I Knew You'd Be Lovely (6 page)

“And me what?”

“You one of the few?” It briefly flashed through Ginny's head that she would never have dreamed of interrupting her teachers, never mind daring to ask if they had ever truly succeeded in falling in love. She leaned back against the front of her desk and wished the slit in her slim black skirt stopped an inch lower than it did. But she didn't believe in lying, least of all to the young.

“I have often been in love,” she said, matter-of-factly. “But never of the surrendering variety. Or rather, if I do surrender, it doesn't seem to be sustainable for very long.” Just then the bell rang, and brought relief. Within the relief, there was also a small pearl of pride, that pleasurable feeling that sometimes accompanies speaking the plain truth.

The pride didn't last. The days dragged; her kids became less and less engaged. Some would unabashedly toy with their cell phones while she was teaching. They didn't do their homework; they chewed gum in glass; Tim Harris sat with an unlit clove cigarette perched on his lips during the entire first act of
Waiting for Godot
. It was as if they were challenging her, calling her out. But she didn't know what was wrong, or how to reach them. Hadn't there been things that had reached her once? Books, films, scraps of beauty that had moved her so deeply she had wept with gratitude? How could she now not remember
what they were? Even the well-worn volumes on her own syllabus seemed to have become mere words on a page.

“There's more to life than grammar and spelling,” she announced on a rainy Friday afternoon, but it only made them slouch deeper in their chairs, squeaking their sneakers against the linoleum. She felt like a hypocrite. Grammar and spelling, sadly, were her lifeblood. Against her better wishes, she'd become an enforcer of the picayune. Her students must have perceived her failure; with the wisdom of children, they sensed that she had chosen the easy path in life, and they resented her for it.

“I'm sure they don't resent you,” Jessica said cheerfully, placing her spoon on the edge of her saucer. All around them, the bright voice of Sam Cooke was greeting itself in the gleaming surfaces of the diner. “They're teenagers. They probably don't give you a second thought. They're too busy thinking about each other, or how to get out of that hellhole.” Jessica had so seamlessly made the transition from pink-haired punk rocker to wife and mother that Ginny sometimes forgot about her undying empathy for the disenfranchised.

“That hellhole is my life,” Ginny said.

“I know, honey. I'm sorry. I feel for you. You know I do.”

“I need to get out of there. It's just—something's got to change,” Ginny said. She cupped her mug with both hands. “You know, when I was their age, I loved English class. It was better than honors chemistry with
Mr. Marks. Or writing the Presidents report for Mr. Tully. It was exciting. It was English, with Mr. Hennessey.”

Jessica arched an eyebrow. “Mr. Hennessey, the one you were in love with?”

“I wasn't in love with him, I was
inspired
by him. He was my
inspiration.
”

“Uh-huh. I thought you said you had your first sex dream about him.”

Ginny was grateful she didn't blush easily. “He was my mentor. I mean, all these years, he's been my invisible mentor.”

“Why not make him visible?” said Jessica.

“Huh?”

“Why not look him up?”

“Whatever for?” Ginny said, but Jessica only shook her head, slid belly-first out of the booth, and went to pay the check.

Ginny thought about doing a search on the Internet, but in the end, finding Mr. Hennessey was as easy as calling her old high school and speaking to the secretary from whom Ginny used to procure late slips on account of the bus—by God, the same woman still worked there. Arthur Hennessey lived in western Massachusetts now, had stopped teaching ten years ago. His address was 49 Merriam Street, Pittsfield. She had a phone number on file but wasn't sure it was current.

Arthur. It was strange to think of his first name. He'd been, what, maybe thirty-five when she was seventeen?
Which would make him fifty-four now, give or take. She wondered what he'd be doing, why he'd left teaching; it seemed he'd been born to teach. Perhaps he owned a bookstore or had started some sort of nonprofit. Or she could picture him as a ski instructor; he'd always been the chaperone for the school-sponsored ski trips. Would he be married, with a family? He'd been a perennial bachelor back then: tall, dark hair, broad shoulders—practically the bachelor from Central Casting. It was occasionally rumored that he was engaged, or had a girlfriend, but he never seemed to actually get married. He sometimes had a little BO, she remembered, which Ginny's adolescent self had found oddly sexy. Mainly, though, he had the peculiar beauty of a person in love with what he does.

His classroom had all the elegance and electricity hers lacked. He would pepper his lessons with quotes from John Cheever, Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan. He seemed to know something about everything, and he wielded his knowledge not as a weapon but with self-effacing humor and quirkiness. He promised his students two dollars for each time they brought in an example of bad grammar in a pop song—an arrangement that easily could have bankrupted him. Ginny was the first to produce one. “I have a quote from the song ‘Hungry Eyes,' ” she announced shyly one afternoon. She didn't have to say what it was. “I feel the magic between you and I!” Mr. Hennessey blurted out, as if he were removing a painful splinter from his heel.

He didn't draw the same boundaries her other teachers did. He told them what books he was reading, what movies he liked, what happened the week he was out on jury
duty. “We were seated around a large table, and the lawyer questioning potential jurors said: ‘Each of you needs to choose which of these adjectives best describes you: leader or follower.' ‘Leader,' reported the first. ‘Leader,' said the next.” Then it was Mr. Hennessey's turn. “Well, if these two are leaders, I'd better be a follower,” he said. “But I should inform you, these words are nouns, not adjectives.”

He had them memorize and recite their favorite poem. He said he would bring in his guitar and accompany them, if they wanted to sing it. The students laughed, but he was serious. “Each of you should make a point of having at least one great poem committed to memory,” he said. “In case you ever have to spend some time in prison.”

In the spring he missed half a week of school, and the substitute teacher told them his mother had died. When he returned to class on Thursday, he was quieter than usual, but beneath the surface, the old self blazed. He gave them an essay assignment so he could sit at his desk, writing what looked like thank-you notes. “Write a three-page composition, either fiction or nonfiction, that illustrates how fragile yet how durable we are.” Ginny wrote something relatively unimaginative about her dog. That afternoon, when she got home from school, she went to her bedroom, locked the door, and cried.

“Never listen to the world,” he announced one sunlit morning in the middle of June. It was the last day of school. “The world gives terrible advice. In fact, more often than not, do the exact opposite of what the world says.” This was her final memory of the man, her favorite teacher. She couldn't locate him in the crowd at
graduation, couldn't find him afterward to tell him about her college choice, thank him for his recommendation. But he had inhabited her consciousness all these years. Of course he had. And now she had his address.

At first it had seemed fitting and adventuresome to drive to his house on a Saturday afternoon, rather than calling ahead.
The world gives terrible advice
, she repeated to herself, speeding along the MassPike. What kind of advice would Mr. Hennessey give? But now, sitting on the side of the road with the engine still running, she felt ridiculous. She was about a mile from the house, had driven by twice, seen a truck, seen the light on in the kitchen, and kept going. It was October, and both sides of the dirt road were lined with trees whose yellow leaves had already fallen. She knew her students were out at soccer matches and football games, and in the silence she heard their shouts and cheers. While here she sat on a country road, where not a single car had passed her. One minute she was prepared to go back to the house; the next she was ready to drive the two-plus hours it would take to get home.
This must be what a midlife crisis feels like
, she said to herself. Then she remembered
Good in a crisis
, from the personal ads, and laughed. The next thing she knew, she had pulled into his driveway, turned off the engine, and was slamming the car door.

The house was modest and unremarkable. Greenish paint, beige shutters, a few shrubs along the front. An old-fashioned black mailbox hung beside the door. The truck in the driveway was rusted, and the word
TOYOTA
across its back was missing its final
A
, rendering it a palindrome. Ginny rang the bell and waited, feeling a bit queasy, preparing herself for a wife or child to answer, or a stranger—perhaps this was an old address—anything. She rang the bell again. A moment later, there he was. Mr. Hennessey.

