Out of the Blue (10 page)

I walked into homeroom Monday morning, my first full day back, to find a bouquet of flowers on my desk, precariously balanced in a jar from the chemistry lab. Some of the students were oblivious to my entrance, but three pairs of eyes—Michelle’s, Sukey’s, and Rudy’s—zeroed in for my reaction. I was in a strange state, actually, infused with endorphins and seratonin and every other great chemical produced by nonstop sex, so what I did when I saw the flowers was burst out laughing. Michelle and Sukey gawked at me in horror and fascination but Rudy was grinning. He knew bliss when he saw it.

I said some shaky thank-you’s and got down to business, which was a plan for our upcoming homeroom party. “Has anyone called Chelsea Pier to make sure we’ve got our lanes reserved?” The vote had been for bowling.

“Me,” Michelle said. “Excuse me, but what happened to your face?”

I’d anticipated this. I was not eager for it to get out that I’d fallen, so I decided on evasive action. “Cut myself shaving,” I said.

“No,
really,”
Michelle pressed.

“Michelle,” Sukey said. “You’re so sixth grade.”

“She’s just concerned,” Rudy said.

“Go, Cootie!” Eddie Zimmer called out. Eddie is not a subtle sort. In my Shakespeare class, I asked my students, Eddie among them, to jot down an anonymous menu for their romantic ideal and drop the papers in a hat. My hope was that from the qualities itemized, we could compose a modern love sonnet in Shakespearean style. This year the first selection I drew from the hat said:
Big Tits.
When I read it aloud, everyone immediately started throwing things at Eddie.

I tried not to resent his good-natured teasing of Rudy, but I felt like strangling him. Poor Rudy, caught out in his defense of Michelle, blushed to his roots and stared down at the floor.

I hurried on. “Thank you all for the flowers. I missed you and I’m glad to be back. The bell is going to ring … now.” It was a joke with us. I could usually tell when the bell for class would sound. All those years at Cameron, no doubt; its rhythm was as familiar as my heartbeat.

Grant was alone in the teachers’ lounge. “Jesus, Anna,” he said when he saw my face.

“I confess, not one of my finest hours.”

“They must have given you major morphine. You look lobotomized.”

“Nope,” I said with a smile.

“Oh my. Well, then, I guess we know what you’ve been doing when you weren’t trying to decapitate yourself. Wasn’t he scared off when he saw that mug?”

“I’m beginning to think he doesn’t scare easily,” I said. I poured us each a cup of coffee and dumped three sugars and a half ‘n’ half in Grant’s. I like mine black, preferably with the dregs that you can chew. Grant actually spilled a little when I handed him his cup, so I knew he had something on his mind.

“Don’t tell me they’re firing me for falling on my face,” I said.

Grant shook his head. “Reese’s in deep shit.” For once, he lowered his voice. “There’s something going on between him and Jessica.”

“Lassiter?” I was incredulous. Jessica Lassiter was the registrar, and mother of two middle-schoolers. “What do you mean, ‘something going on’?”

“They were spotted at a restaurant this weekend up by Columbia looking very cozy, the report goes. Apparently, he was challenged at an emergency board meeting last night and he wouldn’t deny it. Or confirm it either. Pulling a Clinton.”

I sat there twisting my cardboard coffee cup around and around in my fingers. “How can this be?”

“Jessica’s not a bad-looking woman.” His voice had risen to its normal trumpet blast.

“But she’s married.”

He looked at me as if I were the village idiot. “Anniekins.”

“What’s going to happen?”

Grant shrugged.

“You’re on the advisory committee. They won’t make him leave, will they?”

“It could happen. Sentiment is running high in some quarters.”

“I can’t imagine Cameron without him. He came the first year I did, first grade.”

“Nobody’s irreplaceable, you know that. Anyhow, it’s all just grist for the rumor mill for now.”

“Who saw them?”

“Nobody’s saying. Look, sweetness, why don’t you just daydream about your boy-toy and quit worrying in advance?” He got up and planted a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m screening a video your buddy Rudy put together for his special project. Theoretical mathematics regarding the pumpkin on the Cornell library tower. Wanna come?”

