by Holly LeCraw
I tried to take them in. Because they deserved that, my dramas aside. There were Abeje Chukwu, earnest all-rounder, and Darius Flake, ramshackle charmer, and Candace van Slake, of the streak of fuchsia hair, inveterate arguer, either side, didn’t matter; there were Daisy Coomeraswamy, determined nihilist, and Minnie Zheng, who favored animal prints (today she wore zebra-patterned shoes of a dizzying height), and Dexter Angus Pentecost, ginger-haired class president, who wrote his full name on every paper, test, and quiz, without fail, as well he should, as we all should, if our name were Dexter Angus Pentecost.
(Over the course of seventeen years my classroom had become diverse, even international. Challenging but better. More real—maybe. Just last year I’d had the son of a Nigerian oil baron and the daughter of a sheikh.)
Marina Hirschfeld, making sidelong glances at Dex. Will Bolling and Victor Onyango, whom I’d had to separate in my class sophomore year—let’s see if they could control themselves now. Celia Paxton, slight, Asian (adopted? Chinese girl baby, abandoned, now cherished?), long braid down her back, oval face like a young novice’s; a sweetness to her, a breakability. Celia of the graceful duck walk: she was a dancer.
And Zack Middleton. I’d been looking forward to finally having him in my class. He towered over me now, fully Booker’s height, his shoulders even broader. He was a running back on the football team. His essential reserve hadn’t changed. Cassie and B.J. had both been easily confident, rarely awkward, dependably popular, but Zack seemed to fall into the interstices of the social system. He was most frequently seen alone—or with Celia Paxton. They’d been an item since the previous year, glued to each other, adoring, one of those couples occasionally scolded for PDA. Yes, Zack would be the loyal type; he’d find a girl, wouldn’t let go. At this very moment Zack was draping his arm over the back of her chair, and I glanced at him, pointedly. He could damn well canoodle on his own time. He dropped the arm.
Celia’s expression didn’t change. She was private too—but she sometimes reminded me of May. There was a look I sometimes caught. Aimed at no one. A sudden, homeless glance.
But I could not think of May.
There was a little chitchat, who’s read any of the books already, what? you didn’t read them all for me over the summer?—ah, well. Zack was watching me with a seriousness that was almost hostile. Maybe he didn’t want to exploit the connection. Good man. I’d missed him. I felt oddly shy around him, too. How had adolescence descended on him so heavily? His face was pitted from breakouts, his nose too big, his features not settled. Becoming. His springy light-brown hair was close-cropped now. His eyes were the same, though—pale green, heavy lashed.
“Mr. Garrett?”
I’d have to get used to the name. I wondered if he felt the same way. “Yes, Zack?”
He lolled back in his chair. “I did start reading All the King’s Men. And there’s nigger. On the first page.”
I sighed. “I know it,” I said. “I wish it weren’t.” I noticed that Darius Flake, who was president of the Diversity Forum, was rolling his eyes. “How much should we excuse? Because of the historical context? It’s an active question. And the book is no Huck Finn either.” Zack watched me with that flat gaze. “In All the King’s Men there’s no Jim, for better or worse. Very few black characters to speak of. None, really, except for one in an extended flashback, and I’m not sure she even speaks. Although she drives the plot, in a way … so what we can talk about, when we get to that book, is whether it’s about race. Because somebody could say, hey, there are no black characters, so how could it be about race? But on the other hand, how could a book set in 1930s Louisiana not be about race?”
I was overanswering, shutting him down. I was watching myself do it.
“Some of you have had me before, and you know that I think it’s all there. In the text. It’s where you look. It’s where you dig. Sometimes we want to put things there that aren’t there. Sometimes we don’t want to see what is there. Right? But here’s the thing. Sometimes what isn’t there, isn’t there deliberately. It’s an elision that has great meaning. Maybe the book is based on information we aren’t given outright, but we have to find it, we have to deduce it by its absence. Sometimes it’s what we don’t know that is the point. That drives everything.”
I had to stop.
