“I know why you do what you do.” She laughed, not a nice laugh. A laugh bordering on a sob. “I haven’t slept in a week, I just couldn’t—I couldn’t see it. Now I do.”
What could she know? Nothing. All she knew was her own ambition, her preconceived ideas about how things were. She was nothing, less than nothing to him. The sooner she said what she had to the sooner he could get her off him. “You said that. Are you going to share?”
She drew close enough so that he could feel her breath on his face. “You decided two years ago you didn’t want your job, and now instead of just quitting and crawling back here to die, you make me do what you could have done yourself.”
Deep in his chest a pocket of cold burst, flooding his arteries with razor sharp shards of ice. “You’re way off.”
“Am I? I don’t think so.” She pressed a finger into his breast bone. “You want to die, Mr. O’Connel. And you want me to help.”
He wanted to stand, to backhand her, to press her to him so hard she couldn’t breathe. “Don’t tell me about me, you don’t know anything about me. You come to fire me, now you want to psychoanalyze me? I don’t need it—not from you.”
She got unsteadily to her feet, pushing herself up, hands on his knees to stand again in front of him, thighs so close in front of his face he could see the fine blond down.
“Oh, no, you’re not stupid. You knew what would happen when you started this crusade, and you did it anyway. You want to be fired, you’ve wanted it ever since they died.”
He was trembling, now, needing to yawn, to stretch. Every muscle in his body hummed. If she didn’t stop, he would run his hands up under her dress. He could feel her skin under his hands, every muscle, every swell of her. He knew how she would taste, how she would feel. Knew—didn’t have to imagine—knew. He turned his face away. “Shut up, will you just shut up?”
“You need an excuse, an out, and I’m it. I’m doing exactly what you wanted me to do, aren’t I?” She took his face in her hands and made him look at her. “Aren’t I?”
He let her handle him. It was as if he were falling from a great height, barb impaling heart and lungs. Soon he would reach the tether’s end and it would unzip his ribs.
“But then something happened, didn’t it?” Voice barely a whisper, she taunted. “And now you need something else.”
Numb with disgust, for her, for himself, O’Connel wrenched his eyes to hers. “What are you doing?”
Gently, ever so slowly, she straddled him. “I’m giving it to you.” She pressed against him, running cold hands under his shirt, breath on his face. “I’m giving you what you want.”
There was an ache in his throat. “You’ve had too much wine.”
She yanked the hair at the nape of his neck. It hurt. “I’m the one who’s taking your job, I’m the death angel come for you. Isn’t there anything you want to do about that?”
Eyes averted, he strained against her hand. “No.” He could feel the pressure of her against him, feel himself respond.
The room was suddenly stifling, the air thick as cane syrup, every movement slow torture. Could a man want to rape and cherish, strangle and caress, humiliate and protect the same woman at the same time? Could he want all that and still be sane? Trembling with tension that made arousal pain, he tried to swallow and nearly choked. Their eyes mated, he couldn’t look away.
Slow as pitch, she leaned closer, eyes never leaving his. His hands began their inexorable slide up legs he knew would be silky enough to make him cry.
Her mouth nearly on his, he pulled away. “No, uh uh.”
She settled herself more comfortably on him, the fierceness draining from her eyes. “Yes.”
It was a plea now. He cupped her face in his hands. “Solange, this isn’t you, this isn’t me, this isn’t the way it’s going to happen.”
She snaked arms about his neck. “Yes, it is.”
He captured her hands, pressed them to cool leather. As desolate, as disappointed as he could remember being, he shook his head, doing his best at a reassuring smile. “No, no it’s not.”
Seeing he’d made up his mind, she looked as if she might cry. “Why not?”
Now she looked every bit the exhausted woman she was. He drew hair from her face with a single finger, tucking it neatly behind her ear. “Because you’re a strong, good girl who’s had too much wine, and because you’d hate both of us, that’s why.”
She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “I already do.”
