First Man (9 page)

I didn’t think about my mother. Didn’t idly wonder where she was or what she was doing. If I wanted to be truly honest, I had to struggle to recall the exact sound of her voice, but I kept the ring because, for that one moment at that stall in Rome she had understood me and loved the things I loved.

The coat had a new life now, just like its owner. We were both a bit worse for wear, our youthful shine long since worn off, but we had survived without too many tears.

I liked to believe I was not a superstitious man, but in truth, it was impossible to immerse yourself in the legends and cultures of a dozen civilizations, living and dead, as I had for so many years and not find yourself carrying them with you. I was not quite to the point of consulting the auguries over my morning coffee, but, like every person, I guarded my talismans and carried them with me.

In my younger years, I had never anticipated that at 33 I would be in my third year of teaching twelfth grade English at a public high school in New Hampshire. Most of my peers at Oxford would have been horrified. I’m shamed to admit, in the beginning I had scoffed at the idea of teaching teenagers. University students were one thing, but American high school students?

The position had begun as another temporary job in a never-ending string of pursuits to keep myself from drowning after Lily’s death. I had hidden myself away in Greece for months, no doubt far overstaying my welcome with Edwin. For the first time in my life, I’d been frozen in indecision of what to do next.

For years, I’d been content to throw a dart at a map and travel to wherever it landed. Lily had changed me, and surprising no one more than myself, I hadn’t immediately reverted to form after her death.

“Still here then?” was what Edwin would greet me with every morning. There was no malice behind the words, only genuine surprise to find me still brooding in his guest room instead of seeing an empty room and a hastily written goodbye tacked to the door.

I might have been content to live like a recluse, shut up in Edwin’s guest bedroom for years, mourning the life I might have had, but like an irritating older brother, Edwin refused to take no for an answer.

“You need to go back to teaching.”

The advice had come out of nowhere. The children had long since been put to bed and Edwin and I sat on his porch, staring out into the black expanse of the ocean. Summer was drawing to a close and the cool bite of fall was in the air.

“Back to teaching?” I shot back, “I think you forgot that I never actually accepted that job at Corpus Christi. You’ve been ‘Professor’ all these years, not me.”

Edwin snorted. “You bloody well know what I mean. You tutored, and you were a damn good professor’s assistant. Maybe if you have some young minds to mold, you won’t be wallowing forever.”

Stung, I fell silent before adding quietly, “She’s only been dead three months.”

Edwin’s voice softened. “I’m not asking you to date, Adam. I’m asking you to live.” Edwin paused, choosing his next words carefully. “I never met Lily, so I won’t claim to know who she was or what she wanted out of life, but I’d be willing to bet that she didn’t want you to build a shrine to her and spend the next fifty years locked up like a monk. I’ve known you for sixteen years, Adam Edwards, and I’ve never once seen you give a damn about something ending.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Edwin cut me off. “You know what I’m trying to say. There was always another city, another woman. Another adventure. I’ve never seen anything make you just. . . stop caring before.”

Edwin stopped for a moment, waiting to see if I was going to put forth the effort to argue. When I didn’t, he plunged on. “I know you loved her. It snuck up on you, and you let yourself believe it would last forever. And then it was ripped away. That won’t ever stop being terrible. But I don’t need to have met her to know that girl wouldn’t want this for you.”

Edwin stood up and walked back into the house, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I’d sat on that chair for hours, trying to envision any sort of future without Lily and failing miserably. Grudgingly, I admitted that Edwin was right. I needed a diversion, and teaching was as good as any.

A few weeks later, I was on a flight to Boston. Returning to another warm, southern city like Atlanta so soon had been unthinkable. The bitter cold of New England seemed fitting to me.

Logan was just another airport terminal in another city, teeming with people. The skies I could see through the tall glass windows were a uniform shade of dull grey. I gathered my luggage and rented a car, ready to make the ninety minute drive to the small town of Portsmouth, NH.

A sleepy port town of about 20,000 people, it was a far cry from the bustling metropolises I had favored through the years. As soon as I had escaped the skyscrapers and endless highways of Boston, I was faced with an explosion of natural color. Autumn had arrived in full force here, and the trees were a riot of red and orange and gold.

The school was a large and stately brick building, fairly typical of the Federal style that dominated public buildings in the area. I had rented an apartment nearby, a bland grey box. I was still unconvinced that this experiment would last more than a couple months, so I was reluctant to put forth much more effort than finding four walls and a roof.

As I unpacked my suitcases, I stared out the window at the trees. A fine mist had started falling. Except for the color of the leaves, the whole town looked muted and washed out.

Welcome home.

I was amazed to discover in the coming weeks that I actually enjoyed teaching. If she had never walked into my classroom, I might very well have taught there for twenty or more years and retired with a gold watch and a party filled with former students claiming that I changed their lives.

Even in the relatively privileged upper middle class town, it was rare to find a high school offering classes in my specialty, so I had found myself slotted into an unexpected opening in the English department. The previous teacher was an aging hippie who, tiring of the harsh New England winters, had moved to a commune in New Mexico. I’d laughed when I’d first heard the story in the faculty lounge. This was a very different world than Oxford.

I found myself teaching twelfth grade English, helping anxious seventeen and eighteen year olds write college admission essays and trying to teach them the finer nuances of classic American literature.

To a bored teenager suffering though a math lecture or a chemistry lab, the school year seems to drag on, but for a teacher the weeks slip away like hours, buried in lesson planning and tattooing papers with far too much red ink. Before I realized it, three years had passed.

I was 33, and the loss of Lily had faded from the raw agony of those first months to a dull ache. I had so deftly fended off the advances of the few single female teachers in the beginning that I had given myself a well-deserved reputation as a lone wolf. The other teachers were friendly, but I was mainly left to my own devices.

She entered my class the beginning of her senior year looking as bleary-eyed as the rest of her classmates. I was watching the year’s fresh crop of minds shuffle in over a cup of coffee strong enough to chew, cursing whatever sadistic bastard decided that it was necessary to start classes at ten minutes before eight. Teenagers weren’t the only ones who disliked early mornings.

There was nothing particularly special about her that morning. It was not love at first sight. It probably wasn’t even the first time I saw her. She had been a student here for the previous three years, and it was likely that our paths had crossed at one time or another.

I found her pretty. I won’t deny that, but she was no Lolita and I was not her bumbling Humbert. She had long blonde hair that was a bit too silvery to be natural and wide blue eyes. I caught her eye as I scanned the class, and she smiled at me. Even all these years later, I remember that smile because it was genuine. Despite her exhaustion, she wanted to be there.

“My name,” I began, “is Adam Edwards. You are now seniors, and college is within your grasps, so I will expect a high level of work from all of you. This class is called Advanced English for a reason, so I advise anyone who does not plan on committing fully to this class to drop it now.” A pause. “Now that that small bit of unpleasantness is over, I’m handing out copies of the syllabus for the first quarter. This is by no means set in stone, but it at least makes us look official.” A few scattered laughs. “Glad to see everyone is waking up.” Picking up the freshly printed list of students and called out, “Katherine Pierson.”

She looked up from the copy of the syllabus. “It’s Ember actually.” Obviously accustomed to questions about the unusual name, she added, “It’s my middle name. Old family name.”

And so it began.

BEGIN ANEW

Ember