Fallen Crow
Bruce Bullen
The process and the eventual outcome had been so humiliating that Sandro resorted to taking long walks to try to forget. The experience shook him in much the same way the inspector had described the effects of the weather on the foundation, an obstacle raised at the eleventh hour with typically false good humor. Sandro knew that the addition would not be approved. The inspector’s gaze had been so innocent, his tone so confidential, his list of impractical alternatives offered in seeming good faith. The neat little mustache, the unctuous manner, the desire to “be of help” burned holes in Sandro’s mind as he trekked through the woods, a maze of downed trees and rotted stumps. It was too late to start the work now. He had been confident, taking the plans with him to town hall.
“My wife, Angela, has a knee problem,” he said, sitting in the narrow wooden chair in front of the inspector’s desk. The man’s cheeks were drawn, his ears were too big, his hair nothing but patches of gray fluff. “We need a first-floor bedroom and a bathroom so she won’t have to climb the stairs. An architect friend did up the plans for us, and we’re working with Dave Herlihy at Atlantic Construction, who I think you know.” The T’s crossed, I’s dotted. The inspector, whose name was Geoghan, took the plans with an accommodating nod.
“I know Dave Herlihy well,” he said, looking them over. “Seems straightforward enough. I’ll come out and take a look.”
“When?” Sandro said, happy the two of them were seeing eye to eye.
“Next week, week after.”
He went home and told Angela that he thought they were on their way.
“It was good of Matthew to fit us in,” she said. “He’s so busy.”
“He did them quickly enough,” Sandro said.
They waited a month for the inspector to come to the house. When he finally arrived, he walked around, looked at everything, and erected barriers that in the end left Sandro feeling weightless, as if he were floating in space. The septic wasn’t big enough to accommodate another bedroom, the addition was too close to the property line, the square footage was excessive under current rules, the bathroom fan as shown did not vent properly, there was no junction box, the foundation was insufficient. It’s a bedroom, Sandro said, exasperated. You need a variance, inspector Geoghan said.
As a professional guidance counselor in a public high school, Sandro was used to contending with arbitrary rules, but the inspector’s obstinacy released something dormant in him. It may have been the calmness with which he piled up obstacles or the glee he took from saying no. Sandro’s resentment built as he plodded along in the leafless woods. A better name for the man would be Gag-on, he thought.
A Zoom meeting with the Zoning Board of Appeals was held a month later, attended by three of four members and Geoghan. Their disembodied heads at the top of Sandro’s I-Pad were like mugshots. The chairman owned a construction company, one of the members was a retired lawyer, a third was a young eager beaver with ideas. Sandro appealed to their common sense and had Angela describe the pain she felt every day. The members argued over technical issues, deferring to Geoghan, who in his insipid way provided them with fodder to deny the variance. His high-pitched voice, whining like a smoke alarm, drained Sandro of any hope. These people are interested in covering their asses, he thought.
“I believe Mr. Gag-on overstates the septic problem,” Sandro said. “What he calls a bedroom is in fact a study.”
“It’s pronounced Gay-gen,” the inspector said.
The board deemed the hardship insufficient for a variance, and it was denied on a vote of two to one. Sandro watched the board members’ faces dissolve on screen and put his head in his hands
“It’s alright,” Angela said. “We can buy a motorized lift.”
“To have you ride up and down like an old woman?”
“I don’t mind.”
“They’re ugly. You’ll need to use it every time you go to the bathroom.”
“I take the stairs now. Maybe they’ll approve a downstairs bathroom.”
“Go through this again?”
“He got under your skin, didn’t he?” she said, putting her arm around his waist.
Instead of soothing him, his walks prolonged his animosity. The birds were gone, and the silence in the woods was profound. Geoghan’s face haunted his thoughts like the dead crow on the path, eyes blank, beak useless, feet splayed, wings stained by the weather. It would scavenge no more. The process of decomposition changed its shape daily. He wished it were Geoghan lying there. The man must enjoy crushing dreams. Didn’t he understand what it meant to collaborate, find workable solutions? He should try counseling a few apathetic students and misguided parents about college. Creativity and advice, not dictates, produced the right outcomes. True joy was in seeing dreams come true. The idea that Geoghan might actually enjoy his work made Sandro detest the godforsaken landscape he was walking through.
He asked his friends and neighbors if they had had any experiences with Geoghan. Several had, regretfully. Workmen who came to the house looked away or rolled their eyes when he mentioned Geoghan’s name. A contractor friend told him that, having taken a liberal view of the rules and approving a residential addition, Geoghan was taken to court by a neighbor of the homeowner and lost. Did that justify disapproving everything that came his way? Geoghan apparently lived in a sprawling farmhouse and was constantly in conflict with abutters. Did he inspect his own house? Was it up to code?
“You seem angry,” Angela said. “You aren’t still thinking about that building inspector, are you?”
“I can’t get him out of my mind.”
“Let it go,” she said.
The man’s malice infected his thoughts, and he was touchy at work.
