. Final. Make it so that there was no going back, or at least make it much more difficult to. She wanted to celebrate and tell the world. But most importantly, she wanted him to herself. She wanted to hear him say ‘I do.’ She wanted other women to see the band on his finger.

Tessa and Jake’s own wedding pictures were taken by a friend, an old assistant who she regarded as talented yet slow with the shutter. This friend/photographer was more stylistic than Tessa and she focused on the art of heels and hems rather than looks and expressions, which Tessa was fully aware of.

During their last night on the shores of San Simeon, they had a private bonfire on the beach behind their cottage.

“We’re like the O. Henry couple,” he said as he dished a heaping of his mound of potato salad onto the corner of her plate where she had scraped her serving. She took the last hot dog warming on a stick in the spit and wrapped it in a bun for him.

“I love you,” Tessa said simply and with the same look and tone as if she were saying it for the first time.

Jake tightened his trapper hug around her thin frame. “I know. I’ll love you forever,” he said.

Tessa wanted to believe him. This was not her first love and she had murmured Jake’s exact sentiment to someone else before, and it had disintegrated into something less than words. A dozen clichés entered her mind: love is fleeting; nothing lasts forever; it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…

* * *

Tessa’s eyes always lit up when a child entered the room and when she was around babies, but after their third year of marriage, her eyes more than lit up, they stared and stalked. She would seek them out in restaurants and try to catch their attention on the train.

“Aw, he’s so cute!” she said looking at a small boy on the train. She looked at the boy, and scared him with an unrelenting smile. “He is just adorable.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Jake said, jostling her with his elbow. Tessa just smiled and smiled.

“You’re freaking out his mother,” Jake whispered.

Tessa started feeling the urge to be pregnant. She imagined what it must be like to have something growing inside. She wanted her stomach to grow with a life that would one day be walking and talking, calling her mommy. When she and Jake made love she would whisper to him to give her a baby.

“That’s not sexy,” Jake would say, stopping in mid-thrust. He would swing his legs over the bed and search the floor for his boxers.

“I’m sorry. I won’t say it any more. Come back to bed,” she would say.

“Did you take your pill?” he would ask.

“Like clockwork.”

But he didn’t believe her.

In their fourth year of marriage, Tessa got her want. She felt the head and limbs of another being forming within her and that December she gave birth to a baby boy with an extra mop of dark hair.

But when the tiny being had left her body, she was depressed and absolutely could not believe that Jake had allowed such a thing to happen. Sitting on the thin legged metal hospital bed, in an open-back hospital gown she began to cry.

“Shhh, shhh,” Jake said. “He’s so beautiful. Nothing can go wrong. It’ll be okay.”

“How am I supposed to work?” she sobbed.

“You’ll go back to work soon enough, although I’ve never heard you cry for that before,” he smiled.

“I don’t want to but now I really have to!” she screamed.

“This is silly. Stop thinking about this now.”

“You’re getting mad. I can tell!” she said loudly. Jake rolled his eyes. She always admitted that she watched too many reruns of I Love Lucy when she was growing up.

“OK honey.” He stared at the box television set suspended in the far, high corner of the room while Tessa continued to sob. “Maybe you want to take some of your medication now?”

* * *

Despite her dramatic, postpartum protest to have the baby, Tessa proved herself to be a caring and playful mother. She was a bit awkward at first and was scared to death about dropping him. They had to hire a home nurse to help Tessa bathe the baby at first and she did not know whether to wash the baby’s face, how warm to make the bathwater, whether to rub or scrub any part of his body. But after the first week she became a pro. It felt like she was missing an arm if she was not carrying him. She became physically stronger as she moved around the house with Shale’s chest and stomach resting on her forearm, or perched in the crook of her elbow.

While dreadfully afraid of washing him when she first brought him home, bath time quickly became her favorite activity with Baby Shale. She found a good rubber bottomed tub with a pillow for his fragile head and neck so that he could lie on his back while she slowly spilled lukewarm water over his bulbous little belly. He giggled, his smooth face contorted, his eyes squinted and he gave a big, gummy smile.

Instincts and skills that she even knew she had surfaced and answered the call of duty. Although she often repeated that she was due for motherhood as she approached her 34th birthday.

Her work schedule was conducive to childrearing since weddings and bar mitvahs were typically held on weekends.

She still felt both like a productive member of society and a content housewife. She darethought that she was happy. She enjoyed spending the day with Shale, watching him slowly begin to learn to flex his fingers, hold up his head, bend his knees, push up with his arms into a crawling position, and of course, every parent’s favorite, the beginning formations of sounds and words.

Shale learned inflections before syllables. In imitation of Tessa he would gurgle to the pitch and cadence of I love you before he could utter the word “I”.

Tessa’s parents were disappointed in the name she and Jake chose.

“It’s not Catholic. He should be named after a saint,” Tessa’s mother said. Both her parents were born and raised in the Philippines, a country infused with Catholic doctrine. Tessa was named after Saint Theresa; her sister, Maria and her brother, Joseph.

“Why are you copying Hollywood? With naming their children after inanimate objects. Apple, Satchel, Rumor! These are not real names for people,” Mama Maria continued.

“Rumor is not an inanimate object,” Jake pointed out. He knew his comment was irrelevant but it was all he could do to amuse himself with what he deemed as meddlesome behavior from his in-laws.

“Besides, Jake isn’t Catholic,” Tessa said.

“Don’t remind us,” her mother replied. “See? This is why you should go to church!”

Jake laughed out loud. Tessa’s mother was forever hitting the brass gong for frequenting church. Despite this fact, he liked his in-laws and got along with them. He felt he could be himself. He liked that they made snarky remarks about Jake and Tessa’s racial differences. From the varied boyfriends Tessa brought home over the years, they knew her husband’s ethnicity might as well have been determined by a game of roulette’s – the only difference being that there were not enough different choices on the table. She dated Caribbeans, Filipinos, Jews, Cubans, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Swiss, Africans, Dutch, Mexicans, you name it. She prided herself on being an equal-opportunity lover.

* * *

At first, Tessa enjoyed having the house to herself during the day while Jake was at work, but she was sad that she could not call him on the phone whenever she pleased. If he did not tutor a student during lunch, they would be able to check in on each other near noontime but those days were treasures. More and more each year, the students at Jake’s school failed the city’s annual requisite exams and as a result, more and more of them were held back. All of the teachers at the high school were now required to advise and oversee the school’s new peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring program on a rotating basis. Tessa was sad to hear it, but she often heard herself complaining about the test scores that came out of Jake’s school so she tried to translate the support she gave the program in theory to practical use.

At dinner, she asked Jake lots of questions about his day and his class and seemed genuinely interested to everything he had to say. It was one of the first times in the four years, now approaching five years, that they were together that he was the daily center of attention. He had become accustomed to listening to her stories of overbearing parents, bratty brides and flirtatious grooms. Lately, her dinner conversation had turned into a kind of over-enthusiastic progress report of Shale’s gurgles and unformed words.

“Why don’t you read while he takes a nap?” Jake suggested.

“Read? I don’t have time to read. While he naps, I do the laundry, wash the dishes, pay the bills…do you want me to go on?”

“If you want to,” he said. “You don’t have to do all that. You can let some of it go a bit. You really should take some time to yourself. It’s not healthy what you’re doing.”

“Healthy?! What are you talking about? This is what every mother does. This is what your mother did for you. What is this really about? Do you find me boring now? Ignorant? What??” she demanded.

“No, no,” he said. “Look, I just think it’s important that you have some time to enjoy something purely for yourself. Go shopping, rent a movie, anything.”

“We can’t afford to do that. Besides, taking care of our son is what gives me enjoyment,” Tessa stood up, grabbed Jake’s plate and clanked it on top of her own. “Why don’t you go watch TV or something? Enjoy some time pure time for yourself.”

Jake gave up and retired to the couch. Shale was taking a nap in his crib.

“Why don’t you walk around and take some pictures?” he asked as if the golden idea had just dawned on him.

They were rescued by the beginnings of a slow, amorphous sound coming through the long-range baby monitor. That was Jake’s signal that Shale was awake and he could go into the nursery and play with him. But this time, Jake did not wait for Shale to awake. Jake quietly placed his large palm on his son’s softly undulating back, the size of which smaller than his hand. His baby’s soft legs and arms bubbled and creased like strings of sausage held together by a membranous casing. Shale’s skin looked naturally tan with an orange tint of brown. He had a full head of hair, more than Jake had when he was born, that grew in the thin spiral of a snail shell and felt powder-soft to the touch.

The inside of his chest dimpled with a smile. The chance creation of his son was the best thing he had ever done. The breathing, thinking, feeling fragile human bundle in front of him was better than any painting he could have conjure, could he draw, and in an entirely different league than any book he could dream to write. Those were creations of sheer will, sometimes made with painstaking force. His son, on the other hand, was an effortless and perfect collision of workings beyond control of individual intelligence. Jake liked to believe in the principals of modern science that dictated the existence of dominant genes and the survival of the fittest. Jake liked to believe that Shale was the fateful combination of all that was good of his self and all that was best in his wife.

Shale’s ruddy cheeks twitched ever so slightly. His lips were as plump and delicate as decoration frosting on cake, and he expertly folded them into his tiny soft mouth in expectation of creamy, un-homogenized milk. Shale blinked open his lids with newfound confusion, focused his eyes on Jake then smiled with recognition.

“Hi,” Jake said, lifting him from the crib. The baby was a ball of radiating warmth.

“Mhhhhê,” Shale intonated.

“Yes,” he said in encouragement. “Do you want to watch some basketball with daddy?”

More smiles and giggles. Shale lifted and dropped a sausaged arm over Jake’s face. A real baby’s touch – uncontrolled and clunky but with the most tender and affectionate of intentions. Jake caught Shale’s arm with his mouth, lips curled over his teeth, and growled like a dog protecting his bone.

The baby gave a high-pitched squeal. Footsteps approached from down the hall.

“Oh, you did it now,” he said.

Tessa pushed open the bedroom door, letting in geometric patches of incandescent light into the nursery. She carried the baby monitor in one hand.

“Ah, good. It’s you,” she said.

