by Lauren Fox
We enter Mrs. Rosen’s room, a landscape of orange all-purpose carpeting, bright pillows, and multicolored miniature plastic chairs lined up against a long U-shaped table. Meg is whistling a repetitive ditty that seems to consist of just six notes.
“It’s nice to see you in good spirits,” I offer tentatively.
“I feel great!” Meg says. “This was such a good idea. Em,” she adds, “you know how much I appreciate this.”
“Shut up!” I say.
She punches me lightly in the arm; I punch her back. We pretend to be guys. “You shut up.”
“What’s on today’s agenda?” I ask. “Mergers? Acquisitions? Hostile takeovers?”
“The lesson plan involves show-and-tell and a recap of the days of the week, followed by a three-martini lunch and an investigation by the SEC.” She motions me over to the closet at the back of the room and opens the door. “Art supplies,” she says, with a Vanna White swoop of her arm. “Oh, and they’ll be working in their journals today, too.”
“They keep journals?” I ask. “Can they write?”
“Not really. They draw pictures and scratch out a few words.”
“What else?”
“Follow my lead,” she says. “Activities last about twenty minutes each. Welcome to short-attention-span theater. A lot of what we do is wander around and give them encouragement, help them clean up. It’ll be obvious.”
The first students of the day charge into the room, two little girls with pink backpacks and identical haircuts—stick-straight short hair and bangs. Bangs! Maybe I should get bangs. They spot Meg and run up to her, stop just short of crashing into her legs. They haven’t learned the concept of personal space yet. “Hi, Miss Schaeffer!” Meg was their art teacher last year, when they were four, and I can see that they love the shock of seeing her now. I remember what it felt like the time my mom and I ran into my third-grade teacher at the grocery store (Did she buy frozen entrées like we did? An exotic kind of soda?), or even when I saw my high school Spanish teacher at the mall, holding hands with a handsome man—the sudden surprise of realizing that they had lives, possibly even complicated lives.
“Hi, Phoebe! Hi, Jessica!” She crouches down to their height and grabs them both in a hug. I can’t believe she remembers their names.
“Why aren’t you our art teacher anymore?” Jessicaphoebe asks.
“I’m substituting this year,” Meg says. “Mrs. Rosen isn’t here today, so I get to spend the whole day with you!” Meg is so good at this. If it were me, I probably would have overdisclosed to the little urchins. Well, children, the thing is, I couldn’t get pregnant because of all the stress last year, so I took some time off and got knocked up, but then I miscarried, which was really sad, so now I’m just easing my way back into things. Any advice? I don’t really know how to deal with kids. Meg is in her element. It occurs to me that I don’t really have an element. I would like to tell this to Meg, and then we would make a few jokes about chromium and magnesium—no, that’s my element. Well, I’ll take zinc then; you always get chromium—but she’s busy.
“And guess what?” Meg continues, motioning me over. “You get to have two substitute teachers today!” She seems to be operating under the principle that if you pretend something is a treat for a five-year-old, it becomes one. Guess what? You get to have a rubella vaccination today! “This is Miss Ross,” she says. I’m not a “Miss,” but I’m not a “Mrs.,” either, and neither is Meg; we both kept our last names, something we fervently promised to do when we were still in college. Not to mention, Emily Lee sounds like something Porky Pig would say. But “Ms.” sounds accidental, like it lost one of its consonants at the dry cleaner’s. Jessica and Phoebe look at me suspiciously. I stretch what I hope is a benevolent smile across my face.
More little kids arrive, one or two accompanied by their parents, most in distinct little groups. I watch as one girl tries to join a giggling threesome of girls who seem to be having a conversation about shoes. “Hi!” she says eagerly. “Hi!” but they ignore her. Is it because she wears glasses? Just as I’m about to move in and rescue her, she heads over to another couple of kids who immediately include her in their game of Throw the Jacket on the Floor. They’re tiny people, but they already have friends. They’ve formed cliques! They edge each other out, play power games. Observe the North American five-year-old in its native habitat. Watch its sophisticated interactions, its relentless quest for social survival. What a cruel and hearty beast!
