Getting Warmer

by Carol Snow

  She stared at me. “Human feces?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look that closely.”

  “In a paper bag?”

  “Plastic. A baggie. The zipper kind, with a holiday decoration—maple leaves.” She looked at me, awaiting more information. “It was a freezer bag. One quart.” There. I’d said it. Now the security crew could go find Jared and haul his butt off to reform school.

  She asked how he had gotten into the room. I explained that the lock was a little funny, that you had to pull on it a certain way or it didn’t catch. I didn’t mention that Nicolette had locked up for me. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. Besides, I wasn’t really supposed to ask Nicolette to take over my class. I was supposed to go through the “approved channels,” which basically meant talking to the vice principal, who would then talk to Dr. White, who would then talk to Dawna, who would then tell Nicolette to take over my class.

  “How do you know it was Jared?” she asked.

  “I just know,” I said after a pause. “I can tell by the way he looks at me. Like, like he hates me.”

  “We need something more than that,” she said softly. “What did you do with the bag? If we give it to the police, they can probably get some fingerprints off it.”

  “I threw it away.”

  She stared at me. “Why?”

  Why? Because it repulsed me. Because it mocked me. Because it made me feel despised, like a failure. I cleared my throat. “I didn’t think we’d need it.”

  She fluttered her eyes in exasperation. “Don’t you ever watch CSI?”

  My throat hurt from withholding a sob. “Is that a TV show?”

  She laughed, a deep, rich sound. “Oh, Natalie, you’re working too hard. I’m sorry this happened, and if we could catch the kid who did it, he’d be in deep—well, you know.” She smiled wryly. “But without any kind of evidence, we can’t just assume it was Jared. Keep your eyes open. If he does something again, we’ll be ready.”

  “Does something again?” My heart sped up. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.

  I ate lunch with Neil Weinrich. As if that weren’t pathetic enough, I was actually glad to have his companionship. He caught my eye when I walked into the faculty dining room. Jill was sitting with a couple of the history teachers. She looked up when I walked in the door; I looked away. I felt so pathetic, standing there alone with my insulated lunch bag while all the voices around me echoed off the cinderblock walls and the cold tile floors. There were kids who felt like that, kids for whom lunchtime was a daily torture. There’s something peculiar about working with adolescents. Even as you have to be more mature than the average adult—more dignified, less easily amused, a better role model—you can’t help but fall into adolescent patterns. Who’s cool? Who’s not? Where do I fit in? Maybe it’s a case of osmosis. All those hormones. All those insecurities. You can’t help but be affected.

  Neil Weinrich was sitting with a few other math teachers. Generally, math and English teachers don’t mix much, but Neil flashed me a yellow-toothed smile. I smiled back, questioningly, until he motioned for me to join him.

  “Hello, Miss Quackenbush,” he said as I placed my lunch bag across from him. “Do you know Miss Rothstein and Mr. Smith?”

  “Call me Natalie.” They smiled but didn’t tell me to call them by their first names. Miss Rothstein was about my age, with a plain face and a pear-shaped body. She wore a pale pink blouse with navy, pleated trousers, demonstrating even less fashion sense than I had. A small diamond sparkled on her left hand.

  “Pretty ring,” I said. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” She didn’t smile.

  “When’s your wedding?”

  “June eleventh. We wanted April, but we couldn’t get the hall until then.”

  “Hotel rooms will be cheaper,” Mr. Smith said. “Your guests will thank you.” He picked up a tiny carton of milk and took a swig. A line of white liquid dribbled down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand.

  Miss Rothstein scowled. “Nobody’s thanking me. Everybody keeps saying, why can’t you just do it when it’s cool outside? Why can’t you get married someplace with normal weather? Brad—that’s my fiancé—said his brother’s wife told him she isn’t even coming. She said she can’t take the heat. Brad says you just have to let people do what they’re going to do and not let it get to you.” With a plastic fork, Miss Rothstein stabbed at her Tupperware bowl full of salad: lettuce, cucumber, radish, tomato. No meat. No cheese. No dressing. Miss Rothstein had a wedding dress to fit into. I pitied her students. As a rule, hungry women are not nice people.

  I asked a few more questions about Miss Rothstein’s wedding. (“Just one attendant—my sister;” “Maui;” “Pachelbel’s Canon;” “chicken, salmon or portobello mushrooms in case someone’s a vegetarian. But the only vegetarian I know of is Brad’s brother’s wife, and now she says she’s not even coming.”) The men chewed their lunches without expression—unless “complete and utter boredom” can be considered an expression. Finally, Neil interrupted a discussion of shoe-dying (which Miss Rothstein and I agreed was so twentieth century) to say, “Miss Quackenbush, have you performed your student’s on-site evaluation yet?”

  “Huh?” I articulated. Then, remembering (oh, yeah) Neil had once said something (that I had ignored) about observing Robert at work and providing an evaluation. “I’ve performed the site visit,” I said (I had stopped by Suzette’s to pick up the pumpkin pie, after all), “but I haven’t filled out the form.” (Where had I put that stinkin’ form, anyway?)

  “So, you’ve been on a catering assignment?”

  “Uh, no. But I’ve seen him working in the kitchen. The boy can make a mean pie, I’ll tell you that much.”

  Neil scrunched up his face, pretending to think, pretending to consider letting me get away with my half-assed evaluation, until—no. That wouldn’t do. He had standards, after all. “I’m sooooorry, Miss Quackenbush,” he said, looking genuinely pained. Or at least like he was trying to look genuinely pained. “But I must insist that you visit your student on site.”

  “On . . . what site?”

  “Well, he’s working for a caterer, isn’t he? So you should observe him at a catering site.”

  “Oh. Okay.” That meant I’d have to call Suzette.

  “We couldn’t get the caterer we wanted,” Miss Rothstein interjected. “For our wedding.”

  “No?”

  “She was booked until August.”

  thirty

  As luck would have it, Robert was working a party later that week—a holiday cookie exchange, Suzette informed me when I called her. I paused, trying to figure out where a caterer would fit into such an event. “But I thought the point of a cookie exchange was for people to bake.”

  Suzette laughed. “In our mothers’ day, people had time for that sort of thing. Most of my clients, though, they lead such busy lives—juggling family, careers and volunteer work—that they no longer have time to bake. This way, they can enjoy an afternoon among friends and leave with an assortment of home-baked goods without having to waste a day slaving in the kitchen.”

  Suzette sounded like she was reading from a brochure. Perhaps she was.

  To reach the party, I had to bypass a gatehouse. Unlike Robert’s, this one wasn’t just for show. “And what is the name of the family you are visiting?” the security attendant asked, his eyes narrowing at my dusty Civic.

  “Um, I don’t actually know. I just have the address.” The wrought iron gate ahead of me remained firmly closed. I shifted in my seat. I really had to pee.

  He picked up a phone, his eyes never leaving my face, and punched in some numbers. “A Miss . . . Quackenbush is here to see you?” After a pause, he covered the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry, but they’re not expecting you,” he told me.

  I sighed in exasperation. “Just tell them I’m with the caterer.”

  His face lit up. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place?”
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  The house was big. No, that’s not right. My parents’ house was big. This house was huge. Looming. Impressive. It was taupe stucco with a coral-colored tile roof. The yard was landscaped with pink gravel, mesquite and paloverde trees, cacti and succulents. In short, it looked like every other house in the Valley of the Sun, only bigger.

  The woman who answered the door was neatly dressed in a white polo shirt and khaki pants. Her hair was black and shiny, her skin a light brown. A small child clung to her legs. “Mrs. Meyers?” I asked (the gatekeeper had told me her name once he’d established I was part of “the help”).

  She smiled shyly and shook her head. “No, missus. She back there.” She motioned beyond the vast living room with its mile-high ceilings. “In the cucina.”

  “Gracias,” I said, following the warm, sweet, buttery smells.

