The Teacher (2 page)

Chapter
Two

The first week of school was finished.
Done. Over. Survived.

Emma dropped into the chair behind her
desk and dialed her phone.

“Lewis and Sons Law Firm. How may I
direct your call?” a feminine, almost automated sounding voice answered.

“May I speak to Marcus Lewis?”

“One moment, please. May I ask who is
calling?”

“This is Emma Hewitt, Brayden’s teacher.”

“And is this an emergency Ms. Hewitt?”

“No. I’d just like to talk to him about
his son.”

“Please, hold.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” the voice said, returning
to the line. “Mr. Lewis is not available. May I take a message?”

“Yes,” Emma said, sighing. “Please have
him call me when he gets a chance.” Emma rattled off the school’s number before
hanging up.

Emma stood and straightened her desk,
ready to leave the stuffy classroom behind. If she left now she’d be able to
run back to her apartment, change out of her Fitzpatrick Panther t-shirt and
pick up the instructions she’d left behind that would help her navigate to her
sister’s home. She’d been to Audrey’s house hundreds of times, but always
driven up from her home town. Now that she lived inside the city with no car,
she hadn’t the foggiest idea about how to get anywhere using the public
transportation system.

“So, how was your first week?” Susan,
another kindergarten teacher, asked strolling into her room with her matching
Fitzpatrick t-shirt. She pulled a small pretzel from a plastic bag and popped
it in her mouth.

“I survived, didn’t I?” Emma replied
half-joking, because right now all she could think about was how she’d kept
track of twenty-eight kids for the last six hours. There wasn’t much else she
could recall.

Mary Ellen, the senior member of the
kindergarten trio, bustled through the door and handed a stack of papers to
Susan and then to Emma.

“These are the activities for next
week,” she said. Emma tried to smile her thanks, but Mary Ellen had dropped off
stacks of activities for Emma to use all week. Her desk overflowed, like the
banks of the Willamette River after a winter storm, with the unused papers. It
was as if the woman didn’t think Emma had a clue about teaching kindergarten,
despite her three previous years of experience. She was new to the school, not
the profession.

As soon as Emma set the papers on her desk,
Mary Ellen started in on her about her class. First, she chastised Emma for
letting Marriah, a tiny girl who was born prematurely and struggled to catch up
to her peers in size and ability, hold her hand during the day. Then, she
warned her about the assistant, assigned to work with Donald, a little boy with
Down syndrome. Apparently, Sandy—the assistant—liked to take breaks and if Emma
wasn’t careful, she’d probably be gone half the day. She lectured Emma on
Brayden, whom she called Brandon even after Emma corrected her, because he hung
back from the class and was being “passive aggressive” toward Emma’s authority.
At some point during this lecture, Susan slipped out of the room. Emma stood
alone and speechless, staring at the woman she’d likened to Mother Goose during
her interview. Mary Ellen had a cloud of white hair and spectacles, which sat
at the end of her nose. Over the last ten days, though, Emma had yet to hear
anything soft and nursery rhymish come out of her mouth. It seemed it was Mary
Ellen’s duty to point out every one of Emma’s faults.

Somehow, Emma escaped her room without
any further reprimands and hurried down the street in search of the blue line
rail. She didn’t have time to go back for Audrey’s directions, not if she
wanted to arrive on time. How hard could it be? All she had to do was get on
the train heading west. Surely, it couldn’t be that hard.

*     *     *

Two hours later, Emma tried to rest her
eyes as the cab wound its way up the steep suburban street. The angry sound of
the cab’s muffler punctuated her quietude as the car accelerated out of another
curve.

Emma’s body rolled toward the door as
the car turned onto the next side street. The road leveled out and Emma knew
she was almost to her sister’s house, finally. She looked out the window and
watched the trees pass by. Carefully pruned shrubs and manicured lawns harmonized
the homes in this quiet neighborhood.

Audrey’s two-story craftsman style home came
into view and Emma saw the hanging baskets on the front porch, spilling over
with white and red petunias. They’d been there since the Fourth of July. In
another week or two, Audrey would toss them out to make room for scarecrows,
straw bales, and pumpkins.

The cab pulled to the curb. Emma jumped
out and paid the greasy haired driver. Crimson and gold streaked the sky as the
summer sun reluctantly began its decent. The smell of grilled meat lingered in
the air. Beach Boys music and children’s shouts rode the summer’s evening
breeze from the backyard.

Emma hoisted the strap of her quilted
tote bag onto her aching shoulder and made her way through the maze of minivans
and SUVs parked in the driveway. She rounded the side of the house and followed
the path to the backyard, hoping she had enough energy in reserve to survive
this family-studded barbeque.

A handful of children played in her
nieces’ playhouse while their mothers stood guard on the lawn and cast their
conversations sideways at one another, never taking their eyes off the
children. The men, on the other hand, sat kicked back on the patio beneath the
white pergola with Finn McCormack, Audrey’s Irish-born husband. They wore dark
sunglasses and held bottles of beer. Emma scanned the two groups, finding
Audrey absent from both.

Stepping onto the patio, Emma heard
Finn’s robust laugh rise up in response to one of the other men. Emma looked in
his direction and he caught her eye. He waved heartily, his entire face lit up
by his smile. She waved back before she slipped through the back door.

Inside the kitchen, Emma found Audrey
three steps up on a small ladder, reaching into the cabinet above her stainless
steel refrigerator.

“Hey, what’re you doing up there?” Emma
asked as she dropped her bag onto the seat of a barstool.

Audrey teetered on her perch and grabbed
the frame of the cupboard before she looked down, “Geez, Em, you scared me.”

“Sorry, but seriously, what
are
you doing up there?” Emma walked over to stand next to the ladder.

