The Monsters We Become

This amazing story of heartbreaking genius contains profanity.

Desire is our new administrative assistant. She pronounces her name De-zur-ay. While contemporary names have run amok with the apostrophe, I do think one belongs at the end of her name. I don’t tell her this, though. Since moving to the South, I’ve evolved in my open condemnation of idiocy and the human condition. My face says it all. And, my tone, over-emphasizing the third syllable. “Good morning, De-zur-AY.”

She thinks I am flirting with her, but really, I am not, and I won’t protest too much. I’m a man and she has silicone breasts. If my wife were to meet Desire, there’d be bristles.

“Who, her? She’s ugly,” said Chevy Chase to his questioning wife about Christie Brinkley in National Lampoon’s Vacation. That’d be me, with my defense. Doesn’t matter that Desire has three children, with three different last names, and that she had a bumper sticker that read “Grab me by my pussy, Mr. President”; had it until, I infer, someone finally said something to Dr. Davis.

Doesn’t matter. She’s a surgically-enhanced knock out and I’m male.

Dr. David Davis, married with children, pillar of the community. Even has his face on the billboard entering town, an ambassador of the county’s shitty public-school system. He really does think very much of himself, skin too-tan and teeth too-white and hair too-dyed, and muscles too-toned. And. If roles were reversed and my wife were a teacher at his school, I might entertain incendiary attacks, like, “He’s a Fox newscaster, not a principal” to try to negate his stunning virility.

“And, doctor? Pshaw.” I’d be spot on with that attack as well: the diploma on his wall is from the University of American Samoa, Go Land Crabs! Correspondence course, no less. What a douche.

A douche who hired Desire Baxter Finley McCutcheon as his administrative assistant, “an over-the-summer closed-door hire” as propagated by Leigh Leighton, School Stoolie.

“And you should have seen what she wore,” Leigh recounted with dramatic flair. “Fishnet stockings? I mean, really?” Mrs. Leighton shook her head and sucked her teeth at the travesty of it all. “And, worse?” Mrs. Leighton looked around conspiratorially, and whispered behind raised palm, “He closed his door!”

“No way!” I whispered back.

“Way!”

“And how long were they in there?” Now, if you knew me and were passing by, you’d roll your eyes and snort-laugh because I can be an asshole. I was being an asshole here to Leigh Leighton, from whom no one is immune. Every school has one of these; a good mentor will point them out immediately, steer clear of that one.

“At least an hour, and I’d know: I had lots of copies to run.”

“Oooh, juicy. Did he have lipstick on his collar?”

For the past two years, Mrs. Leighton and I have worked on opposite ends of the building. She didn’t “know me from Adam,” yet this encounter told a far different story: we were in cahoots; I was her bestie, right up until the lipstick line. That was the tell.

“Oh, okay. Now you’re messing with me. I see how it is.” She turned on her heels.

“Keep me in the loop, Leigh. I do love a good scandal,” I called after her swishing, prominent backside. She threw up her arm, a polite fuck you gesture.

Having led a less-than-illustrious lifestyle, I knew what it was to be the talked-about. Prior, my nose was all up in everyone’s business, but now? Story as old as time: you don’t know a man until you’ve walked in his shoes. I wasn’t feeling bad for Dr. Davis or anything, dude was still a douche who now gave fuck-all about optics because apparently, word on Leigh Leighton Street was they were having regular and lengthy “closed-door sessions.” I wasn’t grubbing for this information; it simply became fact: it was the end of August, and everyone at our school now knew about Dr. Davis and Desire,

and I know it all started maybe two weeks ago, when I was in the faculty lounge —a place I try desperately to avoid because it is rife with gossip, the chatterlings around the coffee table spinning yarns in whispered hushes, shushing when some one new walks in, like me, that morning, looking for a spork— and Leigh Leighton, after recognizing it was me, said, “Tell them.”

She said this, to me. I looked around. “Tell who, what, Leigh?”

“Christ —sorry, Mabel,” and she patted Mabel Wirth’s knee, there there, “but…but, Jesus, is nobody going to say it?” She looked around at the faces on the couches, then back up at me. “Tom?”

“Okay, Leigh, I’ll bite,” I said. “I’ll say it: I have no idea what I walked into here.”

Lies. I had a very good idea what I’d walked into there, but all I wanted was to eat my Cup O’ Noodles with the spork I’d come in for.

“Our principal and our ‘administrative assistant’ are doing the…the…hokey pokey.” Leigh Leighton whispered the dance behind raised palm, and everyone, including me, gasped.

“Noooo!” I mouthed, because I can be an asshole.

And, like a forest fire:

“Who needs to meet with their secretary everyday behind closed doors,” became the prevailing question; “not to mention having his blinds closed” spiraled off that; and “she always comes out a bit more…chipper?” nailed it.

