Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Nadia relented, laughing. It wasn’t in her nature to feel superior to anyone.

  “Actually, ‘Nadia’ is a name I hate. ‘Nadia’ just isn’t me.”

  Nadia had never admitted this to anyone before. The words had just come out.

  “It isn’t? Who is it, then?” Virgil spoke in his annoying riddlesome way, baring his gums in a geeky grin. “Well—what name would you prefer?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “‘Virgil’ is a weird name, too. Nobody is named ‘Virgil.’”

  “Well—where you’re from . . .”

  “Not there, either. It’s weird there, too.”

  Virgil paused, frowning. You could sense that Nadia’s casual remark had somehow offended him. “What makes you think I wasn’t born here? In America?”

  “Were you?”

  “Legally speaking, yes.”

  Virgil spoke sharply. Nadia hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant, but she knew that no one who’d been born in the United States in any normal way would speak of being born in America.

  “A name that’s an anagram of my name is ‘Dani A.’ I’d like ‘Dani’—or maybe ‘Adriana.’ That’s a beautiful name.”

  A moment before Nadia wouldn’t have thought of “Adriana.” Though she’d worked out “Dani A.” a few weeks ago, after Mr. Kessler discussed anagrams in class.

  “Dani—Adriana—they’re both nice names. But I like Nadia, too.”

  It was at this point that Virgil drew a deep breath and asked Nadia if she’d like to study with him sometime—“If you need h-help with, like, algebra”—and Nadia said quickly, “Thanks, Virgil, but I—I don’t think so. Or maybe just not right now . . .”

  “Sure! Just let me know, Nadia. I mean, Adriana. Anytime.”

  Virgil tried to speak lightly, but Nadia could see that he felt rebuffed.

  How embarrassing this was! She knew that, as she hurried from him without a backward glance, he was gazing after her with reproachful dark bloodhound eyes.

  Within seconds she’d forgotten Virgil. She’d intended to meet up with Chloe at their lockers, but soon she’d forgotten Chloe, too. Her heart was suffused with an almost suffocating warmth.

  Knew I could depend on you, Nadia.

  Only you.

  Soon it happened that Nadia was talking about Mr. Kessler all the time.

  Beginning to see her friends exchanging knowing glances—Chloe, Hannah, Merissa. And a sort of amused/jeering expression in Brooke Kramer’s face: “Kessler? He’s gay.”

  “G-gay? Who says so?”

  Brooke shrugged. Her smartphone was vibrating inside her pocket, and surreptitiously she drew it out to peer at the caller ID—of course you could smuggle a cell phone in if you were careful.

  “Mr. Kessler is not gay—I’m sure. And if he is, it’s his business, right? For all we know, he’s married.”

  “He isn’t wearing a wedding ring.”

  “So?”

  “There’s something, like, wrong with his eyes—isn’t there? He looks at you with, like, his right eye—but the left eye isn’t in the same place. . . .”

  Nadia hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her teacher’s eyes except that his gaze on her was kindly, thoughtful, respectful, sweet. And affectionate.

  In her dreamy-distracted state, Nadia missed girls’ chorus rehearsal, canceled a trip to the Quaker Heights Mall with Chloe and Anita, failed to complete a thousand-word critical essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby for English, did poorly on a major math exam. She’d been negligent about applying to colleges and universities, though this was the major, obsessive topic of conversation among virtually everyone at Quaker Heights—it didn’t seem real to Nadia; she was a senior and she was graduating from high school in a few months—one more thing not to think about.

  (After all, Tink wasn’t going to college. Where would Tink have applied, if she were still among them? You could not imagine Tink Traumer cravenly making out dozens of application forms, writing “personal essays” and self-hyping résumés. Maybe an art school, or a photography school—but knowing Tink, maybe not.)

  When Nadia missed a dental appointment arranged for her by Amelie, her stepmother said curtly, “Très bien. If the jeune fille does not regarde her teeth, why should I? From now on you will schedule your own appointments, s’il vous plaît.”

  Senior year was not going well. Just the words senior year made Nadia’s heart shrink.

  Often she was desperate to avoid Colin Brunner and his friends—except Colin had so many friends. Not just guys on the team but others guys and girls, too.

  Looking at Nadia Stillinger like she was a—s**t.

  Luckily for Nadia there were other “incidents” among Quaker Heights seniors—other girls singled out as “s**ts” on Facebook. So maybe, in time, the guys would forget about Nadia as she was trying to forget about them.

  Hannah and Chloe had said to Nadia, in a concerted way that signaled how the girls of Tink, Inc., had probably been talking about Nadia behind her back, “Nadia? You can report them, you know. Remember Mrs. Jameson told us, there’s a Harassment Hotline. . . .”

