Teach Me

by R. A. Nelson

  Whoa.

  Here’s the bride herself, Alicia Sprunk.

  A butter bar of spring sunshine slaps her across the temple as I open the door, causing her to look up. Expression: Petrified Belle. I could strangle her with my bare hands.

  I could. But instead I kill with my eyes. My smile.

  Alicia is younger and prettier than her picture in the paper. Her veil perches on her billowy curls like a bucket rider about to plunge over Niagara Falls. Dress: phosphor bomb white. She appears to be legless.

  A man I take to be Alicia’s father is holding her arm. Mr. Sprunk is large. He glares at me with the cold intensity of a Komodo dragon. I’m an intruder, a purple monstrosity. Something to be masticated to death. I smile again and brush past them to grab a seat in the back.

  The sanctuary is suffocating under huge sprays of golden daffodils and tulips. In the center of all this gush, there he is, at long last, my teacher. Mr. Mann.

  So beautiful, dark hair hanging just so. I hate how even now he takes my breath away. The groomsmen are ganged around him like linemen protecting a quarterback. Six horrifying bridesmaids stand on the left. I will never wear yellow again.

  I won’t talk about the ceremony, that near-death experience.

  I will talk about the end.

  Alicia and Mr. Mann are kneeling before the minister, heads tipped forward reverently. My heart pounds, gathering steam to cross this mountain. I’m The Little Engine That Could. The minister intones the famous demand:

  “If any man can show just cause why this couple may not be lawfully joined together, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”

  My Lullaby League gloves slip on the pew in front of me as I begin to stand.

  I see faces turn toward me. The weight of the personalities is terrifying and intoxicating.

  No. I can’t do it.

  I’m not going to smash them. Not now.

  I pull at my dress, smooth the pleats, sit down again.

  On with the show.

  I look at Mr. Mann and Alicia and cock my head empathetically. My eyes flood with unexpected tears. I’m projecting myself in Alicia’s place. How ecstatic I would be, how complete.

  At the end of the ceremony, the congregation applauds when the couple is presented. I let go of the pew and clap with all my might. The sound of my gloves beating in the puckered space is the fluttering of a large, frightened bird.

  Truce over.

  We move into another building.

  This is a gymnasium, I realize. There is the basketball goal. Time to score.

  Help me, Emily.

  At last I stand beaming before the happy couple. My gift is clutched in my gloves. The video camera can’t help it. It’s drawn to me. The lens rotates to zoom in. I will be on Mr. Mann’s wedding video a hundred years from now.

  He suddenly turns pale as the icing on the cake.

  “Carolina, what—”

  “For you,” I say.

  I press the gift into Alicia’s small hands. She holds the package the way you would hold a smallpox-infected pudding. Without her Raging Cataract Hairdo, she’s nearly a foot shorter than me.

  I don’t hang around to watch her open it.

  Inside is my wisdom tooth the dentist broke from my jawbone. And a violently scented note that says:

  MINE by the right of the white election!

  Mine by the royal seal!

  Mine by the sign in the scarlet prison

  Bars cannot conceal!

  Mine, here in vision and in veto!

  Mine, by the grave’s repeal

  Titled, confirmed, - delirious charter!

  Mine, while the ages steal!

  moon wife

  Climb.

  I’m the last person on earth who would do this. Or maybe the first.

  The giddy couple is still honeymooning down in Mexico. They’ll be home any day now. This might be my last chance. The wooden stairs are warped by sun and rain. From his door you can see the lake. Just in case, I abuse the knocker. Silence.

  Security is lax, but I have no idea how to pop even a simple lock. Credit card? I bend Mom’s Home & Garden Visa trying to fit it in the slot. There are two windows I can reach. One has a small tear in the bottom of the screen. I make it larger with my finger and lift; the window miraculously gives. Hallelujah.

  Somehow a daylight break-in feels completely safe. I can already hear the police officer: A girl? I make a show of what I’m doing. Fixing this screen, see? I live here, don’t I? All those moments, hours—his bed—it sure feels that way. I screwdriver the frame loose and I’m in.

