by Barbara Hall
Leah and I had our bimonthly breakfast at John O’Groats shortly after my visit to the Edwardses’. I usually filled her in on all the happenings at my job. It took the place of her isolated life, experimenting in art while she whittled away at the same married man she’d been seeing for years. His name was Phillip. He was a literary agent. He was never going to leave his wife.
Leah was beautiful and still made every effort to keep herself that way. She wore whites and creams to show off her black hair and olive skin. She wore all kinds of rattling jewelry and she always smelled like something exotic. People stared at her.
Next to her, I felt dowdy but somehow proud of my earth tones and bare arms. As if I were a more serious person.
Leah always asked about my love life. Even back then, I made the mistake of telling her about Clive.
She was excited. She said, “Why shouldn’t you sleep with a young guy? What’s the harm in it?”
“He’s young. And we work together.”
“If you sleep with him, the other guy will come around in no time.”
“You mean Franklin? I’m not sure I want him, either.”
“Well, who do you want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Pearl, you haven’t had sex in ages. Have you? You’re all alone in that crappy place and you’re waiting for Mark to leave Stephanie.”
“No, I’m not.” But back then, I might have been.
“You need to start living.”
“You’re hanging around every night, waiting for a married man to call you.”
“And how are we so different?”
“I’m not desperate.”
“You’re not?”
“Okay. I’m aware of my desperation.”
“But you’re in retreat.”
“Not forever.”
“Oh, really? How can you be sure?”
“Because I don’t have a vibrator.”
“How is this proof of anything?”
“When you get one, you’re giving up.”
“That’s not true.”
We had that argument often. I was right, though. I knew a lot of girls who had stopped looking after crossing that Rubicon.
“Is it really so much better,” I asked her, “to sleep with a man who is emotionally connected to someone else?”
“He’s only legally connected to her.”
“Right. What planet are you on?”
“He’s staying for the children.”
“The children are in college.”
This seemed to hurt her a little, but she was far too tough to admit it.
She sighed and said, “Oh, Pearl, I don’t know. You’re going home alone tonight, and so am I, but I have the chance of someone calling me in the morning. And he’ll come over in the evening and we’ll make love. And I won’t be alone for those hours. Do you have anything like it?”
I didn’t have anything like that. But I could pick up an instrument and play it and I wouldn’t have to tell it anything in the morning.
Still, I missed lying next to someone in a bed. Kicking him when he got too close or snored. Forgetting he was there, then remembering. Looking dumbfounded at each other when the morning broke through the blind. Wondering who was going to shiver and say, “It’s cold.” Wondering who was going to make the coffee. Wondering who was going to say, “Coffee can wait.”
I remember thinking all this. I remember the whole conversation because I could have left it there. I didn’t have to say the thing I said next. I didn’t have to set it all in motion.
I said, “Listen, I need some advice. I have a situation at work.”
She laughed. “I told you. Sleep with the bass player.”
“It’s about this student I’m working with. She’s kind of a foster kid. She’s not in the system, but she’s living with some relatives who inherited her.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. She didn’t look up. She said this in a tone that asked me not to go further. She used to deal in custody cases, representing parents warring over their children, and sometimes representing the children who had been taken out of dysfunctional homes in order to be placed in less (though not always) dysfunctional situations. She understood about abuse and Social Services and when a layperson was required to step in. She understood, but she left it all behind to flatten bottle caps. She had told me before that it was the pain that turned her away. And I could see the pain rising to the surface again, like some recurring nightmare she couldn’t fight off. As if it always hovered. I felt bad for bringing it up, but I had to.
I said, “Suppose I suspect some kind of abuse is going on.”
“What kind?”
“I saw bruises. On her wrists. She said she was wrestling with her brothers. Her cousins. The boys she’s living with.”
“Right.”
“But I think there’s more.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling that something very bad is happening.”
“Feelings don’t play out in court, Pearl.”
“I went to the house. I met her foster father. He gave me a stomachache.”
“How did he do that?”
I pushed my plate away and leaned forward. “I know about unhappy homes, Leah. I know them when I’m around them.”
“Leave it alone,” she said quietly.
“There’s something going on. I can’t say what, but I know it. She has suddenly lost interest in the music. She’s really talented and she used to love it. Now she just phones it in. Isn’t that indicative of something really bad?”
“Not necessarily. It could be indicative of anything. Hormones. Anything.”
“So you’re telling me to stand by and do nothing?”
“I haven’t heard anything concrete. Believe me, Pearl, it’s hard enough to prove these cases when you have hard evidence. I can’t tell you the times I went to court with signed depositions from abused kids, only to have them recant on the stand. And even when I got some of these kids out of their homes, I just threw them into the frying pan. We all fall in love with the fairy-tale ending. The beauty of riding in and rescuing these children and delivering them to some better place. Sometimes there isn’t a better place. And I came to the conclusion that maybe the stories we are born with are nothing more than that. Just our stories. Everybody has something to get through. Everybody has something to live down.”
