But the moment he left the room my smile faded. I reached up my shirt and pinched my nipples as hard as I could, my fingernails digging in until my eyes began to water.
*
It was impossibly difficult, but for the next two days I managed to ignore Jack completely. I wanted him to miss the attention, crave my furtive glances even though he always looked away in seeming shame, as though he’d walked in on a scene inside a room he had no business entering. Instead I lavished praise upon his blockhead counterparts (Yes, Heath, that’s very perceptive—we could in fact blame Romeo and Juliet’s parents!) and encouraged the foulmouthed girls of the class in their lewd comments, hoping he’d feel ignored when my glance avoided his direction. If it was safe to cross lines with Jack, I figured open house was where I’d find out. An appearance by his mother or father (or worse, both) voicing some concerns about my keeping their son after class would mean I’d somehow have to write our planned future together out of my loins for good. I was afraid that if things fell apart with Jack I’d have to grab Trevor and pound him in the PE storage shed, then flee town immediately—surely, Trevor wouldn’t be able to keep the secret longer than an hour. There’d be no other choice than to take a bus across the state line and try to assume a new identity.
At home, Ford was noticeably reeling from our decrease in face time since school had begun. Due to a leap of fortune I never would’ve had the optimism to imagine, the second week in September he got reassigned to an afternoon shift with alternating weekends; it started around three P.M. and got him home near midnight, by which time I made every effort to already be, or appear, asleep. He often tried to wake me upon entering bed, and in the morning while I got ready for work Ford never failed to ask me a barrage of interrogatory questions, barking them out while he lay unmoving with his torso covered up like an invalid. Nearly every other day he threatened to ask for a reassignment back to his old shift, but I’d do my best to strike this thought from his mind.
“Now, honey,” I’d say, pausing from brushing my hair to walk toward him in the too-white early brightness of the bedroom. My hair was something he’d fixate on—I always joked he must’ve been one of those boys who would cut ponytails off of girls in elementary school. I’d take special care to be interested, bending down and sitting next to the blanketed worm of his shape, my hair falling next to his face like a scented curtain. “If you do that you’ll knock yourself out of line for that promotion you’re trying so hard for.” Ford wanted to advance but it didn’t seem to be in the cards; written tests in particular drew a poor showing from him. Still, I tried to keep the flame of hope going strong inside of him. The last thing I needed was for him to decide his job was a dead end and begin playing detective in our personal life. “It’s just temporary,” I’d coo, leaning down as close to him as I could manage—that horrible adult male sourness exuded from him most in the mornings—and kiss his temple. When he did intercept and make me kiss him on the lips, I had to be sure to get him squarely there and not a millimeter to the left or right. The feeling of my lips touching stubble brought an instant and dropping hotness to my bowels, a sensation I can only liken to a forced enema.
“You’re right, peaches,” he’d finally say. Then I’d smile and pat his form beneath the blanket, get up from the bed and start back toward the bathroom. He’d grab my hair when I did this, but he wouldn’t hold on—he just liked to feel it slip through his fingers as I walked away.
*
The night of open house we had to report for duty at six; rather than leave and return I stayed in the classroom and used a set of needle-nose tweezers to carve a message into the desk Jack Patrick sat at: YOU WANT ME, placed in small, squarish letters at the very top, a border that would hover above his textbook when he read and his notebook when he wrote. Around five I went to the teachers’ lounge to eat a quick bite; several of my colleagues were also there milling around, including Janet. The moment I arrived they wasted no time explaining to me how the evening’s events would be an Armageddon of parent ass-kissing. The feelings that would surface as I agreed to be complicit in such debasing events year after year, they warned, might eventually trigger a midlife crisis.
Daniel Tambor, a soft-spoken math teacher whose model of prescription glasses had not been manufactured for the past two decades, put down his Ziploc bag of Nilla Wafers and turned to me. “Well you’ve heard about Gary Felding, right?”
I shook my head.
“Oh. Well, that kind of shows you. We like to remember Gary each year today.”
