In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  And Edie Friedman, who had been stocking a hope chest since third grade and was high on supplies but running out of hope, looked near fainting with renewed optimism. Or maybe it was just the heat.

  My turn. I stood up and said, “I’m Amanda Pepper. I teach English, all grades, at Philly Prep regularly, and I’ll be teaching Communication Skills Workshops this summer.” I sat down. Mr. Five smiled at me in a way that suggested we had just met someplace much nicer and more intimate than here, the two of us and nobody else. I returned the smile. It was the least I could do.

  If it were not for C.K. Mackenzie, with whom I was tiptoeing toward an understanding, Five’s smile might have made for a charged summer. I sighed and returned to glowering.

  Two

  I WAS SORTING FILE FOLDERS, DECIDING WHICH WERE recyclable for the summer students and trying to forget Havermeyer’s pompous and patronizing talk, when the fellow with the pointy nose tapped on the frame of my open door. Damn—what was his name? It was the one I’d been sure I could remember. Something ground-level. Rodentlike. Mr. Weasel? Bottom? Hole? Pitt?

  “I’m glad you’re alone,” he said. The patch of toilet paper with its red-brown bull’s-eye was still stuck to his cheek. “Didn’t mean to be rude, but it seemed awkward to go through the formalities down there with all the others.”

  He whined even when presumably trying to be endearing, but his pleasantries struck me as decidedly weird. What others? And what was his name? Little? Could that be it? He wasn’t exactly a giant, about five-eight, my height. But insignificant. Mr. Down? Downs?

  I must remember to never read another article on improving my memory.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but it’s been my experience that the older generation exaggerates when trying to make a match.”

  Although the idea made the pit of my stomach contract, mention of the words older generation and match put me on red alert and gave the situation an imprint like guilty fingerprints at a crime scene. Ma, I mentally whined, not again. I refused to accept the idea.

  “But this time,” he continued, “every word was true.” He was a head shaker, too, nodding agreement with himself. Nod, nod. “I hope you feel the same. Do you?”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but there seems to be some misunderstanding. Do I know you? Have we met before?”

  “Not in person. I would never have forgotten.”

  Was he implying we had met in a past life, or via astral projection?

  “But your picture didn’t do you justice. Did mine?”

  “Your what?”

  “Photo. Did it do me justice?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. First of all, what would be justice as far as his likeness was concerned? His features, what there were of them, crumpled into worried insecurity. Pathetic. We were going to work in the same building for the next two months. I tried to be gentle and discreet. “Before we get to that—I was just wondering exactly when was it you saw my photo. I mean, which photo was it again?”

  She wouldn’t give a total stranger a picture of me, would she?

  “You were wearing a big straw hat. It hid your hair, which is, I might say, a lovely hue. Chestnut, is that what they’d call it?”

  I remembered the snapshot. It had been taken when I was in college, ten years ago, and the straw hat completely shadowed my face. The only thing clear in that picture was that I was either female or a guy with severe hormone problems. How desperate was this man? How desperate was she?

  “Aunt Melba showed it to me three weeks ago, when I was visiting her. Melba Diggs.” He nodded and paused, waiting for my happy shout of recognition.

  I had never heard of the woman, but Diggs was the name I had heard in the auditorium. Something Diggs. Shovel? “Is Aunt Melba still”—time to reveal the horrible truth—“enjoying Florida?” I asked.

  He nodded extravigorously.

  Damn. I knew only one woman in Florida, and she wasn’t Melba Diggs, but it didn’t matter, because the woman I knew knew everyone else. Particularly anyone in contact with single males.

  “Well,” he said, “I mean, it wasn’t Aunt Melba’s photo, of course, it was your mother’s. It’s nice how close you are with her. She couldn’t stop talking about you and your interests and accomplishments and your desire to settle down and about what a coincidence it was that we were both teachers. And she was really, really excited when she found out we’d be at the same school this summer, too!” He flashed a smile that emphasized his lack of a chin. “And,” he added, lowering his high voice to a near-normal pitch and wrinkling his brows with solemnity, “hope this doesn’t seem out of line, but she mentioned that you also were recuperating from a disastrous…relationship. I know how it is, believe me. I share your pain.”

