Tampa (8 page)

Janet slowly pushed herself up from the couch and made a
frustrated
groan. “We’re just circus animals here to give the taxpaying parents an entertaining evening.” She hunched her back over and bowed her arms into the shape of exaggerated parentheses. “
Monkey
dance for you,” she grunted in a low voice. “Me monkey.
Monkey
jump high if parent say so.” Encouraged by a light pattering of laughter from the other teachers, she shuffled over to the fruit bowl next to the coffeemaker and grabbed a banana. “Monkey ass itch,” Janet proclaimed in a throaty growl, “monkey scratch!” Her hands reaching backward, she began to laboriously lift each orthopedic Velcro shoe a few inches off the ground to mimic a dance.

“Stop … stop!” Larry hissed under his breath. Suddenly the cause came into view: Assistant Principal Rosen was standing just outside the doorway looking in. Janet removed her hands from in between her butt cheeks but did not turn around to face him.

“Ned,” Larry greeted him, extending his coffee cup outward in a type of salute. “Don’t mind us. Just blowing off a little steam
before
all the pomp and circumstance.” Ned Rosen nodded, then
wandered
away. He seemed confused and a little sad, the way the last caveman to accept the wheel might, wondering how others could possibly appreciate something he found to be so useless.

I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the parents for a
different
reason—to me they were libido kryptonite. I liked to
imagine
the students as an independent resource, new creatures of their own design. Day to day, it was easy to think of the junior high as an island of immortal youths who might never age, but seeing the
parents killed that fantasy. Suddenly I’d be aware of what nearly all my students would look like two decades down the road. And after I’d seen them, it was impossible to get those images out of my mind.

For example, I learned that Trevor’s physical destiny involved the generous distribution of hirsute facial moles, in addition to a series of broken nasal capillaries that had a near-infected red glow. Michael Ronaldo in my fifth period, though currently lanky and weightless, was destined to inherit a third-trimester paunch. Though the night included a few creepy fathers (
I sure would’ve paid attention if my teacher had looked like you
) and overcomplimentary mothers who seemed to be skirting the line of possible friendship (
Dana told me after the first day, “Mom, my English teacher is the prettiest person I’ve ever seen!” Isn’t that sweet? You know, a few of us mothers have a
scrapbooking
circle on Wednesday nights
…), the only bona fide nut who showed up was Frank Pachenko’s mother, who introduced herself simply as Mrs. Pachenko, though I knew she was Frank’s mother even before she spoke—the two of them had the same bulging eyes. Their resting expression was one of squeezed panic, like a ferret dressed up in a miniature corset. Frank was a hopeless dork with the haircut of a fourth grader; meeting his mother, it was easy to see why.

“Mrs. Price, good evening.” She addressed me like I was a Japanese businessman with whom she’d previously had a long and profitable, if not personable, relationship. “Did you receive the
written
inquiries I sent with Frank? According to him, you have yet to send home a reply.” My mind raced—written inquiries? After a moment I finally remembered odd offers, written on floral
stationery
, of volunteer-aide classroom assistance that Frank occasionally
handed me. I’d read the first one all the way through, worried it might be some personalized warning about a specific food allergy or attention disorder, but when I realized their unchanging contents I began to throw them away upon receipt.

“Of course, yes—I figured we could just chat in person since I knew I’d be seeing you soon at open house.” Mrs. Pachenko’s pursed lips flexed slightly tighter.

“Well I’ve always started the week classes began,” she stressed, lamenting the great inconvenience I’d brought upon her. “But I’m a quick study. If you can give me the lesson plans and assignments for the next few weeks, I’ll simply work double-time to catch up. I’ll have no choice.”

It took all the muscle control in my body to keep my eyes from growing large with perception of insanity. I wasn’t sure what we’d be doing in class tomorrow, let alone several weeks from now. “You know, Mrs. Pachenko, the reason I waited to talk to you in person is that we have a somewhat sensitive situation I think you’d be a perfect fit for.” I lowered my voice to a confidential volume, taking her by the arm and guiding her toward a corner of the classroom.

“I have a colleague,” I continued, “who could really use the
assistance
of someone with expertise. Now, I know you’ve probably always helped out in Frank’s classes, and I get it. You’re invested in your child’s education. But I have to say, Frank is really holding his own in my course—he’s a star. With your skill set, you could do a world of good—the most good—helping out a teacher who’s frankly … well, she’s at risk.”

