For the Pushpins
She approached the corkboard wearily, the length of the days
which had turned into years now holding dominion over her frame, bereft of
spirit. Besides the fact that, for her, there were no more special days, this
one had been extraordinarily unspectacular. Her work done, the papers scored,
(of course there would be new ones tomorrow), her grades entered for the day
(an infinite grid, square boxes to be filled by someone—nevertheless, she had
taken thought and care with each). She evaluated the words and thoughts of
young minds: the inertia of the world’s spin.
She heard a chorus of laughter from the parking lot through
the pane of a single window, a thoughtless toss of helmets and shoulder pads
into a dusty pickup truck bed and momentary indistinguishable conversation of
boys who would, she thought, probably go cruise Main and chase cute girls and
forget about the reading homework she would end up doing all together in-class tomorrow, so she didn’t have to keep
up the charade of them pretending they knew what she was talking about and her
being fully aware that she was having a discussion about symbolism with
herself. The laughter faded away, removed to Main Street , she supposed.
A sigh. She had been one of those girls once, only vaguely
cognizant of her beauty, charm, and power: that magic that vanishes as quickly
as it appears, changing the vixens to hags before they can turn around to face
mirrors which no longer hold enchantment. This reminded her, strangely, of Snow
White and Sylvia Plath--(she hadn’t taught “Mirror”in awhile, resolved that she
really must get that in this year, well, maybe next week—yes, she would get to
that).They needed chasing, of course they did.
Another sigh. She revised her lesson plans to include the
poem—a favorite, one that made her wish that she too, somewhere along the way, could
have found profundity in some utilitarian quotidian object, completed a penning
of something anthology-worthy. But her inspiration for her own words had left
her, run away with her loveliness—she was merely an old sorceress who had found
contentment in reciting the spells of others.
She straightened her desk. She tidied up the daily paper
that sat almost entirely unread on the corner of her desk. It was more often
than not her intention to read it thoroughly despite an almost daily failure to
do so, due to the onslaught of all the grading that needed her attention, and also
due to the fact that she found the news discouraging. The only article she read
today was about the government shut-down. She scanned the rest briefly, reading
another headline: ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS CLAIM TESTING-FACILITY
BREAK-IN, 36 ANIMALS STILL MISSING. She guiltily discarded it.
This was the EOD-routine in which she had become so
efficient, and yet, today she lingered. What was the hurry to get home? Her
beloved hound lay long in the ground, and she refused to get any cats, not
because she didn’t like them, mind you, but lest she become more of a cliché
than she already thought of herself as. Maybe a puppy. Yes, maybe. She had more
shoes than she really needed. She rescued the classified ads out of the discarded
paper and returned the rest to the trash. That would give her something to do
this evening.
Her love had been lost long ago—not lost to death, but
rather, to an unfortunate divergence of needs and circumstances. Despite being half-heartedly
pursued a handful of times, she hadn’t the energy to give to another. Her
children had needed raising, and dutifully she did it in spite of the
proverbial unfairness of life—she had done too good a job of it perhaps, (chin
up for their sake) and now they didn’t call much anymore, busy lives and
whathaveyou. She didn’t resent the lack of phone calls, however. There were
plenty more youth that needed her devotion, (though they themselves mostly scorned
it, until [she hoped] some unspecified future date when they wouldn’t speak of
it, but maybe think gratefully upon her efforts in a moment of revelation, a
pausing of the spin, a basking in their own accomplishment after a superlative
day, or a quiet acknowledgement of a discovery of wisdom, beauty, or truth—and
that that was enough, wasn’t it?). Just a turning over of the calendar was all
that was needed to ready for the next 24 hours of something and nothing.
Her gazing out of the window, her search for the laughter,
coupled with a momentary thought about what, if anything, would be worth the
trouble to cook for herself, and a contemplation about what kind of puppies
might be for sale in the paper, caused her to distractedly drop the thumbtack
which had been holding the calendar pages, faced with photos which aspired to
be inspiring, for all the expired months. Without looking for it, she reach
into the drawer of her desk for a new thumbtack, and finding one, she attempted
to put those months back up where they belonged—in the past, after all—why look
at them? They are never to be regained. Best to look at the days ahead,
complete the obligations as the numbers dictate, and flip the pages. They will
be held in their proper place by a thumbtack.