  My mother would do anything, invent a soap-opera history for me if she thought her improvisations would land me a man—any man.

  But this poor fellow’s romantic disaster had been real, as was his delusion that I expected, even wanted, to meet him. Mother Nature had been mean-spirited in allocating him features, Mother Pepper had lied to him, even if he didn’t know it, and a third female had broken his heart. I didn’t have to mend him, but I didn’t need to inflict further damage, either. “Well,” I said, “it’s good to meet you at last.”

  He glowed with relief. I could almost see through his skull to his brain, which was flashing in neon letters that I had just agreed to be his reentry gal. “Me, too,” he said. “Mandy Pepper, Mandy Pepper. Nice name. I just wanted to touch base.”

  He looked as if maybe he expected to touch more than base. “Glad you did,” I said.

  “Me, too.” Still more nods. “And even gladder that we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other! A lot more,” he added with a wink, a pivot, and a slouched, but mildly jaunty, retreat.

  I still didn’t know what name to call him, but I didn’t have that problem when I thought about my mother.

  The second time someone tapped my door frame, I yelped, terrified by images of more suitors sent compliments of Bea Pepper.

  “Have a minute?” a decidedly nonwhiny masculine voice asked. “Am I interrupting?”

  Of course he was, but I waved him in and felt the corners of my mouth tilt up.

  “My room’s down the hall,” he said. “Nice old building, this. I think my side of the hallway is a little shadier and cooler.”

  “It’s the trade-off for having no view.” My sunny and therefore hot room overlooked the square, a green city oasis populated by an interesting parade of locals.

  He stood at the window and considered the scene below. “There it is,” he said. “Penn’s Greene Countrie Towne.”

  His history was good. William Penn was the first city planner in the new world, and a believer in open space. He designed a series of pocket parks way before there were streets to ring them. One of the five original squares lay across the street from the school.

  “Where out West are you from?” I asked. Had he said? Had I forgotten? Was I being rude?

  “Idaho. Ever been?”

  I shook my head. Nobody I knew had ever been there, and I had no empirical evidence to believe Idaho existed. I stacked my file folders.

  “People here think it’s nothing but potato fields, but it can be spectacularly beautiful. I miss it. However, it was time to find out what else there was. Expand my horizons. See where the history I’d studied happened. But you, of course, are a native Philadelphian.”

  “How did you know?” Had I said yo even once? Asked Wassup? when he entered the room? Addressed him as youse? Was I eating a soft pretzel with mustard or practicing my mummer’s strut? What? “My accent?”

  “Your name.”

  “Amanda?”

  “Very funny. Pepper!” When he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled in a wonderful, Idaho kind of way. “A prestigious Philadelphia name if ever there was one. By coincidence, I visited Pepper House this weekend. A handsome place, and such a good example of the Philadelphia sty
le.”

  The only Pepper House I knew about was the one I’d grown up in outside the city, a standard-issue two-story brick colonial. The floor plan you knew even before you opened the front door. Little center hall. Living room on one side, dining on the other, kitchen behind dining. Three bedrooms upstairs. We’d been part of a postwar development. There were probably a few thousand similar homes around the city and a goodly proportion of those in my neighborhood. I didn’t think that was what Five meant by the Pepper House.

  “And there’s George Wharton Pepper, of course,” he continued.

  At what point was I required to break his enchantment with me and tell him that I was not a part of any illustrious Pepper lineage? I decided I was supposed to tell him that when he asked.

  “The Philadelphia lawyer,” he went on. “‘Old Philadelphia’s Grandest Old Man,’ he was called, and how does that Life magazine poem about him go?”

