Getting Warmer

by Carol Snow

  And another. “My mom says Duncan Hines are the best.”

  “Okay!” I clapped my hands. “So let’s move on.” The class gave me a look as if to say, “Do you mind? We’re having an interesting discussion, for once.”

  “A supermarket doesn’t just give the food away. Right?” I chirped. “It sells the cakes and the cake mixes and the peanut butter. In a similar way, marketing is how companies present their products in a way that makes us want to buy them.”

  Dead silence. And then, from Robert: “You mean, like when they say, if you buy the right can of soda, you might win a million dollars or something?”

  “Yes!” I wanted to hug him. “And Cherie said something about Betty Crocker cake mixes. Why do you buy Betty Crocker and not, say, Pillsbury?”

  “I like Duncan Hines. It was Raquel who liked Betty Crocker.”

  “Oh, right. And what is it about Duncan Hines that makes it so special?”

  “Um, I don’t know.”

  “Is it the packaging, maybe?”

  She shrugged and stared at her desk.

  “Okay. How about you, Raquel? Why do you like Betty Crocker instead of Duncan Hines?”

  “Because I like chocolate.”

  I sighed. Looked at the clock. Only thirty-five more minutes to go.

  “What is that?” I asked as Lars sank his teeth into a doughy hamburger bun dripping with orange goo.

  He chewed carefully, swallowed and wiped his mouth daintily with a paper napkin. “Sloppy Joe. It’s not bad, actually.” Lars was perfectly groomed as always, his blond hair moussed just so, his white shirt tucked into his linen pants. I can’t wear linen for five minutes without looking like I have slept in my clothes, but Lars pulled off the Ralph Lauren elegantly rumpled look with panache.

  “Don’t you ever worry about mad cow disease?” Jill asked.

  “There’s no mad cow in the United States,” Lars countered, taking another bite.

  Jill speared a chunk of chicken salad with grapes and tarragon. “I’m thinking maybe they imported some special for today’s lunch.”

  I was eating—well, drinking—a yogurt smoothie that looked far more satisfying on television than it did in my insulated lunch bag. When I was done, I’d eat a not-quite-ripe banana. And then I’d be hungry for the rest of the day. I’d considered keeping cashews in my desk to stave off hunger pangs, but one of my students was dangerously allergic to nuts, and I feared leaving cashew residue on her corrected homework and sending her into anaphylactic shock.

  There are some overweight teachers at school, but I don’t know how they do it. At times I look at them with something approaching envy. Someone must be getting up early to pack them mayonnaise-laden sandwiches and homemade brownies—the same someone who cooks fried chicken or cheesy pasta for dinner while the teacher-spouse grades the never-ending pile of papers.

  “I began my advertising and marketing unit today,” I announced. Advertising and marketing was a required part of the senior curriculum, intended to stop teenagers from wasting their parents’ hard-earned money on name-brand sneakers and flashy jeans. I described my television homework to Lars and Jill, feeling borderline clever, even if I hadn’t gotten the initial response I’d hoped for.

  “I’m having my kids create and market their own products,” Lars said between sips of milk from his mini carton. “They’ll design a marketing campaign and shoot thirty-second commercials. It got a terrific response last year—really made the kids look at the media world in a new way. I’ve got the whole thing spelled out on my Web site if you want to take a look at it.” All of the teachers at Agave had Web sites. A handful even knew how to use them.

  I tried to imagine my Adventures class creating marketing campaigns. I considered it a triumph if they handed in their homework on time. Or anytime.

  “That reminds me,” Lars said. “I’ve chosen the play for the autumn theater workshop. It’s called Romeo and Jules—basically a contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet. A kid in my summer playwriting workshop wrote it, and I’m totally into the idea of producing an original work. At any rate, I could really use an assistant director, and you’d mentioned that you were interested in theater.” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  My interest in theater had fallen closely on the heels of my interest in Lars. I blinked at him, unsure of what I was agreeing to but nodding nevertheless.

  six

  I don’t know what shocked me more: the sight of my mother standing in the kitchen or the envelope she held in her hand. “A young man stuck this in the front door, but he just kind of scurried away and waved when I called out to him.” The envelope had my name scrawled on it. In the top left corner it said, “Pomeroy Restaurant Supply.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked my mother. We hugged. “Where’s Daddy?”

