The Crazy School by Cornelia Read Read Free Book Online Page B

the guy. But he seemed smart and he’d toughed it out at least a couple of years here.
    I wondered why. Did it help, all this wallowing, or did he just have nowhere else to go?
    Gerald sighed.
    “Go on, tell her,” said Mindy.
    He rubbed his palms down his thighs, and said “I thought Wiesner was doing really well in my class last spring. For a few weeks there, he was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed—asking if he could do extra reading, swinging by my classroom so he could walk me to lunch. Gold stars every Friday, let me tell you.”
    Dhumavati and Mindy nodded.
    “And?” I said.
    “And this,” he said, reaching up to pop his four front teeth free, holding the plate out toward me, pink and white plastic bits glistening at the center of his palm.
    “Wiesner walked right over and sat down on my desk one morning, happy as could be. I looked up, and he slammed a fi st into me with all his weight behind it. No warning, no reason.
    He gave me a big grin the whole time, like he’d asked if he could help bang chalk dust out of the erasers.”
    Gerald looked twenty years older without his teeth. Lisped a little, too.
    “Gerald,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
    He dropped his eyes and gentled his false teeth back into place. Looking back at me he said, “I don’t want to see you lose your faith in anyone, but please be careful, Madeline.”
    There was a needlepoint pillow next to him on Dhumavati’s sofa, the words those who do not remember the past are 4 9
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    condemned to repeat it picked out in white on a dark red ground.
    Gerald fussed with it, giving the thing little pats on either end to plump up the down.
    “Let’s end here,” said Dhumavati. “We’ll have our fi rst meeting tomorrow at six-thirty sharp.”
    I looked at the clock on her mantel and bolted for the door.
    Quarter after ten, with a good twenty miles of mountain road between here and Dean.
    On the bright side, I had recently inherited a Porsche.
    I drove to the edge of campus, impatient with the school’s fi ve-mile-an-hour speed limit and egged on by the Violent Femmes in my tape deck, bass and volume turned way the hell up.
    My headlights fl ashed across the school gate’s stone pillars, the arc of rusted butterfl ies above them, the Santangelo motto: free to be!
    Cha. More like ARBEIT MACHT FREI .
    The second I’d passed beneath this odious load of hooey, I stomped on the gas and redlined toward Dean.
    The Porsche shifted hard and steered harder.
    I loved the damn thing, and I made it blister through every last turn.
    Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
    When I fi nally burst into our apartment, Dean was crashed out asleep on our sofa.
    He’d set the table with fl owers and candles—now wilted and guttering, respectively.
    Linen napkins. Polished silver. A bottle of wine. The fancy yellow-rimmed dinner plates we’d received from Aunt Julie for 5 0
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    our fi rst anniversary—French ones with old fox-hunting scenes in the middle.
    Had he meant all this for a celebration? Maybe the interview had gone well?
    He opened his eyes and looked up at me. From the expression on his face, the answer was a resounding no—more like this fi nery was an effort to cushion the blow of bad news.
    “I am so sorry to be this late,” I said. “So so so so sorry.”
    “I got worried when you didn’t call.”
    “They had to take that kid Mooney to the hospital,” I said.
    “He punched out a window outside my classroom and cut himself all to shit, and then the faculty meeting got postponed.”
    “It’s okay.” He got up and started bringing food out from the kitchen.
    I poured us each a glass of wine. “How was your interview?”
    “Thought I had it in the bag until the very last part,” he said, putting down a platter of roasted chicken and carrots.
    I took a sip of wine, then started arranging food on our plates while he went back for the