The English Teacher (10 page)

There were a few tablespoons of slow-cooked sludge at the bottom of the pot. She rinsed it thoroughly and began again. It was a pleasant place to be, the teachers’ lounge in the afternoon when the light, too weak to pass through the windows, clung quietly to the panes, and no voices were there to drown out the hiss and plock of the fresh coffee being made. Vida sat on the brown corduroy sofa and let her head fall back upon the soft lip. She was tired.

“Congratulations, Mrs. Belou.” It was the one voice she dreaded hearing. “You probably need a little shut-eye after this weekend.” Carol, Brick’s secretary, slowed but didn’t stop her trajectory to the closet, where the extra office supplies were stored.

Vida sat up straight. Had she slept? The coffee was still and silent in its pot. Carol’s knees cracked as she squatted to reach the mimeograph paper in the bottom cabinet. It was never too late to offer condolence. She needed to say something. If only she’d been able to finish that damn letter. She thought of the opening line, Shelley’s “Grief awhile is blind …” What good were her own small words if she uttered them now? The letter had so much more strength to it, centuries of wisdom. She’d worked on it for days at a time last summer; she had pages of notes filled with gorgeous quotes from everyone from Shakespeare to Bishop, but no coherent letter. If only she could just hand Carol those sheets of paper and be done with it.

She watched her old friend retrieve the reams of paper, balancing on the balls of her feet, her camel-colored skirt stretched tight. Her son had died. Her son had killed himself. And yet little about her had changed. Vida avoided the front office now, but she could still hear Carol’s laugh occasionally, spilling down the hallway. Within moments she would rise and pass in front of Vida once more. What could she possibly say to her now, now that she’d missed the funeral, neglected to call or write, had been unable, that first week of school, to catch her alone, though she had tried, she really had. Carol couldn’t know about the pages of notes, the hours of research, the pleasure she had taken in finding just the right line. Because of this terrible misunderstanding they had barely spoken all fall (she’d sent her a wedding invitation and Carol had checked the regret box, offered no words at all), and they used to be such friends. Carol used to arrange her lunchtime around Vida’s schedule. She wished she could follow her back to the office, pull up that green chair in the corner, and gossip as they had before at this hour of day. Carol might even ask about the
wedding night and maybe Vida could have implied something, maybe Carol could have given her some sort of advice. She’d been married nearly thirty years. But Carol was rising now, her heels sinking back into her shoes, paper in arms, and Vida had yet to say a single word to her. Something would come, she knew, when their eyes met. Carol backed out from the closet and, a few feet from the couch, looked directly at her with a tight smile. The windows were behind her, two pale panes like wings on Carol’s back. Vida smiled far wider, opened her mouth, and heard the word “Angel” come out. Carol nodded and vanished around the corner.

Angel? Had she really said the word
angel
for Christ’s sake?

Vida poured herself the largest mug of coffee on the shelf and slunk back up to the uncomplicated solitude of her third-floor suite.

At five, she drove down to the gym parking lot and waited in her car with the other parents for the JV soccer players to trickle out the locker room door. Peter emerged with his friend Jason. Both boys were bent over from the weight of their knapsacks and talking in that way that made boys so distinct from girls of the same age: brief remarks, no eye contact. It was hard to tell, when they separated near the hood of the Dodge, if they had even said good-bye.

The passenger door creaked, the enormous bag thunked onto the floor, and Peter slumped in.

“Hey there, big guy.”

“Hey,” he said at the end of a breath. He shot her a quick glance, then stared straight ahead as if the car were already moving.

“How’d it go?”

“What—practice?”

“Practice, history quiz, the day in general.”

“Okay.”

“Just okay?”

She put the car in gear and headed down the school driveway, relieved to be moving away from Carol, from
Tess,
from the classroom in which suddenly Peter was a student.

Peter didn’t answer. She was afraid he was going to bring up the class, the way she had let things unravel. That horrible new boy, Kevin, and his cousin in the mental hospital. It was physical, the mortification this memory produced.

“How’d French go?” French was always a safe subject; they could make fun of Cheryl Perry. His mediocre marks in that class never bothered her as much as they did in other subjects.

“It was stupid. She showed us this movie about this sort of lonely kid. One day he’s walking through a kind of junkyard and he sees this painting of a girl. He looks at her a long time, and then this real girl just appears out of nowhere. She’s supposed to be the one from the painting, but she doesn’t look anything like her. Why do they do that, act as if you can’t tell the difference?”

“Suspension of disbelief. They want you to use your imagination.”

“In a book maybe. But it’s so stupid in a movie.”

The car weaved through the unlit narrow roads, then the lighted stretch of the town center and on toward the mainland. The black surface of the water held the soft yellow light from shore, the bluish neons on the bridge, and the slow red and white streaks from the crossing cars.

“Where are you going?’ Peter said, slicing through their silence when the car didn’t take the right toward Larch Street.

“We need groceries.” The word was strange in her mouth.

“Oh.” A trace of delight in his voice.

She had come into this store only once before, with Tom last summer before a picnic. They had bought egg salad sandwiches and lemonade. Every person in the place had greeted Tom: the teenager shelving soup, the woman buying toilet paper, the old man laying out the fish on crushed ice. The cashier and the bagger barely let
him out of the store with all they wanted to talk about. Out in the parking lot Vida had glanced back to see a line of them at the plate glass, gawking, all their mouths moving at once.

“Be right with you,” a man shouted above the gnarl of the meat grinder, then, upon recognizing her, quickly cut the machine, wiped his hands on a rag, and hurried up to the counter. “What can I do you for?”