  The kitchen was bigger than any apartment I had ever lived in. It had one of those built-in fridges that blends in with the cabinets, all done in a distressed red finish (which was a lot more attractive than it sounds). The countertops and islands (there were two, one of which held a commercial-grade stove) were brown granite, the floors a wide-plank wood that was as handsome as it was impractical. Around the kitchen—in the display nooks, on the shelves, on top of the cabinets (which allowed plenty of room due to yet another towering ceiling)—were brightly colored Mexican objects: enormous vases, donkey statues, woven baskets.

  Jill would kill for this kitchen, I thought involuntarily. Instead, it belonged to a woman who didn’t even bake her own cookies.

  The women were congregated on the far end of the kitchen—in what would be called a great room if there weren’t an acre-sized living room on one side and, most likely, a family room somewhere beyond. The women were blond beyond statistical probability, mostly thin, clad in skirts and trousers that draped just so. They favored short-sleeved, form-fitting turtlenecks and gold jewelry.

  I spotted Robert immediately (not hard, since he was the only male there). He wore a crisp white shirt and black trousers. He was taking a cookie sheet out of one of the ovens (there were three). “Mm,” I said, walking over and gazing at the treats. “What are they?”

  “White chocolate macadamia nut. With cranberries.” He set the tray down on the countertop and pulled off his oven mitts. “It was my idea to bake them here. Suzette was going to just have me bring over the trays and pass them out. I’ve got ten different kinds of dough here.” A timer dinged. He stuck the mitts back on and headed for another oven.

  “No, it’s much better to bake them here.” I was already writing his evaluation in my mind. Innovative thinker. Entrepreneurial spark. “The smells are heavenly.” I was sucking up, perhaps too obviously. Robert and I had been cordial since our spat on Monday, but we hadn’t really made up, even though I had twice offered to come in early. Maybe next week, he’d said.

  Robert set the second cookie sheet on the countertop. “Mexican wedding cookies?” I asked.

  “Close,” he said. “Pecan sandies. The Mexican wedding cookies are out already.”

  “Where’s Suzette?”

  “At the office. She said she might stop by later. Bella is here.” I looked back at the women clustered on and around the overstuffed sofas in the great-ish room. A twenty-something woman with dark, slicked-back hair flitted among them bearing a tray of cookie samples. She was dressed like Robert, in black slacks and a white shirt. I recognized her from Suzette’s kitchen, but she had wisely removed her eyebrow stud for today’s event.

  A tall, slim woman with bright red hair came over. She wore a green velvet top and cream-colored trousers. “You must be Mrs. Quackenbush. I’m sorry I didn’t know your name when they called from the gatehouse.” She smiled warmly and held out her perfectly manicured hand. “I’m Belinda Meyers.”

  “Call me Natalie,” I said, thinking: since you’re, like, my age. “Thanks for letting me stop by.” The doorbell rang. “Um, is there a bathroom I can use?”

  The bathroom Belinda Meyers directed me to was occupied, so I wandered beyond the kitchen; in a house this size another bathroom couldn’t be far. The room just beyond the kitchen was what a real estate agent would probably call a Billiards Room: a space entirely devoted to holding a pool table. A mounted television loomed in an upper corner; a slider led out to the backyard. I could see a boulder-rimmed swimming pool and spa, a built-in barbecue, a beehive fireplace, and views of the golf course. Of course, golf course views meant that golfers had corresponding views of the Meyerses in their bathing suits. No wonder Belinda stayed so thin.

  Failing to discover a toilet off the game room, I continued down the hall past the office (his) and craft room (hers) until I hit the theater room. In the great-ish room there had been a big screen TV. Here there was a huge screen TV flanked by bookshelves. The carpet was oatmeal-colored and spotless. The tan sectional couch was so huge and hugged the curved walls so perfectly that it had to have been custom-made.