“What do you think of the new curriculum?” a teacher in the break room said.
“She’s an automaton,” Sandro said. “She’s doing what the Department of Education wants.”
“Give her a chance,” the teacher said. “She’s new to the job.”
“She’s on a power trip,” Sandro said.
When he counseled his students and met with their parents, his antennae for mindlessness went up.
“We want Heather to go to Bates. That’s where her grandmother and I went,” one mother said. Her daughter was a C-plus student with no extracurriculars and poor test scores.
“Bates might be a stretch.”
“We don’t think so, do we?” the mother said, smiling at Heather, who gave her a compliant smile back.
His workload–interviews, recommendations, monitoring class selections, sending out transcripts, advising on financial aid–felt like busy work designed to satisfy a nameless bureaucrat. He was overly sensitive if his advice was not taken and resented going through the motions with people who had their minds made up. Before school one morning the principal, an AfricanAmerican woman with a masters degree, asked him what was wrong.
His thoughts gravitated to ways of getting even. A letter to the paper recounting his experience with the building inspector might poison the water should he need anything from the town in the future. Ditto for a Twitter screed. Anonymously signing him up for a slew of trial magazine subscriptions was too subtle and trite. An unsigned letter to his superior accusing him of corruption or sexual abuse would be a criminal act. Perhaps if he could learn more about the dispute with the neighbors, he could drop a dime, but it required work. The crow, lying on its side, stared up at him.
It needed to be face-to-face, but what would he say to him? I’m taking you to court? Given the way he’d accepted his bullying, would Geoghan even believe it? He could say, don’t ever ask me for anything, but what did he have Geoghan would want? No, they needed to have a talk, like civilized people. Perhaps he hadn’t understood the implications or had modifications he could suggest.
Geoghan was at his desk looking through papers. Sandro knocked on the glass wall of the cubicle. Geoghan waved him in.
“Mr. Buzzi,” he said, folding his hands on the desktop. “What can I do for you?” No hard feelings? Sandro was hopeful.
“I thought we might talk…about the variance,”
“I’m sorry it turned out the way it did,” Geoghan said. You made sure that it did, Sandro thought.
“I have to say we are at a loss about what to do. My wife’s knee isn’t getting any better. Is there a way we might think differently about the project?” Geoghan rubbed his chin and a sinew in his neck.
“If she were disabled, but I noticed when I came out there that she’s ambulatory.” He smiled at Sandro. Ambulatory? That’s an answer?
“She’s in pain when she walks,” Sandro said. Geoghan lowered his eyes, as if to feel her pain. “If you can’t approve a bedroom, is a downstairs bathroom possible? It would be a big help.”
“Same setback and foundation problems,” Geoghan said, rubbing his shoulders and refolding his hands. He looked directly into Sandro’s eyes.
“Isn’t there anything we can do? Or does she need to live with it?”
“You could try to convince the town to change the ordinances,” he said, rubbing his biceps, as if suddenly cold or annoyed. They looked at each other.
“Thanks for listening,” Sandro said, getting up.
“Any time.”
Sandro turned to leave. The furies held him back.
“You know,” he said, turning to look into Geoghan’s placid eyes, “I’ve been a guidance counselor at the high school now for over twenty years. I work with people like you. “Lifers”, we call them. They never take the tiniest risk and follow the rules, no matter what. Everyone knows that if you really need to get something done, you avoid them.” He waited for Geoghan to speak, but his featureless smile did not change, his eyes pretending to be of service. Sandro left him sitting at the desk.
Walking in the woods later, Sandro’s anger seemed as futile as it was fierce. What he said to Geoghan had been a mistake, but the man sat there with a blameless look on his face. The crow admonished him with a glassy eye. He was out of ideas, and there was no recourse. He kicked at branches and stones on the path, stamping like a trooper. On the way back he looked down at the crow. It gave him a thought, and he went back to the house, put on a pair of work gloves, and returned. He lifted the bird with care, the stiff body like ordnance in his hands. He took it into the garage, laid it on a work table, and studied it. Where should he leave it? On his desk? His front porch? In his car? Possibilities came to mind.
Angela came through the garage door.
“I saw you carrying that bird,” she said. “Is it injured?” She looked at the crow and recoiled. “It’s dead,” she said.
“I…”
“I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with that building inspector.”
There were few legitimate uses for a dead crow. Sandro’s shoulders slumped.
“You’re acting like a child, Sandro. I heard you call the inspector Gag-on at the ZBA hearing. If you keep this up, you’ll get us into trouble with the town, jeopardize your position at school, and damage our relationship. You need to move on. You know how you get sometimes.”
Sandro looked at the crow and back at her. He felt his anger melt away.
“I wanted it so much for you. For the two of us.”
“I know you did,” she said, giving him a hug. She held his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek, which made him feel like a little boy. “Throw that thing away,” she said.
