An Allegory of Apathy
(based on a tweet from the irreplaceable Michael Ramirez)
“What does it look like I do, herd cats for a living?” Javier Alvarez sighed, refraining from throwing his arms out in exasperation. “Look, we’ve both seen improvements in these kids through the past few months. Ellie Saunders couldn’t look anyone in the eye for more than four seconds. Now she’s one of our strongest actresses. You were worried that Jesus Ramirez wouldn’t stay in school. He’s one of the best middle school leads I’ve ever seen. You’d notice these things too if you came to a rehearsal. Or two. Or a performance. We haven’t seen you around at all this year.”
Principal Wright crossed his arms. “Look, Javier, it’s the funding for volleyball or the funding for theater. As much as I’d like to keep both, there’s a hard decision in all of our futures.”
“No, we both know how this will turn out,” Javier said. “The volleyball team will get their new uniforms and equipment while we limp along on twenty-year-old costumes, the same sets that these kids’ parents used when they went to school here, and lighting in the cafetorium that doesn’t work on a good day.”
Javier didn’t wait to hear Principal Wright’s protests, instead choosing to leave the office, grab his coat from the back of the chair, and crank the engine in his ‘03 Saturn, praying to whomever would listen that the engine would start this time. The parking lot was deserted, the rest of his colleagues long gone.
On the drive back to his apartment, Javier cranked the volume and did what he did best-- he sang. The shoddy piano demos he had of the first ten songs of “An Allegory of Apathy” were what kept him going on the bad days. Javier wasn’t much of a dialogue writer, by his standards, but he liked to think that he could write good songs.
“For every cent that grief charges, apathy returns, and the best things in life fall away and burn…”
He pulled into the parking lot and finished the song, breathing hard as he unlocked the door, pulled his backpack from the back seat, and unlocked his door, a skinny grey tabby cat greeting him with a hungry meow.
“I know, Alex, you haven’t been fed since this morning,” Javier sighed, rubbing the persistent feline behind the ears. Motorboat purring ensued as he dumped a can of wet food into Alex’s food bowl.
Javier didn’t bother making dinner, instead choosing to wallow in a Papa John’s Meatlover’s with extra cheese and a bottle of red wine on the forty-dollar Salvation Army couch from his college days. He didn’t bother checking the label before popping the cork, drinking from the bottle itself instead of finding a glass somewhere in the cabinets above the oven. He’d save room in the dishwasher, at least.
A framed diploma from NYU stared at Javier from across the room, surrounded by framed clippings and digital articles about the things he accomplished during his undergraduate. Javier’s keyboard sat in the corner of his living room, a stack of papers about Broadway musicals waiting for markings and grade assignments. His kids turned them in two weeks ago. Javier hadn’t even started.
Javier skillfully pulled the stack of ungraded papers out from underneath the full piano reduction of “An Allegory of Apathy” and settled back in on the patched couch, alternating between marking papers and guzzling wine. Eventually, he looked up to find that the clock read ten-thirty. He started at six.
Ninety papers, stretched across five class periods, sat in sloppy piles of letter grades. There were more Cs than anything else, an unfortunate expectation Javier wasn’t pleased to see fulfilled. Ellie and Jesus, respectively, wrote As, the rest were a measly mix of Bs and Fs. He’d have to offer redos, first, but the most common error was in the astounding lack of research. Names were misspelled, composers and lyricists were left off entirely.
He decided he’d pay Gloria, the school librarian, a visit on Monday. For now, he’d spend his Friday night finishing off the bottle and… his phone vibrated, completely interrupting his train of thought.
Javier groaned.
A notification from Nate Thompson danced across the screen.
“The gang’s all at Sixth Street, we’re missing you tonight.”
In a fit of rage, Javier crumpled the piece of paper he held, stopping cold when he realized it was Ellie’s report.
Why, why did Nate think that he had any right to contact him after what happened last month? Nothing said “miss you” like walking in on your boyfriend making out with one of the company dancers from Ballet Austin’s production of Giselle.
A purring Alex distracted Javier from his enraged thoughts. The dejected theater teacher finished the bottle of wine with one hand and scratched his cat under the chin with the other, eventually turning back to the steadily declining pile of papers he still needed to grade by the end of the night.
At two in the morning, Javier curled under his covers with a clouded mind, Alex deciding to rest on top of his chest.
Monday morning rolled around far too early for Javier’s taste, still a little hazy from the vodka-lemonade mix he thoroughly enjoyed the night before.
