Worthy Penny, Book 1

Chapter One I live in a large brick home in an exclusive suburb northwest of Cincinnati and am often home with heartache. Some say handsome, I turned forty, five years ago, support a wife who plays cards with her girlfriends and volunteers her time at Christ Hospital three days a week. Our two teenage children, Harper and Madeline, attend separate out-of-state colleges, and Stubby, the household Terrier, spends his life begging for food. As Chief Pilot for an international home products manufacturer, my department provides corporate air transportation worldwide, endows me with a large paycheck, and chunks of free time. My neighbors call me house husband, but my birth name is Scott. Stubby’s black beard and brown face mask first and his wide belly second, crawls past the flap of his backdoor doggy exit and noses without direction around the yard in search of bladder relief. Once, I too lacked direction like Stubby, but this changed in grade school with a demanded after school detention. “Please stay after class, Mr. Jameson,” she said a moment before the dismissal bell rang. Without Mrs. Young’s intervention, I’d be dead in a rat-infested city alleyway, overdosed on drugs instead of hiding out as a productive member of society with a proper family and a lazy fat dog. “It wasn’t my fault, Ma’am,” I sputtered after the room cleared of students. “Jerry picked the fight.” Jerry, my next-door neighbor menace, and I butted heads with regularity, he the bully and me the prey who fought back. Mrs. Young moved from her desk, stood next to mine and cast her eyes. They were blue and deep and had little sparkles of sunshine arrayed in symmetrical lines. She wore a gray lightweight two piece tailored suit, her blazer snug, her skirt long toward her ankles, and her honey shaded hair tie-wrapped into a bun. She wore tortuous shell eye glasses. “This is not about fighting on the playground, Scottie, although you fight a lot, nor is it about your grades. This is about you.” She sat her gray linen onto an opposing desktop. “Is everything okay at home?” she asked. Everything was not okay at home; my dad drank too much, my mother worked double shifts at Wal-Mart, my older sister plus boyfriend lived in our remodeled basement apartment, and I ran wild though the neighborhood to keep away from my father’s punishment strap. “Fine Ma’am,” I lied. My goodness, I had never had such a pretty teacher. “Is your dad still working at Fisher Body, like mine?” she inquired. Fisher Body supplied steel frames to General Motors assembly plants and was one of several large employers in the state. I responded, “Yes, Mrs. Young.” “How’s your mom?” “You know my mother?” How can she know my mom? I wondered. “Your sister was a senior at Parkview High when I was a freshman, and after school your mom picked her and me up in the fire engine red station wagon sometimes. She bowls on the PTA team with my mother—sorry, Parent Association team. Does Alice still drive the station wagon?” I nodded. Will mom ever junk the wagon? With a small digression, I remembered my sister. Carol Louise was thin like my mom, except now she was pregnant. Also, like my mother, she had thick auburn hair, aqua eyes and a statuesque nose centered between twin dimples and narrow cheeks. Unlike my mother though, she had a colored reputation. Did a colored reputation make her a loose woman, as some of my friends claimed? “Oh,” I said. Mrs. Young was likely twenty-two or three years old, four years younger than my sister, and knew about my family? Mrs. Young was married; the gold on the ring finger of her left hand flashed the taken sign. Not that a boy of ten years cares about a woman taken or about girls anyhow, but still I wondered who Constance married. I had heard her addressed as Constance by Mr. Bradley, the principal, when she came to collect me from his office after the playground fight with Jerry during recess. “Because your sister and I were schoolmates and my mother bowls with your mother; and since you don’t respond to authority. We should become pals,” she said. “I’ll improve your people skills; you’ll be less confrontational and can help me become a better teacher.” “Confrontational?” “Yes, not fight and be happy,” she replied with a primary school teacher’s compassion. “Let’s get together after class next Thursday, Okay?” Crap, I thought, and I thought crap each day afterward until Thursday when I wanted to play baseball instead of stuck inside with a teacher. Even if she was pretty and even if the outfits she wore made her look even more so, I’d rather have played baseball. I tried my fluster move. “I want to play outside with the guys, Constance.” Mrs. Young ignored my disrespect. She didn’t flinch or get flustered. She may have even interpreted my comment as humorous. A discernible smile parted her lips. She strolled to the door, closed it, continued to the desk across from me and perched. She shrugged, “I’d rather make sugar cookies.” “I’ll stop fighting.” “I doubt it; it will require more than one detention to impress change.” “Come on, Mrs. Young, it’s sunny.” In southern Ohio, Septembers have sun. “It will get cold by