He dropped it into a trash barrel behind the garage and decided to stop walking in the woods and thinking about Geoghan. Angela knew him too well. She always knew when anger was getting the best of him. It was a flaw of his, he never knew what would trigger it. He had wanted the downstairs bedroom to be a thoughtful gesture, but his anger had turned it into a wedge. He was lucky to have her. She could make him come to his senses before he went over the line. Like the time the telephone company threatened to cut off their service over an unpaid bill. “I paid you on time for fifteen years, and this is the way you treat a valued customer?” he’d said to the supervisor the customer service representative got on the phone. Angela said his face was scarlet, and the veins in his neck were popping out like rubber bands. She made him end the call before he said something stupid. When she realized he had begun paying only a fraction of the amount due every month, she made him stop doing that too. “Are you trying to ruin our credit rating?” she said. It left him feeling ashamed. Adults were supposed to get over things.
He let a week go by before suggesting to Angela that they go somewhere over the Thanksgiving break. To Nassau maybe.
After a long weekend spent at Atlantis, that Caribbean Disneyworld for adults, he thought his anger was gone, Angela was no longer stressed, and he was himself. They looked at online catalogs together and ordered an Ameriglide stair lift from Amazon for two thousand dollars.
“Less than the cost of an addition,” Sandro said.
“I’ll try not to look like a senior on it,” Angela said.
At school he regretted having been difficult and went to see the Principal first thing on Monday.
“I was a little out of sorts,” he said. “A problem at home, but I’m better now.”
“Is everything okay?” she said.
“It is now.”
“You’re usually such a rock.”
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
It was embarrassing at forty-eight years old not to be able to control his temper any better than the teenagers he counseled. He promised Angela that he would do whatever it took to address the problem and for fifty dollars signed up with an online coach. The focus was on arousal management, cognitive restructuring, and development of prosocial skills. He spent an hour five nights a week for a month learning to control his furies. When his Certificate of Completion came in the mail after he passed a final exam, he showed it to Angela and told her that his New Year’s resolution would be using the tools he’d acquired to keep from embarrassing her, and himself, in the future. She said she was proud of him and told him he was a bigger man than most.
He had no occasion to use the tools for the rest of the school year, except for the dust-up in June with a repairman who tried to overcharge him for body work on his VW Golf. After a fender bender the insurance company sent him a thousand dollar check to have the work done, but the man wanted two thousand because the insurance company, he said, did not pay the prevailing wage. A request for twice the amount of the insurance payment was an arousal that Sandro knew he had to manage. Instead of venting his anger he did some cognitive restructuring and suggested that splitting the difference would be fair. When the repairman balked, he told him that if he split the difference he would give him a positive Yelp review instead of going elsewhere and giving him a negative review. The prosocial approach seemed effective.
When one of the guidance counselors did not return in the fall, Sandro noticed that the roster of students assigned to him now included Mary Geoghan, the building inspector’s daughter. Seeing her name on the list made Sandro remember his anger. It was an arousal he needed to manage. It helped him to think that his misgivings were with the father and not with Mary. He thought about asking a colleague to take her on but then had second thoughts. Counseling Mary would be a test of newfound resolve. How better to put his latent hostility behind him and demonstrate the value of creativity and advice than by helping Mary make the right choice of schools? She was friendly and popular but not much of a student, so when they met for the first time, he had a number of mid-range schools for her to consider. Slightly overweight, with dark stringy hair and black freckles, she fidgeted in her chair.
“I never heard of any of them,” she said. “Where are they?”
“Different parts of the country,” Sandro said. “They’re all good matches for you.”
“Are any of them in Florida?”
“No, but I can do some thinking, if that’s where you’d like to go.” She scratched her head with both hands, mussing her hair, and looking confused.
“What about Worcester Polytech?” she said, almost inaudibly.
“That would not be a good fit.”
“Why?” she said, brightening up.
“The curriculum there is technical.” Mary’s math and science grades were awful.
“Okay,” she said, taking the list and standing. “Thanks.”
In the rush to schedule meetings and organize applications he didn’t think too much about Mary until Mrs. Sykes, the principal, asked to see him. A thin woman with an Afro and wire-rimmed glasses, she asked him to have a seat.
“What did you say to Mary Geoghan about colleges?” she said, peering at him through rectangular lenses. Sandro’s psoriasis acted up when he got nervous, and he scratched the back of his hand.
“I gave her a list of schools to consider.”
“Did you tell her not to apply to WPI?”
“I didn’t think it would be a good fit.”
“Her father wants her to apply there. He thinks you’re deliberately discouraging her.”
“Have you seen her math and science grades?”
“I know,” she said, taking a breath and tapping her thumbs together. “Is there bad blood between you and Mr. Geoghan?”
“What do you mean?”
“He seems to think you have an ax to grind and are taking it out on Mary.”
“It has nothing to do with that.”
“With what?”
“I gave her the best advice I could.”
“You know you can’t use a child to pursue a grudge?”
“I would never do that.”
“Good. Let’s clear this up.” She nodded toward the door. “That’s all.”
