Sunday, January 1, 2006

Out on a Limb of the Tree of Knowledge

I never would have known my arts and crafts teacher was having a secret love affair with a janitor if my mother hadn’t thrown me out of the house on the first day of summer vacation.

I had decided to catch up on the television shows I’d missed during fourth grade. My dad says we don’t need a color TV, since only Walt Disney and “Bonanza” are in color, so we still have a black and white Philco. I turned it on and flipped through a G.I. Combat book while the picture tube warmed up. Finally, “Love of Life” came on. Meg was telling Bruce she was glad she had stolen him away from Vanessa because he made her feel complete. This discussion started last February, when I was home with the measles.

Then, “Search for Tomorrow” came on. Joanne sat in her kitchen for fifteen minutes with Marge and Stu, her neighbors, complaining that life wasn’t worth living now that Keith was dead. After Marge went home, Stu told Joanne he was aching with desire for her, but Marge would never give him his freedom.

Most boys don’t like these shows, but I do. They teach you a lot about being a grownup.

My mother doesn’t agree with this opinion. During “The Secret Storm,” she came barging into the living room and stood right in front of the TV with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot, saying, “It certainly is a beautiful day outside.”

I glanced out the window. “It sure is,” I said, and moved over on the couch so I could watch Mr. Ames explain to his daughter that he was going to marry his dead wife’s sister.

Mom leaned over and switched off the TV. “This concludes our broadcast day,” she said as the picture shrank into a white dot on the black screen. She picked up my comic book from the coffee table. “Take a walk and see what’s going on in the schoolyard.”

I flopped backwards on the couch and groaned. “I spend all year at school. Why should I go back on the first day of vacation?”

“Your education doesn’t stop when summer starts,” she said, pulling open the front door. “And children learn through playful interaction.“

“Great. When can I come home?”

“‘When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul.’” My mother is also my Sunday school teacher, which takes a lot of the fun out of my life.

“What does that mean?”

“It means goodbye.” She slapped the G.I. Combat comic book in my hand as I walked out the door. I rolled it into a tube and shoved it in my back pocket.

Nothing much was going on in the schoolyard except a game of stickball, an apple fight, a bicycle race and a bunch of kids flying a kite. I walked behind the school to the maple tree next to the teacher’s parking lot. Last year, someone made a ladder by nailing some boards to the trunk. I figured that climbing up and reading my comic book might give me some peace and quiet.

A Chevrolet Bel Air was parked in the gravel under the tree. It looked like Mrs. Wert’s car, but I couldn’t imagine why she would come to school during vacation. She hates school, and hates children, too. I think that’s why she’s such a terrible arts and crafts teacher. Before Thanksgiving, she forced us to bake Pilgrims we’d made out of clay. Something was wrong with the oven, and they came out looking like dinosaurs with flowerpots on their heads.

I looked through the window to see if it was Mrs. Wert’s car. The only clue was a paper bag in the back seat. I was wondering if it might be full of tinfoil snowflakes or painted clamshell ashtrays, when I heard footsteps in the gravel. Over the hood of the car, I saw a man walking from the back door of the school, carrying a giant cardboard box that hid his face.

Then Mr. Kruelski, the janitor, came out the door, waving some papers. He hollered, “You dropped these!”

The guy with the box turned around, but it wasn’t a guy; it was Mrs. Wert. I’d thought it was a man because I couldn’t see her face, and I’d never heard of a lady teacher wearing pants before. She bent her knees and put the box down. It looked heavy, probably full of those burned Pilgrims or soap statues that nobody took home.

I ducked behind the car and listened to her footsteps crunch in the gravel. Looking around the fender, I saw her talking to Mr. Kruelski in the middle of the parking lot. I could hardly hear her, but I was pretty sure that what she said was:

“Gus, oh Gus, how I dread this long summer away from you.”

Then, Mr. Kruelski said something like, “Oh, Josephine, my heart is in agony because I won’t be able to kiss you in the mop closet until September.”

Just then, a cesspool truck drove by, making it even harder to hear. But I could see Mrs. Wert’s lips moving, which helped me understand what she was saying:

“I shudder at the thought of staying home every day with my dopey husband, Mr. Wert, reading about how to make things out of toothpicks, while you’re stuck here fixing radiators and the water fountain by the nurse’s office that squirts everyone in the face like Clarabell the Clown.”

