The English Teacher

by Lily King

  They followed Walt as he trailed a smell down the strip of grass inserted between the sidewalk and curb, carefully shifting his nose for oncoming trees and poles, then shifting back again. Her arm began to ache and she let go of the leash. They had to move swiftly to keep up with him.

  “You’ve got some beans in you tonight, old man.” Her voice was distant and unnatural. Nothing seemed recognizable out here tonight. She wasn’t sure which street Walt had led them onto. Had they turned right back there, or left?

  But Walt knew where they were going. He swerved into the same driveway they’d stood in that morning. The house was just a house being fixed up. The smell had retracted in the cold.

  Peter stood beside her, too close. He had something to say.

  “He asked you to come with me, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He was worried, I guess.”

  “Worried that what, I’d hang myself on a tree with Walt’s leash?” She hadn’t meant to be so specific.

  “Worried you wouldn’t come back.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake where am I going to go?”

  “Ma—”

  “I don’t want to be called Ma. Stop calling me that.”

  She could smell the wood now, the new doors and floors. But it was mild, unmenacing. Now she could follow Walt up the steps, stand here and look at the sawhorses, breathe in the dust from all the new floors. None of it provoked any reaction. It almost felt like she was remembering someone else.

  Walt disappeared through a doorless opening. Peter called to him, but not with the urgency Walt responded to. They waited for him on the porch. The street was quiet, with only the thin hum of a streetlight and a faraway squeak of a car frame going over a speed bump. She had a mind to tell Peter right here, tell him everything. Tell him about the porcelain sink and the fresh boards on the floor and the sound of the football game across the street rising and falling and rising again and how all the other teachers and even the workmen had left their work to see the last half of a close game, left their tools scattered in the hallway, the only witnesses to her steps from the classroom to the bathroom, her last fearless steps in life, one two three four five and her thoughts on the toilet as simple as hoping that her mother would be making chicken for dinner and the water running warm now from the sink—before the renovations there was only cold—and she kept her hands under it too long. At first she thought the lights had gone out, the way in the mirror the room darkened behind her. He brought her down quickly, smashing her chin to the sink, her lower teeth cutting clean through her tongue in two places. She heard a grunt as he turned her over, the clang of his belt buckle, the rip of fabric, then skin, her own gagging on the blood in her mouth, and a horrible boarlike snorting—but she never heard the sound of his voice. In some memories she is clawing, hitting, writhing, but in others she is perfectly still, save the blood pouring out of her mouth. Her dress was badly stained. I bit my tongue, she told her mother, who had in fact made chicken, when she got home.

  “Walt!” she called, and he came immediately, head lowered by the sharpness in her voice.

  Peter knocked the railing with his sneaker. “Tom loves you, you know. If you could just lighten up a bit.”

  So this is what he had to say to her. That she should lighten up.

  Walt pushed the side of his face against her thigh, then, finding her hand, nudged his way in against her palm. The shape of his head beneath her hand was the most familiar object in her life.

  Peter waited for her to respond but she didn’t. That there was a burning hole in her chest was all she could have told him. He walked ahead of her and Walt, his gaze following the smoke rising from chimneys, following people as they flickered past their windows. He peered hopefully into every house, as if he were looking for someone he knew.

  SIX

  THE PARTY WAS OUT IN SUTTON, A FORTY-MINUTE DRIVE NORTH. IT WAS the first senior party Peter had ever been invited to. The entire upper school had been invited—Scott Laraby’s parents had gone to St. Croix for a week.

  Jason’s sister Carla drove them. She was back from college and had brought her roommate with her. They were listening to the worst music Peter had ever heard, more breathing and talking than singing, with one screeching instrument in the background. When Peter looked up front to see what radio station would play such awful music, he saw that the two girls were holding hands.

  Jason told Carla to drop them off at the end of the Larabys’ long driveway. As they walked toward the light flickering through the trees, Peter asked about Carla and the roommate.