For some inexplicable reason, she turned not to the task at
hand but again to the window. Where had the laughter gone? As she had become
proficient at doing multiple things at once, she had continued to flip the
calendar pages and fasten them as she gazed pensively to the left. And
suddenly, the thumbtack slipped to one side, she scrambled to hold the calendar
to the corkboard (it would be a disaster if it were to fall down!), which
resulted in the unfortunate impalement of her palm on the new thumbtack, which
had somehow turned itself around in an attempt to free itself from the sentence
she had attempted to impose upon it: decades of imprisonment on a high school
bulletin board.
She winced and let the calendar fall to the floor in a
pyramidal heap. A small globule of blood had already formed, and the offending
rogue was nowhere to be found. She held her wrist with her opposite hand, began
to reach for a tissue with which to blot it, annoyed. She stopped short, once
again facing the bulletin board, and strangely, she found dozens of round eyes
staring at her, accusing. Some were made of colorful plastic—the red ones, they
especially stood out, angry. Some were metallic, and she could see a distorted,
miniature reflection of herself repeated sporadically around the board. All had
been relegated to the corners of the almighty papers they held up—the papers
were the stars of the show, even if only briefly.
Those papers—how important they are! They shout their
announcements and make silent, deafening proclamations about dates and times.
Those papers—they hold vital numbers and words, and demand to be affixed at
right angles to one another. But had she ever given a thought to the weighty
work of the pushpins? No. Never. She moved them around thoughtlessly, usually
not even exchanging them for a new position on the board. She only pulled them
out, moved them to the side, and replaced the imperative which a team of four
held up, and replaced each one in turn.
 |
| She had mishandled them, underestimated them, and of this treatment, one among their ranks had made her painfully, pointedly aware! |
And yet—a tiny epiphany! Most of them did their jobs
dutifully, the good soldiers. But still—two had, within moments of each other, taken
advantage of the most infinitesimal of opportunities that the universe had
provided to them, seized their day, and achieved liberation in their own leap
from the lion’s head! She had mishandled them, underestimated them, and of this
treatment, one among their ranks had made her painfully, pointedly aware! Who
was she to take that away from them? She was wretched and envious.
A tear. She thought to leave them there, wherever
there was. But, if found by someone else, what would become of them? What would
be their fate? To be picked up (perhaps wriggling once again, unsuccessfully,
for their freedom?) and pushed back in to the corkboard, holding the planet
together in an endless, paper-faceted, geodesic fascia of over-exaggerated
significance, never to be noticed, considered, or thanked? What, indeed?
Another tear. She began to pull the thumbtacks from the corkboard,
allowing the various colored papers—all of them, to flutter to the carpet
below. She gathered the pins in her left palm, cradling them gently, spires
proudly pointing skyward. She searched for the two renegades frantically,
vowing never to leave until they were found. One, of bold green plastic, was
laying in plain sight; the other, small and metal, was hiding (she could have
swore it quivered in terror as she reached for it!) under the heat register.
She placed them with the others. She opened the large wooden drawer in her
desk, rooted around, found a generic-looking office supply box. It was labeled
PUSHPINS 100 ct. She shook it
gently, opened it—it was half full. Bright eyes blinked at the new light. She placed
the veterans in the box; the box in her bag. She went to the whiteboard,
scrawled a few words, hastily and without her usual care for penmanship, with a
black Expo marker. She walked to the door, turned out the lights, and shut and
locked it behind her.
Ms. Mattersby did not return to school the next day, or the
next, or the next. In fact, she was never seen or heard from again. As her disappearance coincided with a strange
rash of office break-ins in her rural town on the night she was last seen, the
county sheriff’s department suspected kidnapping, and investigated the incident
for several years, until it passed into rural cold-case obscurity. They
continue to be baffled by both the absence of motive for the intrusions and of
course, the evaporation of Ms. Mattersby. The only apparent thefts from the three
public schools, and a few other buildings in town, the Times-Clarion,
Mid-Montana Insurance, the Library, and others, being that of thumbtacks: whole
boxes, and also from the bulletin boards, the unknown culprit(s) leaving a mess
of papers behind. The only clue left by her abductors was in her classroom
(from where she was known to work late and is thought to have been abducted).
It was a hasty note, written by an unknown hand in black expo marker:
For the pushpins!