  “I sent him to AJ’s to pick up some food. Really, honey, you should keep the fridge better stocked.” She put her hands on her hips. “You could look happier to see me.”

  “I am happy.” I tried to look happy. “Just surprised.”

  “Didn’t you get my messages?” I looked at the answering machine on the counter; the light was blinking. While I occasionally used my parents’ phone for outgoing calls, my friends, colleagues, acquaintances and phantom dates all called me on my cell phone.

  “Whoops,” I said.

  My mother rolled her eyes. “Well, anyway. Now you know. What do you think of my hair?” It was blondish when I’d last seen her. Now it was reddish.

  “Nice.”

  “It looked fabulous in Rhode Island; I went to your sister’s hairdresser. I thought it was the cut, but the minute I walked off the plane in Phoenix—” She shook her head. “This dry air is impossible.”

  In the past three years, my mother had abandoned the New England matron look in favor of Arizona glitz. She’d pierced her ears and started wearing eye shadow. Talbots was out; overpriced boutiques were in. She had a closet filled with drapey pastel pantsuits, espadrilles and southwestern print blazers. She wore visors and pink-tinted sunglasses.

  “How is Shelly?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “That boyfriend.”

  “Still no ring?”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head. “It’s killing your father.” My older sister started dating Frederick six years ago, when she was twenty-eight and he was twenty-five. Frederick was a big advocate of “taking it slow” and “making sure we’re making the right decision.” Now that they’d been living together for four years, my parents thought it was time to make a decision one way or another or, as my mother so eloquently put it, to “shit or get off the pot.”

  “Maybe for Christmas,” I said lamely.

  In the garage, I heard an engine purring, followed by a car door closing.

  “The Lexus is still running smoothly,” my father announced as he entered the kitchen. Unlike my mother, my father dressed exactly the same as always, in khakis, polo shirts and the occasional sport jacket. The Lexus was his one concession to Arizona flash. He worried that his last car, a Camry, stuck out at the AJ’s parking lot. Whenever I bought groceries at AJ’s (not often; I couldn’t afford them), I parked my crappy Civic as far away from the other cars as possible. I didn’t care about appearances; it was the possibility of scratching a BMW, Mercedes or, God forbid, a Bentley that terrified me. I’d never recover from the increased insurance premium.

  “So, who’s the stalker?” my father asked after putting down his paper grocery bags and giving me a hug.

  “He’s not a stalker. He’s just . . . this guy.”

  “He ran like hell when your mother opened the door.”

  “Maybe he’s shy,” my mother said. I was twenty-nine years old. My mother was willing to overlook a little social awkwardness in my suitors. “Did you have any plans with him tonight?” she asked. “I mean, here at the house? Because your father and I could go out.”

  “We just got here!” he said, pulling a carton of lactose-free milk
out of a paper bag. “Where does this go?”

  My mother raised her eyebrows. “Where do you think it goes?” “Refrigerator?” He paused a moment before opening the stainless steel door, putting the carton on an empty shelf and closing the door softly.

  “If you’ve made plans, Natalie, we wouldn’t want to be in the way.” My mother smiled expectantly. If only she had been this accommodating when I was sixteen.

  “I don’t have any plans,” I said. Her face fell, just a little. “And I am happy to see you. I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d be in Connecticut about now.”

  “We went to Connecticut. Humid. Would you believe your aunt and uncle still don’t have air-conditioning? They kept saying, ‘There’s only three or four days a year when we wish we had it.’”

  “Unfortunately, we were there for those four days,” my father interjected. “Does potato salad have to be refrigerated?”

