-STRIKE-
“Woooooo!!! Yeah!! Top that, Kessler!” Steve told Clark with a smug smile after knocking down all 10 pins in one go.
Clark Kessler rolled his eyes at Steve from the peeling, red leathered couch of the bowling center. It was a crowded night, all bowling lanes were occupied, mostly with loud teenagers enjoying their weekend by shouting too loudly and making the floor sticky from spilled sodas and leftover pizza slices that would become mush on the floor.
“You can do it, honey! Show him what those strong hands can do”, Marla, sitting next to Clark with her hand rubbing his thigh dangerously close to his crotch under the table, cheered him loudly over the blaring music while looking softly at him.
Clark blushed a little but smiled nonetheless as he got up from his seat and turned to take his turn as Steve went to sit next to his girlfriend.
“Ooooo, babe”, Marla called back at her boyfriend. Clark stopped and walked back, crouching a bit so he could hear Marla. She placed a warm hand on the back of his neck and gently stroked it while talking close to his ear - “can you please get me a 6-ball after your turn? This 8 is way too heavy for me”.
“Oh, yeah sure”, he said with a smile. He shivered pleasantly at the feel of Marla’s soft caresses. She smiled back at him and smooched a loving kiss on his cheek. “Thanks babe!” she said. She gave his butt cheek an inconspicuous squeeze before she turned around and took another slice of her pizza.
Clark turned back, still blushing a bit and took his 11-ball. He strode carefully to the Approach.
“Did you need Marla to hold your hand before you threw a gutter ball?” Steve yelled at his back. Clark chose to ignore him and focused on a spot just right of the head pin. He took his 4 planned steps and threw the ball.
-STRIKE-
“WOOOOOO!!!!! Yeah babe!!” Marla cheered him. Clark turned to look at her smiling face and her arms raised up in the air, one hand still holding her pizza slice. He smiled shyly, then looked at Steve and nodded with a small smile. Steve nodded back respectfully.
Clark walked to the house ball shelves on the other side to get a ball for Marla while Steve's girlfriend got up to take her turn. He rummaged through many 10s and 13s before he finally spotted a 6. He took it and started walking back to their couch.
Steve's girl just guttered her ball and walked sadly to her boyfriend with a pout.
“There you go, babe”, Clark said and handed the ball to Marla. She smiled and reached to grab it. However, once she did, she almost dropped the ball due to its weight.
“Woah! Clark, that's heavy. Are you sure you got me a 6?” She asked with a raised brow, her smile faltering.
“Yyyeah. I mean, I think I did”, he said, now not so sure anymore.
Marla spun the ball in her lap until she found the number. There was a line under the tip of the number.
“That's a 9, babe”, she said, slightly annoyed. Clark’s brows raised in surprise.
“Oh, I'm sorry, honey. I didn't notice. There were just barely any light balls left, but I should've looked more carefully”, Clark said apologetically. “Let me go get the right one”, he offered.
“No no, it's fine. I'll manage with my 8 for now”, Marla said, though still a bit frustrated, then handed him back the 9-ball.
She got up, then stopped herself, took a moment before she put a smile back on. “Thanks babe, anyway, I appreciate it”, she said and gave Clark a peck on his lips before she headed to take her turn.
Clark smiled lightly to himself, the softness of Marla’s lips still warm on his own, as the sound of a strike thundered from the lane next to them.
###
The booming thunder outside struck the windows of their bedroom. Clark was startled awake. It took him a moment to snap out of his nightmare and realize he’s awake. He reached for his glasses that were perched on his nightstand and let his eyes adjust to the dark room. He grabbed his phone and squinted as he tried to make sense of the time.
02:14 a.m.
He sighed, tired and turned to see if Marla woke up as well. Except, she wasn’t there. But it wasn’t just Marla’s absence. Marla’s pillow and purple blanket were also missing, leaving her side barren looking. Cold. Missing.
Then, he remembered. Their fight last night, the shouting, then the silent treatment, it all came back to Clark, and he felt a pit in his stomach. ‘She actually decided to sleep separately’. Never in their 14 years of marriage have they ever slept in separate beds.
Clark took a deep breath and felt his world crumbling. This was… different this time.
