He was last to come into the gym. The students were sitting in a circle on the mats. Mrs. Berthelot was standing near the door, waiting for any stragglers for her usual gym clothes check.
By “gym clothes” Mrs. Berthelot meant the full thing: tracksuit top and bottoms, and real sports sneakers, none of those space shoes or other flashy designs.
A few weeks ago Théo received a punishment. He had to copy out fifty times: “I must bring my gym clothes for PE class on Tuesday at 2 p.m.”
Today when he passed her, she gesticulated at him to stop.
“Don’t you have your tracksuit?”
He explained that he was at his dad’s this week and that before he left his mom’s he’d looked everywhere for it but couldn’t find it.
“Don’t you have a tracksuit at your father’s?”
He shook his head, but she’d decided not to let it drop.
“Can’t your father buy you a tracksuit?”
No, his father couldn’t buy him one. His father no longer qualified for benefits, no longer left home, and shuffled around like a zombie.
He could have spilled out the whole story, there and then, and he would have had the fleeting impression that he’d scored a point. But he knows she’s stubborn and likes to have the last word. And anyway, she wouldn’t have been able to take him seriously.
She’s still complaining. She’s had enough, really e-nough, of students who think they can do what they like and turn up in their street clothes as though this was a game of dominoes in their living room. Who do they think they are?
She’s still standing in his way. The sentence eventually comes: “Take some bottoms from the lost-and-found box and go and change.”
This is an order, but Théo doesn’t move.
“Off you go!”
She knows full well there is just one pair of bottoms in the box, where they’ve been moldering for the past ten years. What’s more, they’re pink and tiny.
Théo makes a final protest and then takes out the sweatpants and shows them to her, so that she realizes. He holds them with his fingertips, hoping she’ll recoil.
“Put them on and do four laps of the gym.”
Théo mutters that the sweatpants smell.
“That will teach you not to always forget your things.”
She has no intention of giving in. It’s out of the question that she start the class until he has changed and done his four laps.
Théo goes to the changing rooms and comes back a few minutes later. The pink sweatpants come up to his mid-calf. He’s expecting to be greeted with sniggers and taunts, but no one laughs. Mathis keeps saying, “It’s not fair, Miss.” Mrs. Berthelot tells him to be quiet or he will be punished too.
The class has stopped talking. The gym has never been so quiet.
Théo starts to move. Slowly, with short strides, he does the four laps he’s been told to in deathly silence.
He feels a wave of heat come to his cheeks. He can’t remember ever feeling such shame.
From where they are, can the others see that the cuffs on the sweatpants have an embossed Barbie logo?
When he’s done his four laps, there’s no laughter, no comments.
He stops in front of her and she waves him toward the others sitting cross-legged on the mats.
Théo sits beside Mathis. When Mathis raises his head to smile at him, he sees Théo’s nose is bleeding, a gush that soon stains his T-shirt, sweatpants and the floor mat. The girls shriek. Théo doesn’t move. Mathis offers to take him to the nurse, but Mrs. Berthelot picks Rose to go with him.
Amid shocked glances, Théo leaves the gym, head back with a Kleenex held to his nose.
After they’ve gone, Mrs. Berthelot spends ten minutes cleaning up the blood.
That evening when Théo gets home, his father is sitting in the kitchen. He’s got the crispbreads and jam out, poured milk into a pan and put chocolate powder into their bowls.
For a man in his state this represents considerable extra effort, the scale of which Théo appreciates. A desire to hold back from the brink of disaster, which he has observed several times in his father, a sort of last line of defense, or invisible net, which he grabs hold of and which so far has saved them from the worst.
Théo has sat down on the opposite side of the table from him. He still has the little wad of cotton gauze in one nostril, a little white roll that the nurse changed just before he left school. His father seems not to have noticed.
As silence descends, Théo mentions that he spent part of the afternoon at the nurse’s office. A moment later, in the absence of any kind of reaction, he adds that he was punished because he didn’t have any tracksuit bottoms. He describes the pink sweatpants and the four laps with everyone watching.
His father’s eyes start to glisten, little red spots appear on his neck and forehead and his lips tremble slightly.
Théo wants his father to stand up and bang his fist on the table. To knock things over and shout, “I’m going to get that bitch.” To grab his parka and slam the door as he leaves the apartment.
Instead, tears start to roll down his cheeks and his hands remain on his knees.
Théo hates it when his father cries.
It’s as though the noise in his head is suddenly amplified and reaches a deadly frequency. And that makes him want to tell him he’s gross and dirty and be mean to him.
Théo closes his eyes and fills his lungs with air to clear his throat—a technique he has perfected to stop himself from sobbing—then hands his father a paper towel that was lying on the table.
“It doesn’t matter, Dad. Don’t worry.”