Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher

by Monica Nolan

  The innocuous pleasantry was the spark for an unexpected explosion from the temperamental Art Mistress.

  “Nice for him! Oh certainly! But what about me?” Laura struck her heaving cleavage with a clenched fist. “Is this any life for an artist, stuck in Nowheresville, away from the creative stimulation of the city, all because of some old Indian mounds?”

  “Why, I don’t know. Can’t you paint your pictures anywhere?” Bobby asked cautiously. She’d often wondered what had drawn Ken and Laura together, but it had seemed impertinent to ask. Now, however, Laura was clearly feeling confidential.

  “No, you can’t,” she told Bobby firmly. “You need a place with some artistic life—like Bay City, or Paris. We went there for our honeymoon, but only because Ken wanted to hear Albert de Mitraille, the famous French anthropologist, lecture! I spent most of my time being dragged along to some académie or other, listening to someone drone on while we looked at slides of pygmies. We spent one afternoon at the Louvre, one!” Laura looked bitter at the memory. “When we got back, Ken insisted on taking this job at Metamora. Why couldn’t he write about mounds from a distance, the way Professor de Mitraille does about the pygmies?”

  “So it was mounds that brought you to Metamora?” Bobby pieced it together.

  “The Pottawatomi Mound near Beaver Junction,” said Laura mournfully. “Mother always said marriage required sacrifices, but I never dreamed that would mean I’d be spending my Friday night alone, on the nine twenty back to Adena, while my so-called helpmate climbs around on some Indian burial mound!”

  “Speaking of the nine twenty, they’re calling the Muskrat River Local.” Bobby rose and held out her hand to help Laura to her feet. They made their way to platform 9, and Bobby thought regretfully of her own plans for that evening.

  “I didn’t think I’d be on this train either,” she confessed to Laura as they climbed aboard. In her mind’s eye she saw again those girls, those faceless, welcoming girls who had awaited her at Francine’s before Enid and Rod so cruelly deprived her of their companionship. “But at least we can be company for each oth—oh! I’m sorry—”

  “Excuse me, I—”

  “Ouch!”

  As the train jerked into motion, Bobby lurched heavily against the other teacher, and the two mistresses fell into a tangled pile on the nearest seat. Laura’s hands pushed at her ineffectually as Bobby tried to pull herself off the squirming artist.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, that was awfully clumsy of me.” Bobby extricated herself at last, her face beet red, her whole body trembling—but not with exertion. The brief moment of physical intimacy with the brunette bombshell had caught her off guard and unleashed a wave of lust so powerful she worried that if she even looked at Laura she’d gobble up the Art Mistress the way Tiny had gobbled up the meatballs a few hours ago.

  Bobby put her bowling bag on the rack over the seat and made a pretense of arranging it while she tried to regain her self-control. It looked like another night of restless tossing and turning while the sheets became hot and crumpled beneath her. How many midnight laps could she run? How many cold showers could she take?

  “You’re certainly strong, aren’t you?” Laura said as Bobby sat back down. The Art Mistress was tucking a loose lock of hair into the knot at the crown of her head. “You remind me of my roommate in college—she was a real sports enthusiast.” Pulling a compact out of her purse, Laura redid her lipstick carefully. Bobby watched Laura, mesmerized. Suddenly the Games Mistress’s wish for a roomful of women was whittled down to just one—this one.

  “What were we talking about, before that little faux pas?” asked Laura, putting away her purse. “Oh, yes, the compromises I’ve made for my marriage.”

  Look, don’t touch, Bobby cautioned herself. Luscious Laura was like some delectable cream puff you spot in a bakery case when you’re in strict training. “How long have you been married?” she asked.

  “Five years,” sighed Laura.

  And yet, why not? After all, Bobby had decided to dispense with engaged women. Laura wasn’t engaged, she was merely married—and to a man who neglected her shamefully, it seemed.

  “We got married my senior year,” continued Laura. “After I had my miscarriage, I wondered why I’d bothered. I had to drop out just before graduation, and so I never got to put on a senior show, like the rest of the girls in the art department. I’d been working on a series of murals—in the Mexican style, you know—only instead of peasant labor, my theme was a debutante cotillion. My painting professor said that giving such a subject the monumental treatment was quite unique.”