Her blouse was oddly buttoned, some buttons were missing from her blouse; his tie was crooked, he had lipstick on his collar. (There it was). Her mascara, his hair; his scratch, her hickey.

I was privy to the entire show, as it unfolded, without having to leave the comforts of my classroom. “Hey, Dunleavy, d’jou hear the latest?” some passerby would offer.

“No, do tell.”

“Apparently they were seen leaving the Motel 6 together,” they whispered behind raised palm.

“No way!” I mouthed back, pressing my own palms to my cheeks in shock, practicing my best Macaulay Culkin Home Alone aftershave scene.

“Way! And, get this…”

I was standing by my window, gazing out into the horizon, waiting for some illumination from my dim-witted eighth graders on an open-ended question I’d just posed regarding mob mentality in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, when I saw Superintendent Melvin blipping the fob to his Lexus. The Google Chat on my pc began to ping: teachers warning each other of a “walk-through” that never happened, which really added the gasoline.

“He was in Dr. Davis’s office for only thirty minutes!” it began.

“You shoulda seen Dr. Davis’s face when he left. Scared the spray tan right off him!” it continued.

“Bet we won’t be seeing someone around for very much longer,” it concluded, right there, because that Thursday, that “someone” sang Happy Birthday, Mr. President to Dr. David Davis in her very best Marilyn Monroe in front of the entire staff at the faculty meeting. And, at the conclusion and after cutting the sheet cake, she made a show of dabbing icing on his nose.

For me, it had all been Leigh Leighton hearsay. Until now. The entire staff was aghast with wide-eyed wonder as they perfunctorily clapped away their astonishment. A few gave cat calls. Holy shit, I thought. They really are shagging.

I am not on social media and the news disgusts me. Even NPR. We have Apple television and everything we watch is “streamed.” I have no interest in communication with anyone at school, outside of school, and I live in a different county. All of this said, when I pulled up to school on January 4, the first day after our Christmas vacation, I was not prepared for the greeting I received.

WXYZ had set up camp, and a Dr. David Davis look alike was standing in front of the school, speaking into a mic. Leigh Leighton was to the side, being interviewed by the very blonde Kaci Cashion, the Pride of the South. All of the other teachers were either in their cars, or standing around a perimeter created by central office staff, including Superintendent Mel Melvin.

“What in the world?” I asked no one in particular as I approached the leering throng.

“They’re doing their follow-up,” replied no one in particular. “So sad.”

“Follow up, to what?” Now, everyone in particular turned to face me, their eyes bugging and their mouths salivating at the opportunity to be the first to share.

“Dunleavy, where you been. Under a rock?”

“He-he.” Cute. “Been vacationing in Moldova. Grimesville news currents there are sketchy.”

I was swarmed on all sides by “colleagues” I’ve never had one word with, being pelted from all angles with bits and pieces of holiday cheer: two days after school had let out for Christmas vacation, Desire Baxter Finley McCutcheon was reported missing by her oldest daughter. Five days after school let out, Desire’s body was spotted in a cotton field by a hunter in his deer stand. Her throat had been sawed with a serrated knife. Eight days after school had let out, it was revealed through media outlets that she’d been pregnant.

“And, here we are.”

“So, where’s Dr. Davis?” His car was not in the Reserved for Principal space.

“That is up to speculation.”

As has everything else regarding him, it slapped me in the face, and I felt a nauseous wave of guilty conscience. All said and done, he’d been a good principal; douchie, yes, but always in quiet jest. He’d never crossed me, never talked down to me or acted superior around me. In fact, he’d actually respected me. I recalled the time, especially, when my mother was ill, and I had to take some time off. He had personally called me, not to interrogate, but to express condolence. And, it was quite sincere. “Take all the time you need, Mr. Dunleavy. Family first,” he’d said.

It’s here that Leigh Leighton trundled up, all full of gossipy spunk. She appeared proud of herself, important, like she just did the community a great service by revealing all to Kaci Cashion, Pride of the South. “Well,” she declared with great flair, “if no one’s going to say it, I will.”

“What did you tell them?” someone asked.

“Only everything we know.”

“And, what do ‘we know’?” This was me. I finger quoted ‘we know.’ I was pissed.

Leigh Leighton felt the pissed, and turned to the educators. “You do know what paternity tests will reveal, right? And, you do know there’s only one conclusion we can draw from that.”

They all circled around Leigh, thirsting for more, like the Rod Serling Monsters story I was reading with my children. I looked over at Superintendent Mel Melvin, standing sentry, and I headed his way.

I was going to take the path less traveled by, hoping it would make all the difference for a man I judged, but knew nothing about.