  Luckily, that was a rhetorical question I wasn’t expected to answer, because I was fully occupied by trying not to gape. The man was a master of Pepperabilia—a subject field I’d never known existed. He recited:

  “G. Pepper of Penn. is a model for men;

  A bulwark in peace or in war,

  With character rounded and solidly founded

  On learning and logic and law.

  When Senators bicker of tariff and liquor,

  As Senators will now and then,

  The speediest stepper is certainly Pepper,

  George Wharton Pepper of Penn.”

  “Not precisely poetry,” he said. “What would you call it? A jingle?”

  I would call it amazing. Incredible. Where on earth had he heard that, and why on earth would he want to know it?

  Perhaps he noticed my dangling lower jaw. “I’ve been reading as much local history as I can,” he said, “especially about the movers and shakers who shaped this country.”

  Wait till I told the detective that there was a history besides that of the yellow fever plague to be read. Even a poem—okay, a piece of doggerel—about a Pepper, and he hadn’t known about it. But did I also have to tell the history teacher that my family wasn’t known for shaping anything, except maybe cousin Lou who’d been a doughnut maker?

  “Original family name Pfeffer. German. Anglicized it. Any Pfeffer cousins left?”

  “I really wouldn’t—” I began, but a cloud of scent and a long flowered skirt interrupted my weak stab at honesty.

  “It looked like you two were having just too good a time,” she said, “so I thought I’d join you. I’m Phyllis Esther Estes-Sessions.” The name emerged as one long hiss. “This is going to be fun, don’t you think? Nice old building, an interesting mix of students, nice location. And how are you liking our fair city?” Phyllis asked Five. “The Cradle of Liberty and all that. What have you seen and do you need any suggestions, or guides?”

  A little obvious, Phyllis, I thought. Ease up. And what were those last names about? Didn’t they imply a Mr. Sessions? Or a Mr. Estes?

  “I’ve been in the area a few years,” Five said kindly.

  “I suspect this man knows more about local history than any of us,” I added. “Definitely more than I do.”

  “And do you like it here?” Phyllis continued, looking only at him.

  “Very much so.”

  “And Mrs. Dennison? Or do we call her Mrs. Five?” Phyllis-the-unsubtle inquired.

  “My mother died when I was a child,” he said. “And she was Mrs. Four.”

  “I meant—”

  “Actually, since we seem to have reverted to talk of our ancestors, the fact is, we were just discussing Amanda’s, not mine,” Five said. “Her forefathers were much more illustrious.”

  Phyllis tried to look delighted by the swerve in attention and topic, but she succeeded only in looking queasy.

  I hated disappointing this man, particularly in front of the snaky Phyllis. Still… “The Senator wasn’t related to me,” I said. “I don’t think we’re a branch of that particular Pepper family tree.” I knew we weren’t. My mother was chronicler of the Delaware Valley’s web of human connections, and never had she mentioned anybody of historical significance with our name. In fact, most of her energy was devoted to getting me to give up that last name and take on somebody else’s, so she couldn’t have considered it wildly renowned.

  “Really?” Five sounded unwilling to believe in my ordinariness.

  Phyllis smiled. One small step for her sibilant, nonacclaimed last names.

  “Different Peppers,” Five mused, almost to himself.

  “Maybe even different Pfeffers,” I added.

  “Your family’s German, then? Like his?”

  “I didn’t mean that. My family is a hodgepodge that would give a genealogist the shakes. Kind of the prototype for the melting pot concept.”

  “Have you been to Valley Forge yet?” Phyllis asked overbrightly. Asked him. I had slipped over the horizon again where she was concerned. “We always think of it in winter—Washington’s soldiers in the snow and all. But it’s gorgeous in the summertime. A great place for a picnic.”

  “You know your Philadelphia history,” Five said.

  “I’m a buff. People think because I’m a biology teacher that I’d be narrowly focused, but—”

  “You’ll have to tell me more of your ideas as soon as I have time to do them justice,” he said. “Right now, I’m afraid I…”

  And without saying what he was doing right now, he demonstrated it. Right now, he was gone. Phyllis-the-S-woman had no use for me whatsoever, and I was pretty convinced she wasn’t about to become my new best friend. People say women’s goodbyes take forever, but it surely wasn’t true in our case. We were not off to a good start. But maybe that’s S.O.P. in the city of maximum hostility.

  Three

  DESPITE MY HAVING CLAIMED TO BE SOMETHING scraped out of the melting pot, I never was overfond of the term. It raised hellish images of folks boiling in an iron cauldron, liquefying into shapeless, indistinct lumps. So I had no impulse to apply the tag to my class, which was lucky, since despite my hopes, they showed no desire to become anything except what they were, very separate ingredients that’d be damned before they’d combine.

  This was apparent on day one. On minute one, actually, despite the high hopes I’d had for the potential in this combination.

  One more high hope lowered. One class down. One half day closer to the end of summer school, I comforted myself. But each step would be a long one, because classes were bloated four-hour sessions. That’s how an entire semester is theoretically condensed into eight weeks.

  My A.M. Communications class—that sounded less politically incorrect and offensive than Remedial English or Primitive Skills with Paper and Pen—had fifteen teens. Three were Philly Prep hardcores. It’s damned difficult to fail a course at our school if your tuition payments are up to date, because parents seldom are glad to shell out for a second dose of what we did not impart the first go-round. Any failure is taken to be ours.

  But this trio had forced the issue. One had missed an entire semester—the rumor was a drug rehabilitation program. I wasn’t sure at first glance whether the rehabilitation had taken. A second, “Toy” Drebbin, actually could communicate quite well. I knew that because last autumn he had clearly explained that his allowance was larger than my paycheck, so why should he “break his back over dead writers”? What had they ever done for him, or for his family’s tow-away business? And the last of the homegrown musketeers, Rina, had spent her sophomore year drowning in hormones, unable to spell anything except M-A-L-E. I had little hope that summer’s heat would help her adjust to the idea that there were two sexes, and until such time as she did, all concepts that made it through her brain were X-rated.

  The semischolars from other private schools looked suspicious and hostile. This was not how they’d planned to spend their summer vacations, although it was probable that planning was not their forte, and that they had fiddled while a schoo
l year burned.

  And then we had the students who gave my principal dyspepsia. They came from the public schools on special grants, and they had names like April Truong and Miguel Hernandez and Jhabal Muhammed. Or they were like Tony “Model T” Ford, who had a skull tattooed on his cheek and two gold hoops in his right nostril. Or his pals: Woody Marshall, who may have provided the swing vote in the All-City Hostility Sweeps, and pale, silent Guy Lawson. The three were a sullen but constant trio.

  Or Carmen Gabel, an “Oh, yeah?” girl whose sneer was on automatic pilot and who had obviously never met a cosmetic she didn’t like. And Miles Nye, a gangly Norman Rockwell–freckled redhead who managed, even on this first day, to challenge—in a cockeyed, good-humored way—every idea I put forth. Could he please be a little creative with assignments? he asked. He couldn’t define that any more closely, because he was talking about creativity. Did he really have to use words? Why shouldn’t “Communications” include nonverbal techniques? Wasn’t it true that sixty-five percent of all human communication was, in fact, nonverbal? But if he did use words, did it matter if they were prose? He liked poetry better, I was made to understand. I wished I remembered the Pepper of Philadelphia jingle. It might have impressed him. Nothing else I did was able to. He seemed a nice enough kid, and probably bright, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a prime incentive for a nervous breakdown.

  Don’t despair, I told myself as they filed out. It was only the first day. With time, maybe there’d be a miracle, and the little collection of separate people would chemically reinvent itself into a class, with its own personality and dynamics. A class that put out as much energy as it received. That’s when teaching justified itself, became exciting.