His hands were shaking as he left the office, weaving through a throng of students changing classrooms. Would he ever escape the man’s malignance? It wasn’t enough to deny Angela an accessible bedroom and bathroom, he wanted his job too? Twinges of animosity and an aching for revenge rose in his stomach. Why not apply to Yale or Stanford? He had tried to find the right opportunities for her. The father with the false smile apparently knew better. If he was looking for a fight, he could have one.
“Tell me what she said,” Angela said.
“Geoghan thinks I’m trying to get back at him through his daughter.”
“What did you say in response?”
“That I provided the best fits I could.”
“I guess he wants something different.”
“I don’t care what he wants.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m not angry!” Sandro rubbed the back of his hand. Angela’s eyes seemed sad, and he remembered the promises he’d made. “Maybe I am angry. A little,” he said. “I’m doing what’s in her best interest.”
“Make sure that’s the reason,” Angela said.
After their conversation, thinking about his coach, Sandro came to see Geoghan’s accusation as an arousal he needed to manage. He felt his anger abate and considered telling Mary, while being as supportive as possible, that her chances at WPI were slim and that the schools he recommended were her best possibilities, but if she wanted to apply to WPI, so be it. He would do what he could to help her. They met a week later. She seemed a bit disheveled.
“Did you have a chance to look at the list of schools I gave you?” he said, smiling warmly.
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“Are there any colleges in Florida?”
“Broward or Miami Dade would be possibilities,” he said. She sighed. Her shoulders fell.
“Can I apply there? Worcester Polytech too?” she said, almost inaudibly.
“Are you sure?” Sandro said. She nodded. Sandro said “All right then.”
“Will you write a recommendation?”
“Of course. You should have as many choices as possible.”
“Thanks,” she said, getting up. “Can you make the Florida ones really good?”
“My recommendation will be the same for all of them.”
“Okay,” she said. She picked up her backpack and left the office.
The recommendation was a problem. If he were completely honest, the Florida schools would probably accept her, WPI would not, and Geoghan would see it as evidence of his sandbagging. That couldn’t happen, Sykes was losing confidence as it was. Mary’s chances at WPI were slim, no matter what he wrote in the recommendation. He needed to find an escape route. His only recourse would be to write a glowing recommendation for her and show it to Sykes. Mary’s teachers would speak to her failings. He consulted with Angela.
“You have to be honest,” she said.
“I’m afraid of what will happen, if I’m too honest,” he said, scratching the back of his hand.
“It’s a difficult situation,” she said, watching him scratch. “The only thing to do really is be fair without ruining her chances. I would definitely show Principal Sykes what you’ve written. You need to put this fight with the inspector and any feelings you have of revenge behind you. Remember what the coach said about being prosocial.”
He sat down to write the recommendation, and it turned out to be an ordeal. He went through several drafts, emphasizing Mary’s social skills, enthusiasm, and good attendance, while downplaying, eventually eliminating any mention of, her math and science scores. Her transcript would take care of that. In a final paragraph he appealed to the admissions teams to take a close look at her candidacy, because she had promise and the wherewithal for future success. It was a little much but in the spirit of being prosocial. He showed the final version to Principal Sykes.
“This should satisfy the father,” she said.
“Can you show it to him?”
“I’ll let him know you wrote a strong recommendation.”
“You know that she’s unlikely to go where he wants.”
“He thinks he has an ‘in’ with the admissions office. A relative or old friend or something. We do as much as we can, and I think you’ve done that.”
He told Angela about the meeting with Sykes, and she said “Yay”, taking his hands in hers.
He negotiated his way through a spate of fall interviews, application submissions, and recommendations, feeling good about himself and positive about the future. Angela’s lift was installed, and she made sure to smile at him when she sat in it. He felt especially good about avoiding conflicts with Geoghan and overcoming the desire for revenge. The depth of the man’s spite still kept him up at night though.
Through some fluke WPI accepted Mary. Behind the scenes maneuvering by Geoghan, Sandro concluded. When he met with Sykes she congratulated him with a wink that implied “You just never know, do you?” Her friends congratulated Mary, who looked thrilled, but Sandro saw her in the halls with her head down, shuffling from class to class. He and Geoghan bumped into each other once at the register in the hardware store. They acknowledged each other with nods but did not speak. Not even a thank you, Sandro thought.
He and Angela spent three weeks in August at a cabin on Moosehead Lake in Maine, listening to the loons, reading on the deck, and eating lobsters. When school started in the fall Sandro was energized. He flew through his placement tasks, helped at least one student get into Yale, and achieved an all-time high in the percentage of students going to college. Angela’s knee was better after avoiding the stairs for months. Sandro did not think once about Geoghan.
In January Mrs. Childs, the Algebra teacher, waved to Sandro from the Keurig machine in the break room.
“Did you hear about the Geoghan girl?” she said. It took a second for Sandro.
“Is she alright?”
“She almost died. OD’d on something and had to leave school. She was flunking out anyway, so I’m told. Hardly a surprise. What was she doing there anyway?”
Sandro agreed, scratching the back of his hand. The poor girl, he thought.