  On the other hand, Laura isn’t even my type, the gym teacher reflected. Bobby had always gone for petite, wholesome girls. She’d never had much patience for the tall, artsy girls who threw around foreign phrases like faux pas, as if American words weren’t good enough.

  But that was when I had my pick of girls, Bobby reminded herself. Before her college glory had faded like a hockey tunic left out in the sun. Besides, what was it Pat had said that evening, that distrust of others stemmed from a basic lack of confidence in oneself?

  “…and we didn’t even get a big wedding, because of the rush to the altar,” Laura was saying. “Most of my sorority sisters got twice the presents I did! I registered for the most darling coffee service and all I got was the creamer. Then Ken was too cheap to…”

  It’s not just physical attraction, anyway, Bobby argued with herself. There was something about the sultry beauty’s obvious disappointment with married life that tugged at Bobby’s heartstrings. She’d always suspected marriage wasn’t all it was trumped up to be. Here was Laura, tied to a man who preferred mounds. Mounds! Bobby’s lip curled into a sneer. What kind of man would leave Laura languishing alone for a mere mound?

  Distracted by the jumble of contradictory thoughts in her head, half hypnotized by Laura’s husky voice and the clickety-clack of the Muskrat River Local, Bobby hardly paid attention to what the Art Mistress said. As her fellow teacher poured out her tale of disappointed dreams, Bobby found her gaze drifting distractedly to the voluptuous thighs straining against the flimsy silk sheath as Laura uncrossed and recrossed her legs, or her red lips, as she pursed them in a picturesque pout.

  The gym teacher was imagining how Laura might look with her hair down, her eyes closed, and her full lips parted, when the conductor blared, “Adena,” shattering the picture in her head.

  “We’re here already?” Bobby helped the Art Mistress to her feet. Laura was still recounting the solo show she’d organized in Adena the year before. “…and everyone said it was as good as anything you see in Bay City,” she told Bobby, following her off the train and into a waiting taxi. “It’s all about who you know, really.”

  As the cab pulled away, Laura told the gym teacher, “But I believe my talent will force those Bay City bigwigs to pay attention one of these days!”

  “Of course it will.” Bobby slid close to the Art Mistress, inhaling her intoxicating scent.

  “I get no encouragement from Ken,” Laura continued bitterly. “He thinks my painting is just a hobby.” Suddenly she turned and buried her face on Bobby’s shoulder. “You don’t know how frustrated I feel sometimes!”

  “Sure I do,” Bobby soothed the distraught faculty member, smoothing her hair with one hand. She trailed a finger down the nape of Laura’s neck and the Art Mistress gave a delicate shudder.

  “Oh, Bobby—you’re so strong, and yet somehow gentle too. You understand how a woman feels.”

  It was a familiar moment to the ex-hockey player. Back at Elliott College, how many co-eds had she consoled when they returned to the dorm after a disappointing date? Every fiber of Bobby’s being told her to take Laura Burnham in her arms and rain kisses on her disillusioned face.

  Not in the cab, she reminded herself. She settled for patting the heaving shoulder soothingly. “Of course I understand. Aren’t I a woman too?”

  The campus was dark and quiet. The red taillights of t
he cab faded down the drive, leaving only the dim glow of the old-fashioned lanterns hanging over the dorm doorways. It was eleven, lights out. As they walked toward the quad, Bobby saw a lit window in Cornwall wink out.

  “Would you like to join me in the art studio for a nightcap?” Laura proposed.

  “I shouldn’t,” protested Bobby weakly. “I ought to go to bed.” She couldn’t make up her mind about making a play for the Art Mistress. Would it be breaking training, or much-needed practice? Would it be a foul or a clean shot into the goal?

  “Oh please—I want to show you some of my paintings. I think they’d really speak to you.” Laura took Bobby’s hand. “Come with me.”

  Bobby allowed herself to be pulled along, knowing full well she shouldn’t go anywhere alone with the alluring Laura. “Just for a minute.”