  There were no books on the bookshelves, at least not that anyone would read (Phoenix: A Pictoral History; A Day in the Life of Russia; Southwest Gardens—you get the picture). This was where they kept their family photos, presumably so that they could gaze at them during commercials. Here was Belinda Meyers smiling on her wedding day, her red hair glowing against her veil, her older but still-handsome husband squeezing her shoulders and looking far too relaxed. Here was the small child I had seen earlier, leaning over a white picket fence. Here was the child during the same studio session, laughing on a rocking horse. Here were the three Meyerses dipping their toes in the ocean during some tropical vacation. And here, on a lower shelf, in a little frame, were two other children, older, guarded, not quite so cute. They were standing outside, the light glaring off their faces. They were squinting, their smiles forced. The girl looked to be on the verge of adolescence. Her sandy hair was long and falling in her face. Her legs looked too long for her body. The boy was a couple of years younger, his hair the same color—as if it couldn’t decide to be brown or blond. He had a bit of roundness left to his cheeks. He leaned toward his sister as if looking for comfort.

  Is this how it was for Jonathan, I wondered, a stray snapshot of him serving as the only regular presence in his father’s life?

  When I returned to the kitchen, Robert was cutting sugar cookies into tiny, mouse-bite-sized pieces. “The ladies don’t like to eat whole cookies,” he explained.

  “I’m proud of you,” I blurted. “For how hard you’re working. For the job you’re doing.”

  He looked up at me, colored slightly, and smiled.

  “Natalie?”

  I turned around, and there she was, even blonder, thinner and better dressed than the other women in the room. “Krista?”

  “How do you know Belinda?” she asked.

  “I don’t,” I said. “I’m here for Robert.” He flashed one of his luminous smiles and held out a cookie tray.

  “No, thank you,” she said, patting her concave tummy. I thought about her miscarriage. Robert whisked the tray off to the sofas.

  “Robert is one of my students,” I explained. “Doing a catering internship. I have to write an evaluation.”

  Krista’s eyes widened. “Does Suzette know?”

  “Of course.” Then realization dawned. “He’s not a prisoner, he’s a high school student.”

  “You left the prison?”

  I tried to think fast. I opened my mouth to say something about being scared off by the possibility of a riot, and then I shut it again. I shook my head. Stop, I thought. Stop. “I was never at the prison. It was just a story I made up. I’m a high school teacher.”

  “Ah,” she said, leaving her mouth open for a moment as she let this information sink in.

  “I thought Jonathan would have told you.”

  “Jonathan doesn’t tell me much.”

  “I can’t blame him for being angry,” I said. “My friend and I—well, sort of my ex-friend—we did this thing where we’d meet guys in bars and make
up stories. It was incredibly juvenile and twisted.”

  She laughed. “I used to do that.”

  “Really?”

  “Everybody did. I mean, you’ve had a few cosmopolitans, you’re feeling bored . . . I used to say I was a flight attendant. Or in the FBI Witness Protection Program because I’d ratted out a mob boss.”

  “One time we pretended to be polygamists.”

  She laughed. “If a guy’s drunk enough, he’ll believe anything.”

  My smile faded. “Jonathan wasn’t even drunk, though. And I let it go on way too long.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, you did. But Jonathan . . . I don’t know. He’s dated a lot of women, but with you, he was different . . . the way he looked at you, the way he talked about you.” She smiled gently. “Jack and I thought you were a keeper.”

  “He’s got Suzette now, though,” I said miserably.

  “Suzette? They dated a long time ago, but I don’t think there’s anything going on now.”

  “She came to Thanksgiving dinner,” I whimpered.

  “Thanksgiving? She didn’t come to dinner—she cooked the dinner. Though I must admit, she lingered a little longer than was necessary.”

  “You mean, she was just there delivering the food?”

  Krista’s nose twitched. “Okay, it’s pathetic, but I’ve never learned to cook a turkey. Or anything, for that matter.”

  “No, no—it’s okay!” I brightened. “It’s just, the way she’s been talking about him, I thought there was something going on.”

  She shook her head. “As far as I know, there hasn’t been anybody since you.” She tilted her head to one side. “Maybe it’ll still work out.”

  My shoulders sagged. “I lied to him. Repeatedly. That’s no way to start a relationship.”

  Krista plucked a green bottle of Evian from a row on the counter and twisted it open. She took a swig and replaced the cap. “When I met Jonathan’s father, I told him I’d only been married once.” She wrenched the bottle cap off again and downed some more water.