Mrs. Pachenko folded her arms together. “I was certainly
counting
on being in Frank’s class,” she began. “But I don’t want to refuse someone if I’m badly needed.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. The low thread count of the garment was nearly prickly. “Mrs. Pachenko, I wouldn’t request this if it weren’t an emergency. I feel like you’re the only one who could help.” The flattery worked; at the end of the night I walked her down to Janet’s room and made an introduction.

“You’re a godsend,” Janet exclaimed. For a brief moment she became distracted by a patch of eczema on her upper arm, but after a few scratches her joy returned. “I’ve been waiting for the cavalry to come. Do you know how many times I filled out an assistant
request
form?”

I left the two of them to acquaint themselves while I ran back to the classroom for a final peek—were there any stragglers, any
parents
working late shifts who’d only been able to arrive five minutes after open house ended?

There were not. That meant Jack Patrick’s parents hadn’t shown. I couldn’t help but see it as an omen; as I drove home that evening, every intersection’s signal was green for go.

After the open
house, a pilot light of inevitability lit up inside me; it wasn’t possible to think of anything beyond when things would begin in earnest and I would have him. I felt like a scientist whose years of research had finally brought him to the cusp of the discovery he’d been seeking all along: I could feel the payoff about to hit, and waiting any longer made me want to scream at the top of my lungs.

The day after open house was a Friday; the kids were mentally checked out and I was looking forward to the possibilities of a first
weekend with Jack. Perhaps we would drive through Dairy Queen, then park and explore the differences of each other’s bodies with
ice-cream-
cooled tongues. Or drive out to the country fields, strip down naked and run together like deer, each taking turns being the
follower
, the one who gets to watch the active mechanics of the running body in front. I was hopeful his parents were easily lied to, that an excuse of a sleepover would allow an overnight romp, the sun
rising
on our sticky bodies, me introducing Jack to his first taste of gas station coffee as I dropped him off a safe walking distance from his home, then went to the gym to shower up. I could tell Ford I had an all-night yoga retreat. Any excuse relating to physical maintenance would float with him. But what if Jack’s parents weren’t so lenient? If needed, anything was possible. Jack could sneak me into his window at night and we could fuck on the floor with clean socks stuffed in our mouths to muffle the sound. Nothing would keep me from him.

But he was absent. His very first absence. I was so dumbstruck by this development that for nearly a minute after the start of class, all I could do was stare at his empty chair without speaking. The rest of the students began to whisper and check their phones,
wondering
at the delay but also not wanting to snap me out of a trance and initiate schoolwork. Finally I stood and wordlessly started to put on a video of a modern adaptation of
The Scarlet Letter
. “Are we moving to that red-A book now?” Danny asked.

“Yup,” I answered. I found myself chewing at my nails—a
repulsive
habit from my childhood that I’d taken great pains to break, repeatedly applying a bitter-tasting custom polish; to this day, candy with that same specific, tangy odor will turn my stomach.

“I’ve already read this,” a young girl—I believe her name was
Alexis—said. “It’s like a
Romeo and Juliet
where Juliet gets caught and punished and Romeo doesn’t.” She paused briefly before
adding
, “I read all the books for this year over the summer.”

“How impressive,” I remarked. I couldn’t stop looking at his empty chair. Had he, in fact, told his parents about our whispered exchange? Perhaps he’d confessed just before open house and his parents, who then consulted their lawyer, were told that any contact with the soon-to-be defendant was a bad idea. Worse yet, perhaps one of his parents was a lawyer. Perhaps both of them were. Were they plotting their case right now?

“Our society is still this way,” rattled Gash, whose real name was Jessica. She dyed her naturally blond hair jet black and wore black lipstick and clothing assaulted by several hundred appliquéd safety pins. “When women hit it they’re labeled sluts, but with men it’s just expected.”

“That’s true, Gash.” I nodded, pausing the video. “But it was not ‘just expected’ from Puritan ministers, like the character of
Arthur
Dimmesdale. Let’s think about social context for a moment, and social roles. In today’s society, whom might we expect sex
scandals
from?”

“Priests,” yelled Marissa; the class erupted in laughter as she looked around nodding. “For real,” she giggled.

“Athletes,” said Danny, self-referentially pulling at his football jersey with a smile on his face.

“Good,” I responded, “celebrities especially. But like Marissa mentioned, we’re most scandalized by relationships where
someone
breaches the boundaries of a given social role. The culturally agreed-upon role of a priest is to be chaste and holy, whereas the culturally agreed-upon role of a celebrity is to be entertaining.”

