Getting Warmer

by Carol Snow

  It was Shelly. “Mom? Dad? I’ve been calling for days, and I keep getting the machine, but I haven’t—you didn’t return my messages.” Her voice cracked. The answering machine was turned up so loud, it hurt my ears.

  “Shelly called?” my mother said.

  “Oh, yeah,” I muttered. “I meant to tell you, but—”

  “Shhh!” my mother hushed.

  “Frederick left me,” Shelly continued, letting out a sob. “I really need to talk to you, and—”

  Without thinking, my mother sprang out of her chair in the direction of the phone, collapsing the instant her full weight hit her ankle.

  “Shit!” She sprawled on the ground. My father pushed out of his chair, making a loud squeak on the ceramic floor. “Get the phone!” my mother shrieked as he reached down to her. “Get the goddamned phone!”

  My father grabbed the receiver just as Shelly was whimpering her good-byes.

  “Shelly? It’s your father,” he said, as if she wouldn’t know. The answering machine continued to broadcast at an ear-wounding volume.

  “Oh, Dad!” Then Shelly really let loose with her crying. I glanced at Jonathan. He looked alarmed, like: she told me her mother was nuts, but her sister, too? Is it genetic?

  Finally, Shelly composed herself long enough to wail, “Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

  “We were eating soup,” my father said.

  “For the past four days?”

  “Do you want to talk to your mother?” my father asked.

  “Frederick left me!” Shelly burst into sobs anew.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, honey. I’m really sorry.” He glanced nervously at my mother, who was making her way across the floor on all fours. Jonathan leaped out of his chair to help her up. She held out her hand for the phone as my father scurried across the room to pass it over. Jonathan continued to hold her up. “Maybe it’s for the best,” my father said as a way of closing the conversation. “Your mother never thought Frederick was right for you.”

  “We both thought it!” my mother yelled, taking the portable phone and holding it out between them. “You said he was irresponsible and selfish! You said it!”

  Blinking nervously, Jonathan helped ease her back over and into her chair.

  My mother put the phone to her ear. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart. Just tell me.”

  “Frederick left me,” Shelly said for the third time. And then, the kicker: “Because I’m going to have a buh-buh . . . baby!”

  “Ohmigod!” My mother’s voice grew high and breathy. “A baby! You’re going to have a baby!” She dropped an octave. “And he left you? When you needed him most? Just left you?” Back up an octave. “But—a baby! I’m going to be a grandmother!” At that, she broke down, her sobs mixing with Shelly’s. Together, they sounded like a pack of coyotes that had just caught a bunny.

  fifteen

  I couldn’t believe my luck. I didn’t have to convince Jonathan that my mother was losing her mind; she did all the work for me. He left shortly after my mother got off the phone, thanking my parents for their hospitality and tactfully saying that we probably needed some time alone as a family right now.

  That night I went online to check out the Arizona Department of Corrections. They were hiring, though not English teachers, specifically. Well, not any teachers. But if I could get a job there—just something part-time, temporary and not overtly life-threatening—I could honestly tell Jonathan that I worked at the prison. And then I could quit the prison job, claiming burnout, and begin work at Agave High School.

  And we could begin anew. And I would never, ever lie to him again. I mean, after my mother had a miraculous recovery from Alzheimer’s—which, as it would turn out, wasn’t Alzheimer’s at all but merely an allergic reaction to black mold encountered in a cut-rate motel room at the Grand Canyon.

  I was feeling high on life’s possibilities when I walked into my Adventures class on Monday and saw Robert’s seat empty. That wasn’t necessarily significant; until Katerina came along, Robert rarely made it to class on time, and never on Monday. I dove into my marketing lesson and tried not to glance at the clock.

  Over the weekend, I had assigned the kids, once again, to watch television commercials and identify the target market. The first time I’d tried, it had been hopeless.

  “What was the commercial for?” I’d asked Marisol.

  “A Volkswagen.”