Bruce Bullen
The process and the eventual outcome had been so humiliating that Sandro resorted to taking long walks to try to forget. The experience shook him in much the same way the inspector had described the effects of the weather on the foundation, an obstacle raised at the eleventh hour with typically false good humor. Sandro knew that the addition would not be approved. The inspector’s gaze had been so innocent, his tone so confidential, his list of impractical alternatives offered in seeming good faith. The neat little mustache, the unctuous manner, the desire to “be of help” burned holes in Sandro’s mind as he trekked through the woods, a maze of downed trees and rotted stumps. It was too late to start the work now. He had been confident, taking the plans with him to town hall.
“My wife, Angela, has a knee problem,” he said, sitting in the narrow wooden chair in front of the inspector’s desk. The man’s cheeks were drawn, his ears were too big, his hair nothing but patches of gray fluff. “We need a first-floor bedroom and a bathroom so she won’t have to climb the stairs. An architect friend did up the plans for us, and we’re working with Dave Herlihy at Atlantic Construction, who I think you know.” The T’s crossed, I’s dotted. The inspector, whose name was Geoghan, took the plans with an accommodating nod.
“I know Dave Herlihy well,” he said, looking them over. “Seems straightforward enough. I’ll come out and take a look.”
“When?” Sandro said, happy the two of them were seeing eye to eye.
“Next week, week after.”
He went home and told Angela that he thought they were on their way.
“It was good of Matthew to fit us in,” she said. “He’s so busy.”
“He did them quickly enough,” Sandro said.
They waited a month for the inspector to come to the house. When he finally arrived, he walked around, looked at everything, and erected barriers that in the end left Sandro feeling weightless, as if he were floating in space. The septic wasn’t big enough to accommodate another bedroom, the addition was too close to the property line, the square footage was excessive under current rules, the bathroom fan as shown did not vent properly, there was no junction box, the foundation was insufficient. It’s a bedroom, Sandro said, exasperated. You need a variance, inspector Geoghan said.
As a professional guidance counselor in a public high school, Sandro was used to contending with arbitrary rules, but the inspector’s obstinacy released something dormant in him. It may have been the calmness with which he piled up obstacles or the glee he took from saying no. Sandro’s resentment built as he plodded along in the leafless woods. A better name for the man would be Gag-on, he thought.
A Zoom meeting with the Zoning Board of Appeals was held a month later, attended by three of four members and Geoghan. Their disembodied heads at the top of Sandro’s I-Pad were like mugshots. The chairman owned a construction company, one of the members was a retired lawyer, a third was a young eager beaver with ideas. Sandro appealed to their common sense and had Angela describe the pain she felt every day. The members argued over technical issues, deferring to Geoghan, who in his insipid way provided them with fodder to deny the variance. His high-pitched voice, whining like a smoke alarm, drained Sandro of any hope. These people are interested in covering their asses, he thought.
“I believe Mr. Gag-on overstates the septic problem,” Sandro said. “What he calls a bedroom is in fact a study.”
“It’s pronounced Gay-gen,” the inspector said.
The board deemed the hardship insufficient for a variance, and it was denied on a vote of two to one. Sandro watched the board members’ faces dissolve on screen and put his head in his hands
“It’s alright,” Angela said. “We can buy a motorized lift.”
“To have you ride up and down like an old woman?”
“I don’t mind.”
“They’re ugly. You’ll need to use it every time you go to the bathroom.”
“I take the stairs now. Maybe they’ll approve a downstairs bathroom.”
“Go through this again?”
“He got under your skin, didn’t he?” she said, putting her arm around his waist.
Instead of soothing him, his walks prolonged his animosity. The birds were gone, and the silence in the woods was profound. Geoghan’s face haunted his thoughts like the dead crow on the path, eyes blank, beak useless, feet splayed, wings stained by the weather. It would scavenge no more. The process of decomposition changed its shape daily. He wished it were Geoghan lying there. The man must enjoy crushing dreams. Didn’t he understand what it meant to collaborate, find workable solutions? He should try counseling a few apathetic students and misguided parents about college. Creativity and advice, not dictates, produced the right outcomes. True joy was in seeing dreams come true. The idea that Geoghan might actually enjoy his work made Sandro detest the godforsaken landscape he was walking through.
He asked his friends and neighbors if they had had any experiences with Geoghan. Several had, regretfully. Workmen who came to the house looked away or rolled their eyes when he mentioned Geoghan’s name. A contractor friend told him that, having taken a liberal view of the rules and approving a residential addition, Geoghan was taken to court by a neighbor of the homeowner and lost. Did that justify disapproving everything that came his way? Geoghan apparently lived in a sprawling farmhouse and was constantly in conflict with abutters. Did he inspect his own house? Was it up to code?
“You seem angry,” Angela said. “You aren’t still thinking about that building inspector, are you?”
“I can’t get him out of my mind.”
“Let it go,” she said.
The man’s malice infected his thoughts, and he was touchy at work.
“What do you think of the new curriculum?” a teacher in the break room said.