“Hang up your jackets and come sit in the circle!” Meg trills. She claps her hands three times.
It occurs to me that I could leave Kevin. Not necessarily so that I could pursue David, because I’ve obviously already screwed that up. But maybe David’s appearance in my life was a sign, a warning—a sexy, muscular, dark-eyed warning—that my marriage is not going to go the distance. I feel a flutter and a queasy thump in my stomach, simultaneously. Kevin and I are so comfortable together in our ruts and grooves, even in our perennial disagreements, I’ve just always considered lusty, irresistible excitement to be the plot of other people’s stories. But maybe I’m going to end up making it mine. Divorce Kevin. Kevin and I are divorced. I’m a divorcée. A gay divorcée. Hello, I’ve been divorced for several years now. Suddenly I picture myself as a blowsy forty-year-old with a pack-a-day habit. I wear blue eye shadow and while away my long, lonely nights on a barstool. Get me another gin and tonic! I don’t care if you think I’m drunk, goddammit!
“Miss Ross! Miss Ross!” Meg has, apparently, been calling me, but I’m not used to responding to that name. She rolls her eyes at me from across the room. “Would you like to join our good morning circle?”
I lope across the room, feeling like I’m Alice and I’ve just taken the one pill that makes me large, and I plunk myself down, cross-legged, between two miniature people. The curly-headed little boy on my left scrunches closer to me, leans against my arm. I’m immediately smitten.
Meg casts a spell over the twenty-five little kids. She leads them in a few songs, and then through show-and-tell, which is (I don’t recall this from my kindergarten days) a competitive guessing game. The show-and-teller gives out three clues, and the rest of the students have to guess the object, which is hidden from view. One girl brought in a Barbie doll. (“It has hair. It is fun to play with. My sister has three.” Nobody figures it out.) And another brought in a ball of purple yarn. (“My cat likes to chase it. My mom made a sweater with it. It is soft.” One kid yells out, “Cheese!” but several others get it right.)
Kindergarten has very little subtext. I find that it’s easy to give myself over to this experience, so immediate, so precisely What It Is. It lives up to a person’s expectations: you come, you play, you learn, you go home and eat SpaghettiOs for lunch. I watch Meg at the helm, and I think, This is her antidote. I think that my friend is healed, or at least healing. And I’m relieved.
We review the days of the week, which they’ve obviously been practicing. My little curly-haired neighbor is called to the front for a lesson.
“What day of the week is it today, Ari?” Meg asks him.
He stands, contemplating. He’s wearing corduroy pants, I notice, and suede loafers, which makes me want to laugh. I wonder if he has a tiny briefcase and tie in his closet at home. He scratches his head, looks up at Meg for some help.
“Th-Th-Th-,” Meg prompts, leaning down toward him, and Ari breaks into a huge grin.
“FRIDAY!” he yells. Meg tells him how close he is, what a wonderful guess he’s made.
The morning passes in this strange, surreal way. These three-and-a-half hours are so jam-packed, it’s like we’re living a full day that’s been physically shrunken to fit their size. Meg reads them two stories. Under her tutelage, they make origami houses and slap colored sticky tape to them for decoration. They break for a snack of granola bars and an unidentifiable orange-ish drink. They scribble in their journals and draw pictures of things that are important to them: one boy draws his
dog; one girl draws a loaf of bread. They sing an elaborate song about an old gray cat that creeps, sleeps, and chases mice, method acting all parts. They have playtime. They go outside for recess (which seems redundant to me; what do they need a break from?). Between events, they jump around and pick at each other, grooming, tickling, patting each other, or tugging at one another’s hair. Unless Meg has her hand raised in the universal kindergarten signal for “Listen here, kiddies,” the decibel level always ranges somewhere from carnival to aviary. Meg and I lumber about, pulling children off other children, listening to sentences like “I had pizza last night!” and “I have a brother” and “I’m going to be a veterinarian!” and responding with all-purpose, high-pitched murmurs of approval.
