“For starters,” I told him, “I’m going to have to talk to Tricia.”
Four
Let’s start with the confession right now that from a very early age I have had little success talking with members of the opposite sex. That I managed to talk to a woman long enough to actually get married was an amazing feat. Dissolving the marriage with a bitter, acrimonious divorce was a much easier task to accomplish. For a man who has made two careers essentially out of talking to people, my lack of communication skills was well documented by anyone who’d ever made the “mistake” (generally their term) of dating me. I have this uncanny ability not to talk about emotions, desires or anything that has to do with relationships.
Often my lack of skill runs so deep, I found myself destroying relationships I didn’t even know I was in. One evening in Grade Ten, a girl I went to school with challenged me to a game of tennis. It took me a long time to agree to play—nearly a minute—because I wasn’t much of a tennis player, and I really liked this girl. I mean, I really liked her (that’s Grade Ten-speak). What chance would I have if I showed her how much I sucked at the game? And why was she asking me anyway?
It was an unusually warm spring evening as we walked up to the tennis courts nearly two miles away. Sweat had formed on my brow, partially from the heat and partially due to my nervousness at spending an evening with this goddess from French class. We were walking past the well manicured lawn of a quaint little two-storey house about a block from home, when suddenly Melissa (a name I’m making up because even I can’t remember her actual name) grabbed my hand and pulled me through the oscillating lawn sprinkler, soaking us both in refreshing cold water. As we reached the edge of the lawn, I laughed, let go of Melissa’s hand and continued on to the tennis courts. Melissa later told friends she didn’t want to see me any more, since I obviously had no interest in pursuing a romance. Who knew that grabbing my hand was an expression of her romantic desires?
With a foundation based upon that type of historical success, I can’t say I was looking forward to sitting down to have a heart to heart chat with a female student about her “alleged” relationship with her teacher, my colleague, my friend. Sometimes, so I’ve been told, a teacher is one of the only people to whom a student is able to open up. A good teacher is often a good counsellor, even more so than the professional counsellors.
There are definitely protocols to follow in the kind of situation Carl had brought to me. Relationships between teachers and students were common enough that formal procedures had been established about how these situations should be handled. I hadn’t really gotten around to reading those formal procedures, hoping I would never find myself in a position to have to know them.
I knew at least what the union’s position was: no teacher should report on the professional conduct of another without first reporting their concern to the colleague in question. Even after that concern is raised with another teacher, he or she must be informed—in writing—of the intention to raise the issue with school management. The exception to this rule came when any sexual abuse, exploitation or inappropriate relationship between teacher and student was occurring. Then—and only then—was there no obligation to inform the suspect teacher of any intent to report his or her conduct to the principal.
The catch, of course, was the fact that while I didn’t practice law any more, I had just been retained for the paltry sum of a dollar by Carl Turbot. Therefore, everything he had told me was protected under the principle of solicitor-client privilege. My options were thus: I could follow the duties of my teaching profession and report Carl’s problem to superiors for fear that Trish’s story was true, or I could try to defend Carl and defuse the situation before it got any worse. The problem with option “A” was that I risked getting disbarred for violating my client’s confidence. I might have given up law for the time being, but it was way too early in my teaching career to determine whether or not I was willing to completely abandon my legal credentials. I was inclined to believe Carl. Call me gullible, but I had to give him the benefit of the doubt at least long enough to investigate his story.
So, at the tail end of lunch hour, I headed down to the main office to seek out the timetable of Trish Bellamy. Fortunately, last period that day I had my preparation period, time allotted to prepare lessons, photocopy, contact parents, mark papers and the myriad other tasks that fill the day of a high school teacher. In my case, add “interviewing potential hostile witness” to the list.
For some reason only a provincial bureaucrat can fathom, Physical Education is not required in high school past the tenth grade. The Ministry of Education feels that by the ripe old age of sixteen, students are ready to begin their adult couch potato years. Still, some senior students take the class out of interest or desire to maintain some degree of physical fitness beyond using the fingers on their right hands to operate their computer mouse to navigate internet chat rooms with their friends. Tricia was one of those.
By the time I wound my way down to the gym, class was already underway, and the students were taking advantage of the rare, late fall sunshine to run outside in the crisp November air. I found the P.E. teacher, Ralph Bremner, standing in the exit doorway of the gym, waiting for the students to return from their fitness sortie. Another educational mystery I had wondered about since my own high school days was why so few P.E. teachers actually ran with their students. Bremner cupped a cigarette in his left hand. Role modelling.
“Oh, hey there, ahhh, umm,” Bremner began, surreptitiously tossing his cigarette onto the ground.
“Winston,” I reminded him, “Winston Patrick.”
“Right, Winston. Sorry about that. You’re the lawyer, right?”
“I was. I’m a full-time educator now.”
“Right. I was just . . . .”
“Relax, Mr. Bremner.”
“Ralph. It’s Ralph.”
“Okay, relax Ralph. We all have our vices. I’m not here to bust you for smoking.”
“Right. I’m sure you’ve figured out how it is. So few hours in the day. So much to do. Sometimes you need to sneak in your breaks whenever you can get them.”
“I understand,” I told him, putting on my neutral lawyer face to hide my quasi-disgust at this physical education teacher sucking back a Players Light.
“Wow. So you gave up the courtroom for the classroom. Doesn’t that seem like kind of a step backward? No offence.”
“None taken. If you met some of the people I got to work with as defence counsel, you might think differently.”
Bremner sort of chortled. “You may not have worked here long enough to meet all of our people. Hell, here you’re probably just meeting them before they get to the court room.” He started to laugh, then graduated into a hacking wheeze. As he choked, his large paunch tottered up and down above the waistband of red and white Adidas pants that looked like they dated at least as far back as my high school days.
“You all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine,” Bremner replied, recovering sufficiently to participate in dialogue. “It’s this cold weather.”
“Yeah, it’s a bitch.”
“So, what can I do for you, Winston?” Bremner asked, recognizing slowly but surely that I probably had some purpose for standing out in the cold with him.
“I was thinking of going for a run with your class,” I replied casually.
“Really?”
“No.”
“Ah, shit, you had me going there for a second.”
“I’m looking for one of your students. I was hoping I could steal her for a moment.”
“You