Blue Angel

by Francine Prose

  “Right,” says her husband. “I’m sure the professor really cares what some little pipsqueak kid thinks about his work.”

  “Of course I do.” Swenson can only pray that his pleasure and pride aren’t visible on his face. “It’s always flattering to have a fan. Especially such a talented one. I mean, I think Angela may be a real writer.” Then he stops. It so rarely—never—happens that he gets to say this with any sincerity, he can’t imagine how it sounds. Probably like he’s lying.

  “She’s always been a writer,” her stepfather says. “Back when she first learned, I got her a computer, and she started printing this little family newspaper. She’d put in stuff like how long she’d had to wait that morning for me to get out of the bathroom. I knew computers were going to be big. They’ve sure changed my business—I’m a pharmacist. I can’t imagine how we lived without them.”

  Swenson can’t manage to hate this guy. He’s no more the father in the poems than he is the dad in the novel. But something’s not computing. Didn’t Angela say her father killed himself when she was a teen? Wasn’t that why she liked Phoenix Time, why it saved her life? But this guy talks as if he’s been around forever. Could Angela have lied about this? What point would there have been? Is there some way of asking the guy if he’s her father or stepfather, if the real father committed suicide…without sounding…nosy? Surely, the truth—the explanation—will emerge on its own.

  He says, “She’s working on a novel. It’s really very good.”

  “What’s the story about?” asks her mother.

  “A high school girl,” he says at last.

  “What about a high school girl?” Angela’s mother says.

  “Well…” How much does he want to risk? The closer to the edge he goes, the greater the chance that he’ll look over it and see something he wants to know. “It’s about a girl and a high school music teacher who is not exactly…er, always…professional in his conduct with his students. At least that’s what I think it’s going to be. I’ve only read a few chapters.”

  Angela’s parents exchange glances.

  “What is it?” Swenson fears he knows what’s coming. The novel is autobiographical: the tragic drama of Angela and her teacher. He doesn’t want it to be true, doesn’t want to know he’s dealing with a student who compulsively seduces teachers. “What is it?” Swenson repeats. “Something I should know?”

  “Actually…,” says Mrs. Argo, “something like that—sort of like that—happened at Angela’s school. There was this biology teacher…”

  “Angela wasn’t involved,” her husband adds quickly. “But the guy was messing around with a whole bunch of girls. He had himself a regular harem. Friends of Angela’s, too.”

  “Her best friend,” says Angela’s mother, “got…you know, involved with the teacher.”

  “But not Angela,” says her husband. “Angela’s too smart a kid.”

  “Also she’s a big chicken,” says her mother proudly. “Don’t let all the body piercing fool you. Angela’s a pussycat, really.” A peculiar echo resonates from that last sentence—the faintest hint of meow or growl. I’m a pussycat, too. Or has Swenson imagined it? Is compulsive seductiveness a learned trait that Angela studied at her mother’s knee? But what is Swenson thinking? Angela’s the least seductive person he knows. In fact a big part of her appeal is the touching effort she puts into eliminating anything that might elicit desire.

  “Actually,” says her mother, “I’ve always thought that Angela was a little shy, a little…funny around boys.”

  “Funny how?” says Swenson.

  “Well…she’d chase after some kid she liked…and the second he started to like her, she wouldn’t answer the phone.”

  But what about her boyfriend? Is there some way to ask about that? Swenson’s trying to formulate some sort of tactful, halfway-normal sounding question when Angela’s father says, “Jesus Christ! This guy’s her teacher, not her friggin’ psychiatrist.”

  After a silence, Swenson says stuffily, “Well. Be that as it may, she’s an excellent writer.”

  “Thank you so much,” says her mother.

  “Yeah, great, a writer,” says her father.

  “Thank you,” says Angela’s mother, standing. “We appreciate your time.”

  Her husband follows her cue, and stands. Swenson’s up on his feet.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Argo, Mr. Argo.” If the guy isn’t Mr. Argo, if neither of them are Argos now, maybe they’ll tell him so. And he’ll know that this guy is the stepfather—not Argo, the biological father. But what if he’s adopted Angela and given her his name?

