A Key to Paradise

By Barry Rachin

Grace Paulson's train wreck of a personal life takes a turn for the better when the elementary school teacher meets a gifted artisan whose handmade jewelry boxes are featured at the local museum. Well-versed in nineteenth century Russian literature, Carl Solomon also happens to be the school janitor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Rachin
• Release date: Oct 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781458146229

Barry Rachin

About the AuthorBorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Barry Rachin spent several years stationed in Yokuska, Japan as a Navy medic caring for casualties during the Vietnam War. He has studied at the University of Jerusalem, lived on a kibbutz for a year and holds a degree in clinical counseling from Simmons College. A self-taught woodworker, he presently lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

Book preview

A Key to Paradise

by

Barry Rachin

A Key to Paradise

Part I

GRACE PAULSON TOOK advantage of a free period at eleven forty-five and ran across the street to the Kentucky Fried Chicken. A colorful sign in the window trumpeted: ‘Today’s Special: Chicken Pot Pies only $2.55!’ Inside another cardboard display propped on the counter repeated the bargain. A bleary-eyed youth behind the counter took her order. Anything to drink?

Grace might not have recognized the former student, Kenny Kirkland, but for the telltale, strawberry birthmark on his neck. During her first teaching assignment fresh out of college, Grace suffered through an entire year with Kenny and his utterly tasteless brand of pubescent humor. That was over ten years ago. She did some mental calculations; the youth had to be in his early twenties now.

Grace remembered the incident that soured her on Kenny. It was the week before Easter, and the class was studying modern poetry. She chose a short verse by e. e. cummings.

I thank God for most this

amazing day:

for the leaping greenly

spirit of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;

and for everything which is natural,

which is infinite, which is yes.

The teacher read the poem through slowly in a lilting, singsong cadence. The class listened attentively, a couple students even leaning forward in their chairs. This was why she chose education. A poem wasn’t just black on white. It was spiritually sustenance. Grace read the poem a second time, focusing on the luscious, disjointed imagery. Reaching the final stanza, that’s when Kenny bushwhacked e.e. cummings.

And for everything which is natural,

which is infinite, which is ...

There was no exultant, primal ‘yes’. In its place, Kenny Kirkland blew a humongous fart, a flatulent outrage that turned the class upside down. And what could Grace Paulson do? Sniggering behind his sleeve, the practical jokester stole the show. When the laughter died away, Grace erased the free verse from the board—every tender syllable—and told the class to review their vocabulary until the bell rang.

Whadayawanna drink? Kenny repeated, running all the syllables together in a semantic salad. He didn’t even recognize his middle school teacher.

Nothing, just the pie, Grace said. The former class clown sported a goatee. He was a lot heavier now, more dissolute than morbidly obese, with a mop of curly red hair.

He rang up the order. That’ll be 4.79. Grace pointed to the sign next to his elbow. The youth scowled and punched in the correct number on the keypad. No apology. Not even a hint of embarrassment.

It was a few minutes past noon when Grace returned, and most teachers at Brandenburg Middle School were eating lunch in the staff dining room. Ed Gray, Chairman of the English Department, entered. The man was a bit of an oddity at Brandenburg. Gaunt and high-strung, he kept apart from the rest of the staff but was not unfriendly. A real bookworm. 

Under his left arm was a tattered, hard-covered volume which he placed on the table as he sat down next to Grace. The binding of the book was coming unglued, the spine just barely holding the frayed, yellowed pages together. Didn’t see that on the menu, Ed remarked with a wry grin, indicating the chicken pot pie.

Grace plunged a plastic fork through the flaky golden crust and speared a wedge of chicken floating in a creamy, vegetable broth. The previous Tuesday, the KFC was sold out of chicken pot pies well before noon and she had to settle for a plate of fried chicken with a side order of lukewarm potato wedges and crumbly biscuit. Bait and switch. Even something as simple as buying lunch was becoming a royal pain in the derriere. And who could you complain to? The pudgy, white-suited colonel was long dead and no one in the store, with the exception of Kenny ‘the comedian’ Kirkland, looked old enough to vote.

So, let’s see. Kenney’s been out of school five years now. Never pursued a career. Here he is working for minimum wage at a fast food joint. How sad! How utterly ...

How is it,... the pot pie? Ed’s voice jolted her back to reality.

Actually, it’s quite good, Grace replied nibbling on a succulent carrot. She told him about the incident at the KFC.

An innocent mistake, he said. The clerk probably forgot that the pies were on sale today.

Perhaps, Grace countered, but then he wasn’t the least bit concerned about ringing up the wrong price and actually seemed offended when I pointed out his mistake.

Ed shrugged and pursed his lips but had nothing more to say about the matter. Grace, on the other hand, couldn’t let it rest. She had a nagging suspicion that, out of pig-headed spitefulness, the next dozen customers to order the chicken pot pie would be charged full price.

She broke off a section of the papery crust, swirled it around in the thick broth and deposited the soggy dough on her tongue. Regardless of price, the pie was awfully tasty. Now that’s an ancient artifact, Grace gestured toward the damaged book. She was teaching eighth grade English and worked with Ed on the curriculum committee during the summer.

A collection of Pushkin's short stories, Ed replied, turning his attention to the food on his plate.

Grace wracked her brains. She had a decent grounding in Russian literature—Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov. She’s even read some Turgenev and a smattering of Gogol but no Pushkin. 

After a moment Ed raised his head and noticed Carl, the janitor’s helper, staring at the cloth­bound object by his tray. It’s quite good, Ed said. His thin, delicate fingers danced over the torn binding.

