Looking After Quinn by Dan Peck

Looking After Quinn by Dan Peck

Jay and I ran in the early mornings, when my wife was already at the gym, when Quinn was still asleep, when the air was cold and the sun had just begun to crown. We were childhood friends who had gone to the same Catholic school and ended up teaching at the same public school, and our path alongside the railroad tracks was dotted in fall with leaves that Jay made a game of crushing. He would dart from my side to bring his foot down on one, turning his heel slightly to grind it, and I would watch, usually silent until he jogged back. He taught English, I taught math.

One morning, before our run, I came into the kitchen to see the newspaper lying open on the table, a blank post-it marking one page, and immediately I saw what Cindy had wanted me to see. It was the usual scandal involving Catholic schools and Catholic priests, but this school was the one where my mother had wanted Cindy and me to send Quinn.

"And now you're thinking about what would have happened if you'd done it," Jay said on our run. "Right?"

"Of course," I said. "It disgusts me."

"But it also satisfies you," he reflected. I turned to look at him, my arms pumping.

"What?"

"What you have is something most people can only dream of," he said. "Validation. Cleanly justified anger. Your mother was wrong, you were right. You win. On some level it must feel good."

"Not that simple, Jay. Besides, what about Cindy?"

"What about her?"

"She left the post-it blank instead of writing me a little note like she usually does. Maybe she's angry at me for almost agreeing to send him there."

He considered this. "That may be, but that's still part of the satisfaction. To her the article is proof that she's right. Righter than you even."

This was what Jay did, turned situations into opportunities for mental exercise, and for a second I wondered whether this time he was right. When I first saw the article I had been taken with an impulse to cut it out and send it to my mother, but I'd also read the things he'd done, this priest, and for some reason I couldn't help imagining Quinn in those situations, Quinn being photographed by the clergyman, Quinn sitting in a presbytery, his mouth stained clumsily with wine he'd been told was fruit punch. The counterfactual was realizing itself in my head, and whether or not Jay was right I knew I had to dismiss what he said.

"It's not satisfying. It's troubling. That we were so close to, I don't know, to choosing that fate for Quinn. It's scary."

He raised his shoulders. "I didn't say entirely satisfying. I said on some level."

I was always amazed with the manner in which he spoke—it was detached, almost, as if his voice were freed from the physical constraints of the run. I spoke unevenly, cramming my words into short bursts of breath, but he might as well have been in the classroom with his leg up on a chair, musing as he tossed and caught chalk absently in one hand.

Then the train came and like always we both fell silent, listening to the pumping pistons, the rattling steel, the whistle that emptied the air of all other sound. Jay never stomped leaves when a train was passing, he only stared deeply into the sides of the boxcars, moving his lips as he read the graffiti. His expression was the same regardless of what it said. Penis, welcome to shitsville, learn to love—it didn't matter. He stared as if he were weighing them all equally, giving them some consideration he felt they were for whatever reason due.

After the last boxcar passed we finished the run in silence and went to school. That whole morning I taught quickly, leaving no pauses for questions between examples, using my shirtsleeve to scrub chalk off the board. It was my way of putting the article out of mind, of keeping myself from imagining Quinn in anymore frightening situations. Once or twice I let myself go off on a tangent to fill time, pointing to a naked tree outside and likening it to a fractal, telling a quick story about my college class on fractal geometry, beginning to explain what fractals were before shaking my head and saying:

"But I suppose that's beyond the scope."

This last one made two girls near the back snicker. It was a phrase I had picked up in college, beyond the scope, but to the students it marked me, it had become mine. It entered into their impersonations and jokes about me, but they didn't seem to realize that I was in on it, that I knew they snickered when I said it, that I knew they tallied in their notebooks the number of utterances I made in a single class. For some reason this delighted me. At any other job I would have abandoned the phrase years ago, but here it seemed vital that my usage be static, as though consistency of character was something the students depended on me for.

My break was right after lunch and that day, as on many, I spent part of it watching Jay lecture. It was an agreement we had, watching each other's lectures, a way of expanding our consciousness. I slipped into his classroom a few minutes late and leaned with folded arms against the granite wall's wide bricks.

"Who is Caliban?" he said. "Is he just a monster? A hideous bundle of impulses? Or is there more to him? Please turn to Act three, scene two."

Like most English teachers I knew Jay praised literary subtlety while in the same breath asking the most heinously leading questions, but I did not care. I was here to absorb facts. Shakespeare born 1564, dead 1616, The Tempest, a romance, his penultimate. I did not do the reading.