  “Neither of them have boyfriends,” Jason said, “so they practice with each other. That’s what my dad says.”

  They continued in silence up the road. Peter could smell the stain on his hands, and he was glad. He’d spent most of the afternoon with Tom in the garage, helping him work on a table he was making for one of his assistants who’d recently gotten engaged. Peter had taken shop at school; he’d made a napkin holder and a stool the shape of a turtle. He’d never found any pleasure in the dry noisy room with Mr. McCaffy. He didn’t like being around wailing machines that could cut off fingers or fighting with his classmates over the best scraps of sandpaper. He felt like stuff was always in his eyes. But with Tom it was different; it was peaceful. Fresh air came in freely through the open garage doors. People driving by saw them working together and waved. The brand-new sandpaper came in large sheets. They started with the coarse brown squares and finished with the soft black ones. The whole table felt warm and velvety smooth when they were done, more like skin than wood.

  Tom threw out the used pieces of sandpaper and brought out the stain. He pried open the can, stirred it with a wooden stick, and placed two brushes beside it. There was a certain tenderness to each gesture, and Peter understood that he was in the presence of someone doing something he loved. He wasn’t sure he’d witnessed that before. Most of his teachers had probably once loved their subjects, but their passion was hidden under layers of frustration, years of repetition.

  Staining, it turned out, was even more satisfying than sanding. Stain had none of the stress of paint, which Peter remembered glopped and streaked and never went on as evenly as you hoped. It was hard to make a mistake with stain. Sometimes they talked; sometimes there was just the sound of their brushes. He’d never really been comfortable with a grown man before. Nothing was worse than being stuck alone with Jason’s father, who stood with arms crossed over his broad chest and stiff black hair coming out of his nose as he assaulted Peter with questions. He felt awkward around all his male teachers and coaches; perhaps it was his less than stellar performances, or perhaps it was their knowledge of the absence of his father, their fear that he was looking for a substitute, or Peter’s fear that they had this fear. He even felt uncomfortable in the presence of his great-grandfather’s bronzed head in the vestibule. But with Tom after a while he just felt himself, the self he was when he was alone. Things just came out of his mouth; he didn’t rehearse his lines first, as he often did with Stuart or before speaking in class.

  “Peter,” Tom said into one of their comfortable silences. “Did you ever meet your grandparents? You know,” he added hastily, “your mother’s parents?”

  “No.”

  “Has she ever told you about them, or told you about her childhood?”

  “She didn’t like them much. They moved around a lot and my mother read in the backseat of the car. That’s all I know.”

  Tom waited a while, then asked, “What was your mother like when you were little? Do you remember?”

  “I don’t know,” he stalled. He knew Tom wanted him to say she was different somehow. “She played more games, maybe.” He wished they didn’t have to talk about her. He wished he just lived with the Belous without her getting in the way.

  “Has she always had a few drinks at night?”

  “No, not always. I think it was more on weekends, if she went out.” />
  “Did she go out a lot?”

  “Probably once a month.” Peter kept staining, watching how quickly the wood absorbed the color.

  Tom nodded, then asked softly, “And would she come home drunk?”

  “Not drunk. Not like she couldn’t walk or talk. Just kind of happy. She’s actually a lot nicer that way.” Ever since that fight in the kitchen, he’d wanted to tell Tom this.

  “My father drank himself into his grave before he was fifty.” Tom’s voice was slow and hard and his mouth had fallen down into his chin. “I won’t let that happen to anyone else I love.”

  The front door and all the first-story windows of the Larabys’ house were open. As he and Jason crossed a circle of wet grass, the machinelike hum they’d hardly been aware of broke into separate human voices. Kristina. Kristina would be here. His heart thumped heavily. Peter could see people holding beers.

  “Aren’t they worried about the neighbors telling?” he said.

  “What neighbors?”

  It was true. The property was encased in woods; the last house Peter had seen was miles back.

  “I’m going to get laid tonight,” Jason said.