  They tiptoed through the silent quad, and as they passed the sundial the ex-hockey star instinctively tightened her grip on the Art Mistress’s hand. “You know, I’ve always wanted to tell you, when I made that remark about the tower that first day we met, I didn’t even know how Miss Froelich had died! Mona had told me—”

  Laura halted and put her hand on Bobby’s mouth to stop her words. “Please don’t talk about it. I’m terribly sensitive about these things. I know this kind of morbid curiosity is common, I don’t hold it against you.”

  “But I wasn’t curious, I just didn’t know—” Bobby tried to explain again. Laura shushed her, and Bobby decided not to pursue it. She didn’t want to upset the Art Mistress’s sensibilities. They were passing under Mona’s sitting room, and a rectangle of light fell on the path, which they instinctively circumnavigated.

  “And those awful rumors the students are spreading,” Laura continued in a whisper. “Half the student body should be in the care of a psychiatrist, in my opinion. I confiscated a note the other day in clay modeling. The girls were actually voting on the likeliest motive for Miss Froelich’s suicide!”

  “Really!” Bobby was half horrified, half fascinated. “What was winning?”

  “That she was possessed by a demon ghost. Although,” Laura tried and failed to repress a snicker, “there was a strong write-in vote for Miss Rasphigi as murderess! Poor Miss Rasphigi, without a thought beyond her titrations!”

  They’d left the quad behind, and were passing the corner of Essex, which housed the chemistry lab and faced Kent Tower. It was ridiculous, Bobby told herself. But she couldn’t suppress a sudden vivid image of Miss Rasphigi’s cold eyes and hawk nose, her lips compressed as she shoved an indistinct, gray-haired woman over the crenelated battlement and watched without emotion as she tumbled end over end into a dark void.

  Dizziness gripped Bobby and she stumbled along the dark path blindly, clinging to Laura’s hand like a lifeline. There was something terribly familiar about this walk through the dark, as if she’d traveled this path before. When was it? Where was it? A dark night, a pretty girl…Why, it was her dream! But exactly! Bobby felt cold all over. Laura dropped her hand, and the vertigo-stricken coach bent her head and closed her eyes in an effort to maintain her equilibrium. Where was the cliff edge?

  “Here we are.” Light streamed out from the low building’s glass walls. Bobby blinked. She was standing on flat land, just outside the old chicken coop that a forward-thinking young architect had transformed into Jersey, the Metamora art studio. Unsteadily, Bobby climbed up the concrete steps to the big room with its three walls of glass, its rows of drawing tables, and the smell of turpentine. Laura’s hair, she noted with gratitude, had not changed its color. The Art Mistress was opening a door in the back wall.

  “Welcome to my lair,” she said coyly, standing in the doorway with one arm outflung, indicating that Bobby should squeeze past her into the cozy corner office. The first thing Bobby noticed was the glass wall at the rear, which during the day must look out on the wilderness that led to Mesquakie Point, but now was a looming black square. Bobby, still recovering from her attack of vertigo, was glad when Laura pulled dusty red velvet drapes over the emptiness and switched on a modern floor lamp. There were canvases leaning against a combination cabinet-bookshelf, and an old-fashioned chaise longue, upholstered in green velveteen. Bobby perched uncertainly on one end of it.

  “Voilà!” Laura stood up from the low cupboard brandishing a bottle of red wine and a corkscrew. She handed them to Bobby while she rummaged for glasses.

  Bobby, who was more accustomed to flipping caps off beer bottles, struggled for a few minutes before extricating the cork. “Vin du table,” she read. “What does that mean?”

  Laura wasn’t listening. “À votre santé,” she said, handing Bobby a glass. “Let me show you my paintings.”

  Bobby looked obligingly through the pile of canvases as she sipped the sour wine. She was still feeling dizzy, and she tried to distract herself by studying Laura’s work. She stared at a landscape, the trees painted in vivid violets and oranges, until it started to shimmer before her eyes.

  “That’s Mesquakie Point, at dusk,” said Laura. She pulled out another canvas. “That’s a creek in the woods.” Another. “That’s farmland, in the spring. You can see Adena in the background.”

  “Is that a train, there?”

  “Yes, it’s a reference to Monet’s Gare St. Lazare. Those are all from last year, my fauve period. I’ve moved on to portraits and figure studies.” She turned to the next stack. “Mona.”