I was also here because of the way Jay spoke, not about literature but about everything else. He was swift and improvisational, spinning out theories, dispensing arcane advice, almost none of which had anything to do with the reading. He read the Caliban speech aloud and mentioned something about its poetry, but before the students could get this down in their notebooks he had switched gears to another famous speech, Prospero's.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on," he quoted, his leg up on a chair, the stance by which students marked him. I had a phrase, he had a stance. "What does that mean? As dreams are made on."

A hand went up. "Is it that we're the sum total of our aspirations?"

"Expand on that, Wayne."

"I mean—is it that—I guess I don't know."

"What Wayne seems to be saying, everyone, is that by 'dream' Shakespeare meant something like 'life goal.' Is that right Wayne?"

"Sure?" Wayne made a confused face and raised his shoulders, looking to his classmates for help.

"So then," Jay began strolling around the desk at the front of the room, "what Wayne would have us believe is that we are no more than what we aspire to be." A silence. "Correct, Wayne?"

"Well, yeah. I mean yeah, that's what Shakespeare's saying."

"Unpack that."

Wayne blinked. "Well. So. I guess for example when I become an adult I personally want to work as a—"

Jay held up a palm and said sternly, "Never tell anyone your dreams, Wayne." He wheeled around and began writing it on the board. "That goes for all of you. Never…tell…anyone…your dreams. What do we gain from it?" He brushed the chalk from his hands and resumed pacing. "When you tell someone your dreams you socially solidify two possibilities for yourself. You will either be a success, or a failure."

I felt myself grinning. There was something attractive about these little performances, like watching a standup comic, and sometimes, when I was home alone, I found myself improvising similar monologues to the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in hand.

He put his palms on the table and looked out into the rows of puzzled faces.

"Understood?" he said.

#

This kept Quinn out of my mind until I was back home, speaking quietly with Cindy and watching him play video games in the other room.

"Do you want to talk to him?" she asked.

"I would, but what am I supposed to say? Hey buddy, sorry for almost sending you to a messed up school. Hey pal, Nana almost ruined your life."

"No. I don't know. Good touch bad touch? It can't hurt to reiterate."

"But then he'll ask why we're telling him again and we'll have to say it."

"Because Nana almost ruined your life."

I nodded. Her eyes were fixed on Quinn, one hand playing nervously with her necklace. She looked worried. What images of Quinn had been playing through her mind, I wondered, and were they the same as mine?

"Why do I feel like we're supposed to say something to him?"

"It's perfectly natural," I said, taking on what I felt to be a manly pragmatism, a comfortingly masculine mode of response, "to feel a little guilty for almost sending him there."

Quinn steered the control hard to the right, his whole body tilting. She kept her eyes fixed. "I'm worried," she said.

I decided to try for something different, a moment of levity. "You want to know what I thought about doing?" I said. "When I saw the article?"

"What?"

I leaned in toward her and smiled, almost whispering. "Cutting it out and sending it to her."

"Your mother?" She turned to face me. It was the first time in the conversation she'd looked away from Quinn, and I expected her to laugh. Here is something ridiculous, I thought, something we can make fun of ourselves for. But when I nodded, grinning, she only tightened the grip on her necklace and turned back.

She told me I should take him for a drive.

"Where are we going?" he asked once we’d pulled out into the street.

I shrugged. "Where do you want to go?"

"Home."

I looked at him, then back at the road. "Sorry, bud."

"This was mom's idea," he speculated, and when I didn't respond he exhaled and sank into his chair. "What's she having you talk to me about?"

I faltered. "How's school?"

"Fine."

"Good," I said, and tapped the steering wheel. Then, after a pause, "Are you sure?"

"Do I have to tell you what I'm learning about?"

"Go for it."

"Well I don't want to, but do I have to?"

"Sure," I shrugged, "Why not."

He eyed me suspiciously. "Fractions."

"Awesome, bud. That's great. Three fifths times four fifths."

"Twelve twenty-fifths."

"One third times three fourths."

"Three twelfths."

"Don't forget to reduce."

"One fourth. Sorry."

"Very good."

We drove home.

"What did you guys talk about?" Cindy asked as we were getting into bed.

"The usual stuff. School."

"Did he say anything odd?"

"No," I said, not even looking at her. Manly dismissiveness, I thought, this was my tack, this was what she needed from me.

She settled into the covers. "How did you first feel," she said. "When you saw it?"

"The article? Oh come on Cindy. Let's drop it." She looked at me, waiting for an answer. "OK, fine. Angry," I threw out, making it clear I was saying this only because I knew I had to. "Let's not dwell on it anymore."