  “Which model?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is it a Passat? Or a Beetle? What kind?”

  A pause. “I didn’t know we were supposed to write that down.”

  “That’s okay—no big deal. It was a Volkswagen. Good enough. And what was the television show you were watching?”

  Another pause. “I forget.”

  “Did you . . . write it down?”

  She hunched over her desk, her hair falling in her face. “I didn’t know we were supposed to.”

  This time, I’d created a worksheet: program name, program time, network, product advertised, and, the grand finale, the target market. (Or, as I’d put on the sheet, “Who do they think/hope is watching the show?”)

  First, I called on Cherie. “I couldn’t do the homework,” she shrugged. “We have TiVo, so I always just, like, skip the commercials.”

  “Couldn’t you have not skipped the commercials?”

  She looked genuinely surprised. “I didn’t think of that.”

  Next, I tried Racquel, who had actually completed the assignment. She had watched The Real World on MTV at one o’clock in the morning.

  “What were you doing watching television at one A.M.?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “My brother wouldn’t let me use the Xbox.”

  The product advertised? Red Bull (presumably to help kids stay up until three o’clock).

  “Okay,” I said, ready to drive home the point. “MTV is showing The Real World at one o’clock in the morning. Red Bull pays for air time. Who do they think is watching, Racquel? Who is their target market?”

  She looked at me with rare confidence. “People who watch TV,” she said.

  Next, after giving Racquel a self-esteem boost—“Yes, very good, because if no one was watching, no one would see the ad, right?”—I asked, “But to take it even further, who do they think is watching? Do they think your parents are watching?” The kids snickered. “Do they think I’m watching?” They snickered again, which made me feel really, really old. “No, they think you’re watching. And you, and you, and you. And how old are you? Are you sixty?” And so on.

  I glanced at the clock (ten minutes in, and still no Robert), and moved on to the other students. The last one I called on, when the class was almost over (and still no Robert), was Steven, who, dear boy, had watched the news with his grandmother: six o’clock on NBC. Between stories about a convenience store robbery in Gilbert (family-owned business, family didn’t speak much English, came from a country that started with a “V”) and an arson incident in Carefree (really big, expensive house under construction, neighbor next door smelled smoke, called 911 but it was too late, the house had already burned beyond repair, neighbor said it was really sad when you couldn’t feel safe in your neighborhood anymore), Steven had watched a commercial for Viagra.

  I should have seen this one coming. I expected laughter. There was none. Shock? None. I took a deep breath. “And what’s the target market for . . . this product? Who did they hope was watching?”

  Steven wrinkled his nose. “People who like to take baths outside?”

  That was as good a time as any to wrap things up and assign the next day’s homework. Which left us with four more minutes to spare. Every great teacher knows that class time is precious and you shouldn’t waste an instant.

  “I guess you can just start on your homework,” I said.

  At least this way they’d do their homework, or at least some of it.

  “Has anyone seen Robert since last week?” I asked as casual
ly as I could. They looked at me blankly. A few kids shook their heads.

  “I heard he couldn’t read,” Marisol said. “That he went out for that play and he didn’t know what the paper said.”

  The kids stopped rummaging in their backpacks. Their heads shot up.

  “Oh, please,” I said, rolling my eyes for effect. “This is how rumors get started. Robert tripped over a couple of lines because he was nervous. Stage fright. I guess he’s just sick or something.” I bent my head down to look at some papers. The kids went back to their backpacks. I pretended to believe they were looking for paper and pencils and not their cell phones.

  When I had a free period, I went down to the office to tell Jill about my weekend. She was standing next to Nicolette’s desk, leaning on her elbows. Nicolette looked pale and tired. Her hair was lank. A hangover, I assumed.

  Jill stood up when she saw me. “Nicolette and Rodney went to Vegas this weekend.”

  “Really? I went to Sedona. With Jonathan.”