  Mona’s hair was crimson and she had a green stripe down her nose.

  “Miss Rasphigi—that’s mostly from memory. She refused to pose.”

  “I like it,” Bobby said, glad to be able to express some honest appreciation. The black and white semi-abstract canvas had somehow captured Miss Rasphigi’s stony expression.

  “And this is Enid. I did her last week.” Enid was a slash of ink black bangs and a yellow nose. Laura looked at it thoughtfully, and laid it aside, turning Enid’s face to the wall. She took a long swallow of red wine, and then said, as if just struck by the idea, “I wonder, Bobby, would you pose for me?” She picked up a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil. “Just a quick sketch, to capture that—that Bobby essence.” Her long eyelashes fluttered over her cheek as she spoke and a pulse pounded in the hollow of her neck.

  Bobby surrendered to the inevitable. Ken was off digging in his mound, and here was his lonely wife, asking for Bobby’s comfort, even if she didn’t realize precisely what that comfort might entail. A shiver of familiar anticipation went through Bobby as she contemplated introducing the unhappy Art Mistress to a whole world of unimagined pleasures.

  “How do you want me?” Bobby asked.

  “On the chaise,” Laura pushed her back onto it. “Half reclining. Your hand—”

  “Here?” Bobby put her hand around Laura’s neck and pulled the Art Mistress toward her. Laura yielded to the pressure of her arm, like an obedient schoolchild to a crossing guard’s signals. “Like this?” She nibbled on Laura’s ear, and the bohemian bombshell responded like an instrument tuned to its highest pitch. “Exactly,” she moaned as she half fell, half threw herself into Bobby’s arms.

  The charcoal stick and sketchpad fell to the floor. The wineglasses stood untouched on the bookshelf, next to a monograph on Etruscan statuary. The bodies of the two mistresses met and melded in the white heat of passion long thwarted. “I’ve—never—felt anything—like this!” panted the insatiable Art Mistress as they nearly fell off the narrow velveteen chaise longue in their thirst for each other. Bobby scarcely heard her, so swamped was she in the pleasure of Laura’s warm and willing flesh. The sex-starved gym teacher wanted this interlude to last forever, and the beauteous bohemian evidently shared her sentiments. “Don’t stop,” she cried in a strangled whisper.

  And Bobby, too busy to reply, obeyed her command.

  Yet too soon, their appetites were satiated enough that they paused in this gymnastic competition, whose only scorekeeper was desire.

  “I should go.” Bobby sat up, her conscience smiting her. �
�What time is it?”

  Languorously, Laura lifted her arm to look at her wristwatch, the only thing she was still wearing. “It’s only one A.M. Oh, Bobby, no one will miss us. Stay a while longer.” Her voice was redolent with promises of further joys.

  But Bobby’s responsibilities came rushing back to her, and even the sight of Laura with her hair down, her eyes closed, and her full lips parted couldn’t blot them out.

  “It’s Debby Geissler,” she confessed. “She often sleepwalks…if something happened to her, I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Oh, all right.” Laura sat up. “You better leave first.” She brightened. “After all, Ken’s gone all weekend. We can continue your…sitting tomorrow.” Her salacious smile turned Bobby’s stomach to jelly. “I’ll see you at breakfast, Bobby.”

  Closing the studio door behind her, Bobby couldn’t believe how well things had turned out. Instead of picking up some hard-bitten bar habitué like in the books, she’d brought out a sophisticated, older woman! Laura had taken to the games of pleasure Bobby had taught her with surprising speed. I ought to thank Enid and Rod, the Games Mistress thought with a smile as she climbed the path back to the quad. Besides, it was a relief to discover she hadn’t lost her touch. Actually, she felt just like she was back in college again.

  Bobby frowned. There was something wrong with that. She’d read something the other day in her psych book, something about police. Arrested development—that was it. Was it bad to repeat at Metamora the social-sexual relationship patterns she’d developed at college?

  She was between Essex and Kent when she saw something that drove her worries about psychological development completely from her mind.

  A glowing bicycle, ridden by a dark shapeless figure, floated across the quad and disappeared behind Kent.

  After a split second of shock, Bobby ran after the apparition. But when she rounded Kent, all was dark. The bicycle was gone.