Free Shame by Greg Garrett Page A

in motion as the bell rang and within seconds the room was empty, leaving just the echoes of their departure, the smell of chalk dust, Michelle, and me.
    I gave her what I hoped would come out as a smile. “You have time to go downtown?”
    â€œSure,” she said, pulling out her keys to lock up and beckoning with her head toward the door. “A choice between lunch with you and grading papers on my planning period? I’ll take you any day.”
    â€œYou say the nicest things,” I said, and she slipped her hand into mine as we worked our way down the hall against the flow of boisterous kids. “How did poetry go today?”
    â€œThey liked Don Henley,” she said. “I had them write short response papers to ‘Dirty Laundry.’”
    â€œAh, the planning period papers,” I said, and she nodded. “Was this an all-male day then? What happened to gender equity?”
    She punched me—but gently. “We did Indigo Girls yesterday. And Shanezia Wylie brought in something from one of those female rap groups about black men not giving black women any respect. The women were hooting and the guys all picked out floor tiles to stare at.”
    We got into the truck and headed for the Hi-De-Ho diner, which we’d frequented since we were kids, the kind of place that calls cut-up iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island a salad, where the gum-snapping waitress pours endless glasses of tea into colored plastic glasses full of ice that looks like rabbit pellets, where the jukebox is stocked with songs that haven’t been on the charts for decades, yet nobody complains, or should.
    Once Eileen, an angular woman with peroxide hair teased skyward, took our orders—the daily special, which on this wonderful day was chicken fried steak with cream gravy—Michelle took a sip of her tea, folded one hand over the other, and sat looking at me.
    â€œWhat?” I said after about fifteen seconds of this.
    â€œYou didn’t call Bill this morning, did you?”
    I slapped my forehead in exasperation and hoped it would look like a genuine symptom of consternation.
    It didn’t. “You never take me to lunch unless you’re feeling bad about something. You’re transparent.” She speared a chunk of lettuce. “Work on that.”
    â€œI’ll call this afternoon,” I said.
    â€œMaybe you think you’re going to put this off until someone else does it for you,” she said, smiling. Actually, I did sort of think that. “It’s not going to happen. He made the offer to you, and only you.”
    â€œYou answered the phone when he called,” I said hopefully.
    She shook her head forcefully. “Nope. Not a chance.”
    I sighed and tossed my lettuce around the plate so it would get coated with Thousand Island. “Okay. I’ll call this evening. When he gets home from the office. If I can stay up that late.”
    She patted my hand. “Good for you. I’ll stand right behind you.”
    I had a momentary flash of irritation. “I believe I can at least manage a conversation on the telephone.”
    We sat in silence for a bit; I think she felt that she had pushed a little too far. Maybe she had. I might be a social misfit, but I was capable of dialing the telephone, even if I didn’t want to.
    I finally said, “How’d you get from ‘Dirty Laundry’ to ‘New Hymn’? That’s quite a stretch.”
    She looked up and made a rueful smile to acknowledge the uncomfortable moment and its passage. “Well, we’ve been talking about how a lot of poetry deals with social issues. You know, men and women, the environment, politics, the media. We’re starting to move into the section where I want them to see how literature addresses individual concerns.”
    â€œIncluding finding out where you fit in with the man in charge?”
    â€œSomething like. If it is a man, which I have my