by Lea Geller
I had no response for this. Once again, I was reminded that with Beeks, I had to be careful when asking for the truth, because she’d gladly lay it out for me in all its unflattering glory.
“Oh.” Sometimes that was all I could say to her.
“By the way,” she plowed on, “the school is in Riverdale, which is technically the Bronx, but it doesn’t feel like it. It’s pretty green. Oh, I also found out that St. Norbert’s sounds Catholic but isn’t Catholic.”
“Huh?” I asked, wondering why Beeks had done more research on this school than I had.
“Yup. I spoke to a friend who writes about education for the Journal. When the Catholic Church had to make payouts to settle some of the child abuse cases, they sold some of their low-performing colleges. St. Norbert’s was bought by a private boys’ school looking to relocate. They kept the name. Maybe because it’s on all the buildings.”
I heard her clicking in her retainers.
“Listen,” she said, “I can’t believe I’m saying it, but this may be perfect for you. You have somewhere to go, something to do, somewhere to live, and you can do it all without anybody breathing down your neck. Nobody is paying much attention to these kids. I speak from personal experience. Middle schoolers are moody, awkward, and uncomfortable in their own skin. They are unpleasant as a rule. This means that people prefer to look away while middle school is happening. Don’t you see? It’s perfect!”
I shared none of her enthusiasm until she said, “Plus, and most importantly, you will now be closer to me. We get to have conversations in the same time zone. Even if they won’t be keeping an eye on you, I will.”
We bypassed Manhattan and drove to the very top of New York City, to the leafy north Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. I rolled down the windows. Even in the very last days of August, the air was thick and heavy, and I learned to keep the car windows up to keep out insects—insects that seemed to have crawled out of a nuclear meltdown. I had never seen bugs this size, this ferocious. They could not be swatted away, at least not permanently, and when they returned, they did so with a vengeance. They bit and they stung, and a day before, at a park somewhere in Pennsylvania, a mom cautioned me to check Grace for ticks after she had been rolling in the grass.
“Excuse me?” I replied. “For what?”
“Ticks,” said the Pennsylvania mom. “You know, Lyme disease?” No, I did not know. I had just mastered the art of bug spray, not to mention the art of timing our park visits with the mosquitoes’ naps (or whatever it was they were doing when they weren’t biting). How could I possibly be expected to take on Lyme disease? Still, sure enough, there I was, combing Grace’s chubby pink arms for insects that burrowed and left behind illness. Wasn’t it New Yorkers who came west and complained of the lack of amenities? (“What do you mean, you don’t deliver?”) At least in California we didn’t have swarms of enormous, pissed-off, disease-carrying insects.
But California now lay on the other side of the world, or at least of the country. I couldn’t be like those New Yorkers in college. (“You call the LA Times a newspaper? This is a bagel?”) I couldn’t see everything through a rosy, beachy Californian lens. I had to take off that lens and put it somewhere else. I needed a drawer for it, and I needed to tuck it away.
PART TWO: FALL
-1-
I reached Riverdale on the first day of September. I spread out a map of St. Norbert’s on the passenger seat, obscured by a lifetime supply of veggie puffs and a stack of organic, dye-free burp cloths. Pieces of my old and new life, mingling right next to me in the car. I reached over and shoved the puffs and cloths to the side so I could read the map and find my way.
I drove in from the highest point of the campus, and as I learned later that week, from what was also one of the highest points in the Bronx and in all five boroughs. Campus was a tall, thin spiral. From what I could see on the map, faculty housing and the student dorms were at the bottom of the campus, down along the Hudson River. What used to be a convent sat at the very top of the spiral. When the convent closed, years before the actual university shut down, it was converted into dorms. I’d learned this and a score of somewhat useful facts when I’d googled “St. Norbert’s” every night since Beeks had shamed me with all her knowledge. I also learned a ton about this Norbert, who seemed to have lived a charmed, royal life in Germany until he got thrown off a horse and gave himself to God. He now had a couple of colleges named after him, even if one of those colleges had been forced to close down when the Catholic Church was scrambling for cash.