“Who else would it be?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know. I’m just glad it’s you.” She relaxed her doorway stance and pulled the door to ajar. She gave the boys a smile.

“I’m sorry about snapping earlier,” she said. “Maybe I will start getting out and taking some pictures again.”

“It ain’t no thang,” he said.

She stood a moment more in the doorway, as if getting ready to say something else but instead she closed the door, until she heard the click of the latch slide into the galvanized notch of the adjoining frame.

* * *

Jake imagined himself to be a kind of Dangerous Minds / Joe Clark kind of teacher, but in actuality he was an ineffective, mediocre teacher. His lesson plans were random, disconnected from one day to the next, and ill planned. His students who struggled the most had no idea what they were supposed to be learning in his class. He assigned homework everyday but he either didn’t realize or didn’t enforce the fact that no more than two or three students in each period would actually do the work while the others copied the answers from those students who did the work.

He would spend no more than 15 minutes lecturing and then broke the class up into group study, which essentially meant social hour to his students. As long as they did not get too loud and rowdy, he did not bother them. His smartest students knew that he was not always ‘there’ during class, as they shared with one another outside of his classroom doors.

“He’s either high or really really stupid,” Tanisha said. She untucked the plastic fold that sealed the perfectly shaped cold cuts smashed in between two slices of bread.

“Man, you’re mama is cheap,” Rana said, looking at the thin plastic pouch that Tanisha’s sandwich had shed. “She needs to get some Ziploc. Baggies with a zipper, you know what I mean?”

“Who the fuck cares? It’s a plastic bag,” Tanisha said.

One of the other girls sitting in the circle of the paved, outdoor quad got back on subject, “My vote is that Mr. Davis is high.”

“Now, see…I was going to say the exact opposite,” Tanisha said. “I think he likes teaching seventh grade Transitional Studies because it makes him feel smart. It’s not even a real class. It’s some bullshit one that this school made up because they didn’t have a qualified teacher to lead an important course like Lit or World History, or whatever those private school folks are teaching.”

“Truth!” Rana said in agreement. “All we ever do in Transition is watch movies and do homework for other classes. Not that I’m complaining…”

“Well you should be complaining or your Vietnamese ass ain’t going make it to the eighth grade. Do you know what your chances of failing the State exams are if you’re on the curriculum track we’re on?” Tanisha asked. “52 percent! That means you are more likely to fail than pass.”

“Damn,” Rana said. The other girls looked just as defeated, if not skeptical and/or confused, by this quoted statistic. They stared past each other and at the various groups of kids clumped throughout the quad.

Tanisha fell silent and took a bite out of her thin sandwich. Her fingers made noticeable imprints on the soft, center crumb of the bread. It bothered her that her friends unquestionably believed what she said. She had calculated the pass/fail rate herself and was not one-hundred percent positive of its accuracy. She was about to reveal that she had did the math herself and that she may have miscalculated when she realized that it was insignificant: everyone – the administration and students alike – knew that too many students at MLJ School did not pass the annual State exams, and that was the point she was beating them over the head with.

Tanisha was one of the top, if not the first ranked, student in her grade and it was unlikely that she would fail the three subject exams in math, science and English. But she was just as concerned because it mattered to her that her friends passed as well. Lunch period was only forty minutes, barely enough time to catch up on everything that had happened in their lives – that was partly what class was for. Besides, she did not want to go through eighth grade orientation alone and be one grade higher than them. She feared that was the way the divide between she and them would begin. She would pass the state exams and advance to the next grade while they were continuously held back; one or two of them might even get pregnant and possibly drop out of school. Tanisha would have less and less to talk about with them and she would slowly become the nerd and outcast.

“You know what I heard?” Beth said, trying to change the somber subject. “That Mr. Jake buys his weed from Ralph-the-janitor.”

“No way,” Tanisha said.

“Yeah, yeah. I heard that too,” Rana said.

“Come on. Nobody’s that stupid. He could lose his teaching license. Besides, Ralph sells schwag weed, I’d like to hope that Mr. Jake can afford better than that shit.”

“Look at you,” Beth said to Tanisha. “Talkin’ like you smoke.”

“Whatever. I know that there is such a thing as bad weed and good weed, just like I know there is a difference between bad wine and good wine, and I’ve never drank before. I may not know what that difference is but…” she let her words dissipate. She could tell from the expression on the other girls’ faces that she was arguing too well and talking too smart, and it was obvious they didn’t want to be the audience.

* * *

Over the years he got to know himself better and learned the things he needed to have a happy day and a productive life. One of these necessities was to have some waking moments to himself before the loudness and bustle of his day began.

Like clockwork, Jake forced himself out of sleep and out of warm bed at a pre-dawn hour reserved for senior citizens and newscasters. He walked lightly over the wood flooring to the living room where he turned on a single lamp – away from where Tessa and baby slept behind closed doors.

With a push of a button, the stereo slid out its tongue and Jake placed a small silver wafer onto the grooved tray. He then took out an airtight container from a high kitchen shelf from which he removed a pinchful of evergreen-scented leaves that he jammed into the tiny glass cone of the beaker’s branched arm. From the top of the bottleneck, he watched as a single pull of his lungs bubbled the browning water.

He listened to the same CD every morning, summoning the flashbacks its tracks would bring to mind. In those dark hours of morning, he tried to just listen. Rid his mind of any thoughts unassociated with the sounds emanating from the surrounding speakers and the memories they pushed to the forefront of his mind. One by one the stucco walls of the living room peeled away. The cluttered coffee table, toy-strewn floor and worn sofa became irrelevant, unrecognized, nonexistent, ignored.

Jake breathed in. He was careening the surface of open water. The mountains were close and encroaching, swathed in a blue-gray film. He was surrounded – there was nothing but mountainous range on the left, right, front and behind. He was with her. They silenced the boat’s motor, giving in to the natural ebb and flow of the man-made basin. They laid their bodies like planks across the width of the boat and let their bare feet dangle and dip into the chilled lake water. The sun would intermittently warm their faces through the passing cottoned mist. They held hands lightly, barely – her lean fingers simply crossed over his.

Jake tried to hold onto the feeling, but when the song ended everything became cerebral. The briefly revived moment was re-catalogued in memory, kept matter of factly in his head. Sometimes, when feeling desperate Jake would immediately hit the replay button, but it was as effective as trying to reenact the blood rushing, heart thumping warmth of “Surprise!” at a well orchestrated birthday party. He could try again tomorrow, or even later that day, but he could not silence the chatter, turn off the lights, and re-enter the room in the time that ensued.

Jake steeped slowly into his day, gradually emerging from his shroud of tunneled vision and thoughts with each ring of the bell. First-period Jake was a significantly different teacher than fifth-period Jake. Although he taught the same subject and grade from hour to hour, he was much less interactive with his first class. He would write the assignment on the board, maybe give a brief introduction about the chapter that was to be read in class, and sat at his desk presumably grading papers.

“Mr. Jake,” a student said, arm half raised.

Jake looked up.

“Mr. Jake – what’s ‘downsizing’ mean?” the boy asked.

“It’s in the text book. Did you read section three?”

“Yeah, yeah. But I don’t really get it much.”

The rest of the class had looked up from their books. A couple of girls snickered at the boy who asked the question, while others looked expectantly at Jake.

“Who else does not get the meaning of what downsizing is that’s outlined in the book?” Jake asked.

He was answered with quick breathing, gritted teeth, tight lips.

“Alright then. Ray – meet me after school and I’ll go over it with you,” he said, resuming to the printed newspaper article that he was marking up with a red pen. Jake was banking on the likelihood that Ray would not show. Things had not changed so much since Jake was a teen. He knew that after school was dedicated to socializing and unsupervised attention paid to girls.

If Ray had been in his fifth-period class, Mr. Jake may have been more inclined to actually give some instruction. By that hour, Jake would have come to terms with the requirement to interact with the outside world. His vocal chords would have gotten some exercise and the film around his head would have cleared considerably. And while he was not under the delusion that he was the best teacher in the world, he believed that he offered his students something just as valuable: a constant.

He knew that many of his students had seen too many people – especially men – come and go. Many of his students lived with their young mothers and their revolving boyfriends. His well-adjusted pupils lived not only with their mothers, but also with aunts, uncles and grandparents. He did his job with the belief that hard sediment was better than chipped glints of gold.

Jake had taught at the same school since he first started teaching while still in graduate school. He had seen the sixth graders become eighth graders virtually overnight, and he was there while some of the students struggled to follow at tow. He saw others drop out and a few brought to a juvenile detention center. He crossed out pupils on his attendance list and saw them taken out of class never to return.

He liked to think that he was cool enough for his students to talk to him about any personal problems, but few of them did. Once the kids entered high school, many of them regularly returned to the middle school to pick up younger siblings, see friends in lower grades and visit a select number of teachers. He felt that what he had to do was prove to the dedicated members of the staff and the students that he was not a passing phenomenon then they could begin to trust him. It was why he became a teacher. He wanted it for himself personally and professionally.

* * *

Tessa approached her day much differently than her husband. She had not learned to give up the hope of sleeping in, a hope that is probably best left abandoned with having a baby. So often, she would awake to the cries of a hungry Shale. Jake half-joked that when Shale entered grade school, she would be the mom in her pajamas and unwashed hair dropping him off at school.

“That is if you don’t make him walk,” he said.

“I walked to school by myself when I was in kindergarten,” she said.

“Didn’t you also cook eggs when you were five?” Jake asked. “Isn’t that how you got this scar right here,” he said, running his finger over a smooth, light keloid on the back side of her hand.

“Poor thing,” Tessa said as she lifted her son from the crib. “Mommy’s so selfish, isn’t she? What can we do about her?”

Tessa continued to talk to Shale throughout the day, sometimes as to the baby he was, but more often like he was an adult, a scholar or a type of peer.

“I agree,” she said as she changed his diaper. “The commercialization of matted black and white prints, like those of Ansel Adams, cannot take away the intrinsic beauty of the images. The hoity toity echeleons of the art world should not shun these popular artists because they can be found in any humble home of America,” Tessa tightly balled the fun-filled plastic and sealed it with the Velcro sides. “Absolutely. To do so is like giving in to reputable characteristics of capitalism; and to surrender to the idea, or existence, of a supposedly inferior mass culture.”