“Can’t do it.” I was suddenly very weary. I’d settled into a corner of the couch for a quick snooze when I sensed someone lurking at the door. I figured it was Leonard Chubb since he was always poking his head around corners to check out the territory. He was the last person I wanted to catch me literally napping, so I slapped a hyper-alert expression on my face.

Leonard was looking positively elated. For Leonard, that is. His lips glistened with saliva. “I’m delighted to find you alone, Annie,” he said.

He’d heard Grant call me that and figured that as an old classmate he was entitled. It annoyed me, and also that I felt I was trespassing by taking up space on
his
couch, in
his
corner.

“’Morning, Leonard.” He sat down beside me and began picking at his fingertips. I made a serious effort to work up some sympathy. After all, what kind of childhood could this man have endured to wind up so unappetizing?

“Things may change very quickly around here,” he said, his voice uncustomarily animated.

“You mean because of the rumors?”

“Oh, they’re not rumors.” Over the years, Reese had patronized, thwarted, and ignored Leonard. The possibility of a coup was clearly a tantalizing prospect. “I have a proposition to discuss with you,” he went on. His tongue sent a fine spray into the air between us. He waited for encouragement but I just sat quietly. “You and I have divergent points of view, Anna,” he continued, “but our differences can serve positive ends.” He smiled as if I should understand what he was driving at.

“I’m totally clueless,” I admitted. Leonard was all for reinstating the era of elitist education. More admissions testing, aggressive recruiting among the wealthy, yearly testing of the scholarship (i.e., minority) kids to ensure that they were measuring up, and he’d even once proposed that they be used for free janitorial work at the school. He had also made an unauthorized trip to Ralph Lauren to solicit a design for school uniforms. I don’t know what Mr. Lauren told him, but the kids still slouched around in their eclectic attire. Since Leonard and I had often gone head-to-head over such issues, he was well-aware that I stood squarely on the side of the rabble.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” I asked him.

“With Reese out, we can co-chair the department.”

I burst out laughing. “You and me together?” At his wounded expression, I sobered up. “First of all, it’s about ten years too early, and besides, we’d kill each other.”

“On the contrary, we’d make a very effective team. I know my weaknesses, Anna. I don’t have natural people skills. But you’re accessible and popular. On the other hand, I’m very efficient, and with all due respect, I have a broader grasp of the curriculum.”

Now I got it. I was supposed to help him achieve his goal of becoming headmaster. I had to give him credit. He knew where some of the strategic holes were and had figured out a pretty imaginative way to plug them.

“What about Mary Feeny?” I asked. She was the current head of the department. A longtime favorite of Reese’s, Mary was an ex-nun who had championed American women writers back in the days when the only one anybody ever taught was Emily Dickinson. Mary had backed me up on Annie Proulx.

“Feeny’s finished when Reese goes.” It slipped out so gleefully that even Leonard realized he’d overstepped. “What I mean is, she’ll be retiring soon anyway.”

“Not for another three years at least,” I said. “Mary hired you, Leonard, remember? Straight out of grad school, just like me.” I stood up.

“Where are you going?” He clutched at my arm.

“It wouldn’t work out.” His fingers were like talons, digging. “That hurts,” I said.

“Think it over, Anna,” he said, letting go. “You like innovative approaches; I’m offering you one.” Leonard is one of the few people I know who speaks in audible semi-colons.

“You’re not just talking about the department, are you?”

He didn’t answer, but as I gathered up my papers, he shot a zinger at me. “If you’re not a part of the solution—” he said.

I whirled around. “Don’t threaten me.”

“I’m merely suggesting that you be practical. Your own position could be tenuous, you know, given your disability.”

“You’re the one who ratted on Duncan Reese, aren’t you?”

His eyelids slid closed for a second and his lips formed the saucer of a smile. As I left the room, I could see out of the corner of my eye that he’d nestled into his favorite spot on the couch with his feet tucked under him, dirty shoes and all.

I wanted to go home and complain to Ma or write Joe an e-mail decrying the Uriah Heep of the Cameron English department. But as soon as I let myself in the door and found Ma home early, I knew something was up. She was shelling peas into a saucepan and they ricocheted off the sides like buckshot.

“A little tense, are we?” I asked her.

She gave me a sphinx look that told me she intended to hang on to it, whatever it was, for a while longer. “How was your day?” she asked.

