Getting Warmer

by Carol Snow

  “Now, now!” Mr. Sandler laughed. “We haven’t even made an offer yet!”

  “The great room is spectacular,” Mrs. Sandler murmured.

  Once they left, I drank the champagne while soaking in my parents’ oversized bathtub. Vanilla-scented candles burned. Piano music flowed from my portable CD player. I pushed a button with my big toe, and the Jacuzzi jets began to whir. The water churned and swirled, foaming the bubble bath like a meringue. Internally, I chanted the home spa mantras. Pamper yourself. Relax. Jets pounded water between my shoulder blades and against my hips. Breathe deeply. Let the tension fall away.

  This was pathetic. But the champagne was surprisingly good. I poured another glass. And then another. The glass was tiny.

  Jonathan answered his phone on the first ring. “I was just drinking champagne in the bathtub,” I blurted into the phone on my mother’s nightstand. “My parents are moving. They hired a stager, and she put champagne in the bathroom, and I just drank it. Do you know what a stager is? How are you?”

  He paused for so long, I began to think he’d hung up. “I’m okay,” he said finally. “I don’t know what a stager is.”

  “A stager is someone who makes a house look good so it will sell. But it’s more than that. She sets the house up so people can imagine themselves living there and having this perfect, make-believe life. Like, they’re going to squeeze fresh orange juice every morning and drink champagne in the bathtub. And they’re going to play backgammon in the living room instead of watching the big TV. Have you ever seen CSI?”

  “What? Um, no.”

  “Me, neither. I thought I was the only one.” Nervously, I rubbed my parents’ scratchy bedspread. Kim had covered my parents’ king-sized bed with some burlap-like fabric. I couldn’t imagine sleeping under something so rough. “I saw Krista last week. At a party. Except I wasn’t really at the party. I mean I was at the party, but I wasn’t at the party. I was just there to see how Robert was doing on his internship. He’s doing great. And I really appreciate that you set the whole thing up. Did Krista tell you she had seen me?”

  “No.”

  “It was good to see her. I mean, I enjoyed talking to her. She said—this is kind of funny—she said she thought I was a keeper. For you. I told her it was my fault things didn’t work out. But she said maybe they still would.”

  I waited for Jonathan to say something. He didn’t.

  “But I guess she didn’t tell you any of this,” I said.

  “Krista left my father.”

  Now it was my turn to be speechless. “What?” I finally gasped.

  “Over the weekend.”

  “But I just saw her!” I said, the way you do when someone dies suddenly. “But—why? They seemed happy.”

  He sighed. “They always seem happy. My father and whoever he’s married to at any given time. Usually he does the leaving. Maybe Krista just beat him to the punch. Or maybe he’s just getting older.”

  “Do you want to talk about it? I mean, maybe we could get together. And talk about it. You could come over. You should see my room. It’s all done up in cowboy stuff.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “When I said you should see my room, I didn’t mean—what I meant was, I’d just like to see you. To talk to you. And, maybe, help you. With your father, I mean.”

  “I don’t need help with my father. I’m not upset. I’m not even surprised. With my father, breakups aren’t a case of if, they’re a case of when.”

  “Like father, like son?” I said before my inebriated internal censors had a chance to stop me.

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  I didn’t make any more phone calls that weekend, nor did I drink any more champagne. I left the empty bottle in the ice bucket; no one would notice.

  I resolved to stop thinking about Jonathan and simply concentrate on my work, but it wasn’t easy. On Sunday night, with my stack of student papers graded, my lesson plans prepared, I allowed myself a moment’s weakness and Googled Jonathan, even as I recognized that this was where all of my problems had started. Had they, though? All along, I had assumed that things would have been fine if, after our first meeting, I confessed to Jonathan that I’d been putting him on at Route 66. He would have laughed it off. Right? Then again, maybe not. Maybe if I had come clean at the beginning, our affair would have been cut that much shorter.