Shale opened his mouth and smiled with all his might. He gave a squeal.

As Tessa fed him, she did not watch TV as she first did when she first found herself in new motherhood. Instead, she single handedly kept up the conversation.

“But how can you say that?” she said as she looked down at her baby feasting through her nipple. “Anything worth doing is hard and looks impossible at first. Just because the task of an international, global solidarity of unions is daunting now does not mean that it cannot be done. Yes, it will take years and years. It will be hard, there is no doubt about that. But forming unions in this country at the turn of the 20th century was no cake walk either. We shouldn’t give up before we begin!”

At the rise of her voice, Shale lifted sparsely grown brows with half closed eyes. He was beginning to fall asleep.

“Sleep, sleep, sweet pie,” she whispered then kissed the cashmere of his head.

While Shale napped, Tessa went about the daily upkeep of the house with the same fervent, intellectual commentary. She talked to herself as she washed the dishes, swept, and cleaned the toilet.

She ejected the current CD. “Of course,” she said upon seeing the red and black disc top. Tessa and Jake had different tastes in music, and there was very little overlap in the titles of their respective collections. She stuck her left index finger into the ring-sized donut hole and played one of her albums. She was naturally right-handed, but more and more, she started to use her left hand when going about the household chores. She scrubbed, poured milk into baby bottles, and listed errands with her left hand.

She realized that a lot of everyday work and life is tedious and seemingly inconsequential for everyone. For those with more money these tedious, yet necessary, little chores are done by others who spend whole days taking care of the small connectors and step-by-steps of making things happen. She had an eschewed idea of work and how she should feel everyday. She expected to be performing at her best at every moment of her waking life. If had to be efficient and productive, otherwise, why even get out of bed?

Making phone calls, being put on hold, talking politely to that telemarketer who is selling something you are simply not interested in, adding names to your address book, doing the dishes. She used to feel useless and unimportant when tending to these administrative details, but it is now how she spent a lot of her day.

During her stay in the maternity ward of the hospital, she read a study about Alzheimer’s about how the use of the right side of the body was controlled by the left side of the brain and alternately, that the right side of the brain sent signals to the left side of the body. The theory was that simple exercises utilizing the coordination and strength of both hands could help offset Alzheimer’s because it stimulated parts of the brain that might have otherwise atrophied.

When there was time, she worked on her photographs. She worked an average of a wedding a month so she was able to take her time in developing, framing and album production. In many ways, she resented working as a wedding photographer more than she would have working as a sales clerk, or some other occupation as unrelated to photography. Before finding a job as an assistant photographer, she waited tables and bartended; but in some ways, she never felt more like hired help than when she worked a wedding, especially the high-budget affairs of her wealthy clientele.

She found it degradingly humorous that the parents of the richest brides consistently fed her and her assistants bologna sandwiches. It was as if they had all gotten the idea from a wedding magazine, although she knew that it was more likely inherited behavior.

She would never forget the Shiner’s wedding. A beautiful, arrogant, disinterested bride standing next to a young, drunk groom with an unforgiving wandering eye. Both with money, future and past. They agreed to marry each other for who knows why. Maybe there were not enough good reasons not to – affection and companionship unnecessary lines of the equation.

“Dana asked me to give a speech tonight, and I told her that I would be honored. In the search to encapsulate Dana, I realized that there was one very important thing to be told, and that is that she is possessed by the warrior spirit. Very few people I know have had to go through as many hardships as Dana had to go through as a young child. And even though some people expected her to buckle under- she did what she still continues to do: she defied expectations,” Ronald paused, double-checking the triteness of his words. He looked at the man sitting next to his best friend and Ron wanted to shoot him.

The red robin on the wooden Audubon clock chirped, signaling 2 o’clock. Although she had not watched the soap since elementary school, Tessa knew that it was the beginning of Too Many Lives, one of her aunt’s favorite shows and one that she grew up watching. A time when the day was filled with maintanence and chores; and when the scheduling of those chores revolved around three back-to-back television dramas that ran from noon to 3:00 PM on the same network channel. As a child, Tessa knew what divorce and infidelity were before she had knew of sex. She observed TV screen characters with double personalities before she could recite the alphabet.

“Collect and select. Collect and select,” her aunt said as Tessa dusted imaginary dirt from the top of the baby grand. Everything in the house was polished and swept twice a day, so that the idea of dirt was cleaned up before it had a chance to settle.

“Make sure you collect and collect, then when the time is right, choose your husband.” In hindsight, her aunt’s advice regarding love and men sounded like the rules of choosing a ripe cantaloupe.

“Always make sure he loves you a little more than you love him,” she went on. Tessa no longer kept in contact with her aunt who watched over her on a daily basis when Tessa’s parents were at work. Her aunt would be very disappointed to know the pool of suitors her niece had collected before marrying Jake. Not half the suitors Auntie had in her day. Auntie would also be horrified that despite her preachings, Tessa had married a man who she may have loved more.

Auntie always told the story of how she started to train and develop herself at a young age. She read and learned with the sole intent of being well-rounded, not out of any genuine interest in the things she studied; she ate well and exercised regularly to improve her body; didn’t skip dance lessons; and she was successful in her goals of self-improvement, finding that this was the only way to make herself as desirable and valuable as possible. She saw herself as a commodity, and likewise, everybody else she came across. She quickly and randomly calculated in her head the individual worth of each person she met, putting into account: family, looks, education, goals, and current job – in that order.

According to some of Tessa’s other aunts and uncles, Auntie was a success even though she didn’t really do anything. She didn’t work. She had a live-in maid who kept house and cooked. But she was successful because her husband was rich and he loved her so much that he tried to give her everything she wanted, as much of the world as he could, and on a daily basis. But it wasn’t until Auntie had met enough men and made them fall in love with her, she would tell us, that she was able to see what an asset her husband was. He was a banker and at the time, he wasn’t making that much money but he was considered a star among his peers and he was young and had time to prove his abilities. And really, if it weren’t for Auntie’s true love, Don, she may have fully fallen in love with her husband. But Don only worked as a storekeeper for his dad’s small stand in Manila. If he was lucky, he would inherit the little bodega, but it was in a very poor section of town and could not support a large family. Auntie didn’t need her parents to tell her that Don Don was not the one for her – she told herself. She needed somebody who could provide her with the comfort her parents raised her with. She would not make a mess of her future for a notion as fleeting as love. How could she be guaranteed that she would always feel so in love with Don Don?

She had plans to move to America so she would need someone who could provide comfort and luxury there, as well. If she stayed with Don she might never leave or be able to buy the clothes she wanted or the perfume she loved. So in the end, it was her want for these things that made her agree to marry her husband.

Tessa remembered watching her uncle turn off the blue gas flame under the metal claw of the stove plate. He stirred some milk into the hot pot of oats and water. After he poured the pot into a bowl, he wiped the excess oil from the bacon he had fried to a blackened crisp and crumbled them over the bowl of oatmeal.

“Do you want a bite?” he asked Tessa in Tagalog who was perched on the counter.

He took a clean spoon and fed her a sticky, sweet mouthful of milky oatmeal topped perfectly with the salty crunch of fresh bacon bits. Then he brought in the rest of the bowl to Auntie without taking a spoonful for himself.

Tessa recalled that her uncle did this every morning – woke up two hours before he had to go to work in order to get the bacon and oatmeal ready for Auntie so she could eat her breakfast in bed.

It was mid-afternoon and Tessa was splayed out on the couch, her left thumb numbly resting on the remote control.

Just a fifteen minute nap, she told herself.

* * *

She was unprepared for the cold autumn. When she pulled up to 1095 Agate Drive on that late October evening, Tessa could feel the blood leaving her hands due to the temperature drop. Halloween was still a good two weeks away, but the Red’s front lawn was already decorated with cardboard cuttings in the shape of tombstones with names like “Dolores Hearteater” written in magic marker. What was left of the dry, brown grass was covered with cobwebs made from cottonballs.

A little girl of about five or six appeared from behind the screen door. She was struggling to hold up an oversized cat locked between her arms.

‘Is your daddy Simon Red?’ Tessa asked. The little girl nodded. The only thing Tessa could see clearly through the screen door were the whites of her eyes and the bright green dress, which looked even brighter against the girl’s dark skin. A man with a short and round stature appeared from behind the little girl, startling her. The cat felt her grip loosen and wiggled free of her arms.

The man pushed open the dark, screen door.

‘She’s cute. Is that your daughter?’ Tessa asked.

‘Uh-huh. A handful too, and only one of four.’

‘I used to babysit a little girl about her age. What is she – five and a half?’

The man smiled. ‘Yup. Had a birthday last Christmas’ he said.

‘Ahhh….a Christmas baby,’ Tessa said, smiling knowingly. ‘Us Capricorns are no good. You’re going to have problems with her when she grows up.’

‘You don’t need to tell me, honey. I already have two teenagers. What can I do you for?’ Mr. Red said, stepping out onto the porch. Tessa wasn’t dressed professionally enough to be selling bibles or encyclopaedias, and she was too old to be selling girl scout cookies. Tessa asked Mr. Red if he still worked for Rancor Incorporated, then told him that a few of his coworkers had called because they were interested in starting a union. With this standard introduction, Mr. Red smiled a show of recognition, then shifted his feet and crossed his arms.

“Mr. Red, can we talk inside? It’s getting kinda cold out here.”

The timer on the oven went off, knocking Tessa from her nap. She slowly started moving around the house again.

Before Shale came along, they had turned the downstairs bathroom into a dark room but the fumes of chemicals and acetane had aired from the room considerably from disuse.

Although her business was digitized, she swore to never completely stop shooting in film. It felt more like an art form to her. Although the lighting and perspective of her pictures would not always develop perfectly the way they would in auto-focus, she would at least be fully responsible for the captured image - overexposure, grain and all.

She turned on the (green?) light of the dark room. With gloved hands she poured 2/3 X to 1/3 Y into the first tray, the second and third. [research dark room developing]. She grabbed a random plastic tube from the mystery box that contained nearly a hundred rolls of undeveloped film. She popped the cap off and X, Y, and Z.