  The apartment smells disused and empty. Hot as Venus in here. I bump the air down to sixty-four and the building rumbles subserviently. Everything is just as I achingly remember it, a charming wreck. I see his little brown box of New Wave CDs on the shelf and my heart cracks open.

  Slam it shut.

  Okay, what first?

  I rifle everything. Papers, cabinets, closets, boxes, drawers, even CD cases.

  Nothing. No letters, no photos, no evidence of Alicia or the wedding or even a past. Mr. Mann dropped out of the sky one morning in January.

  Tacked to his bulletin board is a printout of a receipt from JetFare.com. I don’t know how this can help, but I pocket it anyway. The answering machine has seventeen calls, all mine.

  I press the button, listening to myself sounding more and more desperate. Crazy. Pathetic. Halfway through, I stop the tape. I hate whoever that person was. Now she just makes me angrier.

  I turn on the decrepit computer and mouse through his files: lesson plans he never uses and not much else. I check his book-marks and history file. Everything looks familiar, including the honeymoon trip we picked one night on a lark while he fed me strawberries.

  The trip they are on now.

  Meander through canyons dotted with ruins of Mesoamerican civilizations! Splash in the waterfalls of El Encanto! Relax in the hot springs of Rio Antigua! Climb the spectacular pyramids at Teotihuacán! Feast on exquisite Mexican cuisine!

  Contract flesh-eating streptococcus!

  One can hope.

  See, I’ve sunk to the level of schadenfreude.

  Definition: a malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others.

  Or at least a dangerous first cousin. Schuyler told me about this. It’s bad for your karma. In this case the misfortune hasn’t happened yet, but daydreaming about it doesn’t let my soul off the hook.

  God gives a rat’s ass. I’m not sure I do.

  Put that one on my tab, Schuyler.

  I fall over on the white couch. What am I doing here? What do I hope to accomplish? My eye falls on Mr. Mann’s beloved copy of Emily’s poems, a paperback published the year Kennedy was assassinated. I jerk the book open and start to rip it in half along the spine. I can’t bear to tear through the words themselves.

  Wait.

  Several lines jump out at me:

  SHE rose to his requirement, dropped

  The playthings of her life

  To take the honorable work

  Of woman and of wife.

  Yes.

  I reverently put the book back in its place. It’s not Emily’s fault. I should have known she would have the answer.

  It’s time to make ready for the newlyweds. Time to make a Wife.

  I exit by the front door, leaving it unlocked.

  Rush to the Wal-Mart Rules the World Super Center and come back loaded with supplies.

  I scrub the dishes, splash the kitchen with pine cleaner, the bathroom with Ajax. Mom is right: what men don’t see doesn’t exist. I straighten everything. The trash goes on the landing. I make a great show of opening the front door each time I go in and out; I live here, don’t I? I certainly deserve to.

  Mom’s voice nags in my ears, scolding: What a miserable little vacuum. And: Well, no wonder, if you never change the bag.

  When I start to strip the bed, something breaks open again. I burrow my face into the sheets while Emil
y watches in white loneliness from the wall. When I’m finished, I ball up the old sheets and leave them on the landing.

  Crisp new sheets are tucked in a shopping bag in the hall. Lightly lavender, dotted with honeysuckle and crocuses. Alicia will love these Laura Ashley horrors. I snap them over his mattress, make the hospital corners neat and square.

  One thing more.

  In medieval times honeymooning couples were given a one-month supply of mead to drink. Honey = mead, moon = month. If they drank a cup each night, within one year their union would produce a baby.

  I have no mead. This will have to do.

  I tear the wrapping paper and silver bow away from the package Mr. Mann was supposed to open.

  The label on the jar says TRAPPIST, below that, RED RASPBERRY JAM. Unscrewing the top is like turning the core of the earth. Those monks must be Bowflex junkies. I dip a finger in, dangle a string of the stuff on my tongue; it’s warm from sitting in the car. Mr. Mann was right: I taste like heaven.

  I jerk the bedspread back, use three fingers to smear jam across the bottom sheet.