“Yes?” he said through the screen door. She could tell he didn't recognize her. She wore her blond hair long and curly now, and her face had settled in a way that gave her cheekbones she hadn't had when she was seventeen. She was wearing jeans and a brown suede jacket, and carrying an oversize handbag that she thought of as her schoolmarm's purse.

“Mr. Hennessey, hello. It's Virginia Porter. I was a student of yours.”

“Virginia Porter,” Mr. Hennessey said, a smile widening his face. “Come on in. How the heck are you?”

“I'm all right. I'm a teacher myself now,” she said, wishing she'd waited a little longer to say it.

“No kidding! Are you really?” He opened the hall closet. “Here, let me take your coat.” If he was shocked to see her, he showed no sign of it. He spoke as though they did this every third Saturday in October.

She pulled her arms out of her jacket, and he helped her. “I am,” she said, trying not to grin. She was surprised at how good she felt. Mr. Hennessey's face had surprised her—it had more lines, but it was the same face.

“Have a seat. Do you feel like coffee or anything? Tea?”

“Tea would be great.”

The two of them sat on a worn leather sofa opposite a beautifully carved coffee table, holding their cups of
tea. Ginny commented on the table, which featured a landscape of seraphs and Cyrillic letters under a sheet of glass.

“I made it,” Mr. Hennessey said. “I meant to sell it to someone, but then I ended up keeping it. Funny how things work out sometimes.”

“You're a natural—it's gorgeous. Is that what you do these days, woodwork?”

“I do a bunch of things; handyman stuff, mostly. I have some friends with farms who do a lot of canning, so there's seasonal work. It suits me; I like being outdoors. It's nice out here.”

“What made you give up teaching?” Ginny said, not realizing until she asked it how the question had been pressing on her. “You were so great at it.”

“You don't know?” Mr. Hennessey said, adjusting his position. “It was quite the scandal back in the day. I thought everyone knew.”

Ginny felt her face go hot, ashamed both that she didn't know and that she might have brought up an indelicate topic. “I guess I'm behind the times. I never heard a thing.”

“Oh. Well. It was six or seven years after your class. On a ski trip, one of the boys was arrested for smoking pot. Just one of those kid things. No harm done, really. He and his friends had taken a bag to the top of the mountain, presumably to get high and then ski down. But since the trip was in Canada and they'd carried it across the U.S. border, it became a big deal. The authorities pressed him about who sold it to him, and the kid said I had. Said I gave him the weed earlier that day. That
everyone knew I would supply students with drugs—all they had to do was ask.

“It was entirely made up, of course, probably out of desperation. But the school board took it rather seriously, as you can imagine. They searched my house, depositioned me. In the end I was vindicated, but after that, it was as if the wind had gone out of my sails. A year later I left.”

“I'm so sorry,” Ginny said. “I didn't know any of this. I didn't know a thing.”

“Don't be sorry. It all turned out for the best. I like it here. I have plenty of time to read. And it's quiet. Peaceful.”

Ginny surveyed the room—the crowded bookshelves, the dusty white curtains, the guitar case in the corner next to an expensive-looking stereo. It did seem like the abode of a contented person. Simple but homey.

He lifted his teacup. “What about you?” he said. “How do you like your life?”

“My life is generally a barrel of laughs when I'm not contemplating thoughts of an untimely death,” she said, which she'd hoped would make him laugh, but it didn't. “I like my life all right,” she said, and found herself wishing they were drinking beer rather than tea. She remembered the restaurant in Chinatown that was the only place in Boston where you could get alcohol after serving hours, by ordering a kettle of “cold tea.” Cold tea, wink wink.

“Anything exciting going on?” he said. “Where do you teach?”

“Lexington High School,” she said. “English. I even have the AP class.”

“Ah!” Mr. Hennessey said. “Our archrivals! How could you?”

“It's just the way the numbers worked out. It's nothing personal,” she said, as if she were a professional ballplayer.

“And forgive me if I was hoping you'd say English rather than chemistry.”

Ginny made a snort. “All I remember from chemistry is Avogadro's number. And even that I don't remember.”

“Avogadro isn't worth remembering. Unless you're out on a date with a chemist you want to impress.”