And then the morning is over. As quickly as the tornado blew into the room, it’s gone. The twenty-five little monsters know their routine. The first bell rings, and they immediately begin to put away the blocks, paints, crayons, and books that litter the floor; they pack up their belongings in a relatively orderly manner and, as the second bell tolls, head for the waiting kindergarten bus or their parents in SUVs.
Meg and I converge at the doorway as we see off the last of them. They wave and wave at us, torn between the excitement of leaving and the nostalgia of staying, and my friend Ari turns around at the last minute and wraps his arms around my waist in a fast and surprisingly strong hug. “Bye, Lady!” he shouts, and takes off running down the hall.
Meg blows a strand of hair out of her eyes and wipes her hands on her jeans, then examines her palms and fingers for remnants of glue and chalk. “Let’s go outside,” she says. “We’ll watch them as they leave and listen to the quiet before the next shift arrives.” This being kindergarten, we get to repeat our performance in an hour. She links her arm through mine and leads me out, singing the chain gang song.
Outside, a few other teachers are huddled together in the bright sunshine. One woman in a jean jacket is brazenly smoking at the edge of the grass courtyard. School is still in session, since only the four- and five-year-olds are divided into morning and afternoon groups with this hour in between. Some leftover kids are running around or playing on the playground equipment as their mothers look on. The bus pulls away. One or two fathers walk away from the school with their charges, who look extra-short next to the men. I’m exhausted and exhilarated. It feels good to do work that’s physical; it feels more real than the work I usually do.
Meg and I lean against the side of the building. She shades her eyes with her hand and surveys the area. I’m suddenly starving, and I’m about to suggest we go back in and grab our lunches when she nudges me. “Isn’t that your friend?” She tilts her chin toward a youngish-looking man who’s crouched next to a little girl, tying her shoe. They’re about twenty feet from us, on the sidewalk in front of the school. I squint, try to make him out. Just at that moment he turns toward me, and I see that it’s David. He spots me at the exact same second, so there’s no way for me to run away, which is what I would like to do. Anyway, I’m immobilized. I feel like all the blood has been suctioned from my body; I’m dry and brittle and I might turn to dust and just blow away. At the same time, David looks aghast. I haven’t told Meg about recent events, not about our walk or the almost-kiss or the e-mail. In the split second that I identify David’s particular posture, recognizable even as he’s crouching, the contours of his face, the way his dark hair hangs, in the instant that this combination of attributes once again and in spite of everything makes my stomach lurch, I worry that Meg will wave or call him over. I nudge her back, harder than I’d intended, and mutter under my breath, “Don’t say anything.” Then, my heart thumping and with no alternative, I lift my hand and wave to him.
For a few seconds, he doesn’t respond. He just stares at me with the same awful expression on his face. Then he sets his mouth back into place, stands up, still looking at me, takes the hand of the little girl, waves back with his other hand, and turns and walks away.
Meg doesn’t say anything for a while. We both watch him as he leaves, the little girl half-skipping to keep up with his long gait. From this distance, I can hear a few notes of her high, singsongy voice. He looks down at her and says something in response. I sense, rather than see, Meg look at me and then look back again at David as he and the girl grow smaller in the distance and finally turn left down a side street and disappear from view. I swallow hard. “Well, that was weird,” she says softly.
“Yeah,” I say.
“And, ow,” she adds, rubbing her side where I elbowed her.
“Sorry about that.” I wonder briefly what David was doing with a small child. Then I remember that he mentioned a niece to me on our first date. Our first date.
“So,” Meg says, “are you going to tell me what that was all about?”
I don’t know what to say. Supporting myself against the brick wall, I sink down to the ground and look up at Meg. I feel a creeping dampness from the wet grass, and immediately hoist myself back up again. “Did I just get my jeans wet?” I ask, turning around to show her.
“No, you’re fine. Em?”
I think about David’s face next to mine on the bench by the lake, the way his eyes grew darker, softer, as he was about to kiss me. I think about his face just now, horrified at seeing me, his mouth grim, resolute. Meg will definitely not understand this, and I deeply, passionately don’t want to tell her. I just don’t want to have to defend myself. And anyway, I can’t. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I admit. “I do want to tell you, but later. Okay?”