Just then Sonny came, nails clicking, to nuzzle under the hem of her dress, and she nearly jumped out of his arms, squalling in fear, and then they were both laughing. Her eyes filled. “You don’t like me,” she said, lips against his chest.
Eyes shut he laughed low and long. How little she knew.
Face stretched into a sorrowful mask, she keened softly; pitching off of him onto the couch, curling up like a child, trying to stretch the dress to cover her. “I’m so tired.”
He tucked a soft wool blanket over her, slipped a pillow under her head. She moaned, content as he stroked her hair, already missing the weight of her on him. “I know. Rest now.”
Standing, he backed away, unable to turn. Sweet Jesus, what sort of fool was he?
• • •
At dawn, he found her sitting in front of the stove, hair flowing down her neck and into a dark, glimmering pool in her blanketed lap. He remembered its fragrance, the silky feel of it under his hand, the bulk of it, and clenched his hand. “Been up long?”
“Couple hours. There were some coals left, so I added a few logs.”
He dropped onto the couch. “Sleep okay?”
She lifted slender shoulders, shook her head no. “I haven’t been doing a lot of that.”
He’s slept little enough, that was sure. He sat on the couch near her shoulder. “Guilty conscience?”
She winced, smiled slowly. “About last night—”
So she remembered. “Forget it.”
The teakettle surged, spitting a wet whistle and she poured two cups of tea on the low table. Her blanket fell open, and he caught a glimpse of bare thigh and cobalt cashmere. She covered up, met his eye, flinched. “I’m sorry.”
“It was the wine.”
Handing him his cup, she sat cross legged on the floor, back propped against the couch. In the dawn twilight the stove ticked, the kettle hissed, the alderwood fire the only light in the dark house. It felt so easy having her here, so dangerously natural. “You mentioned your father last night.”
“He died when I was ten. A tree went the wrong way in the wind. Mama lives here, now, in Crow. I called her this morning, and she’s angry with me. I promised a week ago to get somebody out to patch her roof before the rain, and then forgot all about it. She says yesterday it leaked. Now I’ve got to try and get somebody out from Eugene.”
She leaned over his leg, craning her neck to see out the window. “Already the sky looks dark.” There was a breathless moment when she caught his eye and they both remembered the night before. She drew the blanket closer around her and sank back onto the floor.
He thought of something, and after rummaging around the back porch, came back to hand her a blue can and a putty knife. “Here you go.” She took it, puzzled. “What?”
“Roof goop.”
She frowned. “Goop?”
“Roof cement, stops leaks.”
She frowned up at him, confused. “I don’t know how.”
He shrugged, the idea catching fire in his mind. “I’ll show you…hell, I’ll do it for you, I’ve got nothing else to do until seven tonight.”
“You can patch a mobile home roof?”
He had to laugh. “A roof’s a roof. You think I could live in this old barge and not know how to patch a leak?”
“But…it might rain.”
“It works fine in the rain.” She was reaching for a reason, he knew, any reason to keep him away. After last night it was kind of funny. He watched her, waiting for the next try.
<
br /> “What about a ladder?”
He was enjoying this. “Got one.”
With a sigh, she set the can on the rug. “I can’t let you do this…not today.”
She was so easy to read. “Why not?”
“Tonight’s the board meeting.”
He took a swig of tea. It burned all the way down. “Big deal, your mother’s roof leaks, right? You won’t get anybody out there today.” He went to a window. “That sky’s hanging heavy as a sow’s tits. It’ll come down tonight. I’ve got to cross the river to take you in anyway, we could just as well swing by Crow after we check on your car. If the creek’s down, we should be able to make it across.”
She shook her head. “Only if you let me pay you.”
This was so typical of her. “Pay me?”
“Yes, pay you, that’s the only way I could let you do it.”
He opened his hands in surrender, and went to get his hat. “Okay, pay me then. Hundred an hour plus expenses.”
She looked up, mouth opening. “Hundred an hour? Plus what expenses?”
He pretended to think. “Cement, gas, mileage, rent on the ladder, it all adds up. I’m skilled labor, it’s that or nothing.”