As soon as I’d passed the guard booth, I saw a statue of Norbert. He was not what I had expected. When I read that he was German, I envisioned an angelic-looking Augustus Gloop—a smiling, stocky, greedy boy with shiny cheeks—a piece of schnitzel in his right hand and a cream puff in his left. This Norbert was not a Roald Dahl character. Humor had never crossed his path, especially at his own expense. While there was a doughiness to his cheeks, he was unsmiling and severe. He seemed to look right at me and at all the contents of my car. I became self-conscious of my tank top and shorts and stared ahead, driving down the steep hill in search of faculty housing.
None of the buildings seemed to match. I didn’t know enough about architecture to identify them, but looking around it seemed that campus was like a bag of hand-me-downs from unrelated people. There was a lot of brick, probably more brick on this one campus than in all of California. A few of the buildings looked like the architect couldn’t decide whether to build a castle or a villa and just settled with a building that looked like both but, really, neither. A few buildings were cement, but not in a breezy, modern Palm Springs way. No, this cement was about as far from a palm tree as it could get.
Grace started to stir. She’d soon be up and hungry. I turned a corner, and at once the Hudson River lay before me. It was not vast like the ocean. Cliffs lay on the other side, topped by dense trees, not a building in sight. No, you couldn’t disappear into the enormity of this river. The other side was near enough to see, and the river was moving quickly, on its way somewhere, as if in a hurry. But the water itself was a reminder that I had traveled from one end of the country to the other. I drove to a dead end and into the parking lot in front of a cluster of buildings marked FACULTY HOUSING.
It was bright and my sunglasses were lost in the morass of the passenger seat. Squinting, I pulled into a faculty parking spot and saw a woman headed toward me. She was tall, with broad shoulders, and wore gardening gloves, a faded blue apron, and a big, floppy, flax-colored sun hat.
“Hello!” she boomed, extending a gloved hand into my open window. I took it, wiping some of my clamminess on her glove.
“Ruth Moore, head of school!” More booming. “Who are you?”
I opened the car door and climbed out, peeling my legs from the seat. I stood close enough that I could still lean on the car door for support. I looked down. There were a handful of sweet potato puffs stuck to my right thigh, just above what appeared to be some crusted peach yogurt. I wiped away the puffs, scratched at the yogurt, and quickly stuffed my clamminess into the pockets of what now felt like exceedingly short shorts. I gripped the pocket seams in search of an answer.
“Agnes,” I spat out, looking at my shoes, one of which had a glob of yogurt settling into its laces. “Agnes Parsons.”
“Agnes Parsons,” she repeated, taking a step back to see all of me. Grace was braying in her car seat. I tried to look up, but Ruth was in front of the sun. I closed one eye, taking her completely out of focus. “You must be Jack’s wife, then,” she said.
I suddenly opened both eyes, almost blinding myself. Had I given this any thought, I might have anticipated that someone at St. Norbert’s, especially Ruth, would mention Jack. After all, he’d sent me here. I suddenly felt short of breath and dizzy.
“Yes,” I stuttered. “I am. Jack’s wife.” Just saying his name made my chest ache and my stomach sink. There was that strange taste forming in the back of my throat again. I
prayed that I wouldn’t mark my arrival on campus by throwing up a combination of veggie puffs and yogurt sticks all over the head of school.
Before I could stutter out any more of a response, another voice rang out from behind a bush. “Yoo-hoo!”
I squinted and saw a short, thick figure, clad in black, emerge from the shrubbery behind Ruth. I scanned the woman, who looked like a spandexed garden gnome, but couldn’t tell if she was wearing a skirt and top, a dress, or just a large piece of stretchy fabric that she had wound around herself. Her thick brown hair was shoved into a twist and looked like it was bursting to escape. In fact, all of her looked like it was bursting to escape.
“This,” said Ruth, sounding slightly annoyed, “is Stacey Figg. She likes to help me garden. She likes to help in general.” Ruth raised an eyebrow. “Stacey will be your coworker and neighbor.” She smirked slightly, as if to say to me, Aren’t you the lucky one? “Stacey, this is Agnes Parsons. Agnes will be joining the faculty of the middle school. I’m sure you’ll make her feel very welcome.”