By the time the truck turned the corner, they were walking toward me, Mr. Kruelski carrying the box while Mrs. Wert jingled her key ring. I slid backwards through the gravel and crawled behind the maple tree. Peeking carefully, I saw Mr. Kruelski waiting for Mrs. Wert to unlock the trunk of the car. Even though they had their backs to me, I could sort of hear them.

Mr. Kruelski said, “This summer will drag on and on like an episode of ‘The Loretta Young Show,’ which stinks because she’s not nearly as pretty as you are, Jeanette.”

“Josephine.”

“Whoops.”

“Say, mister, are you also in love with Jeanette Pelligrino, the kindergarten teacher?”

Mr. Kruelski was in big trouble now. He took his time putting the box in Mrs. Wert’s trunk, so he could think up an excuse.

“My sweet Twinkie,” he finally said, “I accidentally called you Jeanette because that was my dead wife’s name.” It was almost impossible to hear this, because the door to Mrs. Wert’s trunk was raised, and I couldn’t see them. I climbed up the wooden rungs nailed to the tree for a better view, but a breeze rustling through the leaves made it hard to hear.

“You poor man,” Mrs. Wert said. “I’d sacrifice anything for you.”

“Me, too. I’d throw away everything I’ve a got – my bottle of glass cleaner and the cannister of green stuff that I dump on the floor when I sweep up after those snotty children that track mud into the halls and don’t use the wastebasket – just to hold you in my arms.”

This drove Mrs. Wert crazy. She grabbed the door to the trunk and slammed it shut. It was loud, but not loud enough to block out all of what she said:

“Kiss me right now, Gus.”

I needed to hear better, so I grabbed the big limb that stretched a few feet over Mrs. Wert’s car and pulled myself up. While I was climbing, old Mr. Nussbaum drove by in his Dodge. It had a broken muffler that sounded like a machine gun, so I shinnied out further, trying to hear Mr. Kruelski.

“Kiss you here, in broad daylight?” he said. “Where there could be kids spying on us, maybe a blabbermouthed boy who would tattle to Mr. Rutherford, the principal, and we’d lose our jobs?”

“To hell with our rotten jobs! You’re just a janitor who scrubs the toilets with Ajax the Foaming Cleanser after kids throw up in them because the food in the cafeteria is so disgusting even dogs wouldn’t eat it.”

By this time, I was practically right over their heads. I could have heard really well, but Mr. Nussbaum’s noisy car was still nearby.

“And I despise those bratty children,” Mrs. Wert said. “Especially the boys. They burp on purpose and call me Liver Wert behind my back. That’s not what I went to college for. Kiss me now, I demand it!”

Mr. Kruelski said, “Do I dare? Your teacher lips are inviting, but my janitor heart says be careful.”

I tried to pull myself further on the branch, but the back of my pants snagged on something. It almost made me miss Mrs. Wert saying, “Kiss me, or I’ll tell Mr. Rutherford how you spend so much time cleaning the girls’ room. Everybody knows you’re up to something in there.”

I felt another tug at my hip and looked over my shoulder. The comic book sticking out of my back pocket was caught on a thin, bent branch. As I reached for it, the branch sprang, catapulting the comic book into the air.

Mrs. Wert and Mr. Kruelski both turned around when issue #53 of G.I. Combat thudded onto the roof of the Chevrolet. They looked up, and I was caught. The loud car was gone, and I didn’t have any trouble hearing Mr. Kruelski.

“Get down outta there,” he yelled. “You’ll fall and hurt yourself.” Then he said to Mrs. Wert, “I keep meaning to take those boards off the tree.” He pointed at me and started to yell again, but Mrs. Wert said, “I’ll take care of this.” Mr. Kruelski grumbled and walked back to the school.

I thought Mrs. Wert would yell at me, too, but she didn’t. She took the comic book off her car and stood on her toes, trying to hand it up to me. I leaned over, but couldn’t reach far enough. “I’ll leave it here for you,” she said, and set it at the bottom of the tree.

“Enjoy your summer,” she said as she got in her car. She backed out from under the tree and drove through the parking lot to the street. When she stopped at the corner, she stuck her head out the window and waved at me with a big smile on her face.

Her phoney grin didn’t fool me. She wanted me to believe that the janitor was only helping her take some things home for the summer. But as she drove away, she’d be figuring out how to get rid of her husband and tell her children that Mr. Kruelski would be their new father, so they’d better learn to use the wastebaskets and flush the toilet.

My mother is right. Your education doesn’t stop when summer starts.





Copyright 2006, Frank Mullen III

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