by John Irving
But Lucinda was led by her ear to the chapel over another issue: she erased the answers on Roland Simpson’s math test while Roland was turning his back on God in the chapel. (All the other kids were surprised that Lucinda had bothered; in all probability, the answers on Roland’s math test were wrong.)
Mrs. McQuat took Jack to the chapel only once, but memorably. He drove Miss Wurtz to tears not by grabbing Lucinda Fleming’s ponytail and pinning her head to his desk, but by kissing her. It was Miss Wurtz Jack imagined kissing, of course, but he kissed Lucinda Fleming on the back of her neck instead.
Only one person could have prompted him to do such a repugnant thing—Emma Oastler. Emma was angry at Jack for “ratting” on her to his mother, although the return of Mrs. Oastler’s bra hardly amounted to a day of reckoning for Emma. Emma’s mom was unmoved by Alice’s assertion that Emma had “molested” Jack. In Mrs. Oastler’s opinion, it was not possible for a woman or a girl to molest a man or a boy; whatever games Emma had played with Jack, he’d probably liked them, Mrs. Oastler maintained. But Emma was disciplined in some minor fashion. She was “grounded,” she told Jack; she was to come directly home from school for a month.
“No more cuddling in the backseat, baby cakes. No more making the little guy stand at attention.”
“It’s only for a month,” Jack reminded her.
“I don’t suppose there’s anyone in grade three who turns you on,” Emma inquired. “I mean besides The Wurtz.”
Jack made the mistake of complaining about Lucinda Fleming—how she tortured him with her ponytail, but he was always the one who got in trouble. In her present mood, Emma probably liked the idea of getting Jack in trouble.
“Lucinda wants you to kiss her, Jack.”
“She does?”
“She doesn’t know it, but she does.”
“She’s bigger than I am,” he pointed out.
“Just kiss Lucinda, Jack—it’ll make her your slave.”
“I don’t want a slave!”
“You don’t know it, but you do,” Emma told him. “Just imagine you’re kissing The Wurtz.”
The discovery, that same week, of Gordon’s dead hamster in the chalk box should have forewarned Jack. Talk about an ill omen! But he didn’t heed it. If, for what seemed the longest time, he didn’t dare to kiss Lucinda Fleming, he also couldn’t dispel the idea of doing it. Sitting behind her, watching her swish her whip of a ponytail back and forth—well, suffice it to say her neck was often exposed. And one day, when Miss Wurtz was writing the new vocabulary words on the blackboard, Jack stood on tiptoe and leaned across his desk and—lifting her ponytail—kissed Lucinda Fleming on the back of her neck.
There was no response from the little guy—another ill omen, this one not lost on Jack. And what bullshit it was—that the children were ever told to be on their guard for Lucinda’s so-called silent rage. There was nothing silent about it! Lucinda never made a sound when Jack pulled her ponytail or pinned her head to the top of his desk, but when he kissed her, you would have thought she’d been bitten by the avenging ghost of Gordon’s dead hamster. (Not even in Jack’s wildest dreams had Miss Wurtz, in a variety of bras and restraining devices, once responded to his kisses with half of Lucinda’s demented energy.)
Lucinda Fleming screamed until she was red in the face. She lay in the aisle beside her desk and kicked her legs and flailed her arms and thrashed her head and ponytail back and forth, as if she were being devoured by rats. This was a challenge well beyond The Wurtz’s limited capacity. She must have thought that Lucinda was warming up for a suicide attempt. “Oh, Lucinda, who has disappointed you so?” Miss Wurtz cried—or some such idiotic utterance, because The Wurtz always said something amazingly inappropriate. Maybe the kids couldn’t resist misbehaving just to see what she would say.
In crafting dramatizations from her beloved novels, Miss Wurtz had an ear for the best lines—many of which she robbed for her own voice-over. In introducing Jack-as-Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, she set him-as-her up perfectly. (Jack was the reasonable sister.) Miss Wurtz said of Elinor, in voice-over: “ ‘She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.’ ”
Alas, in Jack’s grade-four year, Miss Wurtz would cast him as the immoderate sister, Marianne, whom he detested. It was the meddlesome mother, Mrs. Dashwood, whom he wanted to play, but Miss Wurtz, who conveniently overlooked the fact that she’d cast Jack as blind Rochester, maiden-no-more Tess, A-on-her-breast Hester, and under-the-train Anna, said that he didn’t look old enough to be a woman who’d had three daughters.
