Hummingbirds

by Joshua Gaylor

  “They’re out of town,” she said. In fact, they were at a dinner party on the West Side, but the lie was an easy one. She pointed to the shelf next to the television set. “You have a lot of movies.”

  “Do you want to watch one?”

  So he ordered Chinese food and they watched The Third Man, and she didn’t tell him she’d already seen it because he seemed excited to introduce her to it.

  Afterward, he said, “What do you want to do now?” and she shrugged.

  In the other room his phone rang and he went to answer it. For a few minutes, she listened to his half of the conversation. The words were light and meaningless and she didn’t like how they excluded her. So she walked down the hall and found him sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone to his ear. She stopped in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. They looked at each other through the thin veil of his conversation. He smiled at her. Then she went and sat by him on the bed and leaned back, supporting herself on her palms. When he hung up the phone, she looked at him, and she made her eyes tell him it was okay. He could. It was okay. She lay back for him. And now her mind was going like mad, and she wondered if her breath smelled like General Tso’s chicken, and she wondered if she should go to the bathroom first, and she wondered if she would bleed like Sylvia Plath did in The Bell Jar, though she also knew not to be disappointed because many girls didn’t bleed at all, she heard. She wondered if he would do everything, or if there were things she would be expected to do, like unbutton his shirt for him or put her hands on his back. She didn’t want to be a little girl about any of it, and she was proud that she didn’t feel like crying at all, not even a little, because that was such a cliché. And then her clothes were off and his were off, and he moved her around on the bed, which was good because she didn’t want to figure out where to go, and then she felt something against her thigh and she thought, Something is happening, yes, something is really and truly happening, and this moment can run on and on and wrap itself in thinking all it likes because this is a physical thing, an organic thing, a thing of carbon and blood and physics, and there’s nothing that will stop it now, not even my calamitous brain. And she waited for it in the dark, and then she felt it, like a pressure between her thighs—it was inside her, inside her, and it was happening, and she was thinking of a million things, of ambulances below on the street, of James Joyce and John Donne, of Orson Welles and that whistling tune from The Third Man, of her fingernails and how she should stop biting them, of cartoon characters and world wars and calculus exams and music that made her chest heavy. And then there was something that replaced the thinking, like a drain had opened in her head and all the million words and images swirled away, because she was aware of her stomach and her legs and her toes, and the way her hands gripped the shoulders of this man, this man, and the way her nipples felt when his chest brushed against them, and everything else went away except her ankles and her spine and her belly and her teeth and—

  Afterward, she went to the bathroom and turned on the light and looked at herself in the mirror. There was no hurry in her gut now. Just a peacefulness.

  “Not a virgin,” she whispered.

  She wondered why she couldn’t think of a word that meant “not a virgin,” and then she thought maybe being a virgin was like being French: there was no word for not being French. And she breathed in deep and breathed out and examined her eyes very carefully in the mirror and was pleased to find that she was still the same except for the parts of her mind and body that weren’t.

  She felt restful and good, and she went and lay down next to him in the bed.

  He asked if she was all right, and she said she was fine.

  She told herself that she would only stay a little while longer, looking up at the dark ceiling and making sense of a few things. There was no need for clamor or spite. It had been revealed to her that everyone on earth was gorgeously fallible. Men she had equated with gods or industries fell asleep, apparently, with their heads on their arms. She had seen it now. She knew.

  She had finally done something. And the gaze of the world seemed all of a sudden more benign.

  But she fell asleep and someone saw her coming out of the building at two o’clock in the morning, and Mrs. Landry called her into the office on Monday, and things had gone desperately wrong for Mr. Hughes after that, and she stayed at home for a week thinking how she ruined the life of a man whom she respected and admired above all others.

  And now she sits on a bench next to another teacher who keeps apologizing to her as though she were the victim.

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” she says.

  “I mean, I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  “You don’t have to wish that. It’s all right.”

  She wants to explain it to him. But she doesn’t have the words.

  “The thing is,” she tries, “you go through life feeling towered over by things. Giants and skyscrapers and mountains. But then you get up close to them, and you realize they’re tiny. They fit in your hand. Everything that seems big is actually small. That’s the joke. I didn’t get it before.”

  He looks confused for a moment, but then a smile spreads across his face and he chuckles as though something has been decided—and they gaze together at the bronze sculpture of Alice in her frozen Wonderland.

  “It’s because you’re getting older,” he says. “And that’s funny, because me?—I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach for my lunch money.”

  She would like to tell him something else, since she may not see him again. Something about how she liked being in his class even though it didn’t always look like it.

  So she tries, and she doesn’t have the words exactly, but the ones she does have, they do all right.

  chapter 39

  At the end of the day, the school empties its students all at once—dumps them out through the lobby doors where they linger on the sidewalk in clots. Teachers heading home press through the tight knots, though it is too loud for any of the girls to hear them say, “Excuse me.” Instead, it is acceptable practice for the adults to apply a little pressure to the backpacks suspended from the girls’ shoulders—physical force without bodily contact.