  “R-report who? I d-don’t know what you mean. . . .”

  “Those assholes—Colin Brunner and his friends. If—”

  “I—I don’t know what you mean. Good-bye!”

  Blushing furiously, Nadia ducked her head and walked away.

  No one brought up the subject again. At least, not to Nadia’s face.

  And what people said about her behind her back—she wasn’t going to think about.

  For she had, now, something very different to think about.

  Someone very different.

  She knew his teaching schedule. She knew when he arrived at school, usually—and when he left.

  She knew his not-new-but-in-decent-condition Subaru.

  She knew his office hours, which were three thirty p.m. to four thirty p.m.

  It was a coincidence, Nadia believed: When she went to see Mr. Kessler, on an afternoon in January, Tink had been gone exactly six months on that day.

  Mr. Kessler preferred it if students made appointments to see him. He’d said that repeatedly since the start of the school year. Still, Nadia decided on impulse to “drop by” his office. Otherwise, making an appointment seemed too deliberate.

  As if she had something crucial on her mind. As if seeing her science teacher was something she’d been planning, lying in bed at night.

  It was 3:48 p.m. Someone was in Mr. Kessler’s office, which was disappointing but no surprise. Nadia slid to the floor to sit, to wait patiently.

  Mr. Kessler’s office was in an older, dark-brick building on campus. Younger faulty had their offices here. Nadia knew the building well; she’d prowled this corridor a few times, just out of curiosity, to see where Adrian Kessler’s office was.

  It was beginning to be upsetting to her that the student lingered so long in her teacher’s office—a tall blond soccer player/senior who wasn’t even Mr. Kessler’s student at the present time—(judging from what Nadia could barely overhear)—but was taking AP Chemistry with another science teacher on the faculty. Much of what the girl was saying to Mr. Kessler seemed to be fretful complaining about this teacher and anxiety about where she should apply to college.

  The girl had to be seventeen years old at least. And an athlete. Yet her voice was breathy and whining, girlish.

  That really annoyed Nadia! The girl sounded like her.

  There was a nearby bench where Nadia might have sat, but she preferred the floor. For here she was partly visible to her teacher if he happened to glance in the direction of the open doorway—if he saw Nadia waiting, maybe he’d try to terminate his conference with the tall blond girl more quickly.

  So anxious! Nadia stared at her watch, seeing the seconds fly past. And over in Weldon Hall, Mrs. Conway was wondering where Nadia Stillinger was—Mrs. Conway was offering a tutorial for students like Nadia who needed a little extra help wi
th their writing.

  It isn’t like Nadia to just not show up. Think she’s sick?

  By now, maybe Nadia’s classmates weren’t saying this. Maybe they had an idea where Nadia might be hanging out.

  Oh, this was bad luck! Several girls—Chloe, Martine, a girl named Chrissie—happened to come along the corridor at this time and saw Nadia sitting on the floor, in front of Mr. Kessler’s office. A quick exchange of glances among them—Nadia wasn’t imagining this.

  “Hi, Nadia! Why’re you sitting on the floor?”

  It was cruel of Martine to tease Nadia by threatening to knock on Mr. Kessler’s part-opened door to draw attention to Nadia out in the hall—Nadia begged in a whisper, “No! Please don’t!”

  Martine laughed, but Chloe and Chrissie saw the distress in Nadia’s face and pulled Martine away.

  They know, then. How I feel about Mr. Kessler.

  She hoped that her friends wouldn’t talk—and laugh—about her.

  Most of all she dreaded something cruel and stupid posted online, where everyone could see it—including her teachers.

  Including Mr. Kessler.

  I will kill myself. By now, I should have.

  Except I am not brave like Tink.

  At last, at 4:23 p.m., the tall blond soccer player left Mr. Kessler’s office, swaggering with her backpack and nearly stumbling over Nadia with a sneering look—“Excuse me!”

  Nadia knew the girl just a little—Sylvie. Nadia saw with satisfaction that Sylvie’s face was blemished at her hairline.

  “Nadia! Hello. I didn’t think that anyone was waiting to see me.”

  Clumsily Nadia scrambled to get to her feet. When she nearly lost her balance, Mr. Kessler instinctively reached out to grab her hand and steady her.

  The warmth of Mr. Kessler’s hands! Nadia felt faint. . . .

  She saw that Mr. Kessler had shut up his laptop to take home. He’d switched off the little lamp on his desk. Now he switched the light back on and said, with a welcome smile, “Well, Nadia—have a seat. