Ms. Hempel Chronicles (17 page)

She stopped. Her hands flew up to her mouth. "I’m
_So
sorry!”

Ms. Hempel touched the fair, freckled arm. “Oh, don’t worry. Please, really, don’t worry.”

“I’m an idiot,” cried Ms. Duffy.

"You're not," said Ms. Hempel. “Because I forget, too. After I do the dishes, I get this panicked feeling that I’ve put my ring down somewhere and now I can’t find it.” She picked up her bare hand and looked at it. “Everything was friendly, it really was.”

Ms. Duffy nodded, her face stricken.

“Amit and I still talk on the phone. And last week he sent me a book.” She didn’t mention that it was actually one of her books, a book that had been swept up in his wake and had now washed up again on the shores of his new apartment. “Were in very good touch,” she said.

Ms. Duffy remained unconsoled. “What happened?”.'she murmured. “What made yoU'decide—”

It was hard to keep straight; they had told people different things at different times. There was Amit's fellowship in Texas, which he couldn’t turn down; and there was the difficulty of finding time to plan a wedding, not to mention the expense; there was their youth, of course, and the uncertainty that comes with it, the fearful cloudiness of the future (and what a mercy that was, to be considered, at nearly thirty, still heartbreakingly young).... All of which was true of course, just as all of it was prevarication, and even in the midst of saying these things, she was never sure exactly whose feelings were being spared, just who was being protected. For whose

sake was all this delicacy required? She hated to think that it might be hers.

“It wasn’t the teaching, was it?” asked Ms. Duffy.

Oh no, it wasn’t that. At least she didn’t think so. But funny how everyone had a theory they believed yet also wished to see refuted. “It’s not your father, is it?” her mother asked, her father dead two years now but his absence still brimming as his presence once had. When she showed her the ring, her mother had offered to walk her down the aisle. "But I know it’s not the same,” she said. “I know that.”

So she had told her mother no, it wasn’t because she missed her father. Though she still could feel his warm, dry, insistent hand hovering just above the top of her head. And she had told Mr. Polidori no, it wasn’t because of him, either. Though at moments she could still feel his hand, too, as it made its way down the length of her spine. She had been surprised that he’d even asked. A surprising glimpse of vanity, of self-importance. He had cornered her by the jukebox and gazed down at her earnestly—the earnestness also a surprise.

But it was only a kiss!

And some nuzzling, some breathless pressing and hugging, in one of Mooney’s indeterminate bathrooms. Ages ago, on one of those happy Friday afternoons. After he had ended things with Ms. Duffy but before he had fallen for the gamine younger half sister of Mimi Swartz. A pause between the acts, there in the dark stall at Mooney’s, everyone giddy with the fast approach of summer. She had tumbled into the bathroom and found him, back to the door, penis presumably in hand, and before she could even gasp he had glanced over his shoulder, told her to wait, and then unhurriedly finished, washed his hands, dried them from a roll of gray paper towels, asking her, Do you hate this song as much as I do? They had danced,

barely able to move. He had lowered the swinging latch int the little round hook by the door.

Forgot to do that, he said, and she laughed.

Or did she? She would like to think that she had, that she had kept her wits about her and laughed, kept things floating along lightly, the encounter accidental and jolly. She would like to think that she hadn't swooned. Hadn’t shut her eyes and given way, tipped her head and held on. There was no hesitation—only treachery, only readiness—a perfect swan dive into the dark pool of flings and affairs. Maybe she had let out a little moan. But then the song came to an end, and he clasped her bearishly, pecked her on the forehead, said: I bet you make all the boys crazy, Ms. Hempel. And after releasing the latch, gallantly held the door open for her.

She walked, obedient, to her seat at the bar, wondering, What just happened?

Later, she would return to this moment, flipping it back and forth like a tricky flash card, one that somehow refused to be memorized. She asked herself all the boring questions (not pretty enough? odd smell? fiance?) but couldn't quite manage an answer. Causality kept escaping her. He kissed her, then he changed his mind—that was as far as she ever got; But always fascinating to her was the fact that she could feel him changing his mind. Feel it in her muscles and on her skin. Not that he did anything so obvious as stiffen, and his body didn’t once let go of hers; yet something shifted: the pressure that was once excited now merely emphatic, the mouth still warm but only reassuringly so, the embrace turning into a squeeze. His body’s gracious withdrawal of interest in the very moment that he decided, No, this really isn't for me.