“Complete crash and burn,” boomed Larry Keller, a speech teacher who wore splashy bow ties and liked to shake his right index finger with abandon. “The man taught biology for twenty-six consecutive years here, and the night of his twenty-seventh open house, he snapped.” Larry sat down on the corner of a table, his back straight with perfect posture and his eyes fixed ahead, as though he were being interviewed for a documentary film on the subject. “Went batty. Some parent was complaining that her son found the lectures in his class to be unintelligible. Gary just began screaming. Asked the mother if she was aware that her son had drawn an illustration of a hairy boner on his mitosis-video response worksheet.
“But Gary didn’t stop there. He lit up a Bunsen burner and began stripping. Set his tie and shirt on fire, then his pants. Parents ran from the room screaming. By the time the cops came, Gary had turned out the lights in his classroom and put on an old-school filmstrip about the atom bomb. He was sitting in one of the student desks, crying and watching mushroom clouds fill the screen.”
Mr. Tambor reentered the conversation, his eyes wide and his quiet voice imbued with the vibrato of the haunted. “The saddest memory I have is of Gary being taken away in handcuffs. Though they did let him put on one of those black chemical aprons the kids have to wear during experiments before they led him out. I guess he felt a little exposed when he realized his clothes were burned up.”
Janet slowly pushed herself up from the couch and made a frustrated groan. “We’re just circus animals here to give the taxpaying parents an entertaining evening.” She hunched her back over and bowed her arms into the shape of exaggerated parentheses. “Monkey dance for you,” she grunted in a low voice. “Me monkey. Monkey jump high if parent say so.” Encouraged by a light pattering of laughter from the other teachers, she shuffled over to the fruit bowl next to the coffeemaker and grabbed a banana. “Monkey ass itch,” Janet proclaimed in a throaty growl, “monkey scratch!” Her hands reaching backward, she began to laboriously lift each orthopedic Velcro shoe a few inches off the ground to mimic a dance.
“Stop … stop!” Larry hissed under his breath. Suddenly the cause came into view: Assistant Principal Rosen was standing just outside the doorway looking in. Janet removed her hands from in between her butt cheeks but did not turn around to face him.
“Ned,” Larry greeted him, extending his coffee cup outward in a type of salute. “Don’t mind us. Just blowing off a little steam before all the pomp and circumstance.” Ned Rosen nodded, then wandered away. He seemed confused and a little sad, the way the last caveman to accept the wheel might, wondering how others could possibly appreciate something he found to be so useless.
I wasn’t looking forward to meeting the parents for a different reason—to me they were libido kryptonite. I liked to imagine the students as an independent resource, new creatures of their own design. Day to day, it was easy to think of the junior high as an island of immortal youths who might never age, but seeing the parents killed that fantasy. Suddenly I’d be aware of what nearly all my students would look like two decades down the road. And after I’d seen them, it was impossible to get those images out of my mind.
For example, I learned that Trevor’s physical destiny involved the generous distribution of hirsute facial moles, in addition to a series of broken nasal capillaries that had a near-infected red glow. Michael Ronaldo in my fifth period, though currently lanky and weightless, was destined to inherit a third-trimester
paunch. Though the night included a few creepy fathers (I sure would’ve paid attention if my teacher had looked like you) and overcomplimentary mothers who seemed to be skirting the line of possible friendship (Dana told me after the first day, “Mom, my English teacher is the prettiest person I’ve ever seen!” Isn’t that sweet? You know, a few of us mothers have a scrapbooking circle on Wednesday nights …), the only bona fide nut who showed up was Frank Pachenko’s mother, who introduced herself simply as Mrs. Pachenko, though I knew she was Frank’s mother even before she spoke—the two of them had the same bulging eyes. Their resting expression was one of squeezed panic, like a ferret dressed up in a miniature corset. Frank was a hopeless dork with the haircut of a fourth grader; meeting his mother, it was easy to see why.