Tessa loved going shutter happy then one day developing the once forgotten pictures. When she first started working as a fine arts photographer she could recall every still and frame she took. She knew every detail of the photo before the red/brown gloss was unshelled of its casing. While photographing this way still brought a certain degree of pride and satisfaction, it was impossible for Tessa to view her work with fresh eyes, a fact she resented. As an amateur photographer, she strived to reach a point in her work where she could surprise even herself. Over the years, she collected more and more rolls of film until she had forgotten of their existence. Pictures taken in Cambodia with her father, signs from road trips, kids playing in the fountain at Washington Square, the interior detail of a building she used to live in, the many bird houses that used to hang from the tree in her mother’s front yard.

Gently swirling the glossed paper in the pungent, clear solution, she watched the page slowly come to life under the ---- and chrome was one of the most satisfying moments in her profession.

With a pair of wooden tongs she dipped an 8 x 12 cut into the first tray, watched the timer until 30 seconds, pulled it out of the first pool, letting it drip off the excess before submerging the print into the second tray. With each step the picture became slightly more apparent. First, the darkest spots appeared, which bled into varying shades of gray. In the developing room, only the two colors on either side of the spectrum were visible.

A cypress tree in the background, blurry spots from a series of stringed lights. A messy table with upturned cups and empty bottles, a clue to the time of night. As the cap light ran over one of the shiny, dripping slides she noticed something familiar – the lips of her own smile; then, an earring that belonged to her – a wood and silver dangle that a traveling student from Kenya made and sold at a bizarre. What might not have been unusual in any other circumstance warmed Tessa’s cheeks and made her stomach suddenly feel empty. The earring was hanging from her ear, tangled in her loose, dark strands. Jake was sitting next to her, looking in a direction other than in the camera as he leaned against Tessa’s side. She had no recollection whatsoever of this picture, although from the setting it must have been taken while they were on the honeymoon. But that was impossible. She had left all her cameras at home, and there was definitely not an opportunity for someone else to take this picture of them together. It must have been taken somewhere else that she did not remember.

She dipped and timed the remaining roll of film.

There must be something in here that will rekindle my memory, she thought. But when all 31 shots were developed, she still had zero recollection of having taken any of them. The rest of the prints were of scenic landscape, which again, looked disturbingly like San Simeon to her. It would come to her later, when she was not trying so hard to pinpoint, where she shot these pictures.

She clipped the frames to the line of wire suspended overhead. As she searched her memory and ran her eyes over the rows of dripping photos, her body became awash with goosebumps. She certainly recognized that view. It was the beach and rock seen from the bedroom window of the honeymoon house.

Maybe Jake took this roll, she thought to herself. He kept arguing to bring at least one camera. That would explain a lot. But it was much too like her own style.

Am I going crazy? She thought. These are definitely my pictures. Maybe we picked up a cheap camera while I was drunk or something.

But that would have also been extremely unlike Tessa; she was always amazed at people who could not remember what they said and did while intoxicated. She did not always have control or good sense of the things she said and did when she was drunk, but she always remembered what it was she said and did the following day. Sometimes she wished that she could just black it out.

Must’ve been drunk, she told herself again. Or, Jake took them. Those could be the only possible explanations.

She left the photos suspended in mid-air, held only by clips of their corners then quickly left the dark room and ran upstairs to check on Shale.

* * *

At half past three in the afternoon, Jake tidied up his classroom. He defied the old stereotype that men were messy and disorganized. In many ways, he was more organized than his wife.

“You’re such a metrosexual,” Tessa often joked with him when they first met. “Are you sure you’ve explored all your options? Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Know what I mean? Know what I mean?”

Jake became enamored by her in waves from the night he first met her at a friend’s surprise birthday party. She had just come back from living in Zimbabwe, which he envied, thought a glamorous kind of life, and thought crazy of her to leave her comfort and safety zone to live in a politically turbulent country whose very turbulence was due to foreigners living in the country.

“There’s no food on the shelves,” she said, sipping from a plastic pint of yellow-amber beer. Jake could tell that she liked being the center of attention, but he thought her graceful at the same time.

He thought she was pretty, although he seceded that she did not possess a conventional type of beauty and that some men might not find her attractive. Her hair was thin, a little harried and noticeably matted in places. She looked like she just came back from Africa.

Maybe she is just playing the part, Jake thought to himself. He imagined what she would look like if she ran a brush through her coal black, shoulder-length hair. From where he stood, her complexion looked both dark and translucent – it held a yellowish brown tint that made him think she was descended from Hawaii or some other Pacific Island.

Jake walked closer to Tessa and the girl she was speaking to. Tessa was leaning against the outdoor bar and had a stance of both self-satisfaction and exhaustion. Her shoulders limped forward as if she were too tired or did not care enough to keep a straight posture. But she leaned against the sticky, cheap wooden, imitation luao styled standing bar like she was the tender and she owned the place. Her right tip-toe was propped behind her leaned-upon leg which formed a thin-limbed triangle. In his inebriating loss, he wanted to clang a metal bar in the shape formed by her legs because maybe that would test or shatter her strongly owned sense of self.

He pretended to be listening to the new acquaintance on the other side of the conversation as he slowly inched towards the bar. He did not try to hide his stares. It was a party and he thought her interesting and still found her pretty the closer he got. Her eyes were dark, which made them seem all-pupil. He could not see a thin circle where the iris ended and the retina began as he did when he looked in the mirror.

Her eyes were soft in shape with single creases at the top for each lid. Lids that disappeared like the inside wall of a folded Murphy bed when she looked straight ahead. She wore a tiny stud on the side of her left nostril, in the dimple near the fold between her cheek and nose that Jake would have overlooked if it were not for the sparked reflection that it cast when she turned her head to profile. The thin skin underneath her eyes was taut, clear and smooth, making her seem young. But he had been introduced to her earlier in the night and from listening to her stories it was obvious to him that she was not as young as she looked. Lucky Asian gene, he thought. Although he himself was of mostly Irish descent, growing up in Oakland made him no stranger to people of varying countries and cultures.

From far away he thought she was sporting au-natural and going makeup-less, an idea he wholeheartedly admitted might have been more assumption than eyesight. As he saw the finer details of her face under the luminescence of the decoration tiki torch, he could see the lightly caked pore tracks of foundation or cover-up that was not blended flawlessly. She wore black eyeliner. Thinly following the edge of her top eyelid where heavier lashes could have peeked. She did not line the bottom of her eyes.

In loyal Mr. Rogers fashion, Jake sprayed and wiped down the whiteboard. The reach of his damp rag did not extend to the corners of the board - not due to a lack of inattention but due to a conscience effort not to become obsessive compulsive or anal-retentive to his tidiness. He believe in a little bit of dirt, a mess that could be cleaned up later. Otherwise, one could spend their whole life perfectly maintaining themselves, their home, their surroundings and things, and not have time to actually enjoy themselves without the thought of the mess it would cause, or truly play in their home. And so, Jake skipped the corners where red, black and blue marker dust had accumulated and streaked.

As was his routine before closing up shop, Jake checked underneath each stand-alone (?) seat and desk. He had never personally discovered a marijuana cigarette taped to the bottom, or an envelope filled with $200 in cash, but he knew teachers who swore they did. And the Superintendent’s Office and Dean of Schools had taken it so much to heart that they reminded teachers that legally, such possessions would be partly the teachers’ responsibility, especially if it stayed hidden in the classroom all night.

So Jake checked the bottoms of the desks. Nothing but dried, colorful globs of chewing gum.

“Mmmm, Mr. Jake?” a voice mumbled from the open door.

“Ray…my boy. How’s it going?” Jake tried covering up his surprise.

“What are you doing tonight?” Ray asked.

“Uh…going home and having dinner with my family. Why?”

“We and the B-team thought you would help us out.”

The B-team was the school’s boys basketball team. Jake raised his eyebrows as a sign for Ray to continue.

“We need a teach to come with us to Bayonne.”

“What happened to Coach Merlin?”

“He quit,” Ray said.

“He quit? When? Why?”

“He said something wrong with his grandmoms or something,” Ray said with a roll of his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. No problem.” Jake said. “So you know, since you’re here, you wanna go over the short story?”

“Uhhh,” Ray said with a tilt of his head and a condescending look. “We gotta go to Bayonne.”

“Right now? Oh yo, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you meant right this second.”

“I asked you what you were doing tonight.”
“It’s only 3:30,” Jake said, bringing his eyes to standard, plastic covered, large [Greek]-numeral clock on the opposite wall. “What time does the game start?”

“Five. The bus is out front and it’s gone if we don’t leave now,” Ray said.

The public school buses were notorious for not showing up or driving away if the teachers and kids were not ready to board. The District did not provide school bus service to its students; few districts in the city did. There were school buses available for after school activities and field trips. The drivers were overbooked and could not guarantee to fulfill all the pick-ups and drop-offs on their schedule. Knowing this, and also knowing that no plans were being made to hire more drivers, the facilities superintendents agreed on a rotating schedule, in which each school would have a chance to be in the position of first pick-up so that the chances of seeing the yellow metal bus approaching would increase as the school moved up the list. There was always the chance that the drivers could meet their schedules, depending on traffic and cancellations, so the teachers and coaches whose schools were at the bottom of the list made it a habit of preparing their students to board the District bus, although more often than not, they would just end up taking the city’s public transportation home.

At half past four o’clock, Tessa retrieved one of her older cameras from inside a shoulder bag and added a zoom lens, as per Jake’s suggestion. Jake was usually home by this time. He could stay in with Shale while Tessa wandered around the neighborhood. It would be the first time in a long time that she would be out and about during the magic hour when the light from the setting sun and the even illumination of the rising moon and sky created the perfect lighting.

This had always been Tessa’s favorite time of day. An opportunity for her to be able to leave her flash at home. But it was fleeting, lasting literally an hour before evening officially fell. She realized that although this time of day existed in every part of the world, it was not the same in all places.

In Zimbabwe, the magic hour was in full effect. The open expanse of flat, vast land ran forever. She caught images of antelopes, zebras, lions, giraffes, elephants and her favorite – the wild dog. The spindly legged, spot haired canines ran in packs and howled in high pitch. Their most distinguishing feature as far as Tessa was concerned was their large, perked, mouse-shaped ears. This species of dog could not be found in other parts of the world for Zimbabwe is its home.