Marissa’s hand shot up again but she didn’t wait to be called upon before talking. “Plus with priests it’s kids and stuff.”

“Good point. Can someone else tell us why that’s significantly more scandalous?”

“It’s, like, double illegal,” said Heath.

Jack’s seat seemed to nearly be glowing; the glinting chrome buttons on its backrest kept flashing darts of light against the
window
. “Are there any social roles in our society where it’s okay for an adult to have sex with minors?” I asked.

“Well like in some redneck states adults can marry minors with the parents’ consent and stuff,” Gash said.

“Yes.” I smiled. Never had I imagined my later years unfolding in a holler of West Virginia, paying the families of young men
reverse
dowries to marry me for their fourteenth year of life and then divorce on their next birthday. Perhaps, if I managed to stick with Ford long enough, past when his father died and he received the bulk of his inheritance, I could gain the type of alimony settlement that would make this arrangement possible. It might not be so bad: the shirtless overalls, the Mountain Dew–fueled sex marathons. It could be a far smarter route than staring at an empty seat in a
classroom
wondering if litigation was brewing.

Suddenly I realized I’d been looking out the window with a grin on my face. “So the point being,” I continued, “where legal, an adult and minor can take on the roles of husband and wife and have the consensual sex implied in that relationship. We mentioned religious officials. What are other social roles where sexual
impropriety
is taboo?”

“Politicians,” one student yelled. Then, from the front row in a very quiet voice, Frank Pachenko called out, “Teachers.”

“But, like, that’s exactly what we expect now,” Danny said. The bass and enthusiasm of his voice gratefully drowned out Frank’s comment, which I pretended not to hear. “I mean, like, look at past presidents. JFK was a player. Clinton got it sucked in office.” The room exploded with shrieks of laughter that made my ears ring; the vocal chaos in the aftermath of the comment made the twenty-five students sound like a full auditorium.

“Okay, okay,” I called out. “Let’s settle down. If we want to talk about grown-up subjects we have to act like grown-ups.”

“Mrs. Price,” Marissa chided, her acne-riddled face suddenly full of ancient knowledge. “We are so not grown-ups.”

“But can’t you act it?” I said encouragingly. “Can’t you pretend?”

They were a room full of reality TV hopefuls; in that moment, they swore that they could.

I waited all weekend for the hammer to drop: the summons
to be served, the call to come in. But Friday night passed
uneventfully
—I rented a movie about a thirteen-year-old who had to learn how to operate a motor vehicle when his intoxicated older brother needed to be picked up from jail: the two of them then ran a
series
of errands around shady parts of town to figure out where his brother had left a bag of drugs. To make sure I’d be asleep by the time Ford got home, and for most of Saturday as well, I bought a box of wine, removed its bladderlike sack from the cardboard shell and took it with me to watch the video in bed. Several hours later I woke to Ford holding the emptied container up in front of the night-table lamp. Next to the light, with its amorphous shape and merlot-dyed plastic, it vaguely resembled a placenta.

“Jesus, Celeste.” Ford let out a whistle that wasn’t void of
admiration
. “Those little brats stress you out today or what?”

My mouth felt taped shut with the sleepy film of the wine. “Can you turn off the light?” I suggested.

“It reeks in here. Did you know this bedroom smells like a hobo, Celeste?” I sat up and Ford immediately began laughing. “Oh my god, look at your face. I think you need to brush your teeth before they fall out.”

It was true; my smile had taken on a darkened sheen of
purple
. Around my mouth, where pigmented drool had journeyed and
dried, there was a reddish stain that recalled clown paint. Stumbling from bed, I was at least able to tuck the vibrator beneath the pillow so that the portrait of my solitary hedonism wouldn’t appear to be quite so complete. “We had a 10-31 that some wino was breaking into the bathroom of the convenience mart tonight,” Ford called as I rummaged through the medicine cabinet, downing a small
handful
of what I hoped were Tylenol PM. “But the perp got away. That wasn’t you, was it?”

By the time I was up and showered on Saturday afternoon, I had little energy to do anything but sit at the kitchen table and stare at the phone, hoping not to receive a call from AP Rosen or the legal team of Jack’s parents. When it finally did ring, I jumped in my seat. I was suddenly paralyzed; it felt self-proclaimed—if I hadn’t been watching it, it would not have rung—and I cursed myself and let the machine pick up. But it was just Ford doing a sobriety check on me.