“I think that’s harsh.”
“You don’t know harsh. You only imagine it. I’ve seen it. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Just teach them and send them home. Clock out, for God’s sake.”
“What kind of world is it when people just stop looking out for each other?”
“I don’t know what kind of world it is. I just know it’s the one we live in.”
We were silent for a moment. We sipped our coffee and she avoided my eyes.
Finally she looked up. “Maybe this is about your own childhood and you need to go to therapy.”
“It’s not about my childhood. Though I don’t deny I’m sensitive to her plight. It’s how I’m able to recognize it.”
“Then maybe it’s about you having nothing else in your life.”
“Oh. I see. So if I get a vibrator, I can learn to ignore pain?”
“If not ignore it, at least keep it at bay.”
“Until what? I’m strong enough to confront it?”
“No. Until you’re strong enough to realize that it is always going to exist. And these distractions—music, art, sex, movie popcorn, alcohol, whatever you choose— serve as a vacation from it all. Not an escape. Just a stepping out.”
I looked down and pinched my lips against the angry things I wanted to say.
“That’s what church is, Pearl. If you went back you’d understand. It’s just a stepping out of the world. For that one hour. If that’s all you can afford, it’s enough. But if you can’t step out at all, the world gets to be too much.”
“I barely live in i
t at all. Isn’t that your argument? I’m not at the party?”
“You’re in it,” she said. “But you’re only in it for the bad parts. Even your music makes you sad.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does. It reminds you of some lost career. It reminds you of Mark. It reminds you of your father. It never puts you in the moment or makes you look ahead.”
“You don’t know the first thing about my music.”
“I know what you’ve told me.”
I didn’t feel like talking anymore. I felt defeated but not wrong. I felt overwhelmed by what she was saying to me. She didn’t know my life at all, and I didn’t know hers. She had walked from pain into art and had found some kind of relief. I had walked from pain into art and found more pain. This, she was saying, was how we differed. She was telling me to feel less. She was telling me to look away. But when we look away, there’s no art. There is only distraction.
She said, “Look, if you are really concerned, I know someone in Social Services you can talk to. But it’s a slippery slope, and you’d better think very hard about it before you get involved.”
I didn’t respond. We gathered our things and left.
We said good-bye on the street with a wooden hug. She went off to her car and I went off to buy some vacuum cleaner bags.
If I’m honest, that was the moment I shut down the possibility of Clive. Even though Leah had said it was okay. Even though Leah was who I went to for permission. Because I thought she really knew how to live.
I stood in the vacuum cleaner store, looking at the bags, of which there were too many kinds, and I was unable to remember the model number of my vacuum cleaner, because I didn’t give a shit, and an Armenian man with anxious eyes was heading in my direction, and I realized, I don’t love Leah anymore, and if I don’t love Leah anymore, I’m not sure who I love, and if I don’t love anyone, that means no one loves me, and people cannot live without love. They’ve done studies.
By the time the Armenian man reached me, I had started to cry, and he said, “What can I do for you?”
And I looked at him and said, “Nothing.”
THAT MONDAY WAS when I got the news.
It was at the end of a lesson, during which Hallie had done a fine job of memorizing the first movement of a Bach concerto, that she told me. She was memorizing now, had been for some time, which meant she was no longer reading music. She was storing it all in her brain, and it came out by the numbers, technically perfect, spiritually bland. The thrill was gone, for both of us, and occasionally we looked at each other like old friends who could no longer remember our shared past, all the reasons we liked each other. Like me and Leah.
“Very nice,” I said.
She put her violin on her lap and sighed.
“What’s up with you?” I asked, hoping that innocent question would help us segue into something more meaningful. I was hoping to dig deep into her psyche, help her root out the reasons she no longer cared about her music. As it turned out, her problems were gestating at the surface of her brain, waiting to hatch on her tongue.
She looked at me, her dark eyes flat and devoid of emotion, her eyebrow ring dull and placid in the harsh fluorescent light.
She said, “I think I’m pregnant.”
Nothing could have prepared me for that. I heard it, dismissed it, heard it again, and started thinking. My face must have processed a dozen emotions at once, and she looked away from me, down at her scuffed Doc Martens.
“How?” I said, without thinking.
She looked up at me, surprised for a second, before she smirked.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“No. What does it feel like?”
I didn’t know how to tell her. I had been pregnant, twice, had lost both babies. The first time I barely knew I was pregnant. The second time I knew right away, having grown accustomed to the symptoms. It was an indescribable feeling. In the early days, it felt like being plugged up, with a thick, warm water collecting at the drain. It made you feel drowsy and cranky and warm and cold. It made your breasts come alive, though they weren’t sure what to do with their new life. I had headaches and backaches and a vague flulike sensation. But those could have been the symptoms of anything.