Though Miss Wurtz seemed at a loss about what to say when something spontaneously just happened, she always spoke with authority, her diction and enunciation perfect, even if what she said revealed a total misunderstanding of the situation. This the children found very confusing.
Hence, when Lucinda Fleming suddenly went stiff as a board and began to bang the back of her head on the floor, Miss Wurtz asked the class: “Which of you thoughtless children has caused Lucinda such anguish and pain?”
“What?” Maureen Yap asked.
“Lucinda is peeing!” Caroline French observed.
Indeed, Lucinda lay in a spreading puddle—her skirt stained a darker gray. In a doomed effort to keep time with the floor-thumping of Lucinda’s head, the French twins began the all-too-recognizable patter of their heels; they were not unlike the rhythm section of a band in need of practice. The anticipated blanket-sucking sounds of the Booth twins were ominously replaced by their identical imitations of gagging. They were more like blanket-strangulation sounds; yet, as accompaniment to the spectacle of Lucinda Fleming methodically banging her head in a pool of her own urine, the sounds were more suitable than anything Miss Wurtz had to say.
“Lucinda is having one of her bad moments, children,” Miss Wurtz needlessly informed the grade-three class. “What might we do to make her feel better?” Jimmy Bacon, of course, moaned.
Jack wanted to help, but how? “I just kissed her,” he tried to explain.
“You what?” Miss Wurtz said.
“On the neck.”
Jack saw the eyes roll up in Lucinda Fleming’s head; she appeared to be passing to another world. Lucinda emitted a strangling sound of her own—as if she meant to comfort the Booth twins, long separated from their kindergarten blankets. Even Roland Simpson, destined for reform school and ultimately jail, was instantly afraid and (for the moment) law-abiding. And if Jimmy Bacon had been wearing his bedsheet—well, there’s no need to spell it out.
Caroline French suddenly looked like a girl with a hundred hamsters rushing through her hair. Those utter boneheads Grant Porter and James Turner and Gordon French—in fact, all the boys in the class, Roland Simpson and Jimmy Bacon included—were absolutely disgusted with Jack. He had kissed Lucinda Fleming, evidently a mentally retarded girl. (Now there was a disgrace to live down!) Perhaps fearful of never being kissed, The Yap began to cry—although nowhere near as noticeably as The Wurtz.
Had Lucinda Fleming swallowed her tongue? Was that the reason for the choking sound she was making? “Now she’s bleeding!” Caroline French cried. Indeed, Lucinda was bleeding in the area of her mouth. But it was not her tongue—she had bitten through her lower lip.
“She’s eating herself!” Maureen Yap screamed.
“Oh, Jack, this disappoints me more than I can say,” Miss Wurtz sobbed. By the commotion she made, you would have thought he’d gotten Lucinda pregnant. Clearly his time in the chapel was nigh. This was what could come from kissing: the urine, the blood, the impressive pantomime of rigor mortis—and to think he’d kissed only her neck!
That was when Jimmy Bacon fainted. The Gray Ghost’s sudden appearance was so spectacular, Jimmy must have been too frightened to poo. None of the children had seen her coming. Suddenly Mrs. McQuat was kne
eling over Lucinda. The Gray Ghost pried Lucinda’s teeth apart, thereby rescuing her mangled lower lip. Mrs. McQuat then stuck a book in Lucinda’s mouth. “Bite that . . . Lucinda,” The Gray Ghost said. “You’ve done enough to your lip . . . already.”
Jack would remember the book. Unfortunately, his memorization skills couldn’t always distinguish between the trivial and the important, although Edna Mae Burnham’s Piano Course: Book Two, which he’d often seen on Lucinda’s desk, was not exactly trivial to Jack Burns. He assumed it was a book his dad had used. Jack was sure William had taught from that very book—he’d probably assigned it to someone, back in those days when he was fooling around with two girls at St. Hilda’s. Possibly one (or both) of the girls had been an Edna Mae Burnham reader!