  “Thank you,” repeats her mother.

  Her husband nods and, in his haste to escape, nearly plows into the door.

  “Oops,” he says. “I nearly ran into the door.”

  Angela’s father, thinks Swenson.

  The discussion of Makeesha’s story goes reasonably well compared with the scene Swenson envisioned as he lay awake last night and imagined Makeesha denouncing the workshop’s racist bias. In fact, the class has responded instinctively to the undefended sweetness of Makeesha’s improbable transcription of a phone conversation between a black college student and her former high school boyfriend, the white guy who broke up with her the night before the prom, under pressure from his parents. From its first line, “I knew the dude’s voice right away, even though we didn’t be speaking for a year and a half,” the story, like Makeesha, veers in and out of street talk, and is in every other way (its protagonist is a sophomore at an isolated New England college) so very much like its author that when Jonelle Brevard says, “I really believed these characters,” there’s a chorus of “I did, too,” and everyone—including Makeesha—is relieved and happy.

  Their positive comments go on for a while. Swenson’s not going to chill these warm feelings by introducing the tricky question of how one transforms experience into art, or by pointing out the stiffness that results when narrative exposition masquerades as dialogue. (Early in the story, Makeesha’s heroine says, “Dude, what you be calling for? We ain’t talked since you broke up with me a year and a half ago on the night before senior prom.”) Is Swenson’s forbearance racist? Is he being unfair to Makeesha?

  The only thing Angela says in class is, “I liked the moment when the girl and her boyfriend stop making small talk and fall silent, and out of nowhere the guy tells her he’s been thinking about her nonstop for a year and a half.”

  After class, Makeesha hangs around for a final word with Swenson. Claris waits for her at the door. Angela remains at the seminar table.

  “Good job, Makeesha,” Swenson says. “It’s obvious everyone thought so.” He smiles at her but doesn’t speak, though she’s clearly expecting more. If Claris and Angela weren’t watching, Swenson could be more falsely effusive. Their presence also makes this harder on Makeesha, makes her more eager to get out while she can, with her dignity still intact, before she’s had a chance to beg for another compliment from Swenson.

  “Well, thanks,” she says, and hurries to join Claris. As they leave, they cast identically disdainful, competitive glances back at Angela. She watches them go, then turns to Swenson and says, “Jeez. Excuse me. What did I do?”

  “It’s what I didn’t do.” Apparently it’s become quite normal for Swenson to engage Angela in these unprofessionally conspiratorial chats about the other students.

  “I want to thank you,” Angela says. “You did me a giant favor.”

  “What was that?” asks Swenson.

  “Lying to my parents.”

  “Lying?”

  “Telling them I could write.”

  “You can write. I was telling the truth.”

  “You don’t have to say that,” Angela says. “I spent the whole weekend crying because my novel’s so bad.”

  “Every writer goes through that,” Swenson says. Everybody, that is, but Swenson, who hasn’t written a word in so long that at this point a crying jag would be a sign of
progress. “Anyway, I enjoyed meeting them…your mother and…stepfather.”

  “Enjoyed? That’s hard to imagine.”

  Swenson says, “That was your stepfather, right?”

  “Right,” says Angela. “Why?”

  “Well, it was the strangest thing. He kept talking as if he knew you when you were a child, almost as if he were your real father….”

  “He did know me. He lived next door to us my whole life. He and his wife, that is. A year after my dad killed himself, the next-door neighbor—my stepdad—married my mom. Major neighborhood scandal. His wife and kids kept on living next door. Everything was the same, except they weren’t speaking to us, and he was married to my mom. I know it’s hard to imagine a hot romance, to look at the two of them now.”

  Swenson tries to summon their images so he can match them against this new information, but only unhelpful fragments appear—false eyelashes, jewelry, shoes—details that fail to cohere into a portrait of lovers who braved all New Jersey just to be together. Also, he’s still not entirely convinced that Angela’s telling the truth.

  “I lied about something,” Angela says.

  “Oh?” says Swenson. “What’s that?”