  Recently, the teachers can sense in the girls an even greater reluctance than normal to disperse immediately after school. The school has become a place of secrets and violence and ghosts—like a church except not as many angels. Things are happening in this place of stolid book learning. Scandals have the potential to spread exponentially in the five-minute gaps between classes, so that in the course of a school day, the entire population shares a common account. Even accurate, more or less. The girls have a great intolerance for misinformation. They do not want to be forced to revise the scenarios they conjure up in their heads.

  But after a while when no news is brought down from behind the closed doors of the headmistresses’ offices where confidential summits are taking place, the girls lose interest and drift off—until there is only one girl left over, looking up at the windows of the school, her pigtailed head arched back and gazing longingly as though she were the one remaining mother waiting on the platform for her soldier son who did not arrive on the last train of the day. She has a lollipop poking out of her mouth, and every now and then she gives it an absent suck.

  “Bon soir, Dixie,” says Madame Millet-Johnson as she comes out through the doors and down the steps to the street.

  “Good night,” she replies. She and the French language are like summer camp friends—once inseparable but now unable to withstand the practical realities of the nonidyllic everyday life of young womanhood.

  Alone, Dixie Doyle looks both directions up and down the street, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her favorite coat, which has a white furry collar that used to be sparkly before the sparkles rubbed off on her hair and cheeks. With her tongue, she shifts the lollipop from one side of her mouth to the other. Then she turns around and looks back up at the windows.

  She crosses the stree
t and sits on a stoop and leans her head against an ironwork gate. She doesn’t know what she is waiting for, but she is not ready to go home. And sometimes looking at the empty building calms her. She hums a tune for which she only knows some of the words:

  Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,

  Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?

  Then she sees something. A girl coming from the direction of the park, walking without haste and gazing straight ahead, climbs the steps of Carmine-Casey and goes in through the doors. It is Liz Warren. Dixie hasn’t seen her since the day before the news trickled down about her and Mr. Hughes. Some say Liz has been expelled. Others say she’s had a nervous breakdown.

  Dixie gives her lollipop a suck.

  “Huh,” she says.

  Another five minutes go by, and then she seems to decide something. She looks up and down the street and crosses over and again leans back through the doors into the lobby of the school. Then up in the elevator to the fourth floor where the administrative offices are. Peering in through the window in the office door, she can see through the secretarial vestibule to the headmistresses’ offices at the back. All the doors are still closed. These are classified meetings—parents, teachers, students. Liz Warren is probably in there somewhere. In one of those rooms. Surrounded by tall figures of authority who are tiptoeing around the questions they really want to ask.

  They are ridiculous, Dixie knows. You don’t have to tiptoe around Liz Warren. She’s tougher than all of them. If she wants to talk about it, she’ll talk about it. She’s no victim. And you’re not going to convince her she is.

  Dixie sighs and turns back slowly toward the elevators. But then, through a slit window in one of the classroom doors, her eye catches the girl sitting by herself. On top of a desk, dangling her feet and leaning back on her palms. Staring at the ceiling as though bored. Liz Warren herself.

  Dixie checks to confirm that Liz is alone in the room and then opens the door and steps in.

  “What do you want?” Liz asks. Her voice sounds aggressive, but her heart’s not in it.

  “How come you’re in here?” The door closes behind Dixie.

  “I’m waiting.”

  “They told you to wait in here?”

  “Do you want something?”

  “No.” Dixie considers her lollipop briefly and grimaces. She tosses it into the trashcan and marches straight over to Liz, pulls away the desk directly in front of the girl, and sits down on top of it, facing her. She leans back on her palms, and for a moment the girls look like two mirrored statues at the entrance of an Egyptian tomb. But then, seemingly aware of this, Liz folds up her legs and leans forward.

  “You know what I hate?” Dixie says. “I hate those kids who cheat on the SAT. I mean, isn’t that pathetic? Why can’t they just take the test like everyone else?”

  Liz stares at her. Dixie’s words are apropos of nothing, but she is trying to reach out to Liz, and she knows Liz likes to criticize things. She thinks maybe they could criticize something together. And cheating seems like something in particular that Liz would like to criticize.

  “You know, I had the chance to cheat on the SAT. My Uncle Peter the drunk knows this girl who takes the exam for you if you pay her five hundred dollars. But she must owe him a favor because she was going to do it for me for only two hundred. He’s probably her drug dealer, if you want to know the truth. Anyway, they were going to set it all up, but I said no way. I take my own tests. I may be of average intelligence, but I’m not tacky.”

  “Dixie,” Liz says, putting a hand to her forehead, “can you just leave me alone?”

  “I’m just trying to be nice. We did that whole play together, and everyone said we did a great job with it. And now since you’re in trouble, I thought—”

  “Oh god. Why do you think you can talk to me about this?”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “Well, don’t. Don’t try.”

  Dixie straightens her back and leans in, pointing her finger at Liz’s chest. She has had enough. “You can be a real bitch, you know that? I know what you think. You think I spend all my time being mean to people and that you’re some kind of moral superhero swooping down to make people feel better. But you don’t make anyone feel better. You just make them feel worse in a different way.”