“Interesting.” Two could play that game.

She shoved the saucepan aside and sat opposite me at the kitchen table. “Okay,” she said. “You show me yours, I show you mine.”

“Duncan Reese is supposedly having an affair with a married employee.”

Ma recoiled as if I’d whacked her across the face with a wet towel.

“I know,” I said. “I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Jessica Lassiter. The registrar.”

“Isn’t she about your age?”

“Older. I’d say thirty-five.” I waited a minute while it sunk in. “Do you think they’ll fire him?” I asked her. “Maybe there’re extenuating circumstances. I mean,
he’s
been divorced for years.”

“If it’s true, I’d say he’s fucked.”

We sat in silence for a minute. Then she got up to pour herself a drink. “Want one?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just half.” I still had papers to grade and I was exhausted. After she’d sat back down again, I said, “I always heard Jessica and her husband could barely manage to shake hands. Okay. Now you.”

She brought herself back from someplace else. “It’s your father. He’s asked to see you.”

“Mama mia.” I held out my glass. “Maybe I’ll have that other half.”

I’d tried to explain it to Joe when we were lying in bed during what I recalled as the Weekend of the Thousand Orgasms. As usual, he was prodding me about my father and wouldn’t say anything about his own. I remember wondering if I lifted the lid on my box of worms would Joe maybe offer me the same courtesy. It didn’t work out that way, but I did unearth a few nightcrawlers of my own.

“Don’t you wonder what he looks like?” Joe had asked.

“I’ve seen photos of him.”

“Recent ones?”

“He makes it into magazines sometimes. He’s the guy standing behind the person standing behind the aging television personality. I saw him twelve years ago at my high school graduation. I didn’t enjoy that.”

“Why not?”

“I got a lot of awards, and he acted like it was all his doing. The way he put his arm around me in front of my friends when he hadn’t seen me in all those years. I couldn’t wait to get rid of him.”

Joe gave me a kiss between the eyebrows and worked his way down my nose to my mouth. I thought maybe he was wandering off the track but I should have known better by then.

“So didn’t your mother ever talk about him?” he asked.

I rolled over onto a pretzel. We had plenty of provisions in there with us, for in between.

“From the day he left, Ma never said one negative thing about him. She used to shush her own father when he’d start up in front of me.” I thought back, remembering my grandfather’s angry face. It got so red I was afraid he was going to pop like a big red balloon.

“But she stays in touch with him,” Joe said.

“Sure, there’s financial stuff. He’s very generous about my medical bills. But she knows I’m not much interested in talking about him.”

“Not interested or you don’t want to?”

“Vell, Herr Doctair, a little uff both.” I trailed off. In the silence, Joe leaned over and kissed me. I felt my limbs relax as the pressure of his mouth on mine set me adrift again, just Joe and me on a calm sea. It was time to toss Daddy overboard. He didn’t belong in this boat.

“Maybe it’s not so bad to invent your own relatives,” Joe said.

I confess to dirty pool: “Sure, if the real ones are vile,” I said. “But your father’s not so bad, right, Joe?”

“No,” he said. “Not bad, not good, not anything.” Guaranteed, at the mention of his own father, that flat, undecipherable tone. He draped a leg over me and stopped my mouth. Daddy disappeared under the waves and it was just the two of us again.

This mental plunge back into bed with Joe must have taken less than a second because Ma didn’t appear to have noticed. She was gazing toward the window with faraway eyes as if she, too, was floating on a memory.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked her. She looked at me blankly. “For Dad’s visit?”

“Oh. He’s coming to New York in a couple of weeks,” she said. “He phoned the bakery to ask if you’d have dinner with him.” She got up and went to the kitchen counter to pound chicken cutlets with a mallet. There appeared to be a personal grudge involved, given the level of violence.

“What does he want from me?” I called. We both heard the petulant five-year-old in my voice, and when Ma turned to look at me, I gave her a rueful smile. Up to now it had been easy to avoid my father. His second wife didn’t want him to have anything to do with us. By the time he’d divorced her and remarried for the third time, I had been diagnosed with MS and his rare requests to see me dwindled to none. It was only during the course of my mattress discourse with Joe that I realized my years of resentment were somewhat unjustified. I bore my own share of the responsibility for our lack of connection.