  “You’re not getting it,” Jill said. “Nicolette and Rodney went to Vegas.”

  “I get it. Casinos. Cigarette smoke. Hookers. Vegas.” I smiled suggestively. “Sedona was incredible.”

  Jill rolled her eyes. “Show her your hand, Nic.”

  Nicolette held out her left hand and forced a smile.

  It took me a minute. “You didn’t.” The band was white gold and speckled with diamond chips. “You did?” I looked back at her face. I realized why she looked so drawn. She wasn’t hungover; she had simply neglected to apply makeup this morning. “But you wanted a big wedding. The bridesmaids were going to wear teal.”

  Nicolette began to twist the ring around her finger. “All that really matters is that me and Rodney love each other. And I’d changed my mind about the bridesmaids’ dresses. They were going to wear ice blue.” She burst into tears.

  Jill squatted down and assumed her professional tone of voice. “You acted impulsively. You can get the marriage annulled.”

  “You mean, like, divorced? No! I love Rodney!”

  Jill took her hand. “Why are you so unhappy, then?”

  Nicolette paused to take a scratchy institutional tissue from the brown and tan box on her desk. She blew her nose, dabbing into the nostrils to make sure she hadn’t left any residual snot. She threw the used tissue into her metal wastebasket and took Jill’s hand. Jill, to her credit, didn’t flinch.

  Finally, Nicolette spoke, almost inaudibly. “Nordstrom.”

  “What?”

  “I was gonna register at Nordstrom this week. Now it’s too late.”

  In her office, Jill filled me in on the details. Rodney had planned the whole thing. In front of the Bellagio, while the fountains swayed to “Singing in the Rain,” he had fallen on one knee and whipped out a little velvet box. He said he’d never loved anyone like this before, not even his second wife. He had already booked the chapel, ordered the flowers: everything. He even took Nicolette to a boutique at Caesar’s Palace, where he bought her a $2,400 dress. The service was tasteful: no Elvis impersonators or show-girls. The flowers were genuine silk.

  When Nicolette told her parents, she expected them to be happy. More to the point, she expected them to spring for a reception. But her mother kept saying, “I didn’t get to see my oldest daughter get married!” And her father kept saying, “At least we didn’t have to pay for it.”

  “She could send out announcements,” I said. “She’d probably score some gifts.”

  “I know, I said that. But all she kept saying was, ‘I want my fucking wedding!’”

  “Oh, my gosh. Did Dr. White hear her?”

  “No, just the president of the computer club. He’d stopped by to drop off a form.”

  “It’s probably good for him.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  sixteen

  When I got home after school, I found my mother sitting on the couch, her bandaged foot on the coffee table, propped up on Southwestern print pillows. She was reading. I leaned over to check the title: What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

  “Oh, Mommy, are you going to give me a little sister?”

  “Funny.” She glanced up without smiling. “Would you believe your sister hasn’t even started taking folic acid?”

  I shrugged.

  “I can understand why she didn’t take it before she knew she was pregnant. It wasn’t like she was anticipating a baby. But now . . . tsk.” She shook her head and went back to reading.

  I wandered over to the kitchen and surveyed the overflowing fruit bowl. After pressing the flesh of a still-firm nectarine, I chose a pluot, which is a cross between a plum and an apricot. My mother buys fruit—or sends my father to buy fruit—that nobody has ever heard of. In the summer, it’s: “That’s not a plum, that’s a pluot.” In the winter: “Anybody can see that’s a tangelo. It’s got a little bumpy thing on the end. Oranges don’t have that.”

  I bit into the fruit. It was sweet and juicy. I was eating a lot better now that my parents were home. I wandered back to the sitting area. “Isn’t Shelly the one who should be reading that book?”

  “We just sent her a copy from Amazon. She should get it Friday.”

  “And the folic acid?”

  She turned the page. “I had your father FedEx a bottle today.”

  “They do have stores in Rhode Island, you know.”