  I can’t stop. I scoop out economy-sized globs and finger paint until the jar is empty.

  A bloody Rorschach nightmare.

  Happy birthday, Richard.

  I remake the bed crisply and leave. Grab Mr. Mann’s sheets on the landing and stuff them in the car.

  Wait.

  Come back and set the air to ninety.

  memory scents

  Mom.

  “Darling, you’re home!”

  Her hair looks freeze dried; if you broke off a lock, it would feel like coral. Her eyes aren’t quite so red today. Pollen count must be down. I’m barely inside before she’s peppering me with questions.

  “Where have you been? Is it that hot out there already? You’re flushed, sweetheart!”

  “Springtime in Dixie,” I mutter.

  Mom reaches up to touch my shoulder. “Don’t do anything in the bathroom, dear. We’re out of paper.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to get some at Kroger’s. I won’t be home right away. There’s a used book sale at the library. If there’s an emergency, I put some tissues—”

  “I said okay.”

  “Can I get you anything from the store?”

  “Thanks, Mom, I’m fine.”

  I’m also exhausted. I sit at the table and find the dining room window. Trees still green, sky still blue. Our neighbor, Mr. Garner, is trying to mate with his garbage can. Life stumbles on.

  “Are you sure? Your father will be home a couple of hours late. He’s out at the test stands again. You might want to order a pizza. I believe Terry’s is having a special—”

  “Mom. I’m fine. Truly. Skedizzle. Think about yourself for a change.”

  “But I worry about you, darling. Is it all just too much?”

  “All what?”

  “The end of school, being so awfully sick, everything.”

  Everything.

  But my cat loves me.

  After Mom is gone, Kitty Nation steps into my lap to sniff my breathing. I scratch his sweet flat head. Kitty Nation is the color of grandma afghans and leaves and burning. I will kill anyone who tries to formaldehyde him.

  The empty tub is coldly supportive against my back. The rug is soft. This is my favorite reading place. I wrap myself in Mr. Mann’s sheets. His scent suffuses the space around my head. I spread open my copy of Emily’s poems across my knees:

  HEART, we will forget him!

  You and I, to-night!

  You may forget the warmth he gave,

  I will forget the light.

  When you have done, pray tell me,

  That I my thoughts may dim;

  Haste! lest while you’re lagging,

  I may remember him!

  I’m forgetting something. Yeah.

  I reach into my pocket. It’s still there.

  I crash out of the bathroom to my computer and slap the JetFare receipt next to the mouse.

  naked beasts

  Quick.

  I slip into Mom’s bedroom and get into her things.

  Her Mary Kay Pink Cadillac makeup and orange jogging suit. I cinch the flabby waist and hike the short pants to my knees like knickers. Crimp my hair with colorful old lady barrettes, pull a bushy ponytail through a hole in the back of Mom’s VIVE LE LIVRE baseball cap. I pull the bill of the cap low and put on her narrow sunglasses and rush outside to Wilkie Collins.

  Screech.

  The Huntsville International Jetplex.

  I haven’t been here in a while. It’s smaller than its name implies. Still, I see long glass buildings, overnight parking with its lazy yellow bar, the control tower like a Junovian golf tee. I scrabble quarters out of the ashtray for the meter and sidle Wilkie against the curb.

  A security guard walks toward me with the unmistakable look of the vocationally stunned. I bustle past him with authority and make my way through the automatic doors.

  Somehow the sunglasses make me confident. I’m anonymous, dangerous, impermeable. A soccer mom juiced on steroids. A family of four hurries in front of me as if pressed in the back by my pathological stride.

  They won’t let you all the way to the terminals these days unless you’re a passenger. I look for the luggage carousel. Up ahead a group of travelers is watching suitcases being pooped through flaps of carpet onto an aluminum slide. My head swivels, reconnoitering. None of these people are the Manns. I dig out Mr. Mann’s itinerary and glance at my watch. Seven minutes to spare. Surely I haven’t missed him. Now what?

  For the first time I realize I have no idea what I’m going to do.