“She’s an automaton,” Sandro said. “She’s doing what the Department of Education wants.”
“Give her a chance,” the teacher said. “She’s new to the job.”
“She’s on a power trip,” Sandro said.
When he counseled his students and met with their parents, his antennae for mindlessness went up.
“We want Heather to go to Bates. That’s where her grandmother and I went,” one mother said. Her daughter was a C-plus student with no extracurriculars and poor test scores.
“Bates might be a stretch.”
“We don’t think so, do we?” the mother said, smiling at Heather, who gave her a compliant smile back.
His workload–interviews, recommendations, monitoring class selections, sending out transcripts, advising on financial aid–felt like busy work designed to satisfy a nameless bureaucrat. He was overly sensitive if his advice was not taken and resented going through the motions with people who had their minds made up. Before school one morning the principal, an AfricanAmerican woman with a masters degree, asked him what was wrong.
His thoughts gravitated to ways of getting even. A letter to the paper recounting his experience with the building inspector might poison the water should he need anything from the town in the future. Ditto for a Twitter screed. Anonymously signing him up for a slew of trial magazine subscriptions was too subtle and trite. An unsigned letter to his superior accusing him of corruption or sexual abuse would be a criminal act. Perhaps if he could learn more about the dispute with the neighbors, he could drop a dime, but it required work. The crow, lying on its side, stared up at him.
It needed to be face-to-face, but what would he say to him? I’m taking you to court? Given the way he’d accepted his bullying, would Geoghan even believe it? He could say, don’t ever ask me for anything, but what did he have Geoghan would want? No, they needed to have a talk, like civilized people. Perhaps he hadn’t understood the implications or had modifications he could suggest.
Geoghan was at his desk looking through papers. Sandro knocked on the glass wall of the cubicle. Geoghan waved him in.
“Mr. Buzzi,” he said, folding his hands on the desktop. “What can I do for you?” No hard feelings? Sandro was hopeful.
“I thought we might talk…about the variance,”
“I’m sorry it turned out the way it did,” Geoghan said. You made sure that it did, Sandro thought.
“I have to say we are at a loss about what to do. My wife’s knee isn’t getting any better. Is there a way we might think differently about the project?” Geoghan rubbed his chin and a sinew in his neck.
“If she were disabled, but I noticed when I came out there that she’s ambulatory.” He smiled at Sandro. Ambulatory? That’s an answer?
“She’s in pain when she walks,” Sandro said. Geoghan lowered his eyes, as if to feel her pain. “If you can’t approve a bedroom, is a downstairs bathroom possible? It would be a big help.”
“Same setback and foundation problems,” Geoghan said, rubbing his shoulders and refolding his hands. He looked directly into Sandro’s eyes.
“Isn’t there anything we can do? Or does she need to live with it?”
“You could try to convince the town to change the ordinances,” he said, rubbing his biceps, as if suddenly cold or annoyed. They looked at each other.
“Thanks for listening,” Sandro said, getting up.
“Any time.”
Sandro turned to leave. The furies held him back.
“You know,” he said, turning to look into Geoghan’s placid eyes, “I’ve been a guidance counselor at the high school now for over twenty years. I work with people like you. “Lifers”, we call them. They never take the tiniest risk and follow the rules, no matter what. Everyone knows that if you really need to get something done, you avoid them.” He waited for Geoghan to speak, but his featureless smile did not change, his eyes pretending to be of service. Sandro left him sitting at the desk.
Walking in the woods later, Sandro’s anger seemed as futile as it was fierce. What he said to Geoghan had been a mistake, but the man sat there with a blameless look on his face. The crow admonished him with a glassy eye. He was out of ideas, and there was no recourse. He kicked at branches and stones on the path, stamping like a trooper. On the way back he looked down at the crow. It gave him a thought, and he went back to the house, put on a pair of work gloves, and returned. He lifted the bird with care, the stiff body like ordnance in his hands. He took it into the garage, laid it on a work table, and studied it. Where should he leave it? On his desk? His front porch? In his car? Possibilities came to mind.
Angela came through the garage door.
“I saw you carrying that bird,” she said. “Is it injured?” She looked at the crow and recoiled. “It’s dead,” she said.
“I…”
“I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with that building inspector.”
There were few legitimate uses for a dead crow. Sandro’s shoulders slumped.
“You’re acting like a child, Sandro. I heard you call the inspector Gag-on at the ZBA hearing. If you keep this up, you’ll get us into trouble with the town, jeopardize your position at school, and damage our relationship. You need to move on. You know how you get sometimes.”
Sandro looked at the crow and back at her. He felt his anger melt away.
“I wanted it so much for you. For the two of us.”
“I know you did,” she said, giving him a hug. She held his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek, which made him feel like a little boy. “Throw that thing away,” she said.