  Online, there were no new mentions of Jonathan. I found the old picture of him and Krista at the benefit. How could I ever have thought they were married? She is all glamour, shining in the camera’s flash. He stands apart from her, shoulders angled slightly away, hands in his pockets: the lonely stepchild.

  Once I’d exhausted all of the references to Jonathan Pomeroy, I indulged in a bit of cyber-narcissism. “Natalie Quackenbush,” I typed into the search line.

  The first listing was for my neglected school Web page. There were a couple more mentions of me in relation to Agave: an old PTA newsletter introducing new faculty, a dated school e-newspaper (there was no print version) announcing audition details for Romeo and Jules. My name popped up on my college alumni site; I’d sent in a letter when I’d moved to Arizona on the off chance some of my old friends might want to get in touch with me (as yet, they hadn’t).

  And then I saw it: i hate ms quackenbush. I blinked at the screen. Surely there was another Ms. Quackenbush. A sloppy accountant who caused an audit. A careless hairdresser who left the peroxide on too long.

  I double-clicked.

  i hate ms quackenbush. she is the biggest bitch in school. she is

  mean and stupid. i hope she gets fired, i hope her house burns

  down, i hope she gets bitten by a snake.

  i wish i had another teacher. i wish i had mr. hansen, but i

  can’t because he got fired even though he was a much better

  teacher than ms quackenbush.

  i hate ms quackenbush i hate ms quackenbush i hate ms

  quackenbush.

  she can eat shit.

  i hope she dies.

  thirty-three

  There would be no hysteria this time. No name-calling. No reptiles.

  Monday morning I put on my charcoal gray suit (with the pants) and stopped by the front office. After checking Dr. White’s schedule, I had Dawna assign an appointment slot during my free period.

  There would be no unfounded accusations. No lawsuit fears. My behavior would be above reproach.

  “I think we can catch him this time,” I said, clutching the sheet I had printed from my computer.

  “Catch who?” Dr. White asked.

  “Jared.” I passed her the paper and stood on the far side of her chrome desk, trying to read her expression. My heart was racing. My face felt warm.

  Finally, she put the paper down. She looked up slowly. “Goodness.”

  “If we can trace the computer—isn’t there some way to do that? If we can figure out where Jared’s blogging from, we can catch him.”

  Dr. White held my gaze. “This is a very serious offense. You have every right to be frightened. And angry. But we don’t know that Jared did this.”

  “Of course he did! He’s evil! Nobody else would write these things about me!” I burst into tears. So much for no hysteria.

  She came around from the other side of her desk. She was at least six inches taller than me. I thought she was going to chastise me, tell me to get a grip, to be more professional.

  Instead, she hugged me. I hugged her back, soaking her green silk jacket with my tears. She was softer than she looked, almost squishy. “This is so hard,” I blubbered. “Why is this so hard?”

  Dr. White patted my back gently. “My first year of teaching, I used to go home from school every day and cry.”

  “But this is my second year of teaching.”

  “True. By my second year, I was down to only two or three good cries a week.”

  “Does it ever get easy?”

  “Easy? No. But it gets easier. And it
gets to be joyful. And incredibly rewarding. Believe me, Natalie, you’ll never find a job half as fun as teaching.”

  I nodded through my tears and pretended to believe her.

  There were no computer geniuses on staff at Agave. There were, however, a few students who had been suspended for “illegal systems entry.” According to Dr. White, Tyler Farrell was the most talented hacker by far.

  “How good can he be if you caught him?” I asked. By now Dr. White had retreated to the far side of her desk, while I sat on a chair opposite.

  “A friend ratted him out after he bragged about changing his grades. Like all tragic heroes, Tyler had a fatal flaw—his ego.” She paused for a minute, tapping her pen on her desk. “Or maybe his fatal flaw would be his utter lack of conscience.”

