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Artie told Ken about how his father had been a super for those three buildings in Revere. “And I can’t even fix a leaking faucet,” Artie said. He told him about the plumber who had come that day the week before Artie’s accident, how the man had wept on the bathtub’s edge because his wife was having an affair. (Although he did not mention the plumber’s name or the fact that Artie had his son in school.)

“God,” Ken said. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s an awful thing. When you think you’re getting your faucet fixed.”

“Oh, he fixed it,” Artie said.

Artie called Flossie that week, during third period, which he had off. He walked outside with his phone and down the steep blue steps that led to a public basketball court, and he told her what had happened to him, that he had almost drowned. “No!” She screamed this. “No, no, no, don’t tell me that!”

He chuckled and said, “But it didn’t happen.”

Still, she was tremendously upset. “No!” And then she said, “If you die, I will have to die.”

Artie turned around and watched as two senior boys who had also exited the school walked into the woods behind the basketball court, probably to smoke weed. “Don’t say that, Flossie,” he said, but her voice warmed him. “Tell me how you are.”

“Oh Artie. I’m okay, really. But I’m not sure why I moved out here. Sophie can’t stand me, she’s just looking for a husband, who can blame her, and she kind of hates having her old mother living in a condo a few blocks away. Why did I leave?”

“It seemed like a good decision at the time,” Artie said.

“I don’t believe you almost drowned. What the fuck? You couldn’t get yourself into the boat?”

“Oh, listen to this.” And Artie told her about Kenneth Moynihan and how he had gone to Spud’s with him. As he spoke, he sat down beside a small table by the basketball court that had a wooden roof over it; he and Anne Merrill sometimes took their lunch break down here.

“Okay, now I’m just jealous,” Flossie said. “I could bite his head off.” Then she said, “Listen to me. I’m coming back for New Year’s. I have to spend New Year’s Eve with the Fitzgeralds, you know that dull old couple we were friends with, but I already called up Spud’s and they are taking reservations for the day—the day—of New Year’s Day when everything else in the world is closed, so I’m going to make a reservation for us, the two of us, for New Year’s Day night. Okay?”

“That sounds wonderful,” Artie said. “Cannot wait.”

He whistled as he walked back up the blue steps slowly—his heart was banging—and then into the school, swiping himself into the faculty entrance with his pass.

3

On the first day of every school year Artie would tell his students his policy on cellphones. “I don’t want to see them in this classroom. So either put them in your pocket, or in your purse or your knapsack if you have one, but I do not want to see them or hear them. Ever. If you don’t have a pocket or a purse or a knapsack, put them in here.” And Artie went to his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a very old pillowcase. It had tiny green and yellow flowers on it, and for some reason the students always laughed at the sight of it. Rhonda Lazarre, he noticed, would often put her cellphone in the pillowcase rather than stick it into her knapsack. A few other students did the same, collecting their phones when the bell rang.

“But what if I have to call my mother?” a young woman—it was Tamera, with her long red hair—had asked him that first day.

“Call her after class or before it.” And the young woman said nothing, just pursed her lips.

“What if my father dies and my mother is trying to get hold of me?” asked one fellow.

“It would be terrible if your father dies, but if he does, your mother can call the front office and they will send someone to get you out of class.”

Almost always the students would have their phones out of sight. Today, though, Danny Marino had his phone in his front shirt pocket, and Artie gestured toward his own chest, tapping it a few times. “Don’t want to see that phone, Danny,” he said. And Danny rolled his eyes dramatically and then stood and slipped his phone into his back pants pocket before sitting down again.

—

“Okay then,” Artie said, and the shaggy-haired kid in the back, Willoughby, raised his hand and said, “Hey, what about that fight last week at the soccer game. Were you there, Damn-dam?”

“Of course I was there!” Artie said. “Right down in the front row. That was a very disturbing thing to see.”

And then a quiet student named Jacob Aaronson said, “It was because of me.”

“It was?” Artie said, and the kid nodded. “Yeah, the ref called something in my favor and this guy’s father from the other team came down and started yelling at him, and he said something about Jew-loving refs, man, it was awful.”

“I didn’t know that’s what started it,” Artie said. “Are you sure?”

And then other kids began to talk, and Tamera said to Jacob, “How did he know you were Jewish?”

“My name, I guess.” Jacob raised his eyebrows.

“How did he know your name?”