“You’re not pregnant,” I told her. Then all the ramifications of that statement went through my head, as quickly as information through a computer circuit, and I said, “Hallie, you’re only fourteen.”
“I know,” she said.
“Why are you fooling around?” I asked.
She shrugged, chewing on a hangnail.
“If you are fooling around, why aren’t you using birth control?”
She shrugged again. Then she said, “Tell me what to do.”
“Get rid of it,” I said without hesitation. Because here was this fourteen-year-old girl on the verge of greatness, musically speaking, and I couldn’t imagine letting her take this event another step further. I couldn’t imagine it was God’s will to let a fourteen-year-old musical prodigy end it all by having a baby.
She had no reaction to my advice. She continued to stare at the floor.
“Does Dorothy know?” I asked.
“No,” she said quickly. “And you can’t tell her. You’re like a shrink or a priest or something. It’s against the law for you to tell anyone.”
I had to admit, I liked being put in the category of a shrink or a priest, but the truth was, I was only a teacher, not a public school teacher, as Earl had pointed out, and I had no obligation to anyone. I could tell the cops, the social workers, the parents, anyone. The only thing forcing me to keep this secret was the thin specter of loyalty.
“Do you need money?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“You do if you want an abortion,” I told her.
She glanced up at me. “How much are they?”
“I don’t know. At least five hundred for a good one.”
She picked at a hangnail and said, “I don’t have that kind of cash.”
I grew angry all of a sudden, picturing the seventeen-year-old piece of trash who had done this to her, some swaggering senior who told her it wouldn’t hurt and it wouldn’t count if they were standing up, and she’d never get pregnant because it doesn’t happen the first time.
And that was the positive scenario I was picturing. The other one wouldn’t quite form.
“What’s he, a football player?” I asked.
She shook her head, still staring at the ground.
“Basketball? Some kind of jock? Some kind of Best All-Around?”
“No.”
“Another musician? Some kid in a band?”
“No.”
“How did he talk you into it?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t do much talking.”
“It’s illegal, you know,” I told her. “You’re underage. It’s statutory rape.”
“Oh, what, are you going to tell the cops?”
“It’s certainly an option,” I said.
“Not to me. And if you tell anybody, you’re going to make me very sorry I said anything. I’ll deny it.”
I cleared my throat and tried to gather my thoughts.
“Does he know?” I asked.
She laughed a short, derisive laugh. “We don’t talk about things like that.”
“Well, that’s exactly what you should be talking about. You should have talked about it before.”
“I know. That’s what they say in health class, but that’s not how it is.”
“He has certain obligations,” I said.
She shrugged again. She looked very tired. She started putting her violin and her music sheets into her case. She was giving up. On both of us.
I said, “If I give you the money, do you promise to get it taken care of?”
Her eyes came alive. She looked like a kid being offered a day at the fair.
“Yes, I promise.”
“I can get the money for you. We can work this out. But
Hallie, you have to tell me if this is something else. I mean, something besides some high school boy.”
“I never said he was in high school.”
“It’s against the law. You have rights.”
“I did my part, you know? I’m not innocent.”
“But you are. You’re a child.”
She smiled. “That’s what you’ve been thinking about me all this time?”
“I can help you. Don’t do anything drastic. Just come back next week and we’ll figure it out.”
We both heard Dorothy’s footsteps on the stairs.
I said, “Promise you’ll come back, and we’ll decide what to do. You and me. Don’t tell anyone else. This is between us.”
She cocked her head. “Why do you care so much?”
“Why did you tell me?”
She smiled. “Because I knew you’d care.”
Dorothy opened the door. “Is the lesson over? I have to get supper on the stove.”
Hallie grabbed her violin case. I followed them and stood at the top of the stairs.
I had a feeling, in that moment, that I was releasing her from all of her pain. I knew I was participating in a sin, but I was taking it upon myself to explain. My mother had convinced me that no transgression would go undiscovered. “Be sure your sins will find you out,” she used to say. “If you lie down with dogs, you’re going to get up with fleas.” I remembered all those warnings, but only lately had they seemed true. I was taking it upon myself to argue for Hallie and myself. I would say to God, Did you hear her play? Did you?
“Come back next week,” I said.
“Okay,” Hallie said.
“I can help you.”
Dorothy turned. “With what?”
“She’s just having some trouble with the bowing,” I said.
“Oh, you musicians. The things you worry about.”
11
FRANKLIN FIRES CLIVE on a Monday, two weeks before Christmas. He does it at the beginning of the day rather than the end. He tells him in front of Patrick and Ernest and Declan. Other than that, he handles it perfectly.