They were playful pups and were often seen hopping in circles amongst one another. When one broke out into a run, the others did not necessarily follow suit. She followed them for as far as she could and got as near as they would let her. But she really only got to know them and observe them closely when she developed her pictures. She was able to zoom in and go shutter mad without disturbing them because there was no bright light or loud sound to scare them away.

Now, she and her family did not live in a particularly scenic area. The ocean and waterfront were over thirty miles away and the mountains were that distance times a hundred. Still, there were parks, empty schools and a wider selection of dog breeds than she could ever hope for in Africa. Tessa liked to take pictures of birds on sign posts, kids on bikes, dogs lapping at pools, drivers at stop signals. Again, her lens coupled with that special hour of day allowed her to take these pictures without any one being the wiser.

She was excited to venture out with her 35 mm again. It had been a long time since she went out to shoot photos by herself and for the pure pleasure of it. She remembered old friends who she shared the same interest with. Walking through Central Park on an uncommitted Sunday; on a bike tour down a historic river trail with backpacks filled with sandwiches, water, and just enough cash to stay at a motel; wandering the city streets from morning til’ dusk looking and waiting for a still that would mean more than just a pretty picture years ahead.

Some of her favorite pictures taken by other people were not the ones framed and famous. Instead, they were images, intersections and moments that she chanced upon on random blogs and file sharing sites. She, herself, never posted any of her photographs. Although she often felt the urge to, hoping that she might cause a smile on some stranger’s face. She could fill hour after hour lost in her computer double clicking and downloading jpegs and zip files. Other than her online newspaper of choice, it was the only real use she got out of the computer and Internet.

Tessa straightened up the house and paced about while she waited for Jake to walk through the door. But her anticipation and nervousness of venturing out to take pictures again soon dissipated as the hour slipped past and darkness covered the windows. It was unlike Jake not to call.

Tessa picked up the nearly archaic cordless receiver. They rarely used the landline since their shared cell phone plan was cheaper to use for both local and long-distance calls. They kept the landline more in case of an emergency. She had already tried calling Jake on his cell phone. She left three messages. There were few friends who he saw on a regular basis and he was not close enough to any one of them so that she would feel comfortable phoning any of them to try to track down her husband; especially at the relatively early hour of the evening. Tessa figured that if she called from the landline, Jake would see it on his caller ID screen and would know that the call was urgent.

The loud but muffled brrring of the phone rang once, twice…and after the third time, Tessa gave up hope of Jake answering. After the fifth ring, his voice mailbox picked up. Despite her earlier messages, she felt no hesitation to leave another.

“Jake. Where are you? I’m worried. Please call me. I don’t know where you are. Dinner is getting cold…”

At half past eight o’clock, she wrapped the cold plate of chicken francaise with aluminum foil and put it in the cold but dark fridge. The small bulb had gone out weeks ago and waited to be replaced.

Shale was asleep, as usual. I wish I were a baby so that I could sleep all day, Tessa often thought to herself as she watched her baby boy unconsciously pursed his lips as his round cheeks gently undulated as he ate

Thirty minutes later, Tessa had not moved from her watch from the corner of the sofa with a side of the voile curtains parted to allow a view of the driveway below. The baby was sleeping and if Shale stayed true to his regular schedule, he would remain in dreamland until a couple of hours after midnight. Her matted and worn cotton bedroom slippers were scattered between the sofa’s beige duster and the rustic wooden coffee table cluttered with dirty glasses, and leftover warm milk sitting on the bottoms of baby bottles and random store catalogues.

The benefit of being lithe and petite was that Tessa could wrap her arms and legs around herself and curl into corners without ruining the furniture. She occupied herself by watching one of her weekly reality television shows, knees tucked under her chin and tying her legs close to her body with crossed arms and clasped onto either forceps like a bow. As the show came to an end, she grew more impatient. She typically got ready for bed around this time, but with Jake not home yet she could not bring herself to brush her teeth and wash her face.

I can at least get into some pajamas, she told herself. She was about to redial Jake’s cell phone when her own cell phone gave a pleasant ding indicating that she had a text message.

Who the hell is this? She thought upon picking up her mobile. She did not recognize the phone number. She pressed the “Read” button:

Hi hon – will be home soon.
Coaching the bb team.
Don’t wait up. Love, me.

What the f-ck? Tessa said. She replied to the text message with the same type of sentiment. She then dialed Jake’s cell phone number.

“Jake – was that you that just texted me? I would hope so, but in any case, where the hell are you? What do you mean you’re ‘coaching the bb team’? Since when have you coached the bb team? What is the bb team? Please call me. You’re killing me over here. You could’ve at least let me know what was going on early today. Thanks a lot,” her voice started to crack towards the end of the message as she let her imagination and anger take over her. Was he cheating on her? Was he leaving her and Shale? He had seemed rather distant and unhappy lately; although she might not have necessarily thought so outside of this incident. What disregard he treated her with! If she was ever going to be 15 minutes late, she made it a point to phone to let him know. Even when she was working a gig and she had to steal away to the bathroom in order to call, she did so. Couldn’t he treat her with the same respect? Especially since she was the home taking care of their son!

Another pleasant ding announced the arrival of a new message:
Sorry honey. Be home soon. Love you.

Upon reading the message, Tessa snapped close the phone’s illuminated screen.

I can’t believe this, she thought. She headed for the bathroom to begin her nightly toilette. As she passed Shale’s nursery, she heard a slight shifting and soft coo. She halted for a moment and was about to check in on the baby, but on second thought decided not to for once.

In the bathroom, everything became impossible to bear. She lit the candle to fill the small space with its scent. The window was always open but it seemed to offer no freshness. Why they didn’t leave the candle burning perpetually was a mystery to her. It seemed that no matter how many times she cleaned the damn restroom, the next morning it was as if she had never run the full headed brush around the rim, or covered every surface area with sponge and disinfectant. Instead of elves that sewed and helped during the night, careless, elfin drunks wreaked havoc around the toilet and sink, spraying water onto the mirror and floor, slipping around on hairy asses so that clots and strands of hair steeped in puddles behind the faucet and in the tub’s drain.

Tessa turned down the lid to the porcelain seat and inspected the crevice in between the back screws and the tank where moisture and dust often accumulated.

I clean and clean, and nothing stays clean! Tessa screamed in her head. She yanked the free end of the rolled toilet paper and wrapped it around her hand five or six times. She hated the idea of coming into contact with the dirt, and despised feeling any wetness on her fingers when cleaning so she opted for wastefulness. She wiped the problematic vitreous philtrum of the latrine, then tore off another long strip of two-ply to get that hidden groove right underneath the tank.

Fuck this, she thought. I’m not going to break my neck taking care of this house when no one else will help. I’ve already given up so much.

She proceeded to brush, floss, lather and rinse; making a conscious effort not to look at the surface of the sink or the flecked spots of toothpaste on the glass.

That’s what he must do, she told herself. He blinds his vision so that he can’t see the mess. Can’t clean up what you don’t see! Asshole.

The time was 11:45 by their digital bedside clock as she slipped into practical flannel pajamas. She contemplated waiting for him in bed but she did not want to make it that easy for him, so she resumed her guard in the corner of the sofa, behind the parted curtain.

Shale started to cry down the hall, but this time Tessa left him be.

The drop-off area of the New Bowery School was a crescent shaped driveway largely but dimly lit by high street lamps. The bus was late, but at least it arrived. The boys basketball team shared it with the girls basketball team who also had an away game against the same school. The two teams stood in separate ground – girls and boys - as if enforced to do so by their teachers. As time inched forward and no bus was in sight, the invisible separation of males and females slowly blurred as girls in groups of twos, threes and fours started to mingle with their secret and not-so-secret crushes. Of course, there was an exceptional one or two students who did not seem to be inhibited by the same awkward shyness as the others and who, as it had been rumored, knew the muddles of sex.

“You taking over Coach Merl?” the girls basketball coach asked Jake. Known as Miss Gold to the kids, Sarah Goldin was a new teacher and still taking graduate classes through the city-funded teaching program that Jake and most of the other teachers came through.

“Yeah kinda, I guess. I mean, no. I don’t know. Do you know why he quit?”

“He didn’t quit. Merl was fired,” Sarah said. “Got one too many DUI’s this holiday season.”

“Are you serious? How many?” Jake asked.

“Well, not literally all this month. I know he got pulled over around Halloween, but not sure when he accrued the other two.”

“Accrued. Nice,” Jake said referring to her choice of words.

“Yeah, well. He was a terrible drunk anyways.”

To this news, Jake raised his eyebrows.

“Oh yeah,” Miss Gold continued. “You could smell it on him. Here we are at an away game visiting some other school’s team and he wreaks of whiskey. Pathetic. Personally, I’m glad he’s gone. The threat of sexual harassment didn’t mean anything to that jackass.”

Jake was pleasantly surprised with Sarah’s brash bluntness. Jake had met her at the beginning of the school year during orientation, and was friendly when he bumped into her most mornings, but their exchanges had always been standard and PC. She was well put together, and she managed to dress more professionally than most of the other teachers without overdoing it and looking out of place. Her self-assigned uniform consisted of a knee-length pencil skirt and sweater or cardigan. She was a breath of fresh air to her students whose own mothers were mostly still in their pajamas, if even awake, at that time of day. She did not wear perfume – as outlined in the district manual – but carried the slight scent of sandalwood and lavender. There were no restrictions on using scented soap.

Miss Gold was an anomaly to her students in more ways than one: her hair was blonde and her eyes were blue, which some of her kids could not forgive her for. It would take some years before she proved her steadfastness and loyalty to the school and its families. It did help, however, that she put in the extra hours for the girls basketball team.

“So how are you liking it so far?” Jake asked.

“Liking what?”

