On The Face Of It

The end of spring will mark Rose’s sixteenth year at the high school-six in its classrooms, ten in its basement. Rose listens to AM radio alone while she files paperwork. Ten years and she still has not decorated down there: the radio, two coffee mugs, a clock with a sweeping second hand, and four naked cinder block walls that are cool in the summer, icy in the winter. A city block of filing cabinets dwarf Rose’s desk, its oak worn light and faded. Paper stacks grow like weeds from the desktop and sprout from its feet. A decade, she frowns to herself; a decade in these catacombs of bureaucracy.

She is unable to put a date on it, but some time ago, Rose resigned herself to this solitary life. At least she has gotten fast in the mornings: hairpin, toothbrush, coffee. No makeup. No outfit. The teachers who used to come downstairs to engage her in the social minutiae that lubricated long days, now they simply nod and shyly smile; Rose senses that many avoid lingering eye contact, quickly heading to this filing cabinet or that. They feign another grin and start back upstairs. In truth, Rose figures, most teachers already keep the most useful charts and forms in personal filing cabinets in their rooms.

It had not always been this way, she thought. Rose could remember when she went out for happy hour with co-workers and friends, a martini and a plate of appetizers guillotining the day from the night. And the men. Oh, the men! How safe they had made her feel, holding her close to them, enveloping her body and her limbs, devouring her with their mass and strength. Rose reluctantly dwells on these nights spent with her men. They seemed to have faded in her mind. She now kept only isolated images, spoken words, remembered faces; time stole the details as it passed, slick as a pickpocket.

During that peak of men and martinis, Rose visualized her future as one clear, palpable evening: the bright ashen moon above, she lies on clean white linens listening to her husband softly read her to sleep, the fresh scrubbed children tucked neatly into their beds. But that future has become a burden, no longer an idea that inspires, but rather a Sisyphean device, a punishment she knows not what for.

Judy Davis is fresh out of college with a pretty mouth, straight teeth, and a ponytail. Rose is not sure, but she thinks that Judy works on the second floor: Geometry and Basic Calculus. Although introductions have long been neglected, she has acquired considerable skill at gleaming information from the papers on the desk. Rose lifts her head to see Judy bound down the stairs, her ponytail electric with the stride. Judy gazes openmouthed at the maze of cabinets. Her eyes, blank with apprehension, eventually fall on Rose, who can not help but take a measure of pride in the young girl’s panic. After all, Rose had accumulated, sorted, and organized dissonant nothingness into this sight of efficiency.

Yes, Judy confirms, she teaches Geometry and Basic Calculus. How did she know? Rose coyly dismisses it as “a good guess,” with a smile and a shrug. She stretches this first “good guess” into assumptions about Judy’s life. Judy’s replies come like an official deposition. Beads of sweat develop below her saccharine hairline. Yes, she was married. Her husband is young, stubborn, and working hard to make partner. No, she does not yet have children. But they are trying. Yes, they own a house, the better half of a row home in a recently gentrified area of town. The house, Judy nervously laughs, is “a work in progress.” Judy tells Rose that her husband is interviewing contractors to do brick pointing. Neither of the women knows what is involved in brick pointing, but they agree that it sounds dangerous. They share a laugh that ends awkwardly with Judy turning around and looking at the cabinets, still trying to decide where to begin.

“My fiancée died in the war,” Rose cries out. Judy slowly turns back toward her, her hand moves to her heart and her come-hither eyes turn down; Judy is self-conscious of her beauty, knowing that it is ill suited to such circumstances. She offers Rose genuine condolences, leaning over the desk and touching Rose’s wrists with both hands. How long it has been since Rose felt the warmth of another’s touch! For a moment, Rose allows herself to forget that it is an absolute lie, perfect in its untruth. Rose has no fiancée, never had. She has tasted little death in her life, certainly no one of such importance that the loss might devastate. Rose knows only vaguely of a war in the Middle East or was it the Balkans?

But for a fleeting moment, Rose watches as Judy cycles through the customary motions: the hand to the mouth, the slight shake of the head, again bringing her fingers to Rose’s wrists. A twinge of uneasiness shoots between Rose’s ears, the same twinge she feels when she thumbs through past lovers’ forgotten items: t-shirts, pants; Rose considers the twinge a sudden fright of displacement, of falling. Even more upsetting, Rose imagines that she is falling upwards. But Judy’s cathartic touch reminds her that she is, in fact, still in the high school basement. It reminds her that she is still Rose, the Rose that is not deserving of these quiet gestures of condolence.

Rose takes the scrap of paper from Judy’s clutched fist, a name scrawled there. As she rises to retrieve the file of the same name, Judy insists that she not trouble herself. “Really,” Judy insists, “it’s not that important.”

“No, no,” Rose hears herself say. “This is my job. Like it or not, I’ve just got to keep on. Really, losing myself in my work helps me forget.” She looks at Judy with immediacy and longing, “ya know?”

Judy shakes her head, embarrassed that she does not know. “But I can imagine,” she adds.

“You can’t imagine,” Rose snaps, shooting an accusatory look at Judy. “You can’t possibly imagine until you’re there, in the moment. Realizing what has happened to you, what you have become and what has become of you.”

“Well, you must be in a lot of pain. I mean, losing someone so dear to you like that. I may not be able to empathize, but I can sure sympathize,” Judy reaches her hands to Rose, palms up. Somewhat defensively: “I’ve lost people too.”

Rose continues to rifle through hanging folders, furiously moving from one file cabinet to the next. Judy follows Rose through the aisles, her eyes never wavering, insistent and concerned.

Rose cannot look at Judy. Tears begin to sneak into her mouth, cracking and choking her words, “You will never know what I’ve been through! You have no idea. No idea at all. You realize that maybe he was never there to begin with, that maybe he didn’t exist at all, and even if he did, he’s not coming back. I’ve been alone forever. Before him and after him.” Rose separates one file from the rest, raising it above her head. She looks directly at Judy: her button nose, beautiful green eyes now filling with tears, impossibly perfect hips and tits. “Here’s your fucking file. Go home to your perfect husband and your perfect brick pointed house. Go home and don’t come back!”

Rose throws the file at Judy. It explodes into a million loose leaves, spilling at her feet. Judy, now weeping openly, gets on all fours to rake the papers together. Not taking the time to straighten or organize, she clutches the nest of papers tight to her breast. “Well, for what it’s worth,” Judy manages through her tears, “I am sorry for you.” She quickly runs up the stairs, leaving a trail of stray sheets.

The woman who will soon be thirty-four watches the younger woman’s ponytail disappear through the door at the top of the steps. Rose’s shocked and muddy gaze settles on the forsaken papers. She gathers the scattered sheets and sits on the lowest step, working with the paper to make the stack flush. Rose struggles to rise, but she is exhausted. She tries to imagine the school upstairs. What will be said between teachers? What will go unsaid? Will she be fired? Rose sits on the step in the basement. She sits and thinks. While she thinks, she works anxiously with the paper stack, eventually ruining its trueness.

Over the next few weeks, some teachers come downstairs to ask if it is accurate-about her fiancée. Now committed, Rose stares at the work on her desk and must tell them they heard right. They all offer prayers. She just nods her thanks, trying to appear too busy to carry the conversation any farther. And she is busy. The school year always ends with a lot of freshly outdated forms and charts.