  “Yeah, right.” But Jason’s confidence made him uneasy, and Peter worried that that was how you had to be to get a girl, even just to kiss a girl.

  They stepped into the front hall, where a group of seniors leaned against paintings on the wall.

  “Hey, J-man,” Kent Scully said. “Keg’s in the kitchen.”

  “Cool.”

  Peter wasn’t exactly sure what a keg looked like. Jason was starting to know a lot more than he did. Peter watched him lead the way, greeting juniors and seniors, being greeted. There was no mockery in it anymore for him. Peter got the same twisted smiles and the funny voices he got in the hallways at school. “Does your mommy-mommy know where you are?” he heard someone say behind him. Peter had learned to block it out. Kristina was his only thought. It was the only thought he’d ever had since he’d started going to parties. And so useless. He’d heard that week at school that she’d broken up with Brian again, but even that, if he was really honest with himself, would never matter.

  They passed a small den filled with kids from his grade holding plastic cups and trying to act like they’d been to senior parties before. Kristina, who certainly didn’t have to fake that, would never be among them.

  Scott Laraby, the host, lay spread-eagle and fast asleep on the kitchen table. A girl with a few of Scott’s features, the same stunned eyes and pushed-in nose, was in the corner, operating what Peter guessed was the keg. It didn’t need an operator—all you had to do was press a little button at the end of a hose—but she had put herself on a stool with the cups stacked between her knees just to be able to talk to everybody. It was the kind of thing Peter would do if he had the chance, and it made him instantly dislike her.

  He and Jason got in line.

  “Easy does it this round, sailor,” she said to a guy in a blue-and-white-striped shirt.

  When it was their turn Jason asked if she was Scott’s sister.

  She nodded at her brother, passed out on the table. “Some girls have all the luck.”

  “So why don’t you go to Fayer?”

  “Oh, it was decided long ago I’m not private school material. Red or blue?”

  “Whichever’s bigger,” Jason said, though of course he knew the cups were the same size.

  “You like ’em big?” she said.

  “Always have.”

  Peter was left out of these kinds of provocative, senseless exchanges. He couldn’t respond to them any better than he could initiate them. As if sensing this, Scott’s sister handed Peter a blue cup without a word and poured. Other people, even girls, even now Jason, exuded something he did not. He was as bland as water, as unremarkable as air. He and his cup of foam moved on while Jason stayed at the keg bantering with the sister.

  Peter had no choice but to head to the room of tenth graders. He took the long way around, glancing into the dining room. At the far end of the long table was Kristina with two guys he’d never seen before, older guys, maybe even older than seniors. She was holding a small pleated paper cup, the kind you rinse with at the dentist’s, up to the mouth of a bottle with a fancy gold necklace around it. When it was full, she knocked back the liquor in one swallow. Her throat was much paler than her face and arms. The guys were smiling at each other. Peter knew what they were after; probably Kristina knew, too. She wouldn’t want him to intervene. Although the sight disgusted him, something—that oval of pale skin, the already drunken shape of her lips—aroused him and he tugged down the front of his sweatshirt over the tightening of his pants.

  He tried to imagine Stuart at this party, standing with his perfect posture. He’d drink water instead of beer and make it seem cool. In a half hour he’d be able to get any girl he wanted. Trying to invoke Stuart’s spirit through the meditative techniques he’d taught him, Peter straightened his spine, became aware of his organs, and dissolved his tension. He took a long deep breath, a long gulp of beer, and vowed he’d fool around with someone, nearly anyone (it didn’t have to be Kristina—it could never be Kristina), tonight.

  When he turned away from the dining room, he noticed that the three most lusted-after junior girls were watching him. He tried to look at them the way Stuart looked at his girls through the window, pleased but unsurprised. They buckled, all three of them, to the floor in heaves of laughter. He retreated immediately to the den, grateful for the flat chests and sympathetic voices of the unpopular girls.

  Jenny Mead made room for him in the circle. She asked about the game yesterday, and about the French test he’d barely passed. As she listened, she ran a finger around the lip of her cup. Did she have a thing for him? He could see her searching for another topic.