“MLJ. The school. You know,”

“Oh. Um, it’s good, I guess.” She said slowly and ending with a final, self-assured smile, which Jake took as a cue not to ask any further run-of-the-mill, ice breaking questions. She seemed to prefer unmitigated silence to boring or awkward conversation. Under the parking lamplight, her eyes were clear and bright so that Jake could see the web of her irises. Jake was not typically attracted to women of Sarah’s characteristics; having grown up in Ohio, she actually did look like the girl next door. But in this setting, she looked different, special and somewhat glamorous. She was not particularly pretty. Her skin was too taut, as if there were not enough of it to comfortably cover the surface area of her face. He didn’t mind the freckles, he even found them endearing except that they seemed to grow discolored with age. Some spots were reddish while the specks around her eyes and mouth were brown. She was a few years younger than Jake, and also Tessa, but like them she lacked a youthfulness in her face that might make a bartender check her ID.

Jake wanted to study her face further under the parking lot’s current light and shadow, as it proved to be flattering. He was about to go against his better judgment and ask her where she went to college when one of the girls cried, “Miss Gold! Miss Gold! Robbie won’t give me my pack back,” one of the girls yelled. The young girl did not look at either teachers as she yelled for their help and she was giggling as she made bodily contact with the boy who held her mini, purse-sized backpack ransom. Both teachers ignored her as it was obvious that the student was calling for them for show and to garner more attention.

The long, white painted hairdo of the school bus could be seen behind the wall separating the school’s parking lot from the street.

“Finally!” One of the boys said, hopping off of his seat on the low brick wall. Without being told, the kids fell into line by the curb.

“Thank Christ,” Sarah said as she turned away from Jake and towards her girls.

“Hang back,” Jake said to the gaggle of twelve and thirteen year-old boys trying to intermingle with the girls. “Let the ladies on first.”

One of the boys made an easy jab, “Their ain’t no ladies around here.” Some of the boys laughed. A girl at the end of the line lifted a hard back hand with a certain finger high in the air.

“Oh! Did you see that Mr. Jake?”

“What I see is our transportation nearing…unless of course ya’ll act to rowdy and it turns around and drives away without us. In which case, I am going to p’ed off and you, my young man, will have my wife to reckon with.”

The young girls giggled while the boys looked this way and that, some with rolled eyes.

“Ray! Let me see your phone son,” Jake said. Ray quickly slipped his $500 cell phone into his jacket pocket which he had been quietly and patiently been playing a downloaded game on during their wait.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Jake said, circling with his arm and hand. “I just need to use it to text my wife. Mine’s sitting in the classroom due to the immediacy of the moment,” Jake said, giving Ray a pretend-hard and close look.

Every window on the east side of the house could be seen as Jake rounded the corner in the grey sedan, and all the windows were dark. It was a little past midnight by the time Jake pulled up the inclined driveway of the narrow entrance to their house. He quieted the engine. He was usually in bed by this hour and although he was tired, he also felt invigorated from the night’s unexpected turn of events. It had been a long time from when he started teaching since he felt like a direct influence in his students’ lives. The past year or two he felt a growing awkward divide between himself and the prepubescent bodies that drifted in and out of his classroom each day and with every class period. He had tried staying cool and chummy-like with the boys in his class – trying to fulfill that role as a big brother or cousin – but his attempts fell forcedly and short. He feared that he had slowly turned into that cool new teacher around campus to a dated, aloof instructor. It was a delicate balance to gain seniority through constant years of service at the same school while remaining fresh, active and involved.

Upon being a new husband, he felt hurled into new fatherhood. He had to stop after school counseling and tutoring to be at home with Shale and Tessa. He would not have changed that time with them for the world. Jake became as eager as his students to see the minute hand fall at the center of the clock’s five, signaling the official end of the school day at 3:25. He would rush home to feel the warmth and softness of Shale – a physical feeling he tried words and words again to try to describe accurately. Finally, Jake heard his sister liken holding Shale to that of a hot water bottle. That was it! His plump, full of pure life baby boy was like a doll-sized hot water bottle.

Jake liked coming home and seeing his wife – his once so feisty and hyper wife – taking care of their child and things around the home. She seemed genuinely happy; and why shouldn’t she be? She worked when she pleased. They kept the dark room in the house even though Jake suggested turning it into a storage area to keep the unused furniture and things that was displaced when the second bedroom was turned into the baby’s nursery. At this suggestion, Tessa threw a tantrum unbefitting a thirty year-old woman. She did not even try to argue with logic and reason as she loved to do.

Instead, she stamped her feet and threw her fists out and to the side. “Are you shitting me?!” she yelled. “It’s not enough that I spent nine months dealing with morning sickness then back pains then putting my life on the line! And then I can’t even work full time the way you can, but now you want me to give up my dark room?? For storage, of all things! Listen, I’ll cough up the $20 a month for storage. OK? That’ll come out of my paycheck. Don’t you worry.”

Jake was not all too surprised at this outburst. Had he not known his wife, he would have tried to chalk up her emotional behavior to fiery hormones. He knew better. For all the college debate trophies she won and all her skill in rational argument, she sure did possess the Mr. Hyde to those traits. Her mood could best be described as volatile. She could be lovey dovey one minute, and follow the saying of changing with the drop of a hat.

After awhile, her quick shifting temper affected his restfulness at home. He started to get nervous and on-guard when she picked up around the house as he watched TV. He always offered to help, but most of the time she refused his help and told him to rest. But on those days in which he sat back and did not think to ask, he would hear the slamming of drawers and cabinets in the kitchen.

“Jake! Can you please take out the trash tonight? I don’t particularly want rats in the house. Do you?” she would yell from inside the enclosed kitchen.

“Yes, hon. Do you want me to do it now?”

“No, next commercial is fine.” Sometimes she said this sweetly with head peeked around the corner to give him a smile; other times, she said it sarcastically with a look of spite.

“That’s no way to live,” Jake’s sister told him when he spoke to her over the phone after one of Tessa’s unforeseen outbursts. “You need to tell her to calm down. Or get her some help with the housecleaning.”

“We can’t afford to do that,” he said. “Maybe if she was working regularly we could spare a couple of hundred for a maid, but she hasn’t been working that much lately…”

“Well, you shouldn’t have to walk on egg shells around your own home. You guys have health insurance. Maybe you can get her some valium or something.”

“Wow. Thanks for the advice sis. What are you watching Desperate Housewives lately or something?”

Sitting in his dark car, Jake felt happier than he had in quite some time. He felt young, needed and useful. As he climbed out of his car, he remembered how needed he was to the two people upstairs and rather than raising his blood pressure and making the big vein in his forehead pulse into a groove in hi skin, the thought of this responsibility made him smile. This night made him feel up to the task, whereas most days and nights he was apprehensive, which made the weight of a new hungry family feel heavy.

With one hand on the door knob and the other with palm flat against the edge of the cold, black iron, Jake gently and controlled shut the gated door. He closed the front door to the house in the same fashion. As he tiptoed to the kitchen for a drink he heard the clink of ice.

“Why are you sneaking in?” his wife asked from the sofa that looked like a carved black hole in the unlit living room. Jake reached for the lamp.

“DON’T turn it on!” she said. He froze in action.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because I’ve been crying and drinking and I’m a mess.”

The yellow light from the street shone through the sheer window treatment, making the square cutout in the wall glow. His wife was all outline. He couldn’t tell if she looked a mess, but he could hear it in her voice. Plus, she had just told him.

“OK, honey. Whatever you want.” He continued on his now seemingly long trek to the refrigerator.

“Oh yeah. Hello to you too. How was your night?” she asked.

“Didn’t you get my text?”

“I got your text. I replied. Didn’t you get my voice messages?” she asked.

“No…or, well. I haven’t checked them yet.”

“Nice. That’s just great. Good to know that you’re so reliable. That we can count on you. That I can feel free to call you on your cell in the case of an emergency. Who the hell’s cell phone did you text me from anyways?”

“I told you. I chaperoned the boys’ bb team. The coach quit, or was fired. They needed an adult to accompany them or the game was called off. It was last minute for me too. Don’t think that I had known about this all week, or even all day.”

“Really? What time did you know you were going to take over this coach who quit – or was fired? Which one is it, by the way?”

Tessa still would not allow a single bulb to be lit. Hearing the liquor in her words, Jake leaned against the wall and humored her interrogation.

“Fired. As far as the boys know, he quit,” Jake said slowly. “I couldn’t call you because I was basically pulled out of my classroom and I left my bag in my classroom. My phone was in the bag. I texted you from one of the boy’s cells.”

“Why didn’t you just call me earlier…with one of the boy’s cells?”

“Because I didn’t think of it. I’m sorry. I didn’t think that it would be this big of a deal. I definitely didn’t think that the game would have lasted as long as it did, but we had to wait til’ the girls’ game was over. By the time I realized how late it was getting, the boys were on the court and I couldn’t exactly ask one of them to grab his phone from the locker room. Besides, I was actually coaching them!” he said with a bit of excitement as to the last offering.

She ignored his excitement. They stood/sat quietly in the dark for a few seconds.

“Did you cheat on me?” she asked.

“What?? Are you crazy? What’s the matter with you? For at least the past year I’ve been coming home at the same time without fail after school. I come home after dark once and you crucify me! And it’s not even like I got a drink with Ben or something. I was doing my job!”

With this tirade, Tessa was 99 percent sure that her husband was telling the truth. But she did not yet feel remorseful for the distrust and interrogation. She felt strongly that he could have easily borrowed a phone before the game started to keep her apprised of the change in schedule.

“Alright. I’m sorry,” she said in a relatively hushed tone. “You should get ready for bed then. It’s late and you have work tomorrow.”

Jake shook his head. The need to quench his thirst disappeared under the weight to bury his head in the pillow and make the night end. He kicked off his shoes, dropped his bag and sought shelter in Shale’s nursery.

“Please wash up first before you hold the baby!” Tessa was inconsistent with her cleanliness. The books, CDs and DVDs were organized alphabetically and by genre. But the mail was strewn throughout. Dustballs of hair clung to the foot of the bathroom’s magazine rack which was updated and catalogued by date with the most current newsprint on the left.

The candle cabinet was grouped by scent and ordered by height; the drawer beneath it was overflowing with jumbled plastic grocery bags, unwashed cloth placemats, and ribbon. The drinking glasses were stacked by kind then size but some were rimmed with lipstick and overlooked in the wash.