  She pursed her lips at something she had just read. “Do you think your sister knows enough not to eat sushi?”

  “If Shelly doesn’t know enough not to get pregnant, she probably doesn’t know enough not to eat sushi.”

  My mother put down the book and let out a giant sigh. “What Shelly needs—what Shelly has always needed—is a man who will take care of her.” She shook her head in disgust. “Instead she’s wasted the best years of her life—the best years—with that immature, self-centered, self-righteous . . .” Here she mumbled something that sounded an awful lot like “son of a bitch.”

  Here is all you really need to know about Frederick. He is thirty-one, three years younger than my sister. My mother thinks that’s significant. “Maybe if she’d find someone her own age, she wouldn’t always have to be the adult in the relationship.” He’s a bit on the short side and not fat, really, but soft and pale, utterly lacking in muscle tone. He has a pleasant enough face; if he took to jogging in the sun every day, he might approach attractive.

  But the only thing that truly matters about Frederick, the reason Shelly has devoted six years of her life to him, is this: Frederick is brilliant. Frederick is working on his second PhD, in biostatistics and epidemiology. (I am so not-brilliant that I don’t even know what that means.) His first PhD was in molecular biology. I’m not entirely sure what that is, either, but at least I can pronounce it.

  Shelly thinks Frederick will cure cancer some day. Pretty much everybody else thinks Frederick will just stay in school until he runs out of biology graduate programs, at which point he will retire to the basement and devote the rest of his life to reading back issues of The New Yorker.

  “Your sister wants you to call her.”

  I looked at the bulging tote I had hauled home from school. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  My mother glared at me. “Your sister needs our support right now.”

  She answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, Shelly.”

  “Hi.”

  I waited for her to talk. She didn’t. “Mom said you wanted me to call you.” That didn’t come out quite right.

  “I never said that.” She cleared her throat. “But, um, it’s nice that you did.”

  “So . . .” I said.

  “So . . .”

  “How are you?”

  She snorted. “Well, let’s see. The man I thought I loved is a fucking asshole. I feel like I’m going to puke, like, twenty-two hours a day. And I have no idea how I’m going to support a baby on my crap-ass income.”

  “But other than that, Mrs. Linco
ln, how did you like the play?”

  She didn’t laugh. “I never even thought I’d be able to get pregnant. My periods were so irregular, every doctor I went to see said my hormones were out of balance.” That was news to me, though it did explain a lot. “And that piece-of-shit Frederick, he thinks I did this to trap him. That’s what he said. ‘You’re trying to trap me.’ Fucking, piece-of-shit asshole.” She blew her nose.

  “Like he’s such a prize,” I said.

  She was quiet. And, then, a whisper: “He’s really brilliant, you know.”

  seventeen

  Robert lived in a one-car garage townhome in the Sonora Sunset town houses. The complex was about as far as you could get from Agave High and still be within the required limits. An unarmed octogenarian in a security uniform manned a tiny gatehouse.

  “I’m here to see Robert Baumgartner,” I told him. “Unit B seventy-six.” He gave me directions without calling Robert or checking my identification, more Wal-Mart greeter than gatekeeper. Still, his presence allowed Sonora Sunset’s residents to boast that they lived in a gated community, which mattered at least as much as personal safety.

  The townhomes, rather predictably, were white stucco with red roofs, their garages like row after row of great, yawning mouths. Here and there, silver-haired seniors in pastel track suits strode by, fulfilling their daily power walk requirements before the sun got too hot. Mostly, though, the complex was quiet, even by Arizona standards. Unit B seventy-six was a middle unit, near the back of the development. A tidy white car sat in the driveway, the garage door closed. Robert’s clunker was nowhere to be seen.

  I didn’t really expect him to open the door; it was early, after all, not yet 7 A.M. I’d stopped by on the way to school, hoping I could encourage Robert to return to class. If he was here, he’d probably be sleeping. Still, it was worth a shot.