“Mrs. Price, good evening.” She addressed me like I was a Japanese businessman with whom she’d previously had a long and profitable, if not personable, relationship. “Did you receive the written inquiries I sent with Frank? According to him, you have yet to send home a reply.” My mind raced—written inquiries? After a moment I finally remembered odd offers, written on floral stationery, of volunteer-aide classroom assistance that Frank occasionally handed me. I’d read the first one all the way through, worried it might be some personalized warning about a specific food allergy or attention disorder, but when I realized their unchanging contents I began to throw them away upon receipt.
“Of course, yes—I figured we could just chat in person since I knew I’d be seeing you soon at open house.” Mrs. Pachenko’s pursed lips flexed slightly tighter.
“Well I’ve always started the week classes began,” she stressed, lamenting the great inconvenience I’d brought upon her. “But I’m a quick study. If you can give me the lesson plans and assignments for the next few weeks, I’ll simply work double-time to catch up. I’ll have no choice.”
It took all the muscle control in my body to keep my eyes from growing large with perception of insanity. I wasn’t sure what we’d be doing in class tomorrow, let alone several weeks from now. “You know, Mrs. Pachenko, the reason I waited to talk to you in person is that we have a somewhat sensitive situation I think you’d be a perfect fit for.” I lowered my voice to a confidential volume, taking her by the arm and guiding her toward a corner of the classroom.
“I have a colleague,” I continued, “who could really use the assistance of someone with expertise. Now, I know you’ve probably always helped out in Frank’s classes, and I get it. You’re invested in your child’s education. But I have to say, Frank is really holding his own in my course—he’s a star. With your skill set, you could do a world of good—the most good—helping out a teacher who’s frankly … well, she’s at risk.”
Mrs. Pachenko folded her arms together. “I was certainly counting on being in Frank’s class,” she began. “But I don’t want to refuse someone if I’m badly needed.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. The low thread count of the garment was nearly prickly. “Mrs. Pachenko, I wouldn’t request this if it weren’t an emergency. I feel like you’re the only one who could help.” The flattery worked; at the end of the night I walked her down to Janet’s room and made an introduction.
“You’re a godsend,” Janet exclaimed. For a brief moment she became distracted by a patch of eczema on her upper arm, but after a few scratches her joy returned. “I’ve been waiting for the cavalry to come. Do you know how many times I filled out an assistant request form?”
I left the two of them to acquaint themselves while I ran back to the classroom for a final peek—were there any stragglers, any parents working late shifts who’d only been able to arrive five minutes after open house ended?
There were not. That meant Jack Patrick’s parents hadn’t shown. I couldn’t help but see it as an omen; as I drove home that evening, every intersection’s signal was green for go.
After the open house, a pilot light of inevitability lit up inside me; it wasn’t possible to think of anything beyond when things would begin in earnest and I would have him. I felt like a scientist whose years of research had finally brought him to the cusp of the discovery he’d been seeking all along: I could feel the payoff about to hit, and waiting any longer made me want to scream at the top of my lungs.
The day after open house was a Friday; the kids were mentally checked out and I was looking forward to the possibilities of a first weekend with Jack. Perhaps we would drive through Dairy Queen, then park and explore the differences of each other’s bodies with ice-cream-cooled tongues. Or drive out to the country fields, strip down naked and run together like deer, each taking turns being the follower, the one who gets to watch the active mechanics of the running body in front. I was hopeful his parents were easily lied to, that an excuse of a sleepover would allow an overnight romp, the sun rising on our sticky bodies, me introducing Jack to his first taste of gas station coffee as I dropped him off a safe walking distance from his home, then went to the gym to shower up. I could tell Ford I had an all-night yoga retreat. Any excuse relating to physical maintenance would float with him. But what if Jack’s parents weren’t so lenient? If needed, anything was possible. Jack could sneak me into his window at night and we could fuck on the floor with clean socks stuffed in our mouths to muffle the sound. Nothing would keep me from him.