winter.” “Okay, tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” “Want a soda? I’m a Pepsi person, are you?” “Will it get me out of jail?” “I can spend the hour reading, while you, Mister, can stand at the blackboard with your nose in a chalk circle, unless you behave. Your choice…” “Pepsi,” I said. What else could I say? I wanted out of detention. I had never had a teacher like this, nor drank a soda with one. The guys will die laughing, I thought. She pointed. “In the canvas ice bag in the left lower desk drawer, will you get us a couple? I’m addicted to Pepsi.” She scrunched her nose, refusing my inappropriateness and saved us embarrassments. I raced toward her desk, slid out the drawer, unzipped the bag and bought out the cans, frosty and wet in my hands. Handing hers over, I sat my dirty jeans on the desk attached seat, and rested my Johnny Bench, worn by him, jersey against the chair back. Boys often can own authentic jerseys if they steal. “Thank you, and you?” “Huh?” “What do you say?” “I’m not a child.” “Prove it.” “You’re welcome,” I admitted, as my Irish eyes, no longer stationary, glanced at the floor and my crew cut brown hair stood straight. “Smile,” she demanded. I attempted. Next we spoke about fun stuff. For the rest of the hour we talked about baseball, The Count of Monte Cristo, and John Wayne, not schoolwork. She didn’t mention my grades or my refusal to complete homework; nor did she ramble about higher education like other teachers, or my mother, Alice. She even told me a Johnnie joke substituting Scottie for the boy and Connie, and Penny for the girls. Mrs. Malone became the teacher. Mrs. Malone, on staff at Springdale school since the Korean War, had the personality of a prune. I didn’t know until weeks later that Penelope was Constance Young’s middle name. “So, Mr. Jameson,” my teacher began, “the other day Mrs. Malone asked if a student could use the word fascinate in a sentence. Little Connie stood and said Walt Disney World is fascinating. Mrs. Malone said no use the word fascinate. Little Penny stood and said space has an eerie fascination. Mrs. Malone again said no. Use the word fascinate… From the back of the room, little Scottie yelled, my sister’s boobs are so big; she can only fasten-eight—of the ten buttons on her blouse.” My sister Carol’s boobs were big. I laughed till my side ached. My teacher had said boobs. We both laughed, and she hugged me. Fall leaves dropped from tree branches outside the window. Oh my, I thought, maybe we can be pals. “Progress,” she said. “Mr. Jameson, you’re laughing.” And still I laughed as the oak front door opened interrupting my remembrance of Penny, and Linda, my wife of twenty years, entered accompanied by Steve Freeburg, the plumber from down the street. “Why aren’t you in Paris?” she asked. She flipped her reddish blonde hair and threw her blue eye daggers into my office where I sat in boxer shorts and a tee on the leather of my recliner chair going over the household budget. “My trip delayed a day. Hey, Steve…” I said recalling the yard party he and his wife, Cindy, threw for their tenth wedding anniversary. Standing, I laid aside my scribbles and ventured closer. Steve is okay I guess, a beer drinker and horn dog, but Cindy—hair dyed blonde, long legs punched up skirts too short, the talk of the neighborhood Cindy, might very well be Li’l Abner’s Daisy Mae. Linda shrugged. “Since you didn’t, Steve has agreed to replace my bathroom sink.” Oh, Fine, tomorrow I leave for two weeks and Steve, the muscled neighborhood horn dog, is replacing my wife’s sink. I remembered horn dogs swarming around Linda in college, too. “How about dinner out tonight,” I asked, the question framed to ignore Steve as he slipped up the stairs opposite my office to the second floor? He knew where her sink lived? “Sorry, dear, I’ve made drink plans with the girls,” the girls being three women from the neighborhood, including Cindy Freeburg. So I am again alone. My flight plan and international customs forms are complete. I have eaten a grilled cheese sandwich, fed the dog, and placed a Civil War movie disk in the DVD player. Because I’ve watched The Horse Soldiers, starring John Wayne, many times, and since Linda will not return from Shipley’s, highly expensive Shipley’s, until late, remembrance again fills my mind instead of my wife. Mrs. Young and I had grown fond of each other by the third after school detention. I called her Penny when people weren’t around and she called me Duncan. Penny, after little Penny from the little Johnnie joke, and Duncan after Duncan Renaldo, star of the Cisco Kid television series, her favorite cowboy show when she was in grade school. Cisco was tall and dark and a hero. Mrs. Young appreciated heroes, Winston Churchill, FDR, Home on the Range cowboys, and the Knights of the Roundtable. She thought I should smile more and promised to teach me how. “A smile is difficult to learn, Duncan,” she said as she sat before me and palmed her makeup mirror in front of my face, “show me your best.” Do you think I smiled? I did not. I could not. “Copy mine,” she persisted, igniting the most spectacular smile I had ever seen. Nothing from