Tarnia and I must have been on the same wavelength that afternoon. “I think I got Mason’s,” she said to me. Sitting at the Amazon student’s desk, Tarnia might have been mistaken for a student instead of staff; it fit her perfectly. “Remember how he used to write his lowercase a’s?”
I leaned over, having to stand on the gigantic chair to be able to write on the desk. “Oh yeah. That’s Mason, alright.”
“Let me guess,” Janet said, “the little flourish he does after the tail?” Tarnia and I nodded and laughed. “Sounds like Mason Hargrove to me.” She looked up. “Do I have you two to thank for that?”
“I guess…” I chuckled. “It’s kind of something he’s always done.”
“I’m kinda glad he kept it,” Tarnia said. “It’s a part of him.”
I bit of nostalgia came over me. “Seeing how they grow from year to year is one of the neat things about this job.”
“Yeah…” Beouf said, moving onto her next essay to grade. Tarnia and I shot each other a look. Beouf was probably just agreeing for the sake of agreement. Most of her students stayed in her room for years at a time or their Amazons withdrew them to a private daycare. Beouf’s kids never grew up. They’d all already done that by the time they got to her.
Life isn’t fair. It’s complicated.
We got back to grading. The laughter could only last so long before drudgery kicked in. A few more minutes of reading this third grader’s account of them looking up to their softball coach or that third grader’s rambling about the latest pop star, and Tarnia broke the silence. “Oh, how about that joke, Mrs Grange?”
Janet looked up from her stack of essays. “What joke?”
“The joke about your husband!” Tarnia said. “The one you told me when we first started talking! I”ve been trying to tell Clark, but I just can’t quite get the details right.” Is that what Tarnia had been doing the last couple of weeks? Something about somebody painting a house, and a cat, and gasoline…I’m still not sure, even as I write about this.
Janet looked like she’d just tasted sour milk, or like she was constipated. So that’s what that looked like from the outside. “I’d rather not.” Sore subject, apparently.
“Oh come on!” Tarnia was already starting to laugh. “It was a really good joke.”
I looked towards our newest friend. Unlike Tarnia, I could read a room. “It’s cool,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Had to be there, right?
Janet chewed on her lip. “Right.”
Beouf put down her pen. “Something wrong?”