“Hello, dear,” I said, picking up to the loud beep of the machine recording stopping. My voice had the gravelly sound of someone wearing a bathrobe well into the day. “I have not touched a single bottle and I’ve prayed to the Lord for strength.”

“Ha,” he muttered. I heard a car horn.

“Isn’t it against the law to be on your phone while you drive?”

“Not when you’re driving the cop car, sweets.” He then entered into a long story about a domestic dispute he’d interrupted that had the following punch line: the chosen weapon of assault was a
fly-swatter
.

“I’ll catch you later, hero,” I said. When I was hungover, the sound of Ford’s voice made me unbearably nauseous.

Unable to go back to sleep for a nap, I decided I’d wait until
dusk settled, then drive by Jack’s house again. Surely, if the family was in pandemonium from a revelation Jack had made, I’d be able to detect something from the exterior: the dining room aglow long after dinnertime, the family seated around the table in a strategy meeting, Jack’s head held between his hands at an angle
suggesting
emotional anguish while his parents bickered about how best to proceed.

There was nothing to do but wait. Baking myself seemed like the ideal activity; the feeling of sun on skin would serve as a fitting distraction. Slathering myself with SPF and wearing nothing but a wide-brimmed straw hat, I lay nude in our pool’s floating chaise lounge for the better part of the afternoon and evening, bobbing and staring at the clarified sky through polarized sunglass lenses. I thought about Jack there with me, the scent of chlorine and coconut on his skin, his balls tightening in my hand as he eased into the cool water. How great it would feel to be lying on the warm concrete and have him leap from the water, taut and dripping, and lie on top of me, outlining each of my limbs with his own cold counterpart.

I kept hope as well that instead of the worst possible outcome—seeing his parents interrogating him on the couch, large yellow legal pads in both of their hands—I might plausibly encounter the best: Jack mowing the lawn at dusk for his weekly allowance money, freckles of blown dirt sticking to the sweat of his
shirtless
torso, his mesh basketball shorts slung down below the
boxers
on his hips. No one else home. In that case, I might be able to park the car and gradually happen upon him, feigning surprise: I’d just made a wrong turn looking for a friend’s house, and then I thought I recognized him out cutting the grass and decided to say hello. Would he mind taking a break, letting me in to have a glass
of water? I’d been running around all day; I was parched and he likely was too.

Should this happen, I wanted to be dressed accordingly. When I got out of the pool, I towel-dried my hair and added sea salt spray for messy curls. The sunblock had left a soft beachy fragrance on my skin. Shirking underwear, I put on a pair of terry-cloth lounge pants that sat below my belly button, a push-up bra and a T-shirt that would show just enough midriff. My hangover was causing me to crave starch, so I stopped at a drive-through on the way to his house and got a large order of French fries. I had a certain method of eating them. I liked to clamp down my lips on each one, pulling it through like a straw to get all the salt off, then rub the grains between my lips to make them raw and redden them. By the time I arrived at Jack’s house, my lips stung badly enough to feel
poisonous
. I parked and the sound of my car’s engine dying was
immediately
replaced with the harried drone of crickets everywhere.

The garage door was closed; no cars were parked in his
driveway
. But someone could have been home—a single front room was lit up and the curtains were open. I took the binoculars out of my glove compartment and moved to the passenger seat to see around the cluster of giant palms in the front yard. A closer view showed a middle-aged man passed out asleep on the sofa, a pizza box and two beer bottles on the coffee table. I searched every inch of the room I could view, but there was only the man—Jack wasn’t there. It was Saturday night, I reasoned; it had been silly to get my hopes up. But there was still much to celebrate: the unconscious father figure meant the house wasn’t locked down in any sort of emergency mode. Clearly, Jack hadn’t said a word. I moved the binoculars over to Jack’s darkened window and immediately dropped them.

I couldn’t pick them back up fast enough. My chest began to surge; trying to find them on the floor, I felt like I might suffocate with adrenaline. Had I actually seen him?

