Late one slow night, when it was just Jon and me at the bar, he finally admitted after four or five pints that he had driven Mr. Vernon to the Amtrak train station in Philadelphia, and that was the last they heard of him. Because our former teacher had committed no crime, they didn’t even ask him for any of his information.
“It’s damn hard to see a grown man crying the way he was that night, Chuck,” Jon said, staring down into his golden pint of Budweiser. “Shit. Especially after all that had happened to him. So I gave him a ride across the bridge in the cruiser. It’s what any decent person would have done. You would have done the same thing.”
Portia and I have both googled our former teacher’s name many times, hoping to see “Mr. Nathan Vernon” listed on some high school faculty roster somewhere, or at least find some evidence that he’s still alive and didn’t actually go through with the suicide pact that he apparently made with his dog, according to Portia, which seems bizarre. Portia claims Mr. Vernon’s dog actually held up his end of the bargain by jumping out a second-story window, if you can believe that.
In the public records we find that he sold his house in Vermont, so we can’t even go looking for him there.
But no other new mentions of Mr. Vernon’s name ever appear on the Internet, just references to his teaching at HTHS and his being attacked by Edmond Atherton years ago.
It’s a consolation that we never find any evidence of his death either. Portia says that there would be some sort of official record, an obituary or a listing.
She’s always so optimistic when she says this, so I never bring up the fact that many people die every day in this country without the media printing their names—just ask any former junkie who has spent time on the streets, where last names don’t matter and people vanish into thin air on an hourly basis. According to what Portia found out from his since-deceased nun mother, Mr. Vernon had no known family left to even pay for an obituary to run in a paper. He could also have killed himself in some remote desolate place where his body would never be found, or even in some back alley in a bad city neighborhood.
But as I hear Portia clicking away on her laptop, often until late at night, I know exactly what hope is fueling the writing of her novel, so I keep my darker thoughts to myself.
I want to preserve whatever harmony we have for as long as I can. My life has never been better.
CHAPTER 24
Besides bartending at the Manor and taking Tommy places with Portia, I spend the summer applying and interviewing for jobs as an elementary school teacher. What I have going for me is that I’m a man applying for positions that are almost always filled by women, so I’m a bit of a novelty. What I have working against me is that I’m forty-two and have relatively little teaching experience.
My CV is mostly a huge blank.
Here’s what I have to show: strong recommendation letters from my college professors and the cooperating teachers and principal of the school where I did my student teaching, a portfolio of work from my students that includes happy child drawings of me looking like a super educator, and several samples of six-year-old writing that often proclaims me “the number one teacher in the world.” That’s a direct quote from Owen Hammond’s penmanship sample that I proudly include because it took us two months of encouragement and hand-over-hand coaching to get the little guy to stop writing his S’s backward—one of the finest accomplishments in my entire life, if I do say so myself.
All of this goes over well enough, but the interview will inevitably arrive at the uncomfortable part where they ask what I did in my twenties and early thirties. I have no suitable answer for that, because when choosing role models for small children, you don’t often hire men who used to shoot heroin as a full-time profession. I can’t exactly discuss the many nights I passed out behind Dumpsters with a needle sticking out of my arm or the times when the cravings were so intense that I robbed homes for cash and jewelry. There are dozens of nights I don’t even remember. How I was never arrested, I can’t tell you. So when we reach that part of the interview, I usually just say something vague like I was still trying to find myself or I got a late start with my calling, and then I shrug and laugh in a friendly way. The interviewers never laugh back, and I’ve failed to get the job six times already this summer.
I’ve been extending my potential commute to ninety-plus minutes each way to increase my chances as I scour the Internet for job postings, so no one can accuse me of a lack of effort. Portia keeps saying, “Something will turn up. I’m absolutely sure of it,” which is both encouraging, because she’s so understanding, and infuriating, because her husband’s money affords her the ability to be so nonchalant about the fact that I have no real job, no health insurance, and no equity at all. Why he hasn’t cut her off yet is the biggest mystery of my life these days.
From time to time I ask Portia if it’s not weird that we are living together so happily—making love now on a regular, healthy, and exciting basis—when she is technically still married to another man.
She always laughs and says, “Don’t worry about him, because he’s a complete asshole.”
And when I try to push it, asking when she might actually file for a divorce, she always says, “Are you not having fun?” which makes me feel like I’m rushing her and also that she is just playing at love with me, which is my worst fear. But I keep telling myself to let things develop organically, although I worry about Tommy should Portia ever leave us. I’m not sure he could handle it.