He knew that Gloria came in at 7:30 every morning to reorganize the stacks of books and encyclopedias. At 7:43, Javier walked in to find Gloria humming a happy little tune, stacks of YA novels from three decades on the floor in front of a new display.
“Oh! Good morning, Javier!” Gloria trailed off at the shocked look on her comrade’s face.
Javier’s smile vanished. “Gloria…”
Gloria readjusted the scarf covering her bald head. “Test results came back. The cancer migrated to my lymph nodes.”
“Oh God… Gloria, what can I do?” he asked.
“Nothing, at the moment. I decided to take my hair before the chemo takes it again. I’ve fought and beaten this once, just makes me more experienced this time around,” she chuckled. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to work here, though, my immune system’s about to go haywire. Three kids were out with the flu in every class on Friday. It’s getting dangerous for me to stay.”
Javier sighed. “Do you have a long-term sub?”
Gloria shook her head. “District told me they don’t have the funds. I’m supposed to let our student volunteers maintain the library in my absence. Have you seen eighth graders try to navigate the Dewey Decimal System?”
“If it’s anything like the researchless reports they turned in on Tony-awared musicals, it was probably disastrous,” Javier snorted. “I was about to ask-- can my class come in today to fix the BS they turned in?”
She nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Fourth period, right?”
“Right at the end of the day. We’re working on Alice in Wonderland, I was hoping they’d at least mention Lewis Carroll’s original work. Nothing. All but two said that it's a Disney original concept. Shameful.”
“We’ll whip them into shape,” Gloria said. “See you soon, yeah?”
Javier left the library, waiting until he was out of sight of the glass display cases to lean against a wall of lockers and break down.
Gloria was the first person to talk to him after he left a very passionate and fiery interview with the old principal and his administration team. She took him out to lunch afterwards to calm his nerves until the school called later that day with an offer. Before he got so involved with Nate, he ate dinner at Gloria and her husband’s apartment every Friday night without fail, getting into heated discussions over everything from pop culture to politics to classic literature.
Javier hadn’t done that in seven months.
Someone clapped the watery-eyed theater teacher on the shoulder. Javier turned around to find Darian Hamilton at his side, eyes concerned behind huge rectangular glasses.
“You okay, man?”
Javier shook his head.
Darian sat Javier down on a questionably old couch in the teacher’s lounge that was arguably more stain than fabric.
“Gloria… Gloria’s cancer is back. It’s bad,” Javier choked out. “She starts chemo soon. Admin can’t afford a sub.”
Darian sighed, fiddling with his afro. “I knew the budget was tight, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Have you asked Wright for a redistribution of funding?”
“I petitioned for new costumes for Alice in Wonderland. The volleyball team’s third uniform redesign in five years is more important,” Javier said. “If he can’t make the space for a few new costumes, how can we justify a long-term sub for Gloria?”
“If I didn’t have students in for tutoring during my conference periods, I’d volunteer to take a period in a heartbeat,” Darian said. “The kids are really struggling with the concepts we’ve hit in biology and I can’t let them… or the state… down.”
Javier frowned. “What if we get a crew of teachers together who are willing to sacrifice their off periods to help Gloria? We’ll learn the Dewey system, we’ll learn how to navigate the databases, we’ll make this work. She does too much for our students to be screwed over like this.”
“I could move my sessions to the library,” Darian said. “I’ll ask around the science and math wing during my lunch break, could you get the word out to the fine arts and English teachers?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Javier answered. “Here’s hoping this works…”
By the beginning of third period, Javier and Darian successfully created an interchanging sub system for the library, complete with an online document where teachers could pick up and drop shifts as necessary. Javier walked into his Theater I classroom with a smile on his face-- something that hadn’t happened in a while.
A small chorus of “hello, Mr. Alvarez” greeted Javier as he sat on top of his desk.
“Today we’ll do something different,” he announced, opening his briefcase to pull out the graded reports. “You turned in a two-page report on any Tony-award winning musical of your choice two weeks ago, yeah?”
His students nodded with various levels of enthusiasm.
“There was an overwhelming lack of effort and bad information. Today, we’re going to the library to research Alice in Wonderland. Tell me who originally came up with the story, who starred in the adaptation on Broadway, what year the show closed. I’m expecting more effort this time around. I know that a lot of you are only in this course to satisfy core requirements for Fine Arts,” Javier said, taking in guilty looks from half the class. “However, that doesn’t excuse apathy on your part. Can someone define apathy?”