“So when we get to the Penn Warren, we’ll talk about that. Let’s get out our first book though. Here we go. The Good Soldier.” Shuffling and mumbling. Books appeared. “A great deal we’re not told. At least not in the order we expect it. One of the most famous unreliable narrators in the English language. Along with Humbert Humbert. Heh. Some other year.”
I had them read the first five pages, and then I gave them a microquiz, a gimme, on what they just read, to show what I was looking for. Or was it to fill the time? On the first day? I had to do right by them. I felt myself ache with it. Celia’s foot was pressed alongside Zack’s. I could see it perfectly well under the table. All the heads bowed over their papers.
There was no first-day freshness in my soul. It wasn’t fair to them, not fair at all. Instead there was some sordid thing in me giddy with panic. Maybe all I could do was laugh. I felt it bubbling up. “Okay. Time’s up. If anyone didn’t get one hundred we’ve got a problem,” I said. “Any questions? Zack.”
“Is Mr. Satterthwaite really your brother? The new math teacher?”
I assumed a wry tolerance, copied from Divya. “Is this a question about the quiz? Or this class?”
“No sir. Just general knowledge, sir.”
He was being very thorough with the sirs. As though determined to remind me of how long ago our closeness was. “Yes, he’s my brother. Half brother.”
“He’s got a southern accent.”
“Yes, I know. He’s managed to retain the signs of his origins.”
Minnie Zheng said, “I like his accent.”
Daisy Coomeraswamy said, in either horror or agreement or both, I couldn’t tell, “Oh my God, Minnie.”
Zack said, “Where’s your accent?”
“I used to have one. You were too little then to remember, Mr. Middleton.” There. He looked away. “I guess I’ve lived up here with you heathens for too long. And besides. My brother was born with a great deal more charm.” I had to tell them, somehow, that I knew the differences were glaring. Although I was disturbed to think I had any pride about that anymore. Here at my school. In my place.
Zack’s expression, anyway, said that he gave not one flying fuck about charm. “Be nice to him, everyone,” I said. “He’s new.” Just then, the door opened. A sudden, zinging snap of attention. “Speak of the devil,” I said.
“Hi, everyone,” Nick said.
“Bye, people. First three chapters tonight. Dig.”
At the door, every girl giggled, then went silent as she brushed by Nicky. Even Celia glanced up, then quickly down. Zack was one of the last to leave. “Hey,” I said, as he went by my desk. “A moment?” He stopped, huge, even forbidding, backpack slung over one shoulder. Celia hovered just outside the door. “Are we good?”
He shrugged. “Sure.” But he didn’t move. “You don’t know what it’s like to read that word,” he said.
“No. You’re right. I don’t.”
“It’s like I’m not there.”
“Let’s talk about it,” I said. “Okay?”
“We don’t need to talk about it, Charlie. You just need to know.”
He waited a moment, the hint of insolence still in his posture. Zackie long gone. Was he just tired of his status of being known, of long histories with adults who remembered him when he could crawl? “We’ll have a good discussion,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can. And I’m always here. If you change your mind.” He gave me a curt nod and turned, free to sling his arm around Celia again. The hardness in his face melted when he looked at her. He had it bad.
Out in the hall it was like joining a school of fish headed to a spawning ground. We were carried along down the stai
rs and into the first-floor hallway, where there was an obstruction, dividing the flow: and as quick as that, there she was, there was May, I had seen her, here at school, and it was done.
She was the one blocking the current, talking to Zack, with Celia still at his side, although they’d detached themselves for the moment. Zack was taller than May by a head; she looked up at him, delighted. There was an embarrassed half smile on his face, but he didn’t look displeased. Celia was impassive. Then May reached out and gave him a half hug, one arm—all we were allowed, if that—and then let them go.
“Hi, May,” Nick said. “Are you going to lunch?”
This was what would happen. Every day. There was no way around it. It must cease to amaze, it must become normal.
When we emerged from the building, Zack and Celia were a little ahead of us, relinked. Nick said, “They’re in one of my calculus sections. That kid is huge.”
“Football and hockey,” I said.
“Nice kid?”
“I’ve known him since he was an infant. So has May.” Nick waited. “He’s a very good kid.”
“Not nice?”
“Something’s up with him. Gotten tough, lately. I guess.”
“Oh, Charlie,” May said. “He has a tender heart.”
Oh Charlie.
“I used to babysit him,” May said. “Remember?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, charm is overrated,” Nick said cheerfully.
We crossed the quad and headed down the hill to the cafeteria. Yesterday, at the tea, it had been properly golden and elegiac, roses fluttering in the slight breeze, but it had rained overnight and the tender, clear autumn air was gone. Now it was overcast and muggy, with that weird, shadowless, heavy light. Still, it felt like the first day. Energy and freshness spilling over. I wanted to ask May if she remembered this feeling—couldn’t I ask her that? Well, another time.
I felt how stiffly she was holding herself, how steely her determination. She was damn well going to say Remember, Charlie? and make me behave too. She wasn’t going to give an inch, she was becoming formidable. Maybe it was the Florence in her; but I didn’t have to like it, although it would make things easier for both of us.
As we walked, Nick in the middle, I reflected that no one really remembered about May and me. It had been hush-hush, muted further by the speed of Preston’s dying. And the students—bless these kids, as usual. They had no idea. I tried to forget May’s proximity. Instead I tried to bask in Nick’s reflected glow. Beside me, his face was open and happy; he was incapable of self-consciousness, maybe because he didn’t notice attention anymore, maybe because it never ceased.
Candace van Slake glided by. “Hi, Mr. Satterthwaite,” she breathed.
“Hi, Candace.” Nick was good with names. He’d have everyone memorized already.
She blinked, dazzled. I glanced up at Nick, wondering if he would smile, and at the same moment May looked at him too, and May’s and my gazes crossed and tangled; but Nick walked on oblivious, to us, to himself; and May and I saw it all.
Twelve
Mid-September. When the heat gentles and the light is thick gold. The green of the leaves is darkening, still vital, and time hovers, folding up and back, memories thick on the sides of the road, not even mine, not even Abbottsford’s: the wistfulness is general over the world.
And I’ll get confused, because the light is so pure and equalizing, and think it is June instead of September; or that I am driving down a road in the South, not the North; because the light holds all memory; and maybe I am headed to that guesthouse in the trees, or even to some town where I’ve never been—one of the unknown towns of my faceless ancestors; and a little farther down the road, in that light, over the hill, almost visible, almost here, is the home I have always looked for, the white wooden house filled with voices.
I WAS WALKING down the hall during one of my free periods when I heard a woman’s musical voice, full of confidence and wit, even though I didn’t know what she was saying. It was like seeing someone familiar in disguise.
The voice rose and fell, May’s and yet not. It ascended in a tart question, clearly rhetorical, because the class burst into laughter.
I edged to the open door, peered in at an acute angle. There were Celia, Zack, Dex, looking up at her, engaged, alight. Zack was smiling, a hint of the old sweetness. Then Celia Paxton saw me, her attention flicking to me and back. I couldn’t look in on May’s straight slim self, her grown-up clothes, her hair swinging as she moved, and I was grateful. Instead I had no choice but to assume my usual preoccupied gait, the one that was expected, and so I clasped my hands behind my back and cast my eyes down, knowing I was unwatched as I continued down the hall and disappeared.
I KNEW VERY LITTLE FRENCH. In high school, I studied German, in order (I would say later) to read Rilke and Goethe, but really it had only been a decision of useless nonconformity. Eventually I’d realized my foolishness and in college switched to Latin, with an idea of adding a major in classics, but it was far too late for that (I was already a sophomore), I never even got to Greek, and I ended up, as I thought to myself, with plain old English.
What I’d really wanted was an old-fashioned British public-school education, minus the paddling. That breezy assumption of knowledge, that unquestionable canon, already outdated by the time I desired it. It was the sort of learning I’d assumed of, for instance, Preston, and once, when he was still reliably lucid, I had said as much. “An American version, I mean,” I said.
“I went to a very fine Episcopal school. I was a scholarship boy. Then Sewanee. Scholarship. But I did major in classics. I had Greek and Latin, and then, in seminary, Hebrew and German. I wonder how you knew that.”
“Just a guess.”
“We’re not so different, Charles,” he’d said, and there it had been, a chance to confide in him; but some different instinct, which had surprised and puzzled me, had whispered, Oh yes we are.
I thought of this exchange after Preston died, when May had gone back to France and was still writing to me, baffled, disbelieving, and holding out a different canon, temptations that were not herself. Would I come visit? “I promise to speak nothing but French the whole time. I know you want to read Baudelaire and Mallarmé in the original. And Flaubert, and Proust, and Balzac, and simply everyone who matters!”
It was nothing close to her own voice, to what either of us knew. I’d wanted to tell her that I, too, could hardly believe I had the capacity to break someone’s heart.
And now, every morning, there she was! Mended! I should have been used to her. I had been seeing her for years, all the tall girls, the dark-haired girls. With all the false Mays I conjured over the years I’d feel reflexive joy, then hope, then disgust, and finally the numb acceptance to which I’d trained myself—all those things quick, quick, a millisecond, a sequence hardened over time to a diamond I could toss over my shoulder, faster even than the realization that once again it wasn’t May at all. But now, when I saw her, she was real and true, existing completely independently of my imaginings. Now I was supposed to let her become ordinary. Had to: that was my job.
THE DOOR WAS OPEN. I knocked on the frame. It was late afternoon, the stolen half hour when sports hadn’t ended, conferences were over, dinner was still cooking, over in the big kitchen—still the day, but at a lull. But May was around, and we hadn’t been alone in a room together, and this must be gotten over.
She was sitting at the desk. Her arms lay relaxed on the arms of the chair; her hands dangled down, graceful and still, a pen held loosely, papers spread before her.
She was wearing a different suit today. This one cornflower blue. Not the blue of her eyes. I wondered if Florence had taken her shopping. I wanted to make a joke about a Suit Store. Then I thought that maybe these were uniforms and she didn’t believe in herself, that maybe she was playing a role—but she wasn’t a new teacher, a young teacher, anymore. Another thing I couldn’t get used to. It was just me who thoug
ht she was a little girl playing dress up. If I said that to her! What she would do! I almost laughed aloud.
No, this was who she was, she was in a young-Dallas-matron suit. She’d been engaged there, to a banker she’d gone to school with. Divya, bless her, had been doing reconnaissance, until I told her to stop, that I didn’t need a dossier.
So not married. Still a maid. Oh Charlie how lovely to see you. The jacket was draped over the back of the chair. Her blouse was white and pressed. Collar notched and flat. The pearls glowed on her neck and she was neat and clean as a blank envelope and it could have been 1942, or ’52, or ’62, and who was she?
She looked up and for a moment, before she wrapped the professionalism around her like a lab coat, her face was warm. “What’s up?”
“I don’t want to interrupt.”
“You’re not,” she said. She didn’t put down the pen.
I edged into the room. “I overheard one of your classes. You were speaking French.”
“Yes.” She smiled, and looked like she meant it. “The rumors are true.”
Uninvited, I went all the way over to the window and looked out. Kids were dribbling onto the green; sports must have just ended. “This was Win’s room, for a while.”
“I remember.” Her voice gentled. “You must miss him.”
“I do,” I said. And suddenly time was enormous.
“This all must be strange for you,” she said.
She’d gotten up from the desk and come around to half sit against the front of it. Maybe to signal her openness, her willingness to listen, and also her mastery. She’d taken some seminar. I didn’t want to look at her legs, which were crossed, and long and brown—yes, I could see that from my peripheral vision. Her sensible heels. Jesus, May-May. “Yes,” I said. “A little strange.”
She nodded like a doctor who was pretending to be solicitous but really was just thinking of her next patient; or lunch; or how your case was hopeless and uninteresting. But had she noticed that her Camelot jacket was hanging not on one of the ancient slat-backed oak chairs (I still sat in one in my room) but instead one of the snazzy new mesh-seated models? Had she noticed the whiteboard? (I fought to keep my blackboard, they’d sighed and let me.) Was she, in short, seeing all the tiny things that had changed since she was last here? Because I could see them as though they were outlined in fluorescent paint, but she seemed to feel not a whiff of strangeness.