  “No,” I said, dabbing my nose. Dr. White kept a tissue box on her desk. I wasn’t the first person to fall apart in here. I cleared the phlegm from my throat. “A fatal flaw, by definition, is what destroys the hero. Tyler’s amorality didn’t get in the way of his computer hacking. In fact, it probably helped. What brought him down was the bragging. So, his ego’s the flaw.”

  “You’re right,” she sighed, leaning back. “I’m rusty.” Dr. White had been an English teacher for fifteen years before going into administration.

  Tyler Farrell was well over six feet tall, pear-shaped and slack-muscled. He wore gray nylon shorts that fell below his knees and a black T-shirt that read, BYTE ME. His hair was carrot orange, his skin luminescent white dotted here and there with bright red pimples. Stick this kid in the sun for ten minutes and he’d burn. No wonder he spent his time in shuttered rooms, preferring the cyber world to reality. The real world could give him melanoma. Had Tyler grown up in Seattle instead of Scottsdale, his whole life might have been different.

  Ignoring the chair Dr. White offered, Tyler stood hunched over the computer behind her desk. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have serious back problems in twenty years. With fingers so fast they blurred, Tyler typed my name into a search engine and pulled up the awful entry. I held my breath, afraid that he would laugh.

  Instead, he moaned in disgust. “Oh, man, this is pathetic.”

  “It is.” I smiled cautiously, encouraged by the affirmation. Tyler understood that I was a nice teacher.

  He grunted. “I mean—Xanga? Man. This kid’s on the boards with the girls eating laxatives and writing bad poetry about their boyfriends. You ever read that crap? Pathetic. He could’ve set up his own Web page, had a free-standing blog at least. It only takes a few minutes to get it going. Who’s gonna dig through Xanga?”

  There was a knock on the door: Jill. Dr. White had left a message on her voice mail. I had hoped she wouldn’t get it until after I’d left; the bell would ring in five minutes.

  “What’s up?” she said. Then, spying Tyler: “Wow. It must be serious if Dr. White let you on her machine.”

  Tyler’s shoulders tightened. He didn’t turn around. Jill caught my eye. “Passive aggressive,” she mouthed. I smiled in spite of myself.

  Dr. White said, “Natalie looked herself up on the computer.” She motioned to her machine. “She found this.”

  Jill’s mouth twitched. “You Googled yourself?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Just wanted to see where I lived, what I was doing. We’ve been out of touch.”

  “Oh, my God,” Jill said, peering at the computer screen. Tyler edged away from her. “This kid’s got serious problems. You think it’s—” Her eyes flicked over to Tyler. “You think it’s the kid who you’d think it would be? The kid with the dysfunctional family who has a history of emotional aggression?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think it’s Jared.”

  “We’ve asked Tyler to help us identify the blogger,” Dr. White said. “Until we have any further information, we’re not going to make any assumptions. Natalie has over a hundred students. It could be anyone.”

  “No, it couldn’t.” I shook my head. “The whole no-capitals thing is misleading. Look at the comma usage. This kid knows his punctuation. That rules out at least two-thirds of my students.”

  Jill put her hand on Tyler’s arm. He edged even closer to the corner of the room. If she pushed him much farther, he’d have no place left to go. “I’m proud of you, Tyler,” Jill said. “This time you’re on the side of the angels.”

  “Dr. White said that if I help her out, she’ll reduce my school probation,” Tyler mumbled.

  For the rest of the day, I scanned the eyes of all of my students who had mastered comma usage. I failed to detect any hatred. It’s not that these kids thought I was the greatest thing since iPod phones; they just didn’t think much about me at all. I was She Who Assigns Homework; She Who Gives a Final Grade; She Who Makes Me Read Boring Books.

  Due to the schedule rotation, I didn’t have my honors class, which was a relief. I felt oddly frightened of seeing Jared, of discovering the depths of his cruelty.

  I ate lunch at my new usual spot, with the math department. I’d become friends—or at least friendly—with Miss Rothstein. We were so tight that she asked me to call her by her first name, Stacey. Today she was showing me a printout of her Macy’s gift registry. She had requested white towels, white sheets and white dishes. She had even requested a white bath accessories set.