Stacey Figg climbed clumsily over some flowers, many of which she seemed to be crushing under her short, wide feet, and shook my hands. Both of them. “So happy to meet you.” She smiled through all her teeth. “I don’t know how I didn’t know about you.” She shot a quick look at Ruth. Before I could say anything, she dodged right by me and pressed herself up against the car window.
“Is this baby yours?” she asked, not looking at me.
“Yes,” I said. Apparently I was only capable of one- or, at most, two-word sentences.
“When do we get to meet your husband?” Stacey asked, turning her head to me, her eyes narrowing.
“Her husband travels for work,” Ruth interjected.
“For work,” I repeated, nodding at Ruth. I was getting very good at this.
“How often?” Stacey asked.
“How often what?” I said, pleased to have moved on to three-word sentences. Stacey was going to have to work harder for her information. From what I could gather, this didn’t bother her at all. Working for information was the lifeblood of the Stacey Figgs of the world.
“How often does he travel?” she said, planting her hands on her middle.
“Never you mind,” said Ruth. “I think you can save some of your interrogation for later on, once Agnes has settled in.”
Stacey Figg was not backing off so easily. “What do you teach?” she asked, taking a step toward me and assessing me, my outfit, and all the food stuck to me.
I looked at Ruth for an answer. I couldn’t bring myself to say English, not now that I was here on campus. Coming from my mouth it would have sounded like a question, or even worse, a joke. I needed Ruth to say it.
“English,” she said, not taking her eyes off me. “Agnes is an English teacher.”
Hardly, I thought to myself. But maybe if enough people say it, I’ll start to feel like one.
“Does your baby have a name?” Damn, this Stacey Figg was relentless.
“Grace,” I said, putting a hand flat on the car window.
“Grace?” she asked. “And you’re Agnes?”
I was sure I knew where this was going. “We’re not Catholic,” I continued in my wholehearted determination to be as awkward as humanly possible. “My husband named the baby. I mean, my mother’s mother was Catholic, and I am named for her, but I am not Catholic. My baby isn’t Catholic. We’re not anything. We’re from California.”
My response was apparently not what Stacey Figg was looking for, because she seemed very confused by my verbal unraveling. Before I could say anything else, Ruth plunged into the conversation and saved me.
“Stacey, dear,” she said, more firmly this time, “we really don’t need to be asking so many questions, do we? Let the woman unpack. She’s just driven across the country.” Stacey Figg nodded dumbly, but I wasn’t fooled. She’d find me and squeeze more information out of me, I was sure of it.
Ruth pointed me in the direction of a row of brick town houses, singling out mine, and with a secret wink pointed to Stacey Figg’s, which was next door. She then waved herself off and dragged Stacey Figg with her. Before Ruth got too far, she turned back and called out, “Oh, I forgot! There’s a key in the mailbox. I’ll have someone email you the curriculum and some sample lesson plans later today! Good luck and welcome!”
I turned and looked over at the town houses, a long red row of homes, all attached to each other. Each town house had a large bay window to the left or right of the front door, and each had an identical mailbox on the other side of the door. I freed Grace from her car seat and walked up to the matte-black front door of our new home.
-2-
The house was narrow but deep. Before I stepped inside, I could see all the way through it, past a small dining room, through an even smaller kitchen, and out a back door onto what looked like a small patch of cement. I entered into the cramped, linoleum-tiled foyer and dropped my purse on the floor. On my left was a compact living room, complete with a dark-brown couch for two, possibly three, a single bookshelf, and an outdated deep television. I poked my head into the living room but kept walking straight. I moved through the dining room, past a dark, scratched-up table for four and into the kitchen. Once inside, it was clear why a house this small needed a separate dining room—because there was no room in this kitchen to sit. I scanned the beige cabinets, which seemed to have a fresh coat of gloss paint and the white appliances, and looked down at my feet on the cream linoleum floor. I chuckled to myself. At least this kitchen is kind of white. Actually, it was as if white had gotten really dirty and never bothered to wash. Standing in the tight galley kitchen, I was a long way from Jack’s cavernous white rooms. I stood in a room in which, by default, I would be alone. Even if Sondra had stowed away in my luggage, the two of us would barely fit in this kitchen together.