  “Shut your mouth,” Liz says, her voice trembling with quiet outrage.

  “No. Why don’t you shut your mouth for once. And now you think that just because you fucked a teacher even your stupid teenage angst is better than everyone else’s. Big deal. You think you’re the only one who’s ever fucked her teacher? You’re not even the only one in this room. Well, almost.”

  The door opens suddenly, and Dixie sees Mrs. Landry filling up the doorway. The headmistress seems surprised to find Dixie there.

  “Oh, hello Dixie.” Then, turning her attention to Liz and speaking in tones of implied gravity. “Liz, your parents are still in with Dr. Harrison. I’m sorry this is taking so long. We should be ready for you in about five minutes.” The woman gives Dixie one more hesitant glance before retreating and letting the door close behind her.

  Liz stares down at the floor. Her arms are crossed over her stomach.

  Dixie doesn’t like to see her like this. She is surprised to discover how much she misses the Liz Warren from a few days ago. The sulky, nasty, clever Liz Warren.

  “I’m sorry,” Dixie says. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s okay. Forget it. I didn’t mean anything either.”

  Dixie nods. The other girl still won’t look at her, so she rises from the desk and smoothes the front of her skirt. Then she reaffixes the ponytails in her hair and heads toward the door. She’s almost out of the room when Liz stops her.

  “You too, huh?”

  “What?”

  “You too? With who? What teacher?”

  “Oh. That. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “Dixie.” She makes a wide shrugging gesture to everything around her—the absurdity of Dixie’s admonition.

  Dixie sits back down on the desk in front of Liz, and the two girls lean forward conspiratorially.

  “Well, everyone knows I have a crush on Mr. Binhammer.”

  Liz nods, and Dixie checks herself.

  “You’re in that class. Don’t you think he’s stunning?”

  “Stunning.” Liz smiles. “Sure.”

  Liz laughs a little, but not in a mean way. If Dixie had an older sister named Liz Doyle, that’s how she imagines Liz Doyle might laugh at her. And even though Dixie would put on a performance of being insulted, secretly she would do things to entertain Liz Doyle and make her laugh like that.

  “Can I ask you a question? What was it like? With Mr. Hughes, I mean.”

  “I don’t know. It was something I just decided to do. That’s what they don’t get.” Gesturing with a thumb back toward the administrative offices. “They think I’m suffering posttraumatic stress disorder. But it was a decision I made. And so I wasn’t surprised. The next day, when it was all over, all I could think was ‘This is the man who understands Emma Bovary, the man who can tell you what Elizabeth Bennet is thinking. This is the man who talks about Tess of the d’Urbervilles as though he used to be in love with her. So what does he want with me?’ Isn’t that funny?”

  Dixie looks confused, smiling and screwing up her eyes as though she’s trying hard to picture what Liz feels.

  “And,” Liz adds, confidingly, “his skin smelled like chalk.”

  Dixie lights up with this information. She crinkles her nose and can’t figure out if she likes this detail or not. The dry, dusty chalk clouds of teachers. She imagines Mr. Binhammer’s palm enclosing her cheek, his own smell of chalk.

  “What about you?” Liz says then. “You and Binhammer.”

  “Oh. Well, we never did anything. I mean, we almost did. We talked about it. We discussed it. But we decided it was best not to give in to temptation. You’re lucky Mr. Hughes is single. Mr. Binhammer said if he wa
sn’t married, nothing could hold him back.”

  “He said that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Isn’t it funny?” Liz says, looking wistful. “Isn’t it funny? These men?”

  “Yeah,” Dixie agrees, though she isn’t entirely sure what Liz means.

  “You think you’re going to get a look at something new. You think that the adult world is going to be like Oz—once you’re through the door everything is suddenly going to be in color. You find someone to take you there, and it’s like going to a different country. But when you land on the other side you realize you haven’t gone anywhere at all. You’re back where you started. There aren’t any new colors.”

  “Yeah,” Dixie says again. Despite the fact that she feels she has gotten a glimpse of a new world. She has seen new colors. Things look different to her now. Don’t they? But maybe that’s the difference between having sex with a teacher and almost having sex with a teacher. Maybe for her the cycle never completed itself. Maybe her new world is just the old one in a good disguise.

  Liz is a smart girl. Dixie trusts her judgment.

  “Dixie, listen,” Liz says. “The graffiti…”

  “I don’t heart cock, you know.”

  “I know. It wasn’t nice. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Dixie says, embarrassed. “I’m sure it was just someone who—”

  “Dixie, listen to me. I’m sorry.”

  For a moment she doesn’t understand. And then she does.

  “You?” she says. The image of Liz doing such a thing, when she tries to form it in her head, keeps snapping in half. It doesn’t seem right. The circuit shorts itself. “But—you?”

  Liz nods.

  “Why?”

  “I was confused. It was while everything was happening with Mr. Hughes. I mean, before it happened but after it started happening. I thought he didn’t like me. He kissed me in the park, but then…never mind, it’s stupid. I was jealous of you.”

  “Jealous?”

  “You and Mr. Binhammer. The way you two are with each other.”