  This is the thing that smashes me. My whole life I have always had a plan, but I have no plan. Only a raging need. A need for what? What can I hope for? What is this wildness inside that is pulling me on like I’ve fallen into a flooded river? I try to keep my breathing in check and look around for stones in the current to hang on to.

  A mother struggles with her monsters, hair desperately tucked behind her ears. A man sucks on an unlit pipe and prissily snaps his newspaper. Another man in a wifebeater shirt reads from a huge black Bible. His ropy biceps stand out like pods of butter beans.

  Overhead the Announcement Chick booms about boarding for exotic locales like Cleveland and Baltimore. No news from Mexico.

  People are talking about things I never like to talk about: shoes, cars, TV. Mom says this is why I have no friends, other than Schuyler. She doesn’t know that I can’t bear it, that it feels like being tattooed against my will.

  Do I wish there were more people like me? Sure. Every day. I wish it and hunger for it and almost believe it could happen. But the more I see of things, the more I realize that we can’t have what we want. We can only have what we can have. I had no idea life could be so lonely.

  Zammo.

  Here they come, the lovebirds.

  My fingers curl on the plastic seat. I don’t understand. I simply don’t understand. I will never, ever understand. How could he? How?

  I can’t compare this feeling to anything I’ve ever experienced before.

  My first instinct is to fly at them, pile drive Mr. Mann into the industrial carpet, straddle him, beat his face with the back of my knuckles. Knock her down too. And hope her head bounces.

  But something else is there too. Every second I ever spent with him, touching him, kissing, longing, completing. The rushing heat of all the connections we’ve shared, my fingernails against his skin, the point of his tongue beneath my ear.

  Alicia is laughing delightedly, hair like an oversized seashell. Mr. Mann looks tired. He’s tanned; his lovely hair is clipped short. This loss makes me think briefly of suicide. I tell myself it makes him look old.

  I hunch into my ponytail. I’ve got to be quick. Quick about what? I could rush them, force them back on the plane, make it fly to the Great North Woods and have it out there. The three of us, naked, animals on the ground, claws, dirt, teeth. I might not win
, but I guarantee you, I won’t be the first one down for the count.

  I wait. They’re not thirty feet away now. Alicia leans into him; he straightens and touches her elbow almost consolingly. She giggles and puts her arms around his waist. Alicia is burned pink and is wearing something long and blousy that splits alarmingly up the side. Ankles like fence posts. Poor Richard. I laugh bitterly in temporary satisfaction.

  They’re distracting each other. Suddenly I see a familiar-looking bag at the top of the chute. I focus on it. It’s a no-name cheapie with a fat belt looped over the top through a scarred buckle. In my memory I can see it on a closet shelf in Mr. Mann’s apartment.

  I used to imagine where that bag would go with us someday.

  Why not.

  I edge slowly around the far side of the carousel, watching for my chance. It’s his, all right; there’s the dark tear near the handle. The suitcase tumbles down in noisy flops to smack on its face. Now. My fingers close over the handle and I lift it in one clumsy motion—heavy!

  I glide away at medium speed, stepping purposefully. With my long legs, I’m soon in the middle of the pedestrian flow, increasing the distance away from the carousel in big, easy strides. I’m making my way down the main concourse before I dare to glance over my shoulder.

  I have no sense of being chased. Mr. Mann hasn’t even noticed that the suitcase has come and gone; he’s tugging at an expensive-looking black leather bag, obviously Alicia’s. By now I’m thirty yards away and gathering steam, a high-octane traveler in danger of missing a connection. The sunglasses help, make me expressionless, fierce.

  I swoosh past a big security guard who doesn’t even raise his eyebrows.

  Dinky as airports go, the main building is still track-and-field capable. I look back again. Mr. Mann is almost unrecognizable from here.

  I pass an opening to my left; two uniformed women suddenly rush over from a side tributary, going some place important. I’m not sure they even see me. I turn down the hall they just exited, find a seat in a secluded archipelago of anemic rubber trees. Whew, feels good to sit down. What’s he got in this thing?