“Robber.” She turned back to the fire, showing him that incredible hair.
“I’m the only game in town.”
“I’ll pay it.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ll get the boat loaded. I left a blouse and slacks on the sink upstairs.” He hesitated at the door, unwilling to let it go. “Unless you’d prefer to wear the dress.”
She turned, fire in her eyes, then saw his smile and let her breath go. “I deserve that.”
He opened the door for the dog, waiting for her to totter out.
“I warn you, she’ll bore you to death telling you what a wonderful wife I’d be.”
He followed the dog outside. That he didn’t want to miss.
• • •
Their shoes crunched gravel as she followed him down the path to the waiting boat, Sonny trailing behind. The river stretched darkly below, only a faint glimmer of white through the dense thicket of alder betraying the presence of a trailer on the opposite shore. She caught a glimpse of a red car as it flashed between the trees on the highway half a mile distant, a speck against the looming hill beyond.
“What a place. I wasn’t sure I remembered it right. You are on the other side of a river.” She pointed at the boat. “You cross twice a day in that?”
Fending off the dog with his shoulder, he undid the line, setting them adrift on the current. “Until now,” he said. “Ready?”
She clambered over the rail, avoiding wetting her shoes in the bilge. Starting the engine, he nosed the boat upstream. An old man in a battered straw cowboy hat sat in a boat anchored in the middle of the river, two poles held aloft in racks at the stern. O’Connel cut the engine fifty yards upriver, and they drifted down on him in the sudden quiet.
“What’s bitin’, Frank?” Face brown and wrinkled as a black walnut, his expression soured as he chewed the end of a short, soggy cigar. “Not a goddam thing.”
“I thought the steelhead were running.” He tossed the stub over the side where it drifted on the current.
“They may be runnin’ but they sure as hell ain’t runnin’ my direction.” Frank watched in contempt as a shining power boat sped upriver.
The roar of the engine made talk impossible. They rode out the wake in silence.
“And the fancy boys ain’t doin’ no better, neither,” he said, a sly smile crossing his face. His eyes brightened. “So Dai, who’s this, then?” O’Connel saw amusement in Frank’s pale eyes as he introduced her.
“Well, if he’s takin’ you across the river, you must be a pretty special gal. He don’t take nobody over there. Hell, he’s like some kind of damned hermit.”
“See you, Frank.” O’Connel started the engine, pulled away.
He parked in the school parking lot at a quarter to eight, gut telling him he was late. Twenty years of 7:30 classes made the feeling hard to shrug off. A light rain fell as they walked down to the creek to find her car. The water had receded below the bridge, leaving thick, oozing silt behind. Her car along with fifty feet of guardrail had gone.
“Maybe someone pulled it out,” she said.
He shook his head, turning downstream. “There it is.” A hundred yards down the creek, tow belt stretched downstream from the bumper, her car lay upside-down, half underwater, wedged against a thicket of ash. She gasped, turning back up the hill, swearing under her breath.
Smiling, he followed. From what he could understand, she was good at it. Leaving her in the office on the phone with her insurance agent, he headed upstairs.
• • •
The school was quiet today, kids home for a long weekend.
Upstairs in his room, a cold, gray light flooded in at the windows, and he didn’t bother switching on the overheads as he walked through his room for the last time.
In the bottom of one desk drawer, wedged into a joint behind a pile of bent detention forms, he found a photo. He pressed it flat on the scarred oak desktop.
Patti had taken it only a week before the accident. Balancing her camera on a chair in the garden, she set the timer, and hurried to join them on a carpenter’s stool under a blossoming dogwood.
One of the simple flowers hung near her ear.
Nikki sat between them barefoot, holding Sonny by the loose skin of her neck, the blue bow in her hair hanging tenuously, as if at any moment it might fall. Patricia, a little out of breath from her dash to the bench, had smiled just as the shutter clicked open. An imperfect smile, a real woman’s smile, a smile he’d never learned to live without.
He looked around the room for the last time, remembering.