It was all too much for The Yap, beginning with the kissing. Maureen fainted, less spectacularly than Jimmy. It might have been that The Gray Ghost’s sudden appearance, especially her kneeling over Lucinda, made it appear to Maureen that Mrs. McQuat was the Angel of Death. But of course The Gray Ghost would know how to attend to someone who’d bitten through her lip. (If she’d been a combat nurse, in whichever war, surely she’d seen more blood than that.)
Miss Wurtz, naturally, could not stop crying—thus the inevitable ensued. “Which of you,” Mrs. McQuat began in her breathless way, “made Miss Wurtz . . . cry?”
“I did,” Jack answered. Everyone seemed astonished that he had answered for himself—that simply wasn’t done. Only The Gray Ghost looked unsurprised that he’d spoken up. “I’m sorry,” he added, but Mrs. McQuat turned her attention elsewhere.
Lucinda Fleming was on her feet, albeit unsteadily, blood oozing from her gashed lip; her shirt and tie were soaked. And then there was the urine—Lucinda didn’t seem to notice it. The unnatural serenity of her smile was intact, as before.
“You need . . . stitches . . . Lucinda,” The Gray Ghost was saying. “Take her to . . . the nurse’s office . . . Caroline.” Miss Wurtz once more thought that Mrs. McQuat meant her, but Caroline French understood that she was the designated helper. “Not you . . . dear,” The Gray Ghost told Miss Wurtz. “This is your class . . . you stay.”
The Booth twins were instructed to accompany Maureen Yap to the nurse’s office as well. Not entirely revived from her swoon, Maureen looked dizzy. Jimmy Bacon wasn’t completely recovered from his fainting spell, either. He was down on all fours, as if he were still searching for Gordon’s deceased hamster. Grant Porter and James Turner were assigned the task of taking Jimmy to the nurse. (They were such dolts, Jack doubted that they knew where the nurse’s office was.)
As for Jack, he was surprised by how gently Mrs. McQuat took hold of his ear. Her thumb and index finger, which pinched his earlobe, were ice-cold, but when The Gray Ghost led him from the classroom, he was not in pain. And in the corridor, where she released his ear—her cold hand still steering him by the back of his neck—they struck up quite a cordial conversation, considering the circumstances.
“And what is . . . Miss Wurtz’s problem . . . this time?” Mrs. McQuat whispered.
He’d been afraid that the issue of the kiss itself might come up, but he hesitated only a second. To lie to The Gray Ghost was unthinkable. “I kissed Lucinda Fleming,” Jack confessed.
Mrs. McQuat nodded, seemingly unsurprised. “Where?” she whispered.
“On the back of her neck.”
“That’s not . . . so bad,” The Gray Ghost said. “I expected . . . much worse.”
There was no one in the chapel, where Jack regarded the prospect of turning his back on God with the greatest trepidation. But Mrs. McQuat steered him into one of the foremost pews. They sat down together, facing the altar. “Don’t you want me to turn around?” Jack asked.
“Not you, Jack.”
“Why not?”
“I think you need to face . . . the right way,” The Gray Ghost said. “Don’t you ever turn your back on God, Jack . . . in your case, I’m sure . . . He’s looking.”
“He is?”
“Definitely.”
“Oh.”
“You’re . . . only eight, Jack. You’re . . . already kissing girls at eight!”
“It was just on the neck.”
“What you did was nothing . . . but you saw . . . the consequences.” (Urination, bleeding, rigor mortis, stitches!)
“What should I do, Mrs. McQuat?”
“Pray,” she said. “You should be . . . facing the right way for prayers.”
“Pray what?”
“That you can . . . control your urges,” The Gray Ghost said.
“Control my what?”
“Pray for the strength to . . . restrain yourself, Jack.”
“From kissing?”
“From . . . worse than that, Jack.”
From his father inside him, Mrs. McQuat might as well have said. When she’d added, “Pray for the strength to . . . restrain yourself,” she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye—she was staring at his lap! She meant the little guy, and all that he might be up to. Whatever was worse than kissing, Jack prayed for the strength to resist it. He prayed and prayed.