And though many things would reveal themselves in time—the sex of Ms. Duffy’s baby, a girl; and the name, Pina,

after the bleak choreographer; the name of the woman who worked at Amit’s lab, which was Lilly; the right word, the word she’d been looking for, Yemeni—still she returned to the bathroom at Mooney’s, to its perfect mystery, to the moment when Mr. Polidori wrapped his arms around her like a bear. So that was what it felt like, someone making a decision. She wanted to remember how it felt.

Ms. Hempel had a way with girls of a certain age. They hung around her after school; they invited her over to their houses for dinner. They sent notes at the end of the year, usually on cards they had drawn themselves. Serpentine flowers. Primitive stars. On overnight trips they asked if they could play with her hair. They showed her their poems, sought advice about boys. At Christmas they gave her poinsettias and a gift certificate for a back massage. They liked her shoes, her clothes; they liked every time she did something different with her hair. Not once did they miss her birthday. On the last day of school, they hugged her, speechlessly. But later she would read, in their purple handwriting: I’ll always remember the seventh grade.

Her sister, Maggie, found all of this difficult to believe. “I would never do that for a teacher,” she declared. “Is your school a hippie school?” She wanted to know if they had to do gym. “Can they call you Beatrice?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do they get real grades?”

“Of course they do!” Beatrice said, and snatched the birthday card back from her sister. “I failed a kid two years ago."

Maggie returned to her puzzle book, spread out on the kitchen table. She resumed chewing the beleaguered eraser at the end of her pencil. Rotating her ankle, she kneaded her long monkey toes against the floor.

"I don’t know,” she said. “Your students sound weird."

According to whom! But Beatrice contained herself. She gazed at her sister—the shiny, pebbled dome of her forehead, the butterfly appliques on her mall-bought top, the chapped knuckles of her long, desiccated fingers—and thought to herself, without much pleasure, My students would eat you for breakfast.

Did Maggie even know what it meant to shape an eyebrow? To do an ollie? Would she say tuna sashimi was her favorite food ever? Would she choose Elie Wiesel as the subject for her next book report?

Probably not. She wasn’t in any hurry to become a knowing, complicated member of the world. She was content to do puzzles and enter flute competitions and behave ingratiatingly with their mother. Often Beatrice had to remind herself that her sister was the same age as the girls she taught at school. Compared to them, Maggie seemed either stunted or strangely wizened.

“No tea for me,” she said, though Beatrice hadn’t asked. She poured the boiling water into a cup and opened the refrigerator.

“Where’s the milk?”

“You’ll have to use soy,” Maggie said. “Turns out I’m lactose intolerant.”

“But we love milk,” said Beatrice. “We love all dairy products.”

“Remember last summer? The banana split?”

Beatrice nodded, haunted not by the explosive sounds emanating from the bathroom but by the hoarse moans coming from what must have been her sister. She had sounded like an old sinner on his deathbed.

"Well, that was the problem,” Maggie said.

Beatrice shook the little box of liquid soy. She shook and shook, but didn t have any plans to open it “Mama puts this in her coffee?”

"Mama didn’t even drink her first glass of milk,' Maggie crowed, “until she was seven years old!" No wonder she looked so pleased with her deficiency. Once upon a time, there was no such thing as milk in China! She could have stepped right out of the mythical rice fields herself. Not like Beatrice, or their brother Calvin: those shaggy, beetle-browed, milk-drinking mutts. Maggie’s hair was straight and black, her limbs as dreamily smooth as their mother’s—as if she had managed to run the gestational gauntlet unscathed by their father’s messy genes. That mysterious soup, full of slashes: German/Scot-tish/Welsh/Irish/French. Really, French? Or was that just a wishful affectation? No one knew anymore, no one cared; so why not be a tiny bit French and marvel at Maggie’s quality of chinoiserie. She was not quite the real deal, although she looked pretty close. So much like her mother, people said of Maggie, a similarity that Beatrice had never been accused of.

“Did Mama tell you?" Maggie said. "You’re supposed to be helping me with my application essay."

“It’s my birthday!” Beatrice said.

