Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Mrs. Fisk's art class was Jamie's favorite class. It was a relatively easy course since the teacher graded more on enthusiasm than actual skill. This was lucky because while Jamie certainly had enthusiasm, he definitely lacked any sort of technique. For his end-of-term project, he was sculpting a disfigured monster head out of some kind of dry Play-Doh knock off. 

The clay itself was an ugly shade of booger green, which Jamie hoped would make the end effect even more disgusting. He didn't try to smooth the clay, giving the monster what looked like a rather mottled face of bad acne, and the bulging, rage-filled eyes had formed grotesquely under his overeager hands. The monster stared back at him menacingly, for a brief second making Jamie glad the head didn't have a body to go along with it.

Christina sat beside him. She was blessed with a bit more skill, but had a lot less enthusiasm for the subject. Her preferred artistic medium was words, and she handled the school's cheap Crayola watercolors with distain, as if she knew the landscape she was painting could be better conveyed with simple pen, paper, and pocket thesaurus.

Mrs. Fisk's class was loud and rambunctious. It had the double dose of being both at the end of the day and being an elective. Everybody was talking and laughing, working on their different art projects at their own pace. Mrs. Fisk herself was an elderly, free-spirited woman who believed childhood was the prime time for artistic expression -- it was the one time in life when a person was truly free of all their inhibitions. And as a woman who showed up to work every day wearing bandannas and peasant skirts that looked like they had once spent a summer at Woodstock, Mrs. Fisk looked like she'd never picked up those said inhibitions on her own way to becoming an adult.

She wandered around the tables of students, her benign blue eyes sparkling, inserting a kind comment here and a bit of helpful advice there. When she got around to Jamie's table, her eyes alighted on his sculpture. "Wonderful, Jamie, just wonderful! You've captured the creature's expression perfectly. He practically dares you to look at him!" 

Jamie smiled at the compliment -- the first he'd gotten from a teacher in months. However, Mrs. Fisk then clapped a startling hand on his and Christina's shoulders and said in an overly cheerful voice, "I've got a job for you two." She laughed at the identical baleful expressions on their faces. "Oh, it's not that bad. You only have to stay after school for an hour or two." The baleful expressions deepened. Stay after school?

"I need two volunteers to help me decorate the main hall for the art show on Friday. All you guys have to do is throw up some streamers and help me put up some of the larger paintings." She took their silence for yeses and traipsed back to the tables at the front of the class. Jamie mentally beat himself up for not thinking of an excuse fast enough. If they stayed after school to help Mrs. Fisk, he and Christina wouldn't have time to visit Lucas' grave.

Which was exactly what Mrs. Fisk wanted. On her way home every afternoon, Mrs. Fisk drove past the Catalina cemetery in her beat-up old red Hyundai. She saw Jamie and Christina out there at Lucas' graveside every day and she knew that after five months that kind of behavior just wasn't healthy. She'd talked to Mr. Fisk about it and he'd agreed. "A boy his age shouldn't dwell on death, he should be out getting into scrapes… Though it's a damn shame," Jerry had added, downing a swig of beer, "that a family as fine and as well-respected as the Hendricks got torn apart by such a terrible tragedy."

Mrs. Fisk sighed. The idea of a sweet young boy getting killed clashed with her rosy view on life. But then people must move on, she thought with resolve. So even though making Jamie stay after school may've at first looked cruel, she was sure she was doing the boy a psychological favor in the long run.

At three twenty-five, the kids started putting away their supplies and getting their backpacks ready, and at three thirty, all of them except for Jamie and Christina filed out of the classroom at the sound of the bell. 

Mrs. Fisk handed Jamie a stack of 40" x 60" paintings that practically made his knees buckle under the weight, and Christina a box of old streamers that had been used before in a variety of school plays, PTA meetings, previous art functions, and parent-teacher conference nights. Mrs. Fisk herself carried the scotch tape and stapler, and led them all down to the main hall, their footsteps echoing in the now eerily silent school.

Mrs. Fisk instructed Christina where to hang the streamers (she specifically chose the girl for the job -- Christina did have an eye for design, no matter what her English teacher said about her) and told Jamie to set up the paintings on the easels she had put into place that afternoon. Jamie inspected the paintings critically -- a scene of two children playing in a park, a nest of spotted eggs, an esoteric abstract with lines of black, white, and gold. They were done by the eighth graders taking Advanced Art and all of them had a more professional look that put his monster head to shame. 

But then, though, Mrs. Fisk's commanding voice rang out over his thoughts. "I was talking to Principal Dalton about having more seventh grade pieces in the show, and I think he's coming around to the idea. Yours, Jamie, and yours, Christina, stand out above all the others. Would you mind having your work showcased?" She smiled at them sincerely.

Christina accepted the offer immediately, giving Mrs. Fisk a rare smile, but Jamie was left so speechless he could only stare at her like a goldfish. Mrs. Fisk let out one of her silvery little laughs and said "Well, I'm glad you're so pleased, Mr. Hendrick." Hastily, Jamie blushed and stumbled over a quick "Thank you, ma'am."