Her hands were crossed over her stomach. She looked up at the ceiling, reflective. "I was triumphant," she said. "That was my first feeling. Isn't that awful? I think part of me wanted to send it to your mother too."

I wondered whether I should tell her abut the phrase Jay had used, "cleanly justified anger."

"But then all of a sudden I thought, what if I'm wrong? Quinn has been acting strange, and for all I know this is happening at his school too.” After a silence she went on, "It was almost as though I expected to be punished for feeling that way at first. Triumphant. How could I feel that way about something so awful and not get punished?"

"Things will be OK," I said, rubbing her arm and rolling onto my side, indicating, I thought, that I was ready to sleep. It wasn't important that she heed my indication; what mattered was that she notice it, observe my posture of masculine dismissiveness. "Let's not worry too much. Quinn is at a very good school."

"No I know," she said. "It's just, I'm worried, Robert. I'm not sure why I'm worried, but I am." Then, in a lower voice, she finished, "I think he's been locking himself in the bathroom to cry."

She looked at me, waiting for this to sink in.

"How do you know?" I said. "Are you sure?"

"Not sure, but I walked by once and thought I heard him sniffling. Plus he had the fan on, to cover up the noise probably, and his eyes were red when he came out."

I felt my face mirroring hers in concern. Then I waved a hand. "Kids will do that."

"I don't know, Rob."

"Kids cry, things happen at school, they cry. Let's not let our minds run wild."

I reassumed my ready-for-sleep position and was closing my eyes when she broke out: "Have you been imagining things like this? I see Quinn back as a kindergartener on that priest's knee, bobbing happily with a Dum Dum in his mouth, then reaching back into the priest's pocket for more candy while the priest adjusts his—you know." A silence. "Have you imagined stuff like that?"

I thought about rolling back over to look at her, to touch her and reassure her. The ceiling fan spun quickly, and I felt the space between us.

"No," I said.

#

Some weeks later Jay told me he had a theory about all this news involving the Church.

"The point is that hideous things create a need for a God. People say how can there be a God with all the horrible things happening in the world, but if you ask me it's horrible things that create God in the first place."

He did a little skip forward to crush a leaf. "What that could mean," he said, returning to my side, "is that the Church is highlighting the hideous in order to make more people believe in God. That's one idea."

It had gotten colder, and fog hung over the path. I was silent. Did he realize how this sort of talking made me feel? Of course there were things about the past few weeks he did not know. I hadn't told him about how I'd caught Cindy listening in on a phone conversation Quinn was having, or about how when Quinn and I made her breakfast in bed one morning she had hugged him a little too hard, kissing his cowlicked hair, almost crying.

"For God's sake, Cindy, let the boy breathe." I had actually said this. I was attempting to be the practical one, and I think Cindy saw this. Once or twice when she addressed me she appeared to be calculating something, speaking carefully and gauging my facial expressions, trying, I think, to get me to admit I was worried.

Then there were the times I'd woken up to hear her talking in her sleep. She'd never done this before, as far as I knew, and now many nights I found myself lying awake, images of Quinn running through my head, Quinn's hand being lightly grazed by the priest's, Quinn wincing from the flash of the priest's camera.

We came to the wooden bridge and, putting his finger to the railing, Jay dragged a line into the thin coat of frost.

"But that doesn't really work," he said, "Because the hideousness here isn't dramatic enough to create a surge in belief. What you need are large-scale disasters, deaths, nationally shared psychological traumas. A handful of pedophiles just won't do it, and I'm sure the Church realizes that. The other idea, and the one I like most, is that it's a lesson in humility."

"Humility?"

He nodded. "We have to be able to humble ourselves, Robbie. Come on, you went to Catholic school. That's always been something the Church has said. 'Humble yourself.' And what could be more humbling than having to accept the Eucharist from something so universally hated? Than having to confess to that?"

We were running through thick fog, and the branches that stretched over us looked like cracks in a gray stone tablet. I was thankful when the train came and Jay fell silent, but the silence was thin this time, it felt fragile. This may have been because the fog was too dense for him to be able to read the graffiti, and sure enough when the last car passed, he spoke again. Without wanting to, I listened.

#

By the time my eyes were fully open Cindy had already flung off the covers and sprung out of bed, hissing:

"He's going in there."

I blinked a few times before seeing what she had seen. The hallway light was on, and that meant Quinn was awake. We got on our hands and knees and listened with our ears to the crack beneath the bathroom door.

"Do you hear it?" she whispered.

The fan was on, that was true, and there seemed to be some noise, occasional sobs or gasps, a large heave of breath that petered out into an almost inaudible tremor.

Cindy started. "I'm going to ask him what's wrong."