Looking for Zoe Lane

I met Zoe Lane in my dream last night on the second floor of my old elementary school in Cicero, Ill. This school was Lincoln School. My mother was substitute teaching that day and we had just went to lunch. I was roaming the newly remodeled hallways, reminescening on the past, when I saw Zoe in the second floor hallway--outside the classroom located directly across from my fourth grade classroom--having a close-talking session with a blonde, wavy-haired boy. The boy looked as if he had been crying. I can't recall what they were talking about exactely, but the boy had been in trouble and Zoe had to repremand, as badly as it seemed she didn't want to repremand. She was doing it out of obligation, because if she didn't repremand, she was not doing her job as a teacher eventhough I would come to find out she didn't like her job as a teacher.

So she takes the boy to the other side of the hallway and sits him in this desk chair, plastered with a big sticker that reads Beloit College (my college I attended). It is at this time I walk down the hall and approach Zoe, who seems a little a befuddled and in need of a cigarette. Zoe is a woman my age, with curly, aburn hair and a husky, slightly-Irish looking face. In my dream, she is wearing a brown-beige pant suit with very faint dark red pinstripes intersecting into one another across the tweed. She has a slightly raspy voice and a slight whimsical smirk. She is very easy to me, a person that in my dream I want to hang out with after work. I am almost eager from the start. As the boy is sitting in this desk chair in the fall with tears in his eyes, Zoe is creening her eyes into a dark classroom (Mrs. Holman's old classroom, I recall) and looking for another teacher who is not Mrs. Holman, but I suspect a colleague her age.

"Damn, I wonder if (can't remember teacher's name here, but she calls her by her first name in the mysterious lingo we came to know when we were in third and fourth grade) has any cigarettes?"

The room is dark and she begins shuffling to her own classroom. "I'm scared to go back in thier," she finally says. I ask if she teachs fifth grade and she says, "no kindergarten" which makes sense because the boy in question looks about five years old. I ask her why she is scared and she says she doesn't know what to do, so instead we sit down against the wall on the floor of the hallway (where we used to line up our snow boots) and she tells me how she doesn't even like to teach--she doesn't know how and she is working on "the next big thing," which I remember something involving a vacation home. Suddenly she jumps up and runs into my old fourth grade class room across the fall which is buzzing with activity. As she does so, my old Lincoln School principal Mr. McDogual comes down the hall with a group of kids and asks to see my ID. I tell him I don't have it because my mom is substituting and I went to lunch with her and when I got back I ran into Zoe and we were chatting. Zoe rushes back to the scene and gives Mr. McDogual her ID as he peers at her with these eyes that imply she is going to be trouble. "What are you doing leaving your students?" he asks. And she answers something along the lines of "I didn't know ... I don't know..." as she's looking for words, I am forced to leave but remember thinking, I'm going to leave my business card for this woman so we can hang out. I am going to leave in the office.

As I walk away I ask her "so, what's your name, your name?" There was this sense of urgency in my voice, as if I knew I didn't get her name then I would never get it. And as she walks away she turns back and says in her cigarette voice, "Zoe ... Zoe Lane."

I don't know why I wanted to hang out with this woman so badly. Perhaps there was something that felt really tangible about her. She had this easy comfort and honesty. She didn't like her job, but she was doing what she had to do. And she looked tired and amused and warm. She felt like a friend, or someone I knew.

Every time I return to my elementary school in my dreams (always Lincoln School) it's the same but different. Something is always remodeled. The floors are always retiled or waxed. But the classrooms reman the same, lit up in the same flourescent light that always glowed like cancer, especially on the rainiest of cloudy days. The same paper cut outs of presidents and occupations (doctor, nurse, fireman) still hang on clothes pins from a fishing line strung across the room. And the smell is most memoriable, always. The foyer usually remains unchanged, I think out of respect.

When I leave Lincoln School I am late for a 2 pm appointment. The clock on my Jetta reads 2:23. I am upset and try to find the number to inform my client. I am not mad that I stayed later to talk to Zoe. I was thinking her kids would be getting out of class at 2:30. I was thinking she only had a few more minutes left.