  “Only if you don’t want botulism,” I said.

  “What did you buy potato salad for?” my mother asked.

  “I like potato salad,” he said. “Besides, we needed something to go with the soup.”

  “Soup?” I asked.

  “It’s too hot to cook,” my mother said. “I told your father to pick up some soup for dinner.”

  If it’s too hot to cook, it’s too hot for soup, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Potato salad doesn’t go with soup,” my mother said, reaching into the brown bags my father had now abandoned and stacking the items on the counter.

  “It does if you want it to,” my father said.

  “Why didn’t you just go back to Rhode Island?” I asked.

  “Our month with your sister turned into two weeks because I couldn’t stand another minute with that man. Honestly, he did everything he could to avoid us. He spent most of his time in their bedroom with the television blaring.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked. “I mean, if you didn’t have to talk to him?”

  “No,” my mother said, pouring a carton of fresh salsa into a little dish and opening a bag of tortilla chips. My parents eat a lot of salsa because they can feel southwestern and get their recommended intake of lycopene—at the same time!

  “Your sister was tense. Tense. I try to hide my feelings about Frederick, but she knows me so well that she can tell that I disapprove of their situation.” Pretty much anyone within a hundred-mile radius of my mother knows that she disapproves of their situation.

  “And Pennsylvania?” I asked, still holding out hope that they’d popped by to pick up a few tennis togs before catching a red-eye out of Sky Harbor Airport. It’s not that I don’t love my parents or enjoy spending time with them, but after two months alone in the house, it felt like they were invading my space—and not the other way around.

  “Well, my sister-in-law called two nights ago—two nights ago!” That would be my father’s brother’s wife, a.k.a. Aunt Marilyn, a.k.a. The Hypochondriac. “She said she had a cold and didn’t want to get us sick.” My mother took a supersize box of Cheerios and stuck it in the pantry. “I said that was very considerate of her, but we’d take our chances.” She rolled her eyes. “And then, suddenly, it was more than a cold, it was probably pneumonia, and she didn’t feel up to entertaining. Well. I can take a hint. So I got on the phone to Southwest. There’s no penalty if you’re over sixty.” She gazed around at the majestic kitchen. “Let me tell you, it’s good to be back in my own house.”

  “Yeah, it must be,” I said.

  I took Jonathan’s note up to my room, shut the door and put on a CD that one of my favorite kids from last year had burned for me (she swore it was legal). Hiding out like this made me feel like a teenager myself. Next thing you knew, I’d be instant messaging Jonathan: I can’t w8 2 c u! In truth, as much as I wanted to see him, as much as I smiled every time I heard his voice on my voice mail, I’d been avoiding him—or, more precisely, avoiding the inevitable moment when I’d have to come clean.

  He’d written his note on a simple white piece of copy paper:

  Natalie,

  I was in the neighborhood (okay, not really) and hoped to catch you since I haven’t been able to reach you on your cell phone. (If I were not so supremely self-confident, I might think you didn’t want to talk to me.) I hope I didn’t upset your mother. I remember what you said about her chasing the UPS man with a paring knife because she thought he was a rapist.

  Jonathan

  Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I called him.

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well . . . when a guy leaves three phone messages for a woman and she doesn’t call back, he usually takes the hint.”

  “Then why did you come to my house?”

  “Because I am especially persistent. Or especially dense. It was my last-ditch effort. I had a couple more planned in case that didn’t work out.”

  “More last-ditch efforts?”

  “Yup. A last, last-ditch effort. And a last, last, last-ditch effort.” He paused. “Unless . . . are you calling to tell me to stop calling? If that’s the case, let me know now before I humiliate myself further.”

  “That’s not the case.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Okay.”

