Teacher's Pet

by Andrew Neiderman

“Not fabulously, but Sandy is a difficult child, even without considering all the other problems. For one thing, she is too mature for her age…physically, that is.”

  “It takes more than a big bust to be mature,” Ellen said dryly. She looked at Toby again. The thread of the conversation hung limply in the air among them. She began to think of ways to effect a graceful exit.

  “What did Tony say to him?” Toby asked, remembering her main point.

  “He asked him if he could consider taking on another student.”

  “And?”

  “He said of course. He was very polite. Maybe a little too formal for Tony.”

  “He’s not that way with women,” Ellen said impulsively. She regretted it immediately because they all turned to her with curious new interest. “I mean, he wasn’t that way with me.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t speak to him long enough to know all that,” Toby said.

  “It’s just a first impression, but my mother used to say that first impressions count the most.” Why did she feel such a need to defend him? she wondered. Although she did believe it was true—he wasn’t too formal. He was…sophisticated. Someone as mundane as Myra couldn’t appreciate that. “I felt he had a certain quality about him. Didn’t you sense that, Myra?”

  Myra’s forehead wrinkled as she gave the question some thought. The others waited expectantly as though her reply would determine the tutor’s destiny in the town and maybe even for the rest of his life.

  “I suppose you could call it ‘quality’. I just didn’t think the kids would take to him and get along with someone so, so…obviously intelligent. He is good-looking, though,” she added quickly. “I mean when he looks at you, you, you…”

  “What?” Toby said first. Even Ellen had to lean toward Myra with interest. How did other women react to him? Was it the same for them as it had been for her?

  “This is silly,” she said, seeing their intense interest.

  “No, go ahead,” Ellen said.

  “Well, he made me very conscious of myself.”

  “How do you mean?” Sally asked. Ellen already understood.

  “Well I…I did a stupid thing. I buttoned up my blouse. Right to my neck. Wasn’t that silly? I know Tony didn’t notice, but the tutor seemed to. He smiled at me and I felt like a schoolgirl. Oh, I’m embarrassed to mention it.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” Ellen said. She said it so quietly and so seriously that the others took a new look at her. There was a moment of silence and deep thought for all.

  “Oh,” Toby burst out, “I can’t wait to meet him!”

  This time her childish excitement brought everyone to laughter.

  On the way home, Ellen tried not to think about him. Something was warning her of a hidden danger, a danger she didn’t understand. When he suddenly appeared on the street before her, she shuddered from a mixture of fear and excitement. His appearance was almost supernatural. It was as though she had conjured him up.

  She could ignore him, she thought; she could turn away and walk faster, but she didn’t. She turned to him and smiled while she waited for him to approach her like some long forgotten but recently resurrected feeling. She would stand by helplessly as it washed over her and embraced her.

  “Absolutely beautiful here in the fall,” he said. He began as if they had been walking and talking together for hours. “When they told me autumn was magnificent in the Catskills, it was a gross understatement.”

  “Yes,” she said, and she looked around her as though she were the stranger and he were the native. She couldn’t remember when she had commented about the beauty of the area last.

  “There’s something about the crisp air that makes your mind sharp. It reminds me of my first semesters at college, carrying books over lush, dark green lawns, the leaves yellow, brown, and red. Everybody’s skin flushed from the excitement. I felt I could conquer the world, that there was nothing between me and all the success I wanted.”

  “You sound like someone who’s failed and looks back with regret.”

  He looked at her for a moment as though he had just realized she was there and she overheard his thoughts. It made her regret what she had said. But then a smile came to his face, a warm, friendly smile.

  “No, no, I’m just more realistic now than when I was a college student. How about you?”

  “What do you mean?” She was vaguely aware that they were standing in front of the public library, that people were going in and out and looking their way, that some of the people who drove by and knew her were slowing down to see whom she was talking to, that she had waved to no one and had acknowledged no one and did not care to.

  “Aren’t you more realistic now than when you were nineteen, twenty years old?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” she said. He laughed.

  “Don’t make it sound like such a relief.” He looked past her. “I was just going to check on the public library. Is it a good one?”

  “Not bad for a town this size. I’m sure you could make arrangements to use the community college library if you need more books. It’s only ten miles away.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  He was looking at her hard now, as if he were trying to understand what and who she was. She didn’t mind the intensity of his gaze; she felt she could bathe in it. She almost felt like spinning around and saying, “Well, what do you think?” The silliest ideas were running through her head.

  She broke the dramatic pause.

  “You look like an Irish folk singer.”

  “What? Oh, this sweater.” He ran his hands down his chest, smoothing out the eggshell wool garment. The high turtleneck made him appear even taller, but the garment clung to his shoulders as though it were form-fitted. She considered that a possibility.

  “Did someone make it for you?”

  “No. Actually, I did buy this in Ireland.”

  “Oh. You’ve been there?”

  “I’ve been throughout most of Europe and a good part of the Middle East.”

  “I’ve yet to cross the Atlantic,” she said, and smirked.