Carl’s face went blank and then the hint of a smile formed at the corners of his lips. The smile faded just as quickly as it had appeared. I’m familiar with Pushkin.

There was an uncomfortable pause, as though some code of etiquette had been breached and no one in the dining room quite knew how to set things right. Ed Gray smeared the watery brown gravy from his meat loaf onto the mash potatoes with the flat side of his knife. You’re familiar with Pushkin? He repeated the man’s words without bothering to look up."

The father of modern Russian writing.

Tapping his fingers in rhythmic staccato a second time, the Chairman of the English Department opened the front cover of the book and began turning pages at random. His forehead furrowed and lips tightened in a thin, bloodless line. But that's not possible, Ed countered in a slightly petulant tone. Pushkin wrote in the early eighteen hundreds. There was nothing modern about his prose. Perhaps you have him confused with someone else.

Carl glanced up at a florescent light that had been flickering erratically then resetting itself throughout the meal. The corners of the bulb had turned a sickly bluish-orange; there was no more life left in the mottled tube. Pushkin broke with the romantic tradition. Everything changed after that.

Dead silence. Those teachers who, for the sake of propriety, had averted their eyes, now stared intently at the janitor in the blue coveralls. Ed Gray blanched; he had the look of a man free falling through space. No one spoke for the remainder of the meal.

Grace finished her chicken pot pie, sopping up the last remaining peas and carrots with a piece of crust. She glanced curiously at the janitor’s helper. How long had Carl been employed there? She couldn’t recall when the wiry man first appeared at Brandenburg Middle School. It may have been in the spring of 2004, a particularly cold year with many snow storms and an endless series of illness that thinned the classes by half on any given week. Or it might have been the following September. No one really noticed. Nor did they care.

The janitor's helper. Teachers sometimes used the term interchangeably with his name but not in a mean-spirited way. There was technically no such thing as a janitor's helper. But the man was too old, in his late thirties, to be a career-minded new recruit. He swept the floors, scraped and painted old furniture. He washed the windows and emptied the trash. He did whatever Bob Watson, the head janitor for the past fourteen years, told him to do. He did his job quietly, unobtrusively. Hardworking and dependable, you saw him and didn't see him at the same time.

A nonentity to most of the staff, Carl brought a sandwich and a piece of fruit to work in an old-fashioned lunch pail and sat in the far corner of the lunch room, most days, with the cafeteria workers and bus monitors. Lean and muscular with a perpetual scowl, he ate his food without looking up or taking part in the general conversation. Neither liked nor disliked by the rest of the staff at Brandenburg Middle School, he was the janitor's helper.

When the meal was done, Carl rose abruptly and grabbed his lunch pail. After we set the gap on the boiler, he said over his shoulder, directing the remark at Bob Watson, I'll change that dead bulb.

No hurry, Bob replied with a dry grin. Whenever you get to it.  

ONCE WORD GOT OUT THAT Ed Gray, head of the English Department, had been bested, one-upped, made a fool of - take your pick - by Carl Solomon, the teaching staff were divided in their loyalties. Those who disliked Ed and saw him as a pretentious windbag got a sadistic satisfaction out of the incident, while strangely refusing to admit that the janitor's helper could score any higher than dull normal on a Stanford-Binet.

Those who supported Ed Gray, which was most of the senior teaching staff and the head librarian, Miss Curson, felt that Ed had been duped; in all likelihood, Carl was talking off the top of his head and had never read a damn thing worthy of literary consideration.

You know that custodian, Carl, ...the janitor’s helper, Grace spoke in a casual tone, as though the information was of no great importance.

Pam Sullivan, the office manager, raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips by way of a response. You sure are desperate for a date.

Grace winced. She told her about the incident with Ed Gray and Pam’s mouth eased into a wicked grin. Serves him right, the arrogant snot! As a part of the office staff she had no allegiances to the head of the English Department and felt free to speak her mind. Unlocking a file cabinet, Pam fingered through a stack of manila folders. Carl Solomon... lives over on East Ave. Whenever I call over there some old lady with a foreign accent answers the phone.

His mother?

Pam shrugged. The door opened. A boy with jet black hair and Hispanic features dropped off an early release form. He waited patiently while Pam checked the signature. Pam always nabbed the underage forgers. She knew where a stepfather habitually lifted the pen off the paper in the middle of a signature or crossed the t’s with a downward slash. The boy sauntered off down the corridor in the direction of the entrance. A bell rang shrilly. Students spilled out into the hallways and began rushing pell-mell off to their next class. Grace ran her tongue over her lips. How long has Carl been working at Brandenburg?

Damned if I know. A couple years at least. She grinned again. Seems like we got ourselves a real mystery here.

Grace didn’t like where the conversation was going. Maybe the incident was nothing at all. A tempest in a teapot.

A what in a who? At the far end of the hall, Principal Skinner exited a classroom with a teacher’s aide and was moving in their direction.

Grace reached for the door. Gotta run.

THE REST OF THE DAY went by in a blur. Several students stayed after for extra help with an essay assignment: WHAT I WOULD DO IF I WON THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE LOTTERY. One freckle-faced, floppy-eared boy, Benny Finnegan, reminded Grace in a twisted sort of way of Alfred E Newman from Mad Magazine. The public health nurse visited the Finnegan family in October after an outbreak of head lice and an older sister, Nadine, had been treated for rickets.

Benny said he would spend at least a hundred grand on Play Station 3 video games. Yes, well let’s see if we can get that down in print, Grace suggested. She tried to picture the gawky youth as a middle-aged homeowner burdened with a mortgage and family obligations, but her mind balked at the effort. What if this silly kid ended