“I was just checking our tequila stash.
I thought we were running a little low and I was going to send Finn to the
store if we needed more, but I found some.” She held up an unopened bottle. Audrey
closed the cupboard and grabbed for the ladder’s handle with her free hand as
she stepped down. At the bottom, she nearly lost her balance and Emma reached
for her. Audrey took hold of her sister’s forearm and then straightened. She
pulled her hand back and pressed it to her forehead.

“Are you okay?” Emma asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’m fine.” Audrey said, as
she set the bottle down and cracked the seal open. “Long day,” she added and
poured a splash of tequila into her margarita glass.

Emma watched her sister sip the cocktail.
Audrey’s long dark brown hair was secured into a casual French twist. The belt
at the waist of her short denim sundress was slimming. She looked perfect, just
like always.

Audrey let out a relaxed sigh as she put
her glass down. “Where have you been anyway?” Audrey asked. “I was beginning to
wonder if you were coming at all.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Emma apologized. “I
got lost.”

“Lost? How could you get lost? I gave
you explicit directions on how to get here.”

Emma thought of Audrey’s detailed
directions sitting on the kitchen counter in her apartment and desperately
wished she’d gone back gone for them.

“I forgot them at home,” Emma told her
sister and looked down at the toes peeking out of her sandals. “I thought I
could remember them, but it was more confusing than I thought.” Emma left out
the part about asking a guy sitting on a bench near the train stop which train
would take her west. He pointed to the train coming up the track and smiled at
her with yellow stained teeth encircled by an overgrown beard and mustache. When
the train arrived, he stood up and clomped away in his unlaced hiking boots. He
shouldered an army green duffel bag and pulled on the leash of his mutt. She
climbed aboard the train never once thinking she’d been led astray. When she
reached the eastern outskirts of the city and searched for a cab, she realized
she’d learned her first big-city lesson—taking directions from a bum on the
street, was not a good idea. She knew Audrey would scold her for it and she
couldn’t bear the thought of another lecture. Mary Ellen had given her enough
for one day.

“Emma! You’ve got to be careful out
there. Portland is a big city and if you get lost, you might end up in a very
bad place. This isn’t Orchard Creek where you can stroll along without a care
in the world.”

“I know,” Emma said, her voice shook
from the tickle of sadness that rose in her throat. She took a deep breath and
pushed back the wave of homesickness brought on by the mention of her hometown.

 “I miss Bessy,” Emma added.

“What, that old clunker? Emma, honey
you’re better off without her,” Audrey said and then took another sip from her
glass.

“Well, at least I wasn’t at the mercy of
public transportation with my own car.”

“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” Audrey reassured
her. “You’re a city girl now.”

Emma didn’t think she could ever call
herself a city girl. Born and raised on their family’s twenty-acre peach
orchard she embraced her country roots, unlike Audrey who shed them at her
first opportunity.

“Well, I still miss the freedom of
having my own car,” Emma said.

“Then buy something,” Audrey said with a
hint of impatience. “You’ve been living rent free with Mom and Dad. You must
have some savings to put toward a car.” Audrey didn’t wait for an answer before
she turned to the refrigerator and pulled the door open.

Of course, Audrey would assume Emma’s
bank account was brimming. Audrey attended college on an athletic scholarship,
and after graduation, she landed a job with one of Portland’s top accounting
firms. Emma, on the other hand, went to a state college courtesy of the U.S.
Government’s financial aid loans, all of which she was currently paying back. For
the last three summers, she funded her own master’s classes and dumped whatever
dollars she had left into keeping old Bessy running. The vintage 1966 Ford
Mustang was her first and only car. At sixteen, she spent her entire savings on
its purchase, hoping to draw a little attention when she pulled into the high
school parking lot. Namely the attention of Buck Monroe. His rebel attitude,
tight fitting jeans and sleeveless t-shirts had excited her. But he never
noticed her or the car until three weeks ago when Old Bessy was towed into his
auto shop. The cost of repairs he quoted was more than she could afford and she
sold it to him on the spot for a fraction of its worth. That small amount of
money was the beginning of her new car savings. She hoped that over the next year
she could build up enough money to buy something sensible, because Henry
Hewitt, the accountant, raised his children on the ideal that money is only
borrowed for higher education and a mortgage. “If you don’t have the cash, you
can’t afford it,” he would tell his daughters.

Audrey closed the refrigerator door and
handed Emma a paper plate. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” Emma said and took the plate
with a hamburger, beans and fruit salad on it. She looked for a place to set
it. Nearly every inch of the dark slab, granite counter top was covered with
plates of half-eaten food, empty chip bowls, beer bottles, and lipstick kissed
margarita glasses. Emma moved her bag from the barstool at the island and
settled in while Audrey pulled the mayonnaise and ketchup out for her. She
dressed her cold hamburger before biting into the thick grilled meat.

“Sooo, how’s the roommate situation
working out?” Audrey asked, reaching for a pile of used paper plates and
stacking them in the garbage can.

Emma shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”

“Well, that’s quite an answer for
someone who’s rooming with her heartthrob,” Audrey snickered.

“Seth is not my heartthrob.” Emma
wondered when Audrey would ever let it go that she’d been smitten with Seth at
first meeting all those years ago, when her roommate Stacy dragged him into
their dorm room.

 “Have Mom and Dad gotten over you
rooming with a guy yet?” Audrey asked, her smile playful.

Emma shook her head as she took another
bite of her hamburger. It wasn’t just her parents that had a conservative view
on her roommate. Emma was also uneasy about the whole arrangement. Living with
a guy, even if it was just Seth, was different from having a female roommate.
She would have declined the offer to occupy his spare bedroom except for the
fact that she couldn’t afford rent on her own and his apartment was walking
distance to the school.

“Is he still in California?” Audrey
asked over her shoulder.