  “Your mom’s the hardest English teacher I’ve ever had,” she said at last.

  Everyone said this to him. “Really?” he said, stretching his spine as high as it would go. She was tall, and her bushy hair didn’t help.

  “I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.” But Jenny had clear blue-green eyes and a small nose like a fawn’s. It wouldn’t be awful, kissing her.

  “She probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about either.”

  Jenny snorted, her upper lip revealing too much gum. He looked away, at a funny kind of sofa across the room. It was like a figure eight, with the two cushioned seats facing in opposite directions.

  “Are you close, you and your mom?”

  Girls loved to ask him this. “I guess,” he said. Then he looked at the little sofa as if he were just noticing it for the first time. “The guy who made that must have lost his job pretty quick.”

  Jenny laughed, though he could tell it was fake. “It’s a Victorian love seat.”

  He’d been about to ask her if she wanted to sit in it, but he couldn’t now that she’d used the word love. They stood there staring at it.

  “Should we try it out?” she said. In the end, girls were so much braver.

  Peter chose the seat that faced the doorway, in case Kristina walked by. It was far more comfortable than it looked.

  “Hey.” Jenny’s face was unnaturally close. It was a Victorian make-out couch. Stuart would kiss her right now. Right now. But Peter couldn’t.

  Disappointed but not discouraged, she asked, “What kind of things do you talk about?”

  “When?”

  “With your mom?”

  “Let’s see.” He knew it had to be provocative. “Marijuana, condoms, pornography—the usual topics.”

  She flung her head back, leaving her mouth wide open. He couldn’t tell if she was really laughing now or just putting together all the elements of laughing—except the sound. When she tipped her head forward again, she said, “No, really. Does she ever talk about what she was like when she was our age? I mean, some teachers you can completely imagine as teenagers, but your mom …” Jenny’s clear eyes widened
as if she were staring into the pitch dark. “No amount of rationality can convince you that she was ever young.”

  He’d forgotten that if you talked to Jenny Mead long enough, her sentences would start getting weird.

  He looked around the room for other possibilities. The handful of other girls were either unobtainable or unthinkable. He had this awful feeling that Kristina had left the party with those two guys. It was Jenny Mead or nothing. The thought of hinting to Stuart when he got home that he had gotten some action spurred him on.

  “Of course my mother was young once. She was wild. She grew up in Skaneateles, New York.”

  “I thought she was from the South. She has that accent.”

  “She was born in New York, then moved away later. Her parents were so strict they wouldn’t let her go to any parties, so she had to sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a rope she hid up there.”

  “Why wouldn’t her parents let her go out?”

  “They were Christian Scientists.” He couldn’t remember exactly what Stuart had said.

  “They go to parties. They just don’t go to the hospital.”

  “Mormon. Sorry. Mormon.”

  “But—”

  “Do you want to talk about religion or hear about my mother?”

  He meant to be playful but it came out snippy, the way Fran was to him sometimes. He wondered if she, too, didn’t always mean her snips. He remembered his conversation with Tom this afternoon, and his stomach rolled over. It wasn’t just a little chat; it was a warning.

  He saw the extent of Jenny Mead’s interest and excitement only as it drained out of her face. Just as he was about to apologize, Kristina came into the den and flopped sideways in an armchair. Alone. Not just her lips but all around her mouth was red, like someone had been scrubbing it clean. Her cheeks were flushed in two bright splotches and her eyes moved around the room without latching onto anything. She was smashed. He remembered a time when she wasn’t like this, when at parties they made lemonade from scratch and had cookie-eating competitions. He remembered Stephen Ball’s birthday party and how she asked to be Peter’s partner in the three-legged race and how when they’d fallen her hair had gone in his mouth and it tasted like pizza he’d said and they’d laughed because she’d actually had three slices of pizza for breakfast. He ached with a love for her that had existed for as long as he could remember.