Ellie Saunders raised her hand. “It’s a lack of interest, right?”
Javier smiled at his Alice. “Correct. Thank you, Ellie. We cannot let apathy take over this aspect… or any aspect, really, of our lives. If you don’t want to be here, convince me otherwise. We do learn how to act here, after all.”
His comment gained a few sincere laughs from the class.
“Grab your things, we’re paying Mrs. Young a visit.”
Twenty-eight students of his thirty person classroom bolted to the library, excited giggles and conversations about a rare free day floating down the hall.
Ellie and Jesus hung back to walk with Javier.
“Mr. Alvarez?” Jesus asked. “Did you really try to petition Mr. Wright for new costumes for us?”
Javier nodded, motioning the two out of the classroom and locking the door behind them. “I did. Athletics takes priority, unfortunately, so we’ll have to make do with what we have.”
“... which is nothing,” Ellie said. “Mr. Alvarez, I can sew pretty well, as can Sophia and Marta and Beatrice. Our mamas keep scraps of fabric that they can’t use after they make all their quinceanera and prom dresses for the season for us to practice on. We could make the costumes this year.”
Jesus grinned. “My papa has leftover paint from his construction work! I could talk to Ms. Becker and see if she’d be willing to let us use school art supplies to paint the sets. They’re so dark and dreary and… not Wonderlandy.”
“As long as you take initiative, I’m fine with it,” Javier said. “I’ll need updates on how everything is coming.”
Ellie and Jesus’ eyes grew brighter as they walked into the library, high-fived, and found a quiet corner to discuss their growing plans over a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Gloria joined Javier at the back of the classroom, glowing with pride as the students successfully found articles and books on their topics.
“I don’t know what you said to them before they got here, but there’s a palpable attitude shift. They seem to… care more, I guess. It’s beautiful.”
He smiled. “We talked about apathy today.”
“That’s it,” Gloria said. “You showed them that it’s cool to care for something with everything you can muster. They won’t forget that anytime soon.”
Javier watched his problem students, who watched a rendition of the Unbirthday Song from the Disney cartoon, enthralled by singing teacups and white rabbits.
“I hope they don’t, Gloria. I hope they don’t.”
That night, Javier walked into his apartment, opened another bottle of wine, and poured it down the drain. A bottle of vodka followed, along with three cans of Heineken and the rest of the liquor in the house. Empty bottles made their way to the recycling bin, Javier astounded at the sheer amount of alcohol he’d put into his body over the past seven months.
His life would no longer be an allegory of apathy, Javier decided.
His students deserved better than that.
Javier walked into his classroom early Tuesday morning to five emails from parents wanting to help create costumes and sets, seven emails from teachers signing on to the substitute list for Gloria, and an email from Mr. Wright asking for a conference whenever he was available.
He created a group message for the theater parents, a huge grin on his face as he sent over costume ideas from both Broadway and Disney, set design ideas he’d sketched before the semester started, and a few props that he’d like to have if possible. Ellie’s mom, the seamstress, said that she could easily make all of those costumes before the dress rehearsal.
If Mr. Wright couldn’t find it in the budget to help his program limp along, he’d lean on the parents that were willing to give what little they had to the cause. Theater was a community, after all, and Javier needed to do what he could to turn the apathy he’d lived off of for the past six months into bonds with parents and his kids.
First period brought hyperactive sixth graders, excited about the prospect of the musical “not sucking” like the year before. They learned their marks for the first three numbers and limped through the songs, making do with the props they had. Carlos Jimenez, the Doorknob, remembered all his lines for the first time in two months.
Javier’s heart almost burst with pride as his kids walked out the doors, spontaneously bursting into a rather off-key rendition of The Unbirthday Song. It was bad, yes, but it was enthusiastic. He could work with what he saw today.
He made the trek from the fine arts wing to the library, absentmindedly humming the White Rabbit’s introductory solo while he walked. Javier knew that he should’ve scheduled Mr. Wright’s conference during his free period, but that could wait. Pulling himself away from attempting to help kids in the library wouldn’t be convenient for anyone.
Javier entered the library to find Mr. Wright waiting, arms crossed and foot tapping an executioner’s cadence on the tile floor.
“Mr. Alvarez?” Mr. Wright asked, handing him a folded sheet of paper.
Javier opened the paper to find the schedule he created, teacher’s names filling all possible slots for the remainder of the week.