He dropped it into a trash barrel behind the garage and decided to stop walking in the woods and thinking about Geoghan. Angela knew him too well. She always knew when anger was getting the best of him. It was a flaw of his, he never knew what would trigger it. He had wanted the downstairs bedroom to be a thoughtful gesture, but his anger had turned it into a wedge. He was lucky to have her. She could make him come to his senses before he went over the line. Like the time the telephone company threatened to cut off their service over an unpaid bill. “I paid you on time for fifteen years, and this is the way you treat a valued customer?” he’d said to the supervisor the customer service representative got on the phone. Angela said his face was scarlet, and the veins in his neck were popping out like rubber bands. She made him end the call before he said something stupid. When she realized he had begun paying only a fraction of the amount due every month, she made him stop doing that too. “Are you trying to ruin our credit rating?” she said. It left him feeling ashamed. Adults were supposed to get over things.
He let a week go by before suggesting to Angela that they go somewhere over the Thanksgiving break. To Nassau maybe.
After a long weekend spent at Atlantis, that Caribbean Disneyworld for adults, he thought his anger was gone, Angela was no longer stressed, and he was himself. They looked at online catalogs together and ordered an Ameriglide stair lift from Amazon for two thousand dollars.
“Less than the cost of an addition,” Sandro said.
“I’ll try not to look like a senior on it,” Angela said.
At school he regretted having been difficult and went to see the Principal first thing on Monday.
“I was a little out of sorts,” he said. “A problem at home, but I’m better now.”
“Is everything okay?” she said.
“It is now.”
“You’re usually such a rock.”
“It won’t happen again,” he said.
It was embarrassing at forty-eight years old not to be able to control his temper any better than the teenagers he counseled. He promised Angela that he would do whatever it took to address the problem and for fifty dollars signed up with an online coach. The focus was on arousal management, cognitive restructuring, and development of prosocial skills. He spent an hour five nights a week for a month learning to control his furies. When his Certificate of Completion came in the mail after he passed a final exam, he showed it to Angela and told her that his New Year’s resolution would be using the tools he’d acquired to keep from embarrassing her, and himself, in the future. She said she was proud of him and told him he was a bigger man than most.
He had no occasion to use the tools for the rest of the school year, except for the dust-up in June with a repairman who tried to overcharge him for body work on his VW Golf. After a fender bender the insurance company sent him a thousand dollar check to have the work done, but the man wanted two thousand because the insurance company, he said, did not pay the prevailing wage. A request for twice the amount of the insurance payment was an arousal that Sandro knew he had to manage. Instead of venting his anger he did some cognitive restructuring and suggested that splitting the difference would be fair. When the repairman balked, he told him that if he split the difference he would give him a positive Yelp review instead of going elsewhere and giving him a negative review. The prosocial approach seemed effective.
When one of the guidance counselors did not return in the fall, Sandro noticed that the roster of students assigned to him now included Mary Geoghan, the building inspector’s daughter. Seeing her name on the list made Sandro remember his anger. It was an arousal he needed to manage. It helped him to think that his misgivings were with the father and not with Mary. He thought about asking a colleague to take her on but then had second thoughts. Counseling Mary would be a test of newfound resolve. How better to put his latent hostility behind him and demonstrate the value of creativity and advice than by helping Mary make the right choice of schools? She was friendly and popular but not much of a student, so when they met for the first time, he had a number of mid-range schools for her to consider. Slightly overweight, with dark stringy hair and black freckles, she fidgeted in her chair.
“I never heard of any of them,” she said. “Where are they?”
“Different parts of the country,” Sandro said. “They’re all good matches for you.”
“Are any of them in Florida?”
“No, but I can do some thinking, if that’s where you’d like to go.” She scratched her head with both hands, mussing her hair, and looking confused.
“What about Worcester Polytech?” she said, almost inaudibly.
“That would not be a good fit.”
“Why?” she said, brightening up.
“The curriculum there is technical.” Mary’s math and science grades were awful.
“Okay,” she said, taking the list and standing. “Thanks.”
In the rush to schedule meetings and organize applications he didn’t think too much about Mary until Mrs. Sykes, the principal, asked to see him. A thin woman with an Afro and wire-rimmed glasses, she asked him to have a seat.
“What did you say to Mary Geoghan about colleges?” she said, peering at him through rectangular lenses. Sandro’s psoriasis acted up when he got nervous, and he scratched the back of his hand.
“I gave her a list of schools to consider.”
“Did you tell her not to apply to WPI?”
“I didn’t think it would be a good fit.”
“Her father wants her to apply there. He thinks you’re deliberately discouraging her.”
“Have you seen her math and science grades?”
“I know,” she said, taking a breath and tapping her thumbs together. “Is there bad blood between you and Mr. Geoghan?”
“What do you mean?”
“He seems to think you have an ax to grind and are taking it out on Mary.”
“It has nothing to do with that.”
“With what?”
“I gave her the best advice I could.”
“You know you can’t use a child to pursue a grudge?”
“I would never do that.”
“Good. Let’s clear this up.” She nodded toward the door. “That’s all.”