  “My real father wasn’t crazy. He was sick. With emphysema. I remember once he took me grocery shopping for my mom, and he got so winded helping me bag the groceries that he had to sit down. He was wheezing. He couldn’t catch his breath, and for a while it looked like they’d have to call an ambulance. And I was like at the mercy of these checkout guys, my dad’s life depended on them….I saw one of those assholes roll his eyes at the chick who was bagging. Until then I’d been thinking that particular guy was cute. The worst part was: I was so embarrassed. I mean, about my dad. After he killed himself I couldn’t stop thinking about that day, and I felt totally guilty.” Tears well up in Angela’s eyes. She scrubs them away with the back of her hand. “Why was I mad at him?”

  She can’t be lying. Or can she? That Swenson can’t tell makes him painfully conscious of the distance between them.

  “You weren’t mad at your dad.” He should be patting her shoulder, but a seminar table divides them. “You were angry at the situation. Life can be cruel and unfair.”

  Angela shuts her eyes, squeezing back tears, her fingers hooked onto the edge of the table. “Anyway, I can’t believe how I’m repaying the favor. You were so nice, saying all that stuff to get my parents off my case. And now I’ve brought you another chapter. You don’t have to read it. I can wait.”

  “Hand it over,” says Swenson.

  Alone in his office, after class, Swenson finds himself pretending—as if someone were watching—that he has many more pressing things to do before he can get to Angela’s chapter. He has to open his desk drawer and then immediately close it. He has to wheel his chair back and forward. He has to pick up the phone and put it down. He has to think about checking his E-mail and then decide not to. Only after considering and putting off these many important tasks does he take Angela’s manuscript out of its orange envelope and begin the first page.

  After school every afternoon I rushed out to the shed to see if the eggs were hatching. I searched the shells for fissures, the needle holes chicks poke with their beaks. But the shells were unbroken as I spun them in my palm. I knew they were dead and cold, that their warmth was from the incubator, not from life inside them.

  Incubation took twenty-one days. Three weeks passed. A fourth. I knew from Mrs. Davis, and from the pamphlets, how much could have gone wrong. Problems with the parent stock, old roosters, malnourished hens. Incubator malfunction. A few degrees here or there. And yet I couldn’t make myself admit they were dead. What was I supposed to do with five dozen rotten eggs? Was my mother supposed to cook the little things I’d imagined as tiny pulsating blood-red creatures growing daily in secret, sixty fragile ovals from which I’d thought I heard sixty heartbeats?

  One night I asked my father to come out to the shed. I remember how pleased my mother looked that at last I was including him. I hated that it made her happy.

  So I said, “I think they’re dead.”

  My father said, “What do you mean, dead?”

  I said, “They were supposed to hatch ten days ago.”

  “Ten days ago?” my father said. “Christ. Where have I been?”

  He pushed his chair away from the table, left his steak and potatoes. I had to run to keep up with him as he ran out to the shed. Emergency! He flung open the door as if something were hiding inside it. But of course there was only the red light, the silent eggs, the humming.

  My dad said, “Have you been keeping charts?”

  I said, “Look, Dad. Look how neat.”

  “None of them hatched?” he said. “Not one?”

  I waved my hand around the shed.

  “These things happen,” my father said. “The point is to find out why, and redesign the experiment.” He didn’t want me to be discouraged. He wanted me to like my science project.

  “First of all,” he said, “let’s verify our results.” He grabbed an egg from the incubator and hit it against the rack.

  The smell took a second before it hit.

  “I’m throwing up,” I said.

  What to do with the broken egg? My dad transferred it, oozing gunk, to his other hand, and picked up an egg from another incubator. It broke. It smelled bad, too. He ordered me to get a trash bag from the house, and I held the bag for him while he dropped in the eggs. At first he was just efficient. But the smell got really bad. He began to slam them in hard. He said, “It’s all about trial and error, goddamn it. Finding out what went wrong.” He asked if I was sure the temperatures were correct. If I’d turned the eggs every day. I told him I’d done all that.

  I knew what I had done wrong. But I couldn’t tell him.

  I was supposed to have candled the eggs. When they were a week old you held them up to a bright light and and looked for a veiny red spot that proved they were fertile. If they weren’t, you threw them out. The blanks could spoil the others.