“What’s the issue, sir?” Javier asked, stomach dropping to his toes. “Gloria told me the district couldn’t afford a long-term sub and I improvised. These students deserve better.”
Mr. Wright’s mouth, drawn tight, shifted into a slight smile for the first time in months. “That’s the point. You didn’t have to do this. Why?”
“The same reason why my theater parents are pitching in and helping create costumes, sets, and props. Cesar Chavez Middle School is a community, not an autocracy,” Javier said, making direct eye contact with the principal. “The volleyball team took funding that really should’ve gone to the fine arts department? Fine. But this theater program and this library won’t fail as long as I’m here to keep things moving, even if it’s only an inch at a time.”
Javier left a stunned Mr. Wright at the door of the library, a few students practically dragging him over to the nonfiction shelves with questions about the Dewey Decimal system and how encyclopedias worked.
“Luckily, I used these,” Javier hefted a volume from an older Encyclopedia Britannica, “when I wrote my final thesis in college. It’s like a dictionary, but organized by topic. Instead of definitions of words, encyclopedias tell you about objects, things, and places. So, since you’re looking for the Battle of Gibraltar, it’ll be in the F-H book…”
As Javier helped the students, a single line from one of the first songs in “An Allegory of Apathy” ran through his head.
“... but hope outshines fear, even in the darkest of rooms, lend a hand or raise your voice for a turning page is near…”
Between students, Javier pulled his piano reduction from his briefcase and wrote, scratching out the lyrics for the last few songs and replacing them with words of light and peace, not sorrow and bitterness. As his half-exhausted ballpoint pen scratched across the pages, his heart lifted further out of its chasm, patched with new lyrics and new love.
SIX WEEKS LATER
Javier beamed with pride as his kids sang the last note of Alice In Wonderland’s last number-- mostly in tune. The parents, siblings, and teachers in attendance went wild with applause, cheers and whistles overwhelming the end of the accompaniment track.
Each of the lead roles took a bow to louder and louder yells, ending with Ellie and Jesus taking curtain calls to standing ovations.
Javier’s Alice helped her mom make the dress she wore, blue skirts swirling as she sprinted into the audience to drag her theater teacher on stage. Javier shrugged and let Ellie pull him front and center, where the White Rabbit passed him a mike.
“Speech! Speech! Speech! Speech!” his cast chanted, enthusiastically stomping the ground.
“Okay, okay, okay, shhh,” Javier said, motioning for the kids to quiet down. “To everyone present for this season’s final show: thank you. To the parents that worked endless hours to make our costumes, our sets, our props: thank you. To these phenomenal young actors and actresses: thank you. Before the show started, we decided to dedicate it to someone very special to us all: Gloria Young.”
Gloria, sitting in a wheelchair in the front row, teared up.
“Gloria, we love you and you did so much to encourage us when things refused to go our way. You are our inspiration.”
Jesus peeked out from behind the set with a cast picture, signed by every student in the play, and handed it to the beloved librarian, who burst into tears.
“And with that, the 2017 CCMS Musical season comes to a close. I heard rumors about a reception in the theater room…”
His kids sprinted off stage, singing mostly on-key all the way down the hall. Their parents followed, slightly slower but just as enthusiastic. The last people left in the cafetorium were Gloria and a silent Mr. Wright.
Gloria wheeled over to Javier and gave him the largest hug she could manage.
“Thank you. This means the world, Javier.”
He grinned. “It was a no-brainer. What better way to celebrate your last chemo session?”
“I suppose you’re right,” Gloria chuckled, “and it’s my Unbirthday, as well!”
“I believe it’s my Unbirthday, too,” Mr. Wright said, standing to join their conversation. “Mr. Alvarez, I haven’t seen that level of enthusiasm from the students in decades.”
“Thank you, sir,” Javier nodded. “You just have to know how to motivate them past their apathy. Once they figured out that theater is a community and not just a fine-arts credit, things moved a lot more efficiently.”
Mr. Wright flushed an angry red. “I do believe I owe you an apology. The coaches agreed to give you more priority in the budget for next year. We’re planning on having a funding meeting next Wednesday before school starts, are you available to join us?”
Javier suppressed a victory yell. “I can make it. Thank you, sir.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing what you can do next year,” Mr. Wright waved as he exited.
Gloria departed soon after, her husband waiting at the front of the school to pick her up. Javier remained, alone on a deserted stage in a quiet cafetorium.
He opened his mouth and sang…