She was supposed to be eating noodles for longevity and then maybe some cake for sheer sugary happiness. (But cake with a tall, cold glass of soy?) She was supposed to be blowing out candles and making wishes and being waited upon by her mother. Sleeping late in her narrow bed, reading her old Madeleine L'Engle books, flipping through her record collection

in the closet. Why not come home? Her mother's invitation on the phone had been seductive. Why not come home and relax?

"I don’t know my teachers’ birthdays,” Maggie said mus-ingly. “So I couldn’t give them a card even if I wanted to.” She looked with new curiosity at Beatrice. “How do your students know when your birthday is?”

Beatrice lifted her hands in self-defense. “It comes up naturally in conversation!” she cried.

Maggie had been, from the very first, a surprise. When they found out her mother was pregnant, Beatrice’s father had already taken up residence in a clammy carriage house a few blocks away, basically living in someone else’s backyard. It was only a trial separation, he said. He took with him six shirts, his English shaving kit, and a book of tormented divorce poems by Derek Walcott. Beatrice and Calvin would visit him on the weekends, playing cards on the Murphy bed while he cooked them cheese sandwiches in a toaster oven; Then their mother changed her mind, land he moved back home. With miraculous speed he finished building the gazebo that had been languishing for months. They switched therapists; they spent a weekend at an outdoor early-music festival; he bought her some extravagant chandelier earrings, and when she told him she didn’t like them, he failed to act insulted. A delicate truce was established, into which Maggie was born.

"She’s the caboose!” people said, which seemed a very lighthearted way of referring to an accident of such human proportions. At the time Beatrice couldn’t bear to contemplate how such an accident might have occurred. Only many years later did she realize that her sister sprang from a final good-bye—the product of one last, sad, habitual bout of affection—an insight that occurred while she herself was thus occupied, though in her case she remembered to wear a diaphragm.

Maggie’s birth coincided with the release of a new Sonic Youth record called Sister. Beatrice went to the all-ages show they played on a Sunday afternoon and bought a T-shirt with a picture of a half-naked punk rock girl crawling along the floor and staring alluringly, or maybe crazily, at the camera. She was naked from the waist down, not on top. It was hard to tell, but it looked like she had carved some words into her leg with a razor or a pocketknife. Beatrice knew from reading the back of the album that this picture was a film still, and that the film was called Submit to Me, but she couldn’t find the information she wanted most, which was where one could see a film like this.

At home she pointed to her chest, saying, “Look!” The shirt said sister, and was a tribute to the baby. Maybe because the silk screen wasn’t very clear, no one seemed to notice that the crawling girl didn’t have on any underwear, and Beatrice was able to sport her shirt everywhere, even to school. She wore it until it became as thin and soft as a little kid’s nightgown. Then she kept on wearing it until a hole opened up beneath the armpit and another one at the neckline, and then until it completely fell apart. Thinking ahead, she kept the remains; she had a feeling they’d be of historical interest and value, and maybe, like a Civil War uniform, good material for a quilt.

“There is no greater joy than seeing the fruit of your labor shining on the stage.” So read the final sentence of Maggie’s essay, a sentence that Beatrice feared would not immediately identify her sister as a gifted or talented youth. Maggie was applying to a special summer program, and she needed to get

in. Once she finished the eighth grade, she wouldn’t be u
_sh
ered onto the ancient, rolling campus where Beatrice and Cal vin had spent their adolescence. She’d be going to a real high school instead, with tracked classes and a chain-link fence Hence the grim work of supplementing her soon-to-be-publj
_c
education had begun.

“Okay, let’s take a step back,” said Beatrice. "What are you trying to say in this essay? What do you want to communicate to the reader?”

“That I like being a theater tech,” said Maggie.

“Okay, good. So what about it do you like?”

“I like getting to use the electric drill. Also, Mr. Minkoff showed me how to work the circuit breaker.” She thought for a moment. “We can go to the cast party afterwards if we want.”

“Great. Those are really great specifics. Write those down.” Beatrice felt clearheaded, competent. Nearly professional. But she couldn’t get over the feeling that she was performing for a tiny hidden camera feeding directly into her mother’s busy control room. “Now let’s think a little broader. Be a little more abstract. What are the ^reasons you’re drawn to doing this? What do you get out of the experience?”