Jake muttered, contemplated telling her off, thought better of it and gently closed the door to the nursery. He fought the need to walk over to his wife and telling her not to tell him when to hold their baby. But it was a fight for civil liberties best left for another night.

* * *

The next day, Jake skipped his serenity routine and instead sucked the brown water from the beaker to a boil in the steamy after-shower of the bathroom. He woke up later than usual, which he had not done for at least a year. Even on weekends he made himself get out of bed at the same hour as the workweek. He hid the glass apparatus underneath the sink. Tessa knew that he smoked…on occasion. She was not aware that he smoked every day.

He crumpled up the daily lesson plan that he wrote up in his notebook at the beginning of each week. He was losing some of his students to daydreams and duhs, this he knew. He might as well be honest about it and deal with it as a fact. He was not going to win their interest by continuing along the same path he had set out upon in September. Professionally, Jake’s goal was to cover more area so that his top students could master the harder concepts of the hodge podge of subjects that the District had lumped into his course. It was a joke among the students and was quickly becoming one with the teachers and administration as well.

The Board had argued that the creation of such a course would allow students to become more well rounded and to ask for help in any of their subjects so that they could pass the state’s standardized tests at the end of the year. The teachers knew that the Board, like the District, always focused on these damn standardized tests more than anything, as a big part of their job dictated. On the same token, the teachers also knew that the number of accredited teachers able to proficiently teach the mainstream subjects like math, science, history and English were too many and blocking their funding of the creation of more classrooms. There were only so many math, science, history and English teachers that the District would approve for each school. So they developed new subjects in order to bring in more teachers from the city’s graduate fellowship and likewise, more revenue.

Jake’s students did not like to ask for help. And up to this point he had been assigning few and far between reading assignments, allowing them to do other teachers’ homework assignments and occasionally pop in a Hollywood movie or documentary that was simultaneously entertaining for Jake and education, even if arguably, for his students. But he did not go through this line up of instruction willy nilly. As was required of every public school teacher, he drew up a lesson plan in his city supplied notebook that was collected at the end of the year – not that anyone actually looked through it. This too was considered a joke amongst some staff. People wrote random lesson plans into it weeks ahead of time and never glanced at them again, while others listed their daily instruction months after they occurred.

Although not the most effective teacher, Jake had his heart in the right place. He had the best intentions to be a good teacher to his kids so he did things by the book, for the lack of enough experience, the comfort of his skin or the fortitude of convictions.

Riding the bus with Ray and the basketball team and watching them play. Coaching them and seeing their upturned faces as they actually listened gave him a taste of motivation. In class, his kids barely looked at him. He had to tell them to look in his face when he was disciplining them. It was a real annoyance for Jake and he had never truly gotten used to it the way some teachers had. He always wanted his students to look up at him and he often felt the fool when he constantly tried to make eye contact but without success. He noticed that he was starting to look away and stare at their ears instead of their eyes when speaking to a student individually. He had just become so frustrated, disappointed, and dare he admit? Hurt by their eye evasion.

So to have some of the most rowdy boys in the grade look him in the eye, even if distrustfully and with raised eyebrow, made Jake feel as if the invisible coat had been blown away. He had already seen the vice principal regarding taking over Coach Merlin’s position. He forgot to mention it to Tessa in the wake of their argument last night but she would just have to be happy and supportive of him, or deal with it. He never dictated to her the kinds of events she should work – and they did not always meet with his agreement.

Like the snipping of the bris that she worked. It was not that Jake had a problem with the religion or religious aspect, but he thought it was just gross to take pictures of the baby’s genitals. It went against his beliefs to try to make adolescence as painless as possible, and he imagined that the baby’s family would only document the event so as to show the baby’s friends when he was older. Plus, Jake worried every time Tessa photographed a wedding. He knew how people, especially men, acted at weddings. Tessa was a good looking woman and he was sure the camera prop did not help his concerns. And although he joked with her about this concern, he never seriously brought it up and he did not ever wish to hinder her talents and job to humor his insecurities. And he knew that Tessa had her fair share of insecurities. He had hoped that she would overcome them as she got on over the years, but he doubted her progress. Relatively, she was not as insecure as other women he had dated. She did not have an eating disorder; she was lucky not to need one since she had the metabolism the speed of a jumbo jet. But she was not completely free from the watchful glare of the country’s expressed standard of beauty. She watched movies, she drove by billboards, and worst of all, she flipped through beauty magazines. By these items, America was still very much a white world. Like many women, she dyed her hair over and over again to try to make it lighter and hopefully make herself look lighter overall. Of course, the lightness of her skin was never the problem – it was the tone of it. Jake had tried to get her to stop dying her hair. He liked her natural. But she could not bear to be away from the bottle. And over the years it became more and more extensive to feed her addiction/insecurity. She would get her hair done and treated to try to reverse and counter the effects of processing. Of course during times when they needed to be more economical, she would go to the supermarket for an $8 fix in the form of Clairol, Loreal, or some other box with a brown haired white woman on the front.

It saddened Jake. He wished that she would learn to embrace her natural brand of beauty. He was disappointed when she started to get her eyebrows lightened as well. She looked most beautiful when she was raven. It was nothing new to him to be with a woman who could not simply embrace her natural characteristics. Most of the girls he dated had an image issue in one way or another. He was just happy that Tessa did not suffer from anorexia or bulimia like his last girlfriend. It did not matter how many times he told his ex-girlfriend that she was skinny and thin, she could not see it. She just had to be as lean as a model although she was not nearly pretty enough to have such a job. On paper his ex-girlfriend was Kim Bassinger, but physical characteristics did not add up like a math equation. Certainly, the chances that they added up to a good looking person may increase with the sum of their traits but the beautiful thing about beauty is that you never know if something is it until you see it, and even then, you may not be able to pinpoint exactly what has made it so.

Jake was not exactly sure what type of protests, if any, Tessa might have with him volunteering himself as the school’s new junior varsity basketball coach, but after the way she reacted last night nothing would surprise him. Also, as the marriage cliché goes, she was becoming big on the discussing and conference with one any decision in their mundane lives. She never made or bought dinner without first consulting with Jake. This was not a courtesy that Jake asked of her, or one that he even wanted. He tried telling her that he was easy and would be happy with any dinner, lunch or breakfast decisions she made and that she really did not need to ask him what he preferred for each meal; but it proved to be a question she could not turn off. At times Jake wondered if their meal consultations was just an excuse to talk, keep the communication lines open and/or provide some stability of something the same and expected. A nightlight for their life as a married couple. It was theories like these that irritated him for its over-analysis, yet entertained his mind. It was the ability to philosophize in this manner that kept him smoking. Although even he found it doubtful that the THC had that effect on his brain anymore. He didn’t get the high the way he used to when he was in graduate school, or even a few years ago, and he wasn’t sure why he continued to smoke everyday. All he knew was that it seemed to be his equivalent of a cup of coffee. It gave him a little boost to his day; provided a cheap form of short-term motivation.

The vice principal had told him that she would have to clear his volunteer as basketball coach with the administrative staff but they both knew that it was all stamps and signatures from this point forward. No one else would volunteer to replace Coach Merlin. There was nobody else, unless one of the female teachers took an interest. But even then, the administrative staff and board of trustees might not find that copasetic. Jake was the only male teacher with any type of visual athleticism in his body who was not already coaching a sport. The three or four other youngish male instructors coached the varsity basketball, the football team and the track team. As it was, those guys doubled up on the fall and spring sports – turning into soccer and baseball coaches when the weather warmed. The rest were either too old or had bodies that might as well have been old since they performed only the necessary functions of an adult life, letting their muscles and limbs sag with disuse.

After paying an unexpected morning visit with the assistant vice principal, Jake traveled down the empty hallway to his classroom in new sneakers. He was actually filled with an excitement, a newness, and breathed in fresh mountain air of the Lysol mopped fragrance trapped between two walls of lockers. Once inside his classroom, he rearranged the desks to form one big circle. He put the wastebasket in the center of the circle, opened up his District notebook, and drew up a new seating placement for his first period class.

As he scraped and scooted the combination chair and tabletop school desks, Miss Gold leaned against the doorway.

“Did you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Take over as boys BB coach?”

“How did you know? I didn’t tell you I was going to try to do that. I didn’t know for sure myself until this morning.”

“You ever hear that saying that it’s easier for other people to know you than your own self?”

“Sure. But you don’t know me at all.”

“Well,” Sarah said. “Apparently I know you better than you think.”

Jake was not sure whether to be flattered or irritated. He was just surprised that she had started a conversation with him. She did not seem the least bit interested in speaking with him last night.

“What are you doing to your room?” she asked.

“Oh yeah. New lesson plan,” Jake said.

“OK…Good luck with that,” she gave that same final, self-assured smile then turned on her small slipper heel and walked away. Jake could not help but admire her figure flattered by the fitted skirt. Her hair fell around her shoulders and she looked like she had more makeup on this morning than she did last night. Of course, he did not see Sarah every morning so he did not know if it was unusual or not for her to be wearing makeup to school.

He sniffed the air for sandalwood and soap.

When Tessa awoke Jake had been gone for over an hour. She felt terrible about the way she reacted the previous night. She called his cell and was going to left a message, but instead she hung up.

I’ll make it up to him by making a nice dinner tonight, she said to herself. Right after I call him around lunchtime to see what he feels like eating.

Pushing Shale down the aisles of the grocery store, she thought of making steaks for dinner. She went to the butcher and ordered the best cuts displayed. It did not matter that the time was early morning and that she had not yet heard from Jake what he wanted for dinner. She often picked out dinner in her head before she asked him.

“I am telling you – we’ve been eating garbage. Yeah, you heard me, garbage,” a woman who was about 15-20 pounds overweight said into her cell phone. It was impossible by looking at her to know if she had kids, but her cart was filled with organic treats and juice boxes. Tessa perked her ears and assumed she was speaking to her boyfriend or husband.

“I don’t know,” she said. “They just have better and fresher stuff here that they wouldn’t even be selling at Hughes. Like the meat! It’s fresher.”

Tessa wondered if the person on the other end of the line was taking her word for it.

As Tessa surveyed the small pints of ice cream behind the see-through freezer, a woman dressed in smudged overalls called out her name.