She looked down into the case of purple meats. In fourteen years she’d made nothing more elaborate than a cheese omelet. “Any suggestions?”

He chose a small roast. In one long complicated gesture, he wrapped it in a fresh sheet of white paper, tied it tight with twine, and marked the side with a black hieroglyph only his daughter at the register could read. “I was really happy to hear about you and Mr. Belou,” he said, sliding the package at her. “Mrs. Belou—the former—she was a customer of ours from the very beginning. Special lady.” His pale eyes swam unsteadily. “He’s a lucky man. Twice blessed.” He looked unconvinced.

Vida thanked him, set the roast in the child’s seat of the cart, and headed for produce.

“You’ll want to put that in at three-fifty for an hour and a half,” the butcher called out to her before turning on his machine once again.

In the vegetable aisle, she pulled the string off the meat and tied up her hair.

Peter was waiting for her at the magazines. He looked at the roast, the eight potatoes, the bag of string beans, and the bottle of bourbon. “That’s it?”

“I need to get the roast in.” Maybe tomorrow night she’d have more stamina for all the choices and the scrutiny.

Larch Street made Vida uneasy. All these houses pressed together seemed to demand something of her as she drove past—a normalcy she couldn’t deliver. She hated the curtains in the windows, the
decorations at the door. She still had to look carefully at the house numbers to find the right one. She pulled in behind Tom’s wagon and cut the engine. The car shook a little, then was still. Above the squat little house, long clouds floated pink in the dark sky, as if it might snow. Here, too, lights were on in every window; everyone was home. Her throat had seized up; she couldn’t even swallow her own saliva.

“Aren’t you getting out?” Peter’s voice was shrill. He had some fear in him, too, and she wished she found it reassuring. All those years they had been alone together and yet she couldn’t turn to him now and ask,
What have we done?

They walked up the steps together without speaking.

Walt made happy circles around her as she moved from the front door to the kitchen with the grocery bag. Fran and Caleb were at the table spreading peanut butter and fluff onto eight slices of bread.

“Those for lunch tomorrow?”

“Dinner. Tonight,” Fran said, glancing at the clock.

“I’ve got dinner. I’m about to whip it up right now.”

“That’s okay, we can just have these,” Caleb said, bouncing, all sugared up just from looking at that crap.

“We’re going to have a roast.”

“But—”

“It will be ready at seven-thirty.”

Fran sunk her knife deep into the peanut butter and left the room. Caleb tried to do the same with the fluff but both jar and knife tumbled to the floor.

“Sorry,” he said, squatting to pick it up and then, thinking better of such a reconciliatory gesture, scrambling off with a small whimper, as if she might chase him.

Vida piled up the heavy slices of bread and dumped them in the trash. Walt was making as much noise with his arthritic limbs as he could, demanding to be fed.

“You’re home.” It was Tom. She’d nearly forgotten about him.

“I am. In all my glory.”

How had it all led to this, his leaning in the doorway looking as if she had broken in through a kitchen window? She brushed the crumbs off her skirt but didn’t know what to do with her hands after that.

“I’m glad.” He came toward her with a face she recognized from the beginning of their dates, when she’d answer the door and there he’d be, grinning as if every moment since he’d last seen her had been spent in anticipation of seeing her again. But now that he’d gotten her, brought her to his house to live, how long could that grin—a grin that expected so much—really last? He kissed her, his tongue reaching for hers. He seemed to have no plans to stop kissing her. Hadn’t he seen Fran storm off or heard Caleb squeal? And the roast had to get in the oven or supper wouldn’t be ready till midnight.

“Later, cowboy.” Where did she come up with these phrases?

“Promise?”

He seemed not to remember last night or the night before. He swung a chair around to face her as she unwrapped the roast and set it in a pan. He wanted to talk about her day. He had a thousand questions. She fought them off with short answers as she cut up potatoes, trimmed beans, and boiled water for the gravy mix she’d found in a cupboard. She glared at the clock; at this time in her old life she’d have eaten in the dining hall already. She’d be home in her slippers under a blanket, reading.

By the time she managed to get dinner on the table, no one seemed particularly hungry. Even Tom, who always polished off his meals at restaurants, picked at his plate. Vida couldn’t understand it. The roast had turned out well; the slices looked just like Olivia’s at school.

“So, Stu, what went on today?” Tom tried to be light, but he was worried, deeply worried, about his oldest son.

“Not much. Got up, went to work, came home. Same as you.”

“Where’s that?” Peter asked.

“At E. J.’s.”

“Are those people free yet?” Caleb asked his father.

“It’s a used record store downtown.”

“In Iran? No, sweetheart, I’m afraid they’re not.”

“You have to be really
cool
to know about it. There’s no sign or anything outside,” Fran said, trying to provoke her brother and insult Peter all at the same time.

“They’ll be out of there soon, I promise,” Tom said. He was too soft with Caleb, as if he were a girl.

“You don’t know that.” Stuart glared down at his plate.

“Only druggies go into E. J.’s. Everyone knows that,” Fran said.

“Who said that?” It was exhausting to watch Stuart fighting on two fronts.

“Mom did. One time we were walking past it and I asked her what was in there and that’s what she said. Drugs.”

“She did not.”

“Yes she did.”

“You’re full of it.”

“Stuart,” Tom said.

Vida got up to make herself another drink. Usually she only had one on weeknights, but there was the problem of that promise. She mixed the soda with the bourbon slowly.

“Why can’t we just give them a bunch of money?” Caleb asked.

“They don’t want our money. They want the Shah and
their
money,” Stuart told him.

“The what?”