me! She snapped her compact shut. “Come on, give me your best.” At which point I took off out of the classroom door, barged through the boy’s bathroom door, slammed into an open toilet stall, and hid. I would have stayed hidden had she not followed, not that I knew she followed. Picture a ten-year-old running through the hall creating havoc and imagine his teacher in hot pursuit. Then imagine me wrapped in her arms with tears streaming down my face while her eyes also watered with concern. “I’m oh so sorry,” she said as a whisper. “Can you forgive me?” I suppose my interest in Knight of the Roundtable and cowboys and heroes became puppy love at four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in the boy’s bathroom. Puppy love expressed later with cookies and apples, homework completed, freshly laundered slacks, hair combed, and me sitting at my desk before the last bong of the dismissal bell each Thursday. “I want to smile, Mrs. Young, be your hero,” I told her one day. “Help me smile. I’ll do anything to smile.” Doing anything as suggested turned a shy boy into a confident, strong-willed man. On Thursdays that followed, we discussed topics that mattered, philosophical conundrums, or current news events. I’d pick something for our next session or she’d choose. Sometimes we selected subjects together. Sometimes she read to me, and sometimes she critiqued how I read. I felt grown up, an equal, and important. We laughed, and we drank Pepsi—I too became addicted to the beverage. We ate cookies and became friends. With fifteen minutes remaining each session, she brought out her compact, held it in front of my face and forced a smile. Not that I smiled well in the beginning, several times I imitated her smile. If my memory is correct, on the Thursday before Thanksgiving; she told me the story behind her smile. “Once, when I was a little girl, my Grandmother Wolf, my mom’s mother took out her compact and taught me to smile like I’m teaching you. It’s hard at first, but after a while a friendly smile becomes natural, an important tool available when needed. When you’re sad it hides your sadness and when you’re happy it shares your joy. It disarms your adversaries and endears your friends. It can liberate a troubled mind or free a heavy heart. Good smiles transform’s suffering. Great smiles gain allies.” A boy can fall in love with his teacher, not in love like grownups love, but like boys love. The day my special smile reflected into my eyes from her compact mirror, I shouted, “I love you.” “That’s the one, Duncan. That’s your smile,” she said to the mirror, “practice it, make it yours and everyone will love you.” Practice it, I did. I created my smile in the bedroom mirror. I thought about my smile. When I thought of my teacher, I smiled. To impress others, I manufactured a smile. When Mrs. Young passed in the hall, I flashed hello. Before nodding to sleep, my last movement was a smile. I smiled in the morning. I smiled during the day. When my father strapped me without him seeing, I smiled. Whether happy or sad, or stitched with pain, the smile she taught became me. Then in the spring, on the last Thursday of the term and my last day in fourth grade, when detention time ended, I smiled to hide sadness. On the day of separation, we discussed nothing, not philosophy, not current events, not anything. Nor did we share a Pepsi. Instead, Mrs. Young gathered me from my chair and placed me on my feet at the foot of her desk. With one hand, she picked up a long wooden dowel rod from her desk; with the other, she clutched a token. “Stand erect, Sir Knight, Duncan,” she said, her voice poignant and sincere, her smile electric. The rod whirled. The rod settled on my left shoulder and then tapped my right. “Go forth with honor,” she admonished as her other hand eased into my hand, the keepsake. She replaced to rod. Like the French kiss, left cheek to right cheek, and right cheek to left cheek, our faces touched. I don’t recall how she had dressed, and I can’t recall my attire, though I’m sure mom pressed my clothes to a sharp crease. What I’ll never forget is our smiles; how could I? “I love you,” poured from my lips as I ran from the classroom. I lost track of Mrs. Young after that. Not the next day, for I saw her in the lunchroom, nor in the summer months ahead. Once, grocery shopping at Kroger, she stopped to chat with my mother and say hello to a tag along like me. I saw her sometimes the following year. We waved and smiled hello in the hall during class change, and once she stopped at my table during lunch. With Pepsi in hand and my friends in shock, she offered congratulations. “I hear you’re on the honor roll this term, Sir,” she smiled and curtsied, which gave me a glow and her smile returned. Then at school year’s end, she waited outside Mrs. Malone’s classroom. “My husband, Donald, has accepted another job and we’re moving,” she said, “I will miss you, Duncan.” Even her best smile didn’t hide her sorrow, nor did it hide my pain. As she turned away, I plunged my fingers into my pants and caressed my doubloon, my memory as warm as the gold in my pocket. “She is with child,” my mother told me later.