“Sure, I guess,” she says, noncommittal. Is she miffed? This is not usually how we operate, holding back, not talking about what’s on our minds. With the glaring sun directly above us, we stand for a few more minutes in silence. The breeze picks up, and I shiver, pull my light sweater more tightly around me. Finally, Meg says, “Come on, let’s go eat and get ready for the next crew,” and we make our way silently across the grass and back into the school.
That night, an e-mail from David comes in:
Arrr$%@rggh&#*(%@#@!
I’m sorry that I was awkward this morning. I wasn’t expecting to see you.
I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t realized that something was up the day we didn’t kiss. To tell you the truth, Emily, I wasn’t going to write back to you at all. Then I decided I’d send you a scathing note, so that you’d feel as awful and surprised as I felt when I got your e-mail….
I was working on that reply (and it was going fairly well) until it occurred to me that I could rise above it and just tell you honestly what a crummy feeling this is, and ask you what you were up to, because I thought that you and I were pretty connected. I was starting to feel kind of great about you.
So that’s the one I finally landed on. I’m stung, but I’ll get over it.
—David
P.S. We should probably put that “relationship expert” assignment on hold for a while (unless you want to write it as straight irony). Check back with me in a few months, if you like. In the meantime, feel free to pitch any other ideas to my editor, Matt Fowler.
Later, much later, I lie awake in our bed and I watch Kevin sleep, his chest rising and falling, his breathing regular and deep. It’s this rhythm that usually calms me when I can’t sleep, the solid, peaceful hulk of his warm body next to mine; I lay my head on his chest when I’m restless and I’m lulled by his beating heart.
Tonight, of course, it’s my own recalcitrant ticker that keeps me up. I was exhausted when I got home, and I tried to tell Kevin about my day of kindergarten while we sat in front of the TV eating our hastily thrown-together cheese omelets. But the story, so specific in its details while I was living it, became muddled in the telling. My non-interaction with David lay over my thoughts, muffling everything else. I couldn’t remember all the things I’d wanted to relay to Kevin, the smells of paint and Play-Doh that suffused the room, the crazy energy of thirty five-year-olds whirling around like tops, the way they listened with their whol
e bodies to Meg when she read to them. I tried to talk about the things we’d done, the activities and the lessons, but Kevin was distracted, kept turning his eyes back to the TV, which we had put on “mute.” I knew he wasn’t really listening, and I wasn’t even annoyed; I just gave up. We unmuted the TV, watched reruns, and then, after dinner, we both retreated into our own offices for the rest of the night. I sat staring at my computer for two hours, thinking about David. And then I got his e-mail.
I read it over and over again. I analyzed every paragraph, every sentence. I reacted to it physically: his slightly sour tone made my stomach ache; but his basic goodwill and gentleness, the honesty and humor that still shone through the whole message planted a slow, burning regret in my chest. I wanted to write back to him. I wanted to apologize or explain, but every time I tried to compose a few words, I drew a big fat blank. That’s the thing about telling a man you’ve almost kissed that you happen to be married: there’s not a whole lot left to explain. In the room of my brain reserved for sanity and clarity, and one that is not always open for business, I knew that anything I wrote would just be the start of something, possibly something mature and friendly, or maybe something illicit and irresistible…but whatever I started, it would be wrong. I wanted contact with him. I hit “compose new message,” typed in David’s address. Desire played tug of war with my conscience, and my conscience won. I couldn’t think of any words to write to David. Finally, at ten thirty, I turned off my computer and went to bed.
Now, four hours later, I sneak out from under the covers and tiptoe across the room. At the door, I listen to make sure Kevin is still asleep. As if he’d wake up and surmise my intentions, the intentions I don’t even quite know, and cry out, “Where do you think you’re going, harlot!?” My dramatic sensibilities have obviously been informed by too many episodes of Days of Our Lives, circa 1989. There’s a closeness in here, the faint musk of our breathing bodies, despite the window open a crack to let in the air. I slip out of our room and sneak down the hall into my study, flick on the computer, and watch as the ghostly blue glow emerges on the screen and casts a translucent pall over the room.