How many teachers had there been in this room in eighty years? How many more would there be? He slipped the photo in the pocket of his jacket, and let the door swing shut behind him.
He found them in the lounge.
“Hey, here he is,” Lott said. “So where’s the bitch goddess?”
“Hey!” Myrtle wagged a finger in Sid’s direction. “That’s a good teacher you’re talking about—a damned good one!”
Lott gave up. “She’s not a teacher any more.” Myrtle knitted furiously. “Well, she was, so just knock it off. You showing up for this thing today, Dai?” He said he wasn’t.
“Come with us to the races!” Aurora said. “We’re going to duck out after the morning session.”
“I’ve got some stuff to do.”
“Well, I think it’s lousy, them treating you like this after twenty years,” Aurora threw her apple core viciously at the trash bin and bouncing it off the wall.
Sid and Karl cheered. Aurora laughed as she scooped it up. “I mean they send that Brazilian femme fatale up here—”
Karl whistled long and low.
Lott snapped his fingers overhead in front of the intercom speaker. “You getting this okay up there in the office? That was Aurora Helvey speaking.”
“Well, it irks me,” Aurora said. “She turns on the charm, and you, babe in the woods that you are, make it easy for her to slip in the knife.”
“Yeah, seriously, O’Connel,” Lott said, “have you talked to Hersh about what you can do?”
“I don’t want a thing from NEA.”
“Okay,” Helvey said, “how about getting your own lawyer?” O’Connel dug around in the fridge, found a juice he’d forgotten, checked the date, shook it up. “Look, I’ve taught here twenty years. I don’t know what’ll happen tonight, but they’re just going to have to judge me on my teaching if they don’t want me here, I don’t want to be here.” Lott leaned back, crossing his ankles on the edge of the table.
“Anybody on the board ever seen you teach?”
“She has.”
Karl laughed. “Oh, well, then, I wouldn’t worry about a thing...everything’s copacetic. Hey, guys, the angel of death’s seen what a good teacher he is
.”
O’Connel smiled. Karl was right, it was stupid. O’Connel liked these four, liked their banter, their sarcasm. He would miss them. “I don’t blame her…she’s just doing what she has to to keep her job.”
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Dai,” Karl said, “you sure don’t let the little things bother you.”
Myrtle looked up, wrinkled face concerned. “If they fire you tonight, what’ll you do tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ll just wait and see.”
“Oh, yeah,” Lott said, “that sounds like a hell of a plan.”
“Uh, huh, that’s what I thought,” Myrtle said. “You can’t let them do it.” O’Connel tossed away the can, wanting to change the subject.
“Ah, something’ll turn up.” Karl sang, drumming with his hands on the table top. “Sha la, la la la la, live for today.”
“That’s right, it will,” agreed Aurora. “Don’t you worry about it. Things’ll turn out all right. I’ll pray for you, Dai.”
Solange came in and O’Connel could feel the room chill. “You ready?” he said, eager to get her out of the room.
Aurora said, “Well, Solange, another career down the toilet. You’ll be going back downtown, now, won’t you?”
Solange faced her. “I do what I do for the same reason you do we owe the kids the best we can give.”
Helvey slammed the jar of nuts down on the table. “And will the rookie they get to replace him on Monday be better?”
Solange met her eye, answering, voice low. “You know, this isn’t about the way things ought to be; it’s about the way things are. We can work with it, or we can get out if it helps you to despise me for what I do, go right ahead, but my job has to be done, too. Any time you want to try it, just let me know.” She took up her bag and went out.
Myrtle went on with her pearling, lips pursed with enjoyment. “Well, I guess somebody got told, didn’t they?”
It was time to go, and O’Connel was lousy at goodbyes. “See you,” he said as he followed her out.
• • •
She waited for him in the truck.
“You’d better buckle up.” She did as he suggested, saying nothing of her anger, of the sense of having been betrayed. Her face grew hot as they drove. She bounced a crossed leg anxiously, determined not to speak first.
A Terrible Beauty: What Teachers Know but Seldom Tell outside the Staff Room Page 17
