“That’s disgusting,” Jill said.
“So?” Clyde said, and I could sense Jill reigning in her restless middle finger, an inheritance from her mother, who’d flip off anyone who suggested that being an artist was crazy, artists starve.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” I told her. “It’s rarely produced these days.”
“It should be. I wrote a paper about it for my theater class. It would have been an “A” if I hadn’t screwed up the footnotes. Would you read it sometime?”
She gave me a half-shrug and a smile, her mother’s signature, irresistible move; over the years that half-shrug and smile had launched a thousand yes’s.
“Of course,’ I said, and waited for her next request: a ride to the mall, help with her chores, a “loan” of twenty bucks.
“Maybe when Mom…gets out…we could go see a play, something off-Broadway, something cool,” Jill said.
Clyde almost sneered. “Not on my dime.”
“Mom has her own money.”
“She’s got better things to spend it on than the theater.” He looked around the corridor, maybe searching for a locker to throw me up against. “So much like her goddamn mother.”
All I could think in response was “Fuck you,”—admittedly poor dialogue—so I said nothing.
“I need to talk to Mr. Marcino,” Clyde told Jill. “Go wait in the car.”
“Go wait in the car,” Jill mimicked, capturing the Cro-Magnon in Clyde’s delivery. She looked at me, bowed twice, and said, “Someday I’ll be on Broadway, too.”
Midnight Chair had been off-Broadway, but I didn’t correct her. She checked her phone and hurried down the corridor, as if late for a costume change required for the next scene.
“She drives me crazy,” Clyde said.
“She seems charming.”
“Big surprise you’d think so,” he said. “Just do me a favor, okay? Don’t encourage her with this acting crap and don’t believe a word Amy says. She’s gonna tell you she’s being stalked by Ronan …Ronan at the supermarket, Ronan in the panty aisle. Whatever she says, don’t buy into it. No one’s stalking her.”
“How can you be so certain? Even if it’s not Ronan …”
“It’s not. Don’t empower her delusions.”
“Look at you, Clyde, using a word like ‘empower.’ Did someone leave a copy of Psychology Today in the police station john?”
He smiled. “That’s the best you’ve got? I guess that’s why your name’s never in the credits. Just don’t make things worse, okay? You’ve been gone for years, hanging out in California banging actresses while people like me do the real work.”
“What makes you think I ‘bang’ actresses?”
“Actors?” He raised his eyebrows, enjoying the smirk.
“I’m just here because Amy needs me.”
“She needs a lot of things,” Clyde said, “and I’m the one who has to deal with her. I’m serious—if you tell her that maybe she did see Ronan, it’ll be a straight ride to shit-creek for all of us. No one’s stalking her. I’m the goddamn police in this town. If there was a problem, I’d know about it. Ronan’s dead—that’s all you need to say.”
His words—Ronan’s dead—were like a punch to the gut. I nodded, turned my face blank, let his words bounce around unmoored as I waited for him to leave.
“I’ll see you around,” he said, hitching up his belt like Andy Griffith on TV. “Remember, Pizza Boy—dead, dead, dead!”
He strode down the hall like a pro wrestler leaving the ring. Asshole, I thought, but it could have been worse. At least he didn’t stay.
At the reception desk a grey-haired volunteer checked me in, confirming my name on the visitor list and handing me a pass. I peeled off the little guest badge and stuck it to my chest, then headed toward the elevators and the third-floor Behavioral Health Unit, where Amy waited behind locked doors.
. . . . .
But first I stopped at the restroom, found an empty stall, and fell apart—thinking of Mr. Ronan, alone in some dingy apartment, a rope hanging from the base of a ceiling fan, the dark blades twirling shadows across the floor beneath his pointed, dangling feet, his eyes still open even after the neck-snap ends his troubled life.
Had I known, had there been a funeral, I would have gone. I would have paid my respects and let the world know how much this man had helped me, how much his life had mattered. Instead I stood sobbing in a hospital bathroom stall, pleading.
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
. . . . .
Voices from the Town: Adam R., Principal (retired), West Ocean High School, April 20XX
It’s a cliché of the profession but true: a teacher can change a student’s life. Donatello Marcino was bright enough, but too quiet, too passive and socially awkward, too reliant on his friendship with Amy Willingham to engage with the rest of the school. Yet somehow Mr. Ronan got through to him, encouraged him to join the Drama Club and write plays. Something sparked—the transformation was stunning. We were all so proud when Donny won the New Jersey Young Playwright’s Award—twice! He owed so much to Mr. Ronan, who was a passionate, dedicated teacher. I considered him a friend. What happened that last year was a tragedy. Amy’s accusations were completely ungrounded. Unforgiveable, really.
-7-
Though I knew better, I still expected something straight out of Cuckoo’s Nest, Big Nurse and teams of “colored” men in starched white uniforms, maybe even a young Danny DeVito bouncing around in his feral glory. Amy, of course, would be the Jack Nicholson character, riling up the league of mental defectives, if not to watch the World Series, then perhaps for a chardonnay and a pedicure, utterly adorable in that black ski cap Nicholson wore for half the film. And me? Maybe I was the Chief, the sly observer, the quiet rebel, the key to her escape—or perhaps something worse, like one of those dumb party girls who showed up at the end of the film, had a little fun, and left poor