But he was absent. His very first absence. I was so dumbstruck by this development that for nearly a minute after the start of class, all I could do was stare at his empty chair without speaking. The rest of the students began to whisper and check their phones, wondering at the delay but also not wanting to snap me out of a trance and initiate schoolwork. Finally I stood and wordlessly started to put on a video of a modern adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. “Are we moving to that red-A book now?” Danny asked.
“Yup,” I answered. I found myself chewing at my nails—a repulsive habit from my childhood that I’d taken great pains to break, repeatedly applying a bitter-tasting custom polish; to this day, candy with that same specific, tangy odor will turn my stomach.
“I’ve already read this,” a young girl—I believe her name was Alexis—said. “It’s like a Romeo and Juliet where Juliet gets caught and punished and Romeo doesn’t.” She paused briefly before adding, “I read all the books for this year over the summer.”
“How impressive,” I remarked. I couldn’t stop looking at his empty chair. Had he, in fact, told his parents about our whispered exchange? Perhaps he’d confessed just before open house and his parents, who then consulted their lawyer, were told that any contact with the soon-to-be defendant was a bad idea. Worse yet, perhaps one of his parents was a lawyer. Perhaps both of them were. Were they plotting their case right now?
“Our society is still this way,” rattled Gash, whose real name was Jessica. She dyed her naturally blond hair jet black and wore black lipstick and clothing assaulted by several hundred appliquéd safety pins. “When women hit it they’re labeled sluts, but with men it’s just expected.”
“That’s true, Gash.” I nodded, pausing the video. “But it was not ‘just expected’ from Puritan ministers, like the character of Arthur Dimmesdale. Let’s think about social context for a moment, and social roles. In today’s society, whom might we expect sex scandals from?”
“Priests,” yelled Marissa; the class erupted in laughter as she looked around nodding. “For real,” she giggled.
“Athletes,” said Danny, self-referentially pulling at his football jersey with a smile on his face.
“Good,” I responded, “celebrities especially. But like Marissa mentioned, we’re most scandalized by relationships where someone breaches the boundaries of a given social role. The culturally agreed-upon role of a priest is to be chaste and holy, whereas the culturally agreed-upon role of a celebrity is to be entertaining.”
Marissa’s hand shot up again but she didn’t wait to be called upon before talking. “Plus with priests it’s kids and stuff.”
“Good point. Can someone else tell us why that’s significa
ntly more scandalous?”
“It’s, like, double illegal,” said Heath.
Jack’s seat seemed to nearly be glowing; the glinting chrome buttons on its backrest kept flashing darts of light against the window. “Are there any social roles in our society where it’s okay for an adult to have sex with minors?” I asked.
“Well like in some redneck states adults can marry minors with the parents’ consent and stuff,” Gash said.
“Yes.” I smiled. Never had I imagined my later years unfolding in a holler of West Virginia, paying the families of young men reverse dowries to marry me for their fourteenth year of life and then divorce on their next birthday. Perhaps, if I managed to stick with Ford long enough, past when his father died and he received the bulk of his inheritance, I could gain the type of alimony settlement that would make this arrangement possible. It might not be so bad: the shirtless overalls, the Mountain Dew–fueled sex marathons. It could be a far smarter route than staring at an empty seat in a classroom wondering if litigation was brewing.
Suddenly I realized I’d been looking out the window with a grin on my face. “So the point being,” I continued, “where legal, an adult and minor can take on the roles of husband and wife and have the consensual sex implied in that relationship. We mentioned religious officials. What are other social roles where sexual impropriety is taboo?”
“Politicians,” one student yelled. Then, from the front row in a very quiet voice, Frank Pachenko called out, “Teachers.”
“But, like, that’s exactly what we expect now,” Danny said. The bass and enthusiasm of his voice gratefully drowned out Frank’s comment, which I pretended not to hear. “I mean, like, look at past presidents. JFK was a player. Clinton got it sucked in office.” The room exploded with shrieks of laughter that made my ears ring; the vocal chaos in the aftermath of the comment made the twenty-five students sound like a full auditorium.
Tampa Page 7