He was thirsty, but he was afraid to leave the bedroom, because he knew he had to cross the living room to get there, and he knew exactly what’s waiting for him there.
With great trepidation, Clark took one quiet step after the other, careful not to wake his wife, and especially their children, Benji and Emily. As he reached the end of the hallway, he paused, took a deep breath, and continued to cross the living room.
Sure enough, Marla was there, sleeping on the couch, not fully covered by her heavy blanket. If she would’ve slept with Clark, he’d make sure to cover her bare feet, because he's already come to know and anticipate her habit of leaving large parts of her body uncovered at night, then freezing by the morning.
Clark took a glass from the cabinet and pressed it against the silicone pad of the water dispenser as he kept quietly looking back at his sleeping wife. He gulped the cool water. Even though the water relieved his dry throat, there was still this heavy lump there. In a few hours the kids will be up and see their mother asleep on the couch. What is he going to say to them?
Clark gently placed the empty glass on the counter even though he wanted to smash it and wake her up. He felt… numb. It was just too much.
He went back to bed, laid down and closed his eyes.
It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered but the kids.
*
“Isss yo’ turn daddy. Daddyyyyy!”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sorry sweetie.” Clark said groggily and rolled the dice, then started moving his green pawn along the cardboard. He reached the head of a snake.
“Daddy! You have to go back down to heeeere!” Emily pointed at the tail end of the snake with her little finger.
Clark shook his head and used every ounce of love he had for his daughter to stay focused on the game somehow. It had taken him over an hour to go back to sleep, and he slept horribly, awakening multiple times with weird nightmares about his wife. Then Emily decided 05:10 AM would be an excellent time to wake up and start playing ‘Snakes and Ladders’ with daddy. He didn't dare make himself coffee lest he'd wake Marla up, or worse - have Emily follow him to the living room and see her mom sleeping on the couch. Clark gulped his tears back down.
“Daddy? Where's Mommy?”
Clark took a deep breath. She asked the thing. ‘Why is parenting so goddamn hard?’
“She uhh… decided to sleep in the living room tonight”, he said truthfully with a croaked voice, without revealing the whole story, hoping this would put an end to the investigation.
“Why didn't she sleep with you?” Emily asked innocently.
Clark was at his wits end and felt the tears coming fast. He had no idea how to explain this to his daughter. He felt that lump in his throat rising fast.
“Baby, daddy has to go to the bathroom real quick, ok?” He said and got up, not waiting for an answer. It was all he could do to keep it inside. Emily looked at him, puzzled, as he went out of her room and into the bathroom. Clark locked the bathroom door and reached for the nearest towel, bunching it up against his face.
“HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF” he roared an agonized, muffled cry against the towel.
*
“Ok Jaden, now - we had ten whole bubbles, but then I popped six bubbles. So now, how many bubbles do we have left? Jaden? Come back to your seat, please. Good. Now, did you hear my question, Jaden? No, please try to sit for the question Jaden. Yes, excellent. Now, how many bubbles do we have left?”
“Oneeee… twoooo… tweee… foooo…”
“Very good, Jaden! Great job, buddy! Here, choose a sticker.”
Jaden wasn't smiling, per se, but Clark could tell he was happy by his excessive movements. Jaden took out the smiling star and pushed it against his shirt around his tummy, then went for another lap around the class room.
Clark looked at him with genuine pride. He's been working hard with Jaden this year on getting him attentive enough to listen to a question and answering it. It didn’t look like much to an outsider, but for Clark it was a big win.
The clock above the door showed five minutes left. Clark sighed as he looked around the room: faded gray paint peeling from the walls, the class schedule drawn on a piece of cardboard with the whole right side torn off, so Thursday afternoon and all of Friday were missing. A large, plastic bin on the far corner containing mostly broken or half-working fidget toys and sensory aids.
All the conversations he had with Mr. Sheffield were like talking to a wall. “You know we don't have the luxury for this, Clark. We're not like those fancy, private schools they got in Chicago. This is Aurora, be grateful you even got chairs.” ‘Luxury my ass… you can't scrape 5 bucks for a new cardboard?’ but of course, Clark never said this out loud to the school principal. “I understand Mr. Sheffield. I just think these kids deserve better”, he'd say back, defeated, knowing it won't matter anyway.