“Excuse me for . . . interrupting your prayers, Jack, but I have . . . a question.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Have you ever done . . . worse than kiss a girl?”
“What would be worse?”
“Something . . . more than kissing . . . perhaps.”
Jack prayed that The Gray Ghost would forgive him if he told her. “I slept with Mrs. Oastler’s bra.”
“Emma Oastler? She gave you . . . her bra?”
“Not Emma’s—it was her mom’s bra.”
“But Emma . . . gave it to you?”
“Yes. My mom took it back.”
“Mercy!” Mrs. McQuat said.
“It was a push-up bra,” he explained further.
“Go back . . . to your prayers, Jack.”
In her ghostly way, she left—genuflecting in the aisle and making the sign of the cross. In her kindness to him, Jack couldn’t help but feel that she was more alive than he first thought; yet the message Mrs. McQuat had left with him was as chilling as an admonition from the grave.
God was watching Jack Burns. If Jack turned his back on God, He would see. And if God was looking so closely at him, this was because He was certain Jack would err. (The Gray Ghost seemed fairly certain of this herself.) Whether the fault lay with his father inside him, or with the independence of mind and imagination already exhibited by the little guy, Jack seemed as predestined for sexual transgression as Emma Oastler had predicted.
He prayed and prayed. His knees were sore, his back was aching. Moments later, he recognized the smell of chewing gum in the pew behind him—this time, it was a fruity flavor. “What are you doing, baby cakes?” Emma whispered.
Jack didn’t dare turn around. “Praying,” he answered. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”
“I heard you kissed her, Jack. It took four stitches to close her lip! Boy, have we got our homework cut out for us! You can’t kiss a girl like she’s a steak!”
“She bit herself,” he explained, to no avail.
“Passion of the moment, eh?” Emma asked.
“I’m praying,” Jack said, still not turning around.
“Prayers won’t help you, honey pie. Homework will.”
Thus did Emma Oastler distract him from his prayers. If Emma hadn’t found him in the chapel, he might have followed The Gray Ghost’s instructions to the letter. And if he’d successfully prayed for the strength to restrain himself, which of course meant restraining the little guy, too—well, who knows what Jack Burns might have been spared, or what he might have spared others?
12
Not Just Another Rose of Jericho
Years later, Lucinda Fleming would still include Jack among the bored recipients of her Christmas letter. He didn’t know why. He never kissed her again. He hadn’t kept in touch.
Emma Oastler’s theory was tha
t Jack’s third-grade kiss on Lucinda’s neck was her first and best—possibly her last. But given the sheer number of children Lucinda Fleming would have—they were mentioned by name, together with their ages, in those repetitive Christmas letters—Jack would be inclined to refute Emma’s theory. Spellbound as he was by Lucinda’s prodigious childbearing, Jack could conclude only that her husband had been kissing her—even happily. And in all likelihood, the husband who had spent the better part of his life kissing Lucinda Fleming had not caused her to bite through her lower lip and pee all over herself.
Looking back, Jack wouldn’t miss Lucinda—or the rage she saved seemingly just for him. It was The Gray Ghost he would miss. Mrs. McQuat had done her best to help him not become like his father. It wasn’t her fault that Jack didn’t pray hard enough, or that he lacked the strength to control what The Gray Ghost called his “urges”; that he turned his back on God was more Jack’s failure than Mrs. McQuat’s or his dad’s.
He had a ton of homework in grade four. Emma genuinely helped him with it. Jack’s other homework, his sexual education, remained Emma’s responsibility; she was tireless in her role as his self-appointed initiator.
As his grade-four teacher, Mrs. McQuat stayed after school two days a week to help Jack with his math. He actually concentrated on the math; with The Gray Ghost, there were no distractions, no conflicting desires to breathe her in. He never dreamed about Mrs. McQuat in anyone’s underwear. In fact, Jack should have thanked her for the sympathy she showed him—not only for what she said to him in the chapel, but the degree to which she tried to counteract the command Caroline Wurtz took of the boy whenever she turned him loose onstage. (Or turned him not-so-loose, as was more often the case with Jack’s performances under The Wurtz’s uptight direction.)