There I was, in my new home, not mourning the loss of my husband. Instead, I was mourning the loss of a woman with whom I’d spent most of my days, a woman I knew did not like me much, and a woman I was not sure I even liked myself. But over the last six months, it was Sondra with whom I’d spent many hours, and it was Sondra, and Alma, to whom I turned for help during the day. Alone in this house, which was small but daunting, my first thoughts were of her. How would Sondra clean this kitchen? How would she unpack the few items I’d brought with me?
It was also possible that I was not thinking about Jack because I could not picture him, could not even imagine him here. Despite the bay window in front and the glass back door, the house was dark, walled in by the houses on either side of it. I imagined Jack walking through and running his finger along the windowsills and countertops, searching for dust. I envisioned him opening the fridge, the oven door, hunting down crumbs and mold. I thought about him breathing in the mustiness of a room that smelled like it hadn’t been aired out in generations. I imagined his beautiful bronze face wrinkled in disgust, his nostrils flared.
I especially could not picture him as I walked up the staircase, with its low stucco ceiling and small cloudy picture window. On the second floor of the house were two tiny bedrooms, one with a full bed for me, another with a small crib for Grace, and a bathroom in between them. The entire floor was smaller than Grace’s nursery. In fact, like the houses I grew up in, this whole house could have folded several times into the ground floor of our home in Santa Monica. No decorator had ever been in here. No furniture had been custom made to fit the space. In fact, what little furniture there was seemed to have been collected from a variety of uncoordinated but equally cheap sources, and I briefly wondered if the crumminess of my surroundings was a sign that St. Norbert’s was having money troubles.
Still, it was immediately clear that in this dark, musty little house, I knew where to be. I knew where to sit. I knew where to stash the few things that I owned. I felt alone and daunted beyond belief, and if given the chance I’d have run home to my life of help, comfort, security, and what I had once thought was predictabi
lity. But I did not feel out of place. In fact, I felt quite the opposite.
Grace had starting sitting but not yet crawling. Looking back, I know now that she was in that remarkable but short period of time where she could sit and play and I could be free of the worry that she’d crawl off and disappear down a flight of stairs or out a back door. I put her down in the living room with some chewy, squeaky toys and unloaded the car. I put everything in the foyer and dining room. Looking at the few suitcases and boxes, I saw how very little I had brought with me.
That night, Grace slept in a crib and I slept alone for the first time since I’d left Santa Monica, and I dreamed about Jack. We were dancing on the deck off our bedroom. It was dark and we were alone, as we often were. We weren’t really dancing, more like holding on to each other and moving slowly to music. In the dream, I could smell and taste him. I don’t know what I was wearing, but Jack was wearing only pajama pants. I ran my fingers over his chest and put my lips on his neck, taking in his musky scent and the clean, salty taste of his skin. When I looked up at him he turned; his face clouded and turned dark. I tried to pull away so I could get a better look, to make sure it was him, but he just pulled me close and held me tighter. I said his name, but he didn’t answer. Finally, he looked back at me. Half his face was still dark and clouded, but the other half was normal, just as it always had been.
When I woke up, I instinctively rolled over in bed, a bed Jack had never slept in, to see if he was there. When I realized where I was, I lost my breath.
This is real. You are in New York. You are in New York and Jack is not.
I grabbed the empty pillow next to me, wrapped myself around it, and for the first time since Jack disappeared, I let myself ache for him. Looking around the room, at the solid but dingy furniture, I felt far from home, and even farther from Jack. I was in a bed he had never seen, in a room he wouldn’t recognize. You are here, and he may never be. I woke up feeling so alone and so desperate that I called Jack. The call, as did all the ones I’d made from the road, went straight to voice mail, but Jack’s voice made no appearance. He didn’t like personalized messages; he found them juvenile—his word, not mine.