“Theresa? Theresa Nunez?” the woman asked.

Tessa looked at the woman blankly then gave a weak smile. “I’m sorry. Do I..” she said studying the woman’s face. She was about the same age as Tessa.

“Oh, it OK if you don’t remember me. I’ve lost a lot of weight,” she said, leaning forward as if to a friend. “We went to school together. Pratt, right?”

Tessa nodded. “I’m so sorry. I wish that I could place you. You don’t by any chance remember what class we had together?”

“Drawing, I think,”

“I, II, III, IV or V?” Tessa inquired.

“Not sure!” the woman said. They both laughed.

“I guess it doesn’t really matter,” Tessa said.

“What are you doing nowadays?” the woman asked, crossing her arms and paying Tessa full attention. Tessa could not remember the last time another person of the same gender seemed so interested in what she was doing with her life. The woman’s eyes glimpsed the stroller and she cried, “Well a lot obviously!” She leaned forward to get a better look at the baby inside.

“Oh! He is just beautiful. What a sleeping doe-eyed sweetheart! Is he your first?”

“Uh huh. Will be for awhile too, I think,” Tessa said.

“Really? Not ready for another? Or just want to spoil the hell out of this one first?”

Tessa floundered, not quite sure why she and Jake had agreed not to have another child for at least a couple of years.

“In any case, this is one precious package you have now,” the woman said.

“Thank you.”

“Listen, are you still…photographing, is it?”

“That’s right. Yes, well, sort of. I’m a wedding photographer now. I worked the media circuit for a few years but then I met Jake,”

“Jake must be your husband,”

Tessa nodded.

“Well, that sounds wonderful. As long as you still get to do what you love most,” she glanced at her thin-band watch. “Aargh. I want to talk to you some more and catch up! I’ve gotta run. I set this stuff to dry.” She shoved an arm into her tote and fumbled around. Finally, she fished out a crumpled business card. “This is my gallery. It’s small and nothing too impressive but if you have a chance to stop by – with baby, of course – I would love to show you around and catch up again.”

“That sounds great,” Tessa said.

“Oh yay! What perfect timing. So glad I bumped into you!” she said, wrapping her thin arms around Tessa. “You wouldn’t by any chance know where they keep the apples, do you? I don’t go food shopping much.”

Tessa gave a small laugh. “Apples would be on that side. Against the wall,” she said pointing towards the produce section of the market.

The woman smiled at Tessa then startled her with a perfect wink. She crunched her fingers up and down in a little wave.

Tessa took a look at the business card: Braxton Gardner.

What an interesting name, Tessa thought. It sounds like two last names. I kind of like it.

As a peace offering, Tessa had decided to bake fresh chocolate chip cookies. She bought an extra bag of dark chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. The rest of the ingredients were staples of their house like sugar, eggs, milk, baking powder, and of course flour.

She set Shale in his crib and gave him a bottle. He was a fairly self-sufficient baby even as an infant which Tessa was indescribably grateful for. He just wanted to be carried and hugged most of the time and since she opt for overfeeding him, there was not much cause for him to cry for his milk. She checked his diaper religiously with quick finger runs and so he was most often comfortable and dry in that regard. She wondered how working mothers were able to take care of their babies with the same care. She had often heard that it was a full time job raising a child, but this was ridiculous. Taking care of Shale kept her almost as busy and physically active as working a bar mitzvah; except it was harder because she had to do it day in and day out, and not just on the weekends. At the same time, she over packed her day with things for Shale and things for herself. During the first couple of months at home with the baby she began to feel like her brain was turning to mush. She noticed that simple words that she knew were part of her vocabulary did not as easily come to mind as they used to, or as they should have.

“What’s that word that means the same as careless but worse?” she asked while she spoke to her cousin over the phone.

“Neglect?”

“Yes! That’s it. Thank you. I hate it when I can’t think of a word.”

So to counter what she termed the onset of baby brain, she read the entire newspaper every morning. She kept the news on in the background while she did the morning chores but she forced herself to turn it off once the news became trivial and/or repetitive. She loved all kinds of music, but she had never learned to truly appreciate classical music so she was on a self-education plan which consisted of perusing history, commentary and summary books from which she would list, chronologically, the various composers that she had to cover within a one-week span. She kept copious notes and an history timeline-and-outline-at-a-glance drawn on butcher paper.

She changed the beater on the standing mixer and collected the various measuring cups and spoons that she would need for the recipe. She uncapped the cylindrical cardboard canister where she kept the flour. The paper jar had originally contained Christmas cookies that an old coworker had given her to express her thanks for getting a ride home to East New York during the 2005 MTA subway strike. She had only worked with Kedist for two weeks because Tessa was temping at a hedge fund firm for extra holiday cash. Tessa liked seeing the green and gold stripes of the cookie canister.

It had been over a three-hour drive to East New York from midtown due to the holiday traffic. Kadist had originally planned to walk across the Manhattan bridge and through Brooklyn to East New York in the 20-degree cold so that she could catch a train to Washington DC the next morning with her fiancé. It was impossible to find a cab considering the countless other people in the similar situations.

Upon first glance at the dusty white contents of the cookie can, Tessa knew that she did not have enough flour. She looked at the kitchen clock – the market would close in fifteen minutes. It was not too late for her to return to the grocery store to buy the extra flour if she left now; she had plenty of time. But Shale had curled up like a kitten on the floor of the crib. She would have to quickly bundle him for the cool Bay Area evening.

I have got to have more flour around here somewhere, she thought. She checked each cabinet three times, in different orders as if switching up the sequence might reveal a spot she had overlooked the first couple of times. In the dry goods cabinet were glass canisters filled with grains, beans and a white powder. She sampled a pinch. Tastes like nothing. Guess that means it tastes like flour. It’s gotta be flour. What else could it be?

She poured the balance of a cup and a half into the dry mixing bowl. The new flour was a brownish yellow next to the first cup and a half of flour from the cookie canister. This must be unbleached. Does flour discolor when it’s old? Can it go bad? She answered ‘no’ to both of her questions.

She continued with the recipe and licked the cookie dough from the metal mixers.

That’s damn good cookie dough, she thought to herself.

She pulled back the sticky side tabs of the white wrinkly plastic and unfolded the front end. Before she could unfold an unused diaper from the bottom shelf that she knew to use as a shield by placing it like a cap over Shale’s front legs, he peed. A single, small fountain squirt into the air, a self-celebration of urinal fireworks.

Baby boys, she thought. Always trying to pee first chance they get. Tessa lifted Shale’s chubby ankles with one hand and deftly pulled the soiled disposable from underneath his bottom. fed him and placed him back in the crib. As she washed the baking dishes she tried to list the reasons why she enjoyed baking more than cooking. It was a conversation she had now and again with her mom and friends who seemed to be divided into bakers and cooks.

“I just like the smell and feel of baking ingredients more than cooking stuff. Like sliding your fingers through cold, powdery soft flour you just can’t get the same kind of thing with cooking. Plus too, I don’t like the way some sauces and things smell,” Tessa said.

“I don’t like baking because everything needs to be exact. A cup of this, ¼ teaspoon of that. I can be more creative with cooking and improvise as you go along,” her friend said.

“There in lies the difference. I see that as cheating. First of all, you don’t have to be perfectly exact with baking. If it something you have made before you can alter the amount of ingredients and substitute or leave stuff out. But with baking, there’s this prep period in which you do everything necessary before popping it into the oven; but once you slide it into the heat then there’s no turning back. You’ve just gotta wait, hope and see how it turns out. It has an element of anticipation. Cooking doesn’t have that. You can be cooking the meat or a sauce and monitor its progress and do taste tests as you go along, and if its not to your liking then you can meddle and add this and that. It’s just not as fun to me.”

It was such a long tirade that her friend simply responded with a ‘huh’.

The anticipation associated with chocolate chip cookies was not long: thirteen to fourteen minutes at most. And as Tessa quickly unboxed and heated up dinner for the night, she mentally rehearsed at least the first line of apology that she would offer her husband, “I’m sorry. I over reacted.” She would say simply then let the rest of the words follow on their own.

She tried calling his cell to find out if he was on his way home but it went straight to voicemail. Probably not charged, she thought.

The timer went off. With mitted hand she pulled out the slightly burnt rack on which the cookie sheet rested. The individual mounds that she had placed three inches apart had become one part-cookie glob. Only scattered thumbprints of the golden dough had risen. The rest was a paper thin crisp bubbling with spots of sticky browness.

“Shit, fuck, motherfucker!” she muttered as she threw the hot sheet into the crammed sink. “What in God’s name…”

She turned the oven knob to the far left. I can’t believe this, she thought. Try to do something nice and fuck that up too.

She waited until the alien cookie sheet stopped bubbling then she dumped it into a plastic trash bag.

Guess there won’t be no peace offering in this family tonight, Tessa thought. She removed dinner from the microwave and saucepans and onto ceramic plates.

Her plans for making up with Jake were ruined. She didn’t feel like baking something and cleaning the house anymore. She didn’t give a damn if the place was clean.

By the time Jake walked through the front door dinner had been heated, served, eaten and rewrapped for refrigeration. The baby was sleeping and Tessa’s remorse had cooled and any apologies put away as easily as the leftovers.

“Sorry couldn’t call again,” Jake said. “Phone died.”

“Yup,” Tessa said not taking her eyes off of the television screen. She was taking an opposite approach to her reaction the night before. If this is the way he wanted to do it…she thought smugly to herself.

“I had to go to practice. Decided to take up position as coach.”

“I figured. Great for you. Dinner’s in the fridge.”

“Are you upset?” Jake asked.

“Upset? Why would I be upset? No. I think it’s great that you coach the team. You’d be great at that.”

“Practice is every day,” Jake said.

“Yup. Well, figured that too.”

“That’s OK by you?”

“You’re not really asking me that now, are you? It’s just stupid to act like I have a say in the matter when you already told me you took up the position,” she snapped.

Jake was relieved that an oozing of truth came out. She was obviously tight lipped and pissed. She just needed an opportunity to say what was on her mind, and she always did.

“I can always reconsider,” he said.

“No, no, no. I’m sick of being the bad guy. Can’t let those kids down. Those are the kids you are there for. That’s y