  “You should try to go. It’s important to meet other people and see other places.”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling my husband. His idea of a vacation is two weeks in the Poconos playing golf.”

  “Interesting, isn’t it—how many ways we have found to lobotomize ourselves.”

  “What?” A wide smile formed on her face. “I’ve never heard it put quite that way before, but you know something, you’re right.”

  “Oh, I know I’m right,” he said. Then he pointed to the library. “Let me investigate.”

  “Yes.” She regretted that their conversation had ended, but she didn’t walk off until he entered the building. Then she thought about Barton.

  How many nights did they spend during which neither of them had anything very interesting to say to the other? Where was his intellectual curiosity, his perceptions about life? What did he ever do but talk about his business or people at the business? And he expected her to be just as interested in those drab things, too.

  She walked on, thinking. How long has it been, she wondered, since she and Barton spoke to each other impulsively as she had just done with this stranger? She never thought about the fall. They never went for walks or looked at the scenery. And the library…she couldn’t remember a time when Barton had been in it. All he ever read were the newspapers and those consumer magazines.

  It occurred to her that her life was far duller than she had ever dreamt. This man was probably younger than she was, but he appeared to have far more wisdom. She had missed out; she was still missing out. Was it too late? Too late for what? she wondered. What could she do now? She hadn’t even developed a career. She didn’t want to go back and start over again. What was she looking for? What could she hope for?

  All of this depressed her and she knew the only way to get herself out of it was to exercise. When she got home, she immediately changed into her exercise sui
t. The skintight garment pinched her thighs and made her aware of every flaw in her body, not that there were many for someone her age. She turned on the records and began her aerobics, moving faster and harder than ever in an attempt to quiet the gnawing that had begun within. The music couldn’t get loud enough and she couldn’t move fast enough. She almost drove herself into a wild frenzy. When she caught sight of herself in the wall mirror, she couldn’t believe the look on her face. She was on the verge of either screaming or crying.

  Then she heard the doorbell. It must have been going for a while because she caught it just as one song ended and another was about to begin. She turned down the volume on her deck, grabbed a towel to wipe her face, and went to the front door. Even before she opened it, she sensed who it was.

  For a moment he looked stunned. Then she realized she was in her skintight exercise suit. She folded her arms across her breasts quickly.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were in the middle of exercise. I thought…”

  “To the music…I…it’s one of those programs.”

  “Yes. I just wanted to tell you that I used you as a reference.”

  “Reference?”

  “At the library. To get a card,” he added when she continued to look confused. He opened his palm to reveal the card. “You were right, too. Not a bad library for a town this size. Is that OK?”

  “What?”

  “Using your name?”

  “Oh, sure. Just don’t run off with any books or forget to pay your fines.” He laughed.

  “What are you into, aerobics?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m into yoga, myself. If you see me standing on my head for an hour or so, don’t think the world’s turned upside down,” he said, backing up. “Thanks again.” He waved the card. She nodded, watched him turn the corner, and then closed the door.

  For a moment she simply stood there in the entranceway. Her heart was beating just as fast as it had been before when she was in the middle of her exercise. This was the second time he had caught her unawares. Her nipples were so erect under her thin suit that she might as well have gone bare-breasted.

  She went back to the den. Her curtained window looked out across their lawn to the Taylor house. She knew that the windows on that side of the house were kitchen windows. She never thought about closing her curtains or pulling her shades when she exercised because no one ever lived there since she and Barton had moved into this house, and she liked the way the daylight brightened her room.

  But when she went to turn her amplifier on again, her fingers trembled. She looked at her opened window and thought about him looking in on her. Her exercise was a personal thing; she didn’t have the self-confidence to do it in groups, and this outfit she wore was far too revealing for her to wear it in any public way. Yet, she couldn’t get herself to close those curtains or pull those shades. She felt just the way she had when she had looked down at him from her bedroom window.

  In fact, as she went through her moves, she deliberately placed herself in full view. She slowed her exercise down, making it into a kind of sensual ballet, working and more stretching and turning. Periodically, she looked out the window into his.

  She never saw him, but her heartbeat never slowed and she sensed that he was there watching her, waiting. He haunted her with his smile and drew her to him with his magnetic eyes. She had fantasized extramarital affairs; she had even made love to Barton imagining him to be someone else, but actually to be unfaithful…she didn’t think herself capable of it.

  She turned up the music again. She moved faster until she was almost in a frenzy once more. Afterward, Barton found her flushed and exhausted, lying on the living-room couch. She was still in her exercise suit and she looked like a woman who had made love all afternoon. He didn’t understand why, but as he looked at her, he felt a terrible sense of foreboding, a sense of personal defeat.

  4

  Sandy Dickens opened her front door lethargically and stepped out of her long, brick-faced ranch house. The morning sun, appearing between the twin oaks on the well-manicured front lawn, blinded her for the moment and she did not see Johnny Masterson, Gary Rosen, and Sheila Cohen sitting in Gary’s car, parked a few feet down from her driveway. She listened for a few seconds before closing the door. Her father and his new wife were laughing over coffee, their voices reverberating through the corridor from the dining room.

  Even though Paula had been with them for almost two years now, Sandy still thought of her as her father’s “new wife.” It was difficult for Sandy to think of Paula as a mother anyway, since she was only in her late twenties. She had resisted getting to know her well and because of that aloofness, they were still learning things about each other. If anything, Sandy was even more reluctant to become friends.

  She reached into her pocketbook for her Porsche sunglasses and put them on quickly. Her father had bought Paula a pair just like them, but one morning they had appeared, mysteriously shattered, on the hall table. No one accused Sandy. Everyone agreed someone must have laid a heavy object on them unknowingly. Accusations were not easily made in this house, she thought. It was too guiltridden.

  She would never forget the guilty expression on her father’s face when he woke her that morning to tell her he was off to get married. He had been going with Paula before the divorce actually took effect, and Sandy had sensed it was inevitable that her father would bring Paula into the house.

  She was just surprised by the formality of it—a legal marriage. Why bother? Why did anyone bother to get married in this day and age? A mere sheet of paper, some silly-looking legal document didn’t legislate sincerity. Getting it was part of the world of adult hypocrisy. People behaved according to their selfish whims anyway. She was convinced of that.

  She turned back quickly when she slipped her glasses on so she could look at herself in the door window. With her free hand, she brushed back her shoulder-length auburn hair—her pride, the feature that she knew drew the most attention to her. Even her teachers, the ones who professed such disappointment in her for her poor grades, expressed appreciation of her hair and complimented her for it. What was it Mr. Adams had said; “If you took as good care of your grades as you do your hair, you’d be the class valedictorian.”

  She laughed at that—one of the few times she laughed at anything teachers said anymore. They had become such ogres, such depressingly dreary people. No wonder she had refused to be tutored and hated going to school. She had the worst attendance record so far of any year she had gone. Paula lectured her about it. It was one of the few times she tried to behave as her mother. Sandy nearly laughed in her face.

  “This is your most exciting year, your best year, the senior year. How I wish I could return to that myself,” she concluded, and Sandy thought, How I wish you could also. Who the hell wants you here?

  But her mother, too, had claimed that her senior year would be her best year. That was so long ago, however, she could barely recall the conversation. It was before her mother’s Sida Yoga stage, or was it TM? She couldn’t remember which one anymore; they all ran together in her mind.

  All she knew was that once, a long time ago, when things in the world seemed balanced and good, when her father and mother looked young and the three of them sat around the dinner table and talked with a young family’s excitement, when her father’s business was just beginning and they were struggling together to reinforce and encourage each other, when all that was going on…her mother and she had real conversations and during one of those conversations, she described how wonderful her senior year had been.

  It all seemed like a fantasy now. It was as if she had dreamt those days and they never really happened. She had gotten to the point where she looked curiously at people who said she was getting to be as beautiful as her mother, or she had her mother’s green eyes. What mother? Did she really have a mother? How did her father describe it all to her when she demanded to know his true feelings?

&nb
sp; He was going around pretending that what had happened to him was nothing. He could deal with it. So you’re married to a woman for nearly eighteen years and one day she says, “I don’t want marriage anymore. I don’t want ‘wifedom and motherhood.’ I don’t want to be a part of this plastic world we live in. I want spiritual truth. Good-bye.” So what? Doesn’t it happen to a lot of married people?

  That was the way he wanted to appear to the rest of the world, but he didn’t appear that way to her. She wasn’t going to permit any false faces, not anymore. One day she demanded honesty.

  “I want to know how you took it,” she said. “I want you to tell me how you really felt.”

  “What do you mean? We’re making it, aren’t we?”

  “I’m not talking about making it. We eat. The house is clean, Daddy. You’re making as much money as ever, I’m sure. But for godsakes, I’m your daughter. Mommy forgot that, but you can’t.”

  He saw how she was and he stopped smiling. He nodded and sat down.

  “I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel like someone who has been in a boat tied to a dock for years and one day someone untied the boat and now it’s adrift on an endless, meaningless sea. That’s how I feel.”

  He looked like he would cry then and she was sorry she had demanded the truth. The picture of that drifting boat never left her, not even when he married Paula.

  Sometimes she thought she liked that picture and wanted him to be forever a boat adrift. He’d be more in line with her and the way she felt. Marrying Paula was his way of changing the picture. He was tying his boat to another dock, but what about her? What about her endless drifting? Paula wasn’t any dock for her. She was anything but that. She was simply another person out for herself. She didn’t use TM or est as a rationalization, maybe, but the net result was the same.

  Sandy thought she had rationalized the situation well. Paula saw her as a threat, not just because she took her father’s attention away from her, but because she reminded him of his former wife. Didn’t people say, “How could Tony Dickens look at his daughter without thinking of his first wife?” Sandy thought Paula might even have overheard someone saying it.