  I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to see what was inside the eggs. I didn’t want to be the one to throw the dead ones away. Besides, Mr. Reynaud had said something about helping me with that part.

  Instead of candling the eggs, I’d gone out to the shed and imagined a knock, imagined I opened the door—and there was Mr. Reynaud. I pictured the look on his face: confident, as if he had every right to be there, and at the same time worried I might not let him in. I imagined he took off his jacket, replaced one of the red lights with a bright light bulb, and gently, one by one, held the eggs to the light. I imagined him saying, Come here. And I did. I stood behind him, so close I felt his rough jacket against my skin, and I leaned forward, against his back, looking over his shoulder until I could see what he saw: the egg as red as the blood in your hand when you hold it up to a flashlight, and the yellow yolk deep inside, and the tiny red clot.

  By now I had to lean in so close that my breasts pushed against his back. I felt it, and he felt it, neither of us spoke. He replaced the egg in the rack and started to reach for another, but then he turned slowly. I was so close he could have thrown me off balance. He put his hand on my upper arm and steadied me as we turned against each other and meshed, his mouth locked into mine. We kissed. His hands ran over my back. Then his hands slipped under the waist of my jeans, and I made a sound so low in my throat that even the unborn chicks must have heard me. What did they think that noise was as they swam around in their shells?

  Angela’s thinking about him. He knows this with telepathic certainty. She’s back in her room at the dorm waiting for him to call. He should call her. Tell her the chapter’s fine, it’s great, just keep on doing what she’s doing. He picks up the phone. He puts it down. Good. He’ll wait for a while.

  Home early, Sherrie’s cooking thin chicken cutlets, breaded, fried in butter and olive oil, arranged with slices of lemon, scalloped potatoes with prosciutto, a salad with walnuts and Gorgonzola.
Are they celebrating again? Swenson certainly is—a miracle cure, the unbidden grace of coming to his senses, his recovery from a fleeting, inappropriate interest in one of his students. The evidence that he’s cured is that he has a reason to call Angela. But he doesn’t want to. Nothing could interest him less.

  He sits in the kitchen, admiring the easy competence with which Sherrie flips the cutlets, checks the potato casserole bubbling in the oven. The sight of her tossing the salad by hand, lightly stroking oil onto each lettuce leaf, fills him with such longing that it’s all he can do not to put his arms around her and lead her off to bed. He watches her wipe her hands on her jeans, imagines covering her hands with his, feeling her fingers underneath his, and beneath that, her thighs. He remains quiet, so as not to distract her and because he feels that their silence, together with the heat from the stove, creates a humid greenhouse in which his desire can thrive.

  Sherrie lights the votive candles, then hands him a bottle of cold white wine, a corkscrew, and two glasses. He pours half a glass and tastes it, drinks what’s left in the glass. A flush of intense well-being makes him think that all history and civilization has been preparation for this blessed moment of sitting across from his wife, inhaling the perfumes of wine, chicken, lemon, and melted cheese, while a gentle steam rises from his plate.

  They bring their food to the table. Leaning forward to eat, Sherrie rakes her hair back from her forehead. The skin between her brows forms a vertical crease dug by years of focused attention, hours listening to students describe pain more intense than anything they put in the stories they write for Swenson. How moved he is by her frown lines, by the loveliness of his wife, the beauty that’s grown stronger and stormier with the passage of time.

  He takes a bite of chicken, potatoes, smiles inanely while detaching the strings of cheese that connect his mouth to the fork. “So? How was your day?”

  “Kind of great,” Sherrie says. “Nothing too awful went wrong. Arlene brought me a fabulous sandwich with cream cheese and some kind of spread she made from stewing red peppers practically down to nothing. She got the idea from a magazine. The sandwich was so delicious I didn’t even mind her spending twenty minutes explaining the recipe and the changes she made in the recipe or thought of making in the recipe and how she never used olive oil before and how the smell took getting used to, and how long it took to reduce the peppers to this gummy paste, and how she knew I would like it because I like exotic foods…. How was your day?”