His hands were shaking as he left the office, weaving through a throng of students changing classrooms. Would he ever escape the man’s malignance? It wasn’t enough to deny Angela an accessible bedroom and bathroom, he wanted his job too? Twinges of animosity and an aching for revenge rose in his stomach. Why not apply to Yale or Stanford? He had tried to find the right opportunities for her. The father with the false smile apparently knew better. If he was looking for a fight, he could have one.
“Tell me what she said,” Angela said.
“Geoghan thinks I’m trying to get back at him through his daughter.”
“What did you say in response?”
“That I provided the best fits I could.”
“I guess he wants something different.”
“I don’t care what he wants.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m not angry!” Sandro rubbed the back of his hand. Angela’s eyes seemed sad, and he remembered the promises he’d made. “Maybe I am angry. A little,” he said. “I’m doing what’s in her best interest.”
“Make sure that’s the reason,” Angela said.
After their conversation, thinking about his coach, Sandro came to see Geoghan’s accusation as an arousal he needed to manage. He felt his anger abate and considered telling Mary, while being as supportive as possible, that her chances at WPI were slim and that the schools he recommended were her best possibilities, but if she wanted to apply to WPI, so be it. He would do what he could to help her. They met a week later. She seemed a bit disheveled.
“Did you have a chance to look at the list of schools I gave you?” he said, smiling warmly.
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
“Are there any colleges in Florida?”
“Broward or Miami Dade would be possibilities,” he said. She sighed. Her shoulders fell.
“Can I apply there? Worcester Polytech too?” she said, almost inaudibly.
“Are you sure?” Sandro said. She nodded. Sandro said “All right then.”
“Will you write a recommendation?”
“Of course. You should have as many choices as possible.”
“Thanks,” she said, getting up. “Can you make the Florida ones really good?”
“My recommendation will be the same for all of them.”
“Okay,” she said. She picked up her backpack and left the office.
The recommendation was a problem. If he were completely honest, the Florida schools would probably accept her, WPI would not, and Geoghan would see it as evidence of his sandbagging. That couldn’t happen, Sykes was losing confidence as it was. Mary’s chances at WPI were slim, no matter what he wrote in the recommendation. He needed to find an escape route. His only recourse would be to write a glowing recommendation for her and show it to Sykes. Mary’s teachers would speak to her failings. He consulted with Angela.
“You have to be honest,” she said.
“I’m afraid of what will happen, if I’m too honest,” he said, scratching the back of his hand.
“It’s a difficult situation,” she said, watching him scratch. “The only thing to do really is be fair without ruining her chances. I would definitely show Principal Sykes what you’ve written. You need to put this fight with the inspector and any feelings you have of revenge behind you. Remember what the coach said about being prosocial.”
He sat down to write the recommendation, and it turned out to be an ordeal. He went through several drafts, emphasizing Mary’s social skills, enthusiasm, and good attendance, while downplaying, eventually eliminating any mention of, her math and science scores. Her transcript would take care of that. In a final paragraph he appealed to the admissions teams to take a close look at her candidacy, because she had promise and the wherewithal for future success. It was a little much but in the spirit of being prosocial. He showed the final version to Principal Sykes.
“This should satisfy the father,” she said.
“Can you show it to him?”
“I’ll let him know you wrote a strong recommendation.”
“You know that she’s unlikely to go where he wants.”
“He thinks he has an ‘in’ with the admissions office. A relative or old friend or something. We do as much as we can, and I think you’ve done that.”
He told Angela about the meeting with Sykes, and she said “Yay”, taking his hands in hers.
He negotiated his way through a spate of fall interviews, application submissions, and recommendations, feeling good about himself and positive about the future. Angela’s lift was installed, and she made sure to smile at him when she sat in it. He felt especially good about avoiding conflicts with Geoghan and overcoming the desire for revenge. The depth of the man’s spite still kept him up at night though.
Through some fluke WPI accepted Mary. Behind the scenes maneuvering by Geoghan, Sandro concluded. When he met with Sykes she congratulated him with a wink that implied “You just never know, do you?” Her friends congratulated Mary, who looked thrilled, but Sandro saw her in the halls with her head down, shuffling from class to class. He and Geoghan bumped into each other once at the register in the hardware store. They acknowledged each other with nods but did not speak. Not even a thank you, Sandro thought.
He and Angela spent three weeks in August at a cabin on Moosehead Lake in Maine, listening to the loons, reading on the deck, and eating lobsters. When school started in the fall Sandro was energized. He flew through his placement tasks, helped at least one student get into Yale, and achieved an all-time high in the percentage of students going to college. Angela’s knee was better after avoiding the stairs for months. Sandro did not think once about Geoghan.
In January Mrs. Childs, the Algebra teacher, waved to Sandro from the Keurig machine in the break room.
“Did you hear about the Geoghan girl?” she said. It took a second for Sandro.
“Is she alright?”
“She almost died. OD’d on something and had to leave school. She was flunking out anyway, so I’m told. Hardly a surprise. What was she doing there anyway?”
Sandro agreed, scratching the back of his hand. The poor girl, he thought.