“Hey C.”, Meredith Shoehorn called out to Clark from the other end of the classroom, her head peeping from beyond the low, wooden partition.
Clark raised his gaze and gave Meredith a kind smile. She looked… well… worn out. She's been like that for quite a few years now. She was only a little older than Clark, but he hated to admit that she looked older than that. And for a good reason.
“What's up, Mer?” he asked kindly.
“Well… this Friday's gone’ be my last day”, she said with a sad smile. Clark thought this would've caught him off guard but it actually made perfect sense.
“Oh no, really? I'm sorry to hear that”, he said empathically. “What happened?”
Meredith sighed heavily and shrugged her shoulders. “17 years of SPED teaching happened… I gave myself to this profession”, she said and her voice cracked a little. “17 years of struggling against this… indifferent system, fighting for these kids. They're wonderful, you know how much I love them. But I mean… you know how it is. I just… I can't do this ‘shit’ anymore.” She silently mouthed the word ‘shit’ so her students wouldn't hear her. Her eyes started watering.
Clark was shocked to hear her swear for the first time since he's known her. It was clear to Clark that Meredith had mixed feelings about this decision. This job really took its toll on her mentally. To be honest, Clark couldn't help feeling similarly.
“Anyway, Mr. Sheffield told me he might have a potential replacement, so hopefully you won't get stuck doing everything yourself. ‘She seems very eager’ is what he told me”, Meredith quoted the principal with an eye roll and a smile of an experienced veteran who found the newbies adorably clueless.
‘She?’ Thought Clark and couldn't help feeling an inexplicable flutter in his stomach. His thoughts started racing.
“... giving her 6 months tops before she runs off crying”, Meredith finished a sentence Clark didn’t listen to with a snicker.
“Huh?” Clark realized he wasn't paying attention. Meredith smiled warmly at him like, used to his ‘kite-like’ brain flying somewhere, daydreaming.
“I'll miss you Clark”, she said fondly and her head disappeared beyond the partition.
Clark’s thoughts inevitably dozed back to last night. Marla and he have been having problems for a few years now, fighting and arguing almost every day over practically anything. And yet, this felt worse. Much worse. Marla had this look in her eyes last night. Like… she's had enough.
He was startled out of his stupor by a humming sound, and turned to attend to Shira.
“Almost there Shira, just one more block to the pyramid. Yes! Way to go, wow that's such a tall pyramid, I'm so proud of you. Give me five!” Clark reached out his hand in front of his student and waited patiently. Shira had a big smile on her face and even through her wide glasses Clark could see the joy in her eyes. She slowly reached her hand and clumsily touched a few fingers against Clark's palm, which for Clark meant the world.
Shira was more challenging, non-verbal and with some major disabilities moving around. Mr. Sheffield had told Clark when the year started that he'd be wasting his time on Shira. Well, Clark had a somewhat tilted yet fully built Pyramid to prove him wrong, right in front of him.
The bell chimed a tune far nicer than the “TRRRRRRRRRRRR” ring Clark used to have when he was an elementary school student.
“Alright everybody, please form a line near the door before we walk together for lunch”, Clark called out to the 6 students in his class.
Mrs. Meredith Shoehorn escorted her own 5 students from the other half of the class into the same line.
Clark's students formed a similar line behind him as Meredith and himself stood at the door like mother and father geese. Clark smiled warmly at her, knowing this'll be one of the last times they'll have formed that double line of students together. Meredith smiled back and wiped a tear from her red eye.
Just as they were about to head out, two knocks were heard on the hollow metal door.
“Clark?”
Clark looked back to find Mr. Sheffield. He seemed… oddly tense. Even uncomfortable.
“Mr. Sheffield, we were just about to…”
“I know, I know. I need you for a minute. Meredith, can you take Clark's kids to lunch today? Thanks”, Mr. Sheffield said, not really waiting for an actual answer. Meredith raised her finger to object but dropped it. “Yeah, sure”, she said with a sigh. Clark gave her a confused shrug. “See you later, Mer, thanks.”
The two men exited the classroom and started walking down the empty hallway, when Mr. Sheffield turned to Clark and said: “I wanted to introduce you to someone you’re soon going to be working closely with”.
Clark’s heart started beating fast and he didn’t understand why.