When I finally got ahold of them beneath the seat, I thrust them up to my eyes so violently that I felt a volt of pain when their hard plastic hit the bone of my left brow. There, within two seven-centimeter circular lenses, I could see the shape of a body contrasting against the darkness. I focused the lenses further, my fingertips sweating. It was indeed Jack. His right arm rose and fell in repetitive motion, tugging against his crotch. The
windowsill
blocked me from seeing below his pelvis—the tip of his penis was visible, but nothing beneath it. Yet there in full view was the entirety of his torso, his flexed arm. What caused me to nearly scream as I shoved my fist into my underwear and began grinding my clit against my knuckles was the oddity of his posture and gaze; I came immediately, then continued to push against my pubic bone with the full force of my wrist, as if to try to muffle the insanity-producing sensation and stay in a state where I could, with full mental faculty, observe him as a specimen. He was
staring
out the window, straight up at the moon, wildly jerking off to a distant celestial body.

Watching him was so taunting that I felt like I was being
injured
; the longer I looked, the deeper the hot wound inside of me grew. When he finished he closed his eyes for just a moment,
resting
his forehead on the glass of the window. Then, suddenly, his head turned, and in a singular panicked motion he seemed to reach to his ankles for pants and disappear within his room. A quick rove of my binoculars over to the living room showed that the sleeping father had awakened and left the couch.

I felt like I’d been kidnapped and now had to escape while drugged—a fuzzy, sharp paralysis swam through my limbs and made it difficult to turn the key and start my car; my vision was blurred and a dull nausea churned in the back of my head. My body petitioned that my actions made no sense—everything I wanted, stripped down and clearly ready, was right there in wait, yet I was driving away in the opposite direction, an oxygen-deprived climber traveling farther up the mountain instead of making a descent. My feet were too heavy on the pedals; I pictured Janet’s swollen feet grafted onto my ankles, the prosthetic hooflike shoes she wore
tangling
on the clutch and brake; at the first stoplight I arrived at, I stalled out. It was several minutes before I realized I’d left his
subdivision
through an alternate exit. Getting home would require many corrective turns. For a harried moment, with the fluorescent lights of the road and the strip-mall business swirling around me, I
wondered
if I could find my way home at all. Supposedly I knew exactly where I was—these were roads I drove daily. But there was a
confusing
pressure at the base of my skull and it was pulsing a blood rhythm not unlike the sound and speed of riot police striking their shields with their batons; it was a sound that thought and memory seemed to find threatening. Reason had evacuated my body. I felt like nothing more than a bomb with a steady timer attached, my heart counting down to an unknown hour of disaster.

When I finally found my street, I parked sideways in the
driveway
and stumbled in the door. My clothes felt like scratchy wool; I disrobed and stood in the dark, leaning against the cool drywall, panting. Moments or hours later when I heard Ford arrive home—the slam of his car door, a frustrated expletive because he had to park on the street due to my vehicle’s position—I fell to my knees
in the dark, squatting down like a dog in the hallway with my ass facing the door.

There was an incoming flood of light, then the hurried
slamming
of the door’s screen.

“Celeste, Jesus,
hello
! Good thing I didn’t bring Scottie back for a beer …” The sound of his locking the doorknob and dead bolt, drawing the chain.

“Can you turn the light back out?” I asked softly. Darkness. The sound of his belt being undone, his weapons coming off. My view as he took me from behind was the glass patio doors, through which I could see the full moon hanging in the sky, reflecting off our pool as if it was its point of origin. I stared up at it
imagining
not the brutish strength of Ford thrusting inside me but the inquisitive determination of Jack’s body exploring the instinct of touch. The moment Ford finished I began to crawl away to the patio door, his semen dripping down my thighs like blood from an injury. Wordlessly, I jumped into the pool and sank to the very bottom, blowing every ounce of air in my body out with all the force of my lungs. The moon seemed to take up over half of the sky. I continued to stare as my lungs began to twinge with panic, my abdominal muscles struggling not to heave in for air, until a naked Ford, one hand cupping his genitals for fear of a nosy neighbor peeking over the fence, eclipsed the view, his mouth overenunciating. “What the hell are you doing?” read his lips. Then I slowly glided up the pool’s slanted floor to the shallow end and surfaced.

I went back to Jack’s house again Sunday night. Hoping for a repeat performance, I took great pains to leave the house at exactly the same time, park in the same spot. I fought the superstition that nagged me to wear dirty clothes I’d worn just the night before, step
back into the doubtlessly hardened crotch of the terry-cloth pants I’d had on when I’d seen the erect and glistening tip of Jack’s penis, his budding chest and arms in the full motions of exertion and his mouth parted to channel additional oxygen.

But he wasn’t there; his window was closed. All I could see of his bedroom was a long, draped curtain, fallen as if to announce the show was over.