"Of course, you and your parents are invited to the show on Friday," Mrs. Fisk informed them. "I would love to meet your father," she added to Jamie in particular. Mrs. Fisk had to admit she was curious about Jack Hendrick. Who was the man who had captured sweet little Nurse Mary Hendrick's heart? And how was he coping after the death of his youngest son?

Christina looked momentarily uncomfortable at the mention of parents; she knew her father would never be interested in such things as art shows… but seeing Mrs. Fisk looking at her, she nodded her way before casting her eyes to the floor. 

"How about I each give you a dollar since you've been such hard workers today, and you can go into the teachers' lounge and buy yourself a coke?" said Mrs. Fisk, removing two dollars from the pocket of her obviously handmade vest. Jamie and Christina each took the bills slightly suspiciously as if suspecting a trap, before running off down the hall to the previously un-entered, but much speculated about TEACHERS' LOUNGE. But before they could open the door to the legendary place, a voice called out to them.

"Hey! You two! Stop!"

Jamie was running so fast his beat-up tennis shoes skid for a second before he could make a complete stop. He turned around and saw Paul Marks, Christina's father, dragging a huge vacuum cleaner out of one of the classrooms.

"What are you two doing here after school?" he asked them in a rough voice. He stared at Christina hard as if trying to read his daughter's mind. "You're not in detention, are you?"

"No, Daddy," said Christina exasperatedly, and Jamie had to admit that the idea of Christina in detention was laughable. "Mrs. Fisk needed two volunteers to help get the art show ready for Friday." Jamie noted how she left out the rather blaring fact that the man was invited, but chose not to intervene. Paul Marks had frightened him since childhood and it was best to let Christina handle him. 

"Oh. Okay then," replied Paul, visibly relaxing. 

"She said we could get cokes in the teachers' lounge," added Christina, smiling up at him sweetly for a little insurance.

Paul knew his daughter's tricks for getting away with sweets, but he let this one slide past. "Well, you two be respectful to Mrs. Fisk and don't be a bother. Make sure you thank her for those cokes."

"We will Daddy," replied Christina, adjusting her glasses a little impatiently now that she had his okay.

"And Chrissy," cut in Paul before his daughter could escape him, "walk home today or get a ride from Jamie's mom. I'm going to Mike's after work."

A crease formed between Christina's eyebrows, but she nodded anyway. Mike's was the local bar, a dirty old joint which happened to be the only flourishing business in town due to its liquor license and extra large pints of beer. She didn't like it when Paul came home drunk, something he had never done back when her mother was still alive.

Their journey to the teachers' lounge ended quietly. It turned out to be a generally disappointing place. The walls were the same blotchy mauve color as the rest of the school and the carpet had a mysterious yellow stain on it that could've once been vomit or spilled Mountain Dew. The couches looked lumpy, though neither he nor Christina had the courage to actually sit on one, and in the corner was an old TV set topped by a bent pair of rabbit ears. Jamie had to kick the vending machine to get his coke to come out, and after this abuse the machine turned spiteful and ate Christina's dollar. Immediately, Jamie offered Christina his coke, though she declined graciously.

They walked back to Mrs. Fisk in silence. Mrs. Fisk, surprisingly, gave them each a hug in thanks, going on about an art auction for next year so the whole program wouldn't be cut from the school budget completely. But then she dropped the subject, seeing their eagerness to get home was starting to edge out their politeness, so they said their goodbyes in smiles and general good spirits. 

Jamie and Christina's walk home was subdued, Jamie sipping his coke to make it last. Staring down at the concrete sidewalk beneath her feet, Christina thought about her father, of how much she loved him, and how -- secretly in her most deepest of places -- she was ashamed of him. She had never spoken of this shame and tried her best to hide it in his presence, but it was there, unalterable. 

And coupled with this shame was the fear. It rose within her as fierce as Jamie's monster head, this fear of the ugly being hidden underneath the man of Paul Marks. After Christina's mother died five years ago, Paul changed. He started drinking, and though he had never hurt her and only yelled at her when she didn't clean her room, she sensed that a very palpable capability for violence lay within him. She knew it was conceived during his time in the Gulf and was later nourished by the milk of her mother's death.

Christina missed her mother very much. Abigail's presence centered everybody. Her gentleness, her faith, her soft-spoken words of kindness and encouragement helped guide her daughter -- and her husband. The cancer that had taken her had to be from Lucifer himself, striking down one of God's living angels.

There were no pictures of Abby in the house -- Paul couldn't stand to look at her now, he found the pain so unbearable -- but Christina knew of the hidden photograph in the sock drawer. She went there whenever she needed guidance, when she needed to remember the beauty in her mother's face and the understanding in her eyes. She could stare at that photograph for hours… and she had on those nights when Paul came home from Mike's especially drunk. He stumbled through the house, shaking its thin wooden frame, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up exposing the tattoos on his muscular biceps like bruises: a confederate flag on one arm and a crucifix on the other.