  “I hope it’s not too much white,” she said

  “You could pick an accent color,” I said. “Eggplant, maybe.”

  “You mean, like, purple? I don’t think so.” She sighed. “I could never pull off purple.”

  “Nicolette was going to do a lot of eggplant,” I said. “You know Nicolette in the office? But then she eloped, so she never got to register.”

  Stacey picked up her tiny milk carton and took a drink. “I heard Nicolette was getting a divorce.” She grimaced at her carton. “I hate skim milk. The day after my wedding, I’m going back to whole.”

  Jill was sitting at her desk, eating her lunch: some sandwich on focaccia. She smiled when she saw me. “Is Nicolette getting a divorce?” I whispered.

  She motioned for me to shut the door and sit down. “Big blowup,” she said once the door was closed. “They’d been saving money for a party in the spring—a kind of post-wedding reception.”

  “But I thought she didn’t want that,” I said. I was still whispering even though no one could hear us through the door.

  “That’s what she said at first. But then we talked about it. I explained the real purpose of ceremonies: they mark a transition. One part of our life ends, another begins.” She gestured as she spoke. Her fingers were perfectly manicured a ruby red. Her clothes, as usual, were black. “Without a wedding,” she continued, “Nicolette felt like she and Rodney weren’t really married.”

  “Plus she missed out on all the presents.”

  “That, too. So anyway, they had this pile of money building up.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “And then, without discussing it, Rodney used the cash to make a down payment on a new truck.”

  “No!”

  She settled back in her chair. “He’s exhibited poor impulse control from the beginning.”

  “Is Nicolette very upset?”

  “I’ll say. She keeps saying that she loves him but she can’t trust him. Nicolette has a completely idealized view of romantic love. Cognitively and emotionally, she hasn’t quite made the leap from adolescence to adulthood.”

  “So maybe it’s for the best,” I said. “The breakup.”

  She scrunched up her face. “I don’t know. Even though they’re both emotionally immature, they seemed really . . .”

  “In love?”

  “Yeah.” She took a big bite of her sandwich.

  “What’ve you got on the focaccia? Roasted eggplant?”

  She shook her head and then swallowed. “Portobello mushroom. With a red pepper aioli. You want a bite?”

  “No, thanks.” I stood up.

  She put her sandwich down on its sheet of waxed paper and stood up. She towered over me. Sh
e slumped a bit, perhaps trying to bridge the gap. “I’m glad you stopped by.”

  I looked at the floor. “Yeah, well, I just wanted to see what was going on with Nicolette.”

  “Lars said to say hi.”

  “Did he find a job yet?”

  She shook her head. “No, but he has a promising lead. Charter school in Glendale. Nicolette says Dr. White’s about to fill his position. She’s got two good candidates—she just has to decide which she likes better.”

  I nodded. I’d heard this, too. “So it’s working out?” I said casually. “You and Lars?”

  “I guess.” She paused. “You know how immaculate he always looks? How clean? You should see his apartment. Total pig sty. He’s got these two roommates from Arizona State—he completely regresses around them. Between the beer and the farts, I can’t stand to be in that place for more than ten minutes at a time. It’s like being in a frat house.”

  “So you should stick to your place.”

  “I know. But of course, I’ve got a roommate, too.” She sighed. “I don’t know. I like him. I really do. And, weirdly enough, he likes me. But I always seem to attract guys who want to be dominated, and I’m afraid Lars is another Peter Pan.” She shrugged and tried to smile. “I don’t want to be his mother.”

  I tilted my head to one side. “You could be his Wendy instead.”

  She smiled. “That’s one way to look at it. I’ve missed you, you know.” I didn’t respond. “Would you come out with us sometime soon?” she asked. “I mean, with Lars and me. It would be like old times.”

  I was quiet for a minute. “I’m not sure I want it to be like old times.”

  “It’ll be like new times, then,” she said. “Think about it?”