  He asked me to have dinner with him. I couldn’t, of course; I could hardly abandon my parents on their first day home. Besides, I had at least four hours’ worth of grading and lesson planning to do. But I was free Saturday night, I told him—though maybe he could pick me up in a parking lot somewhere.

  seven

  Here is what I planned to say to Jonathan at dinner: “I hope that what I am about to tell you won’t change the way you feel about me. The night we met, I was hating life and feeling bad about myself. I never thought I’d see you again. I had no idea how much I’d like you. I told you some lies, and then one lie built upon another. If you give me another chance, I promise I will never lie to you again.”

  Here is what I actually said to Jonathan: “I guess I thought it was just going to be the two of us at dinner.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’d completely forgotten that I was supposed to have dinner with my dad and Krista. I thought about calling them and saying I was sick, but I really hate to lie. I should have warned you. But I was afraid you’d back out.”

  I would have, but not for the reasons he thought.

  He laughed. “Oh, God. First I leave notes at your house, now I’m introducing you to my parents on our first real date. You’re probably ready to take out a restraining order.”

  I bit my lip and looked out the window.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, his smile fading. “Am I not supposed to make criminal jokes?”

  I smiled—or tried to, anyway. “You can make all the criminal jokes you want. Really.” I shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat of his gigantic truck.

  He noticed my expression and pulled into a shopping center parking lot. He put the truck in park but left the engine running and the air-conditioning at full blast. “Look. If you want me to take you home, I will. I thought we had something going, but maybe I misread your signals.” He shook his head. “Most of the women I meet are waitresses or bartenders. And it’s not that they’re not nice—a lot of them are. But . . . you’re different. You’re just so . . . real.”

  My throat ached with a pent-up wail. “My job—” I said, and then stopped.

  I took a deep breath, but before I’d had a chance to form the right words (as if there were any right words), he said, “Your job is amazing. There aren’t a lot of people who could do that day after day.” We were quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you want me to take you home? I like you. I’ve made that embarrassingly obvious. But if you don’t feel the same way, you don’t have to keep pretending just to spare my feelings.” He smiled wryly. “I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  “I’m not pretending anything as far as my feelings go,” I
whispered. This was my moment to come clean, to fess up, to tell him what I had been pretending. But a funny thing happened. Jonathan leaned forward. And I leaned forward, too, at least until my seat belt snapped into place. I released it with a seductive click.

  His lips were slightly rough, but the skin around them was smooth. He must have shaved right before he picked me up. He tasted of mint and smelled of lemons. My stomach grew warm.

  When we parted, our faces still inches away from each other, he ran a finger along my cheek. “So you aren’t just being nice?”

  “I’m not as nice as you think I am,” I whispered.

  Even without humidity, Krista Pomeroy’s blond hair looked fabulous: smooth yet buoyant. Her highlights looked so natural they had to be fake. She probably had salon expenses the way I have student loans. Her left hand glittered with the kind of gem never simply referred to as a diamond but rather, more bluntly, as “a rock”—though “boulder” might be more apt. She wore a simple coral-colored silk shift that set off her tan just so and delicate pearl earrings that coordinated with the strand around her neck.

  I wore my navy blue skirt that should have been taken up an inch because it hit me at mid-calf, which any women’s magazine will tell you is the most unflattering, leg-shortening length. Up until this moment, I hadn’t cared.

  We met Jonathan’s father and stepmother at the door to Clarke’s, which was located inside the intimate and ever-so-swishy Golden Palms Hotel. In Scottsdale, most good restaurants are located inside hotels, which unsettles me, as if the Phoenix Valley is just a nice place to visit and living here is a kind of extended vacation and not real life at all. Everything is geared toward visitors, as if the several million residents don’t count. Still, I was excited to be eating here; my parents, in the process of working their way through Fodor’s restaurant recommendations, had eaten here with the Gillespies, after which Mrs. Gillespie said to me, “It is so fabulous, you must get a date to take you there.” I didn’t know whether to feel insulted that Mrs. Gillespie didn’t think I could afford to pay my own way or flattered that she’d think I could find a guy willing to spend that kind of money on me. Now I found myself wondering which guy was going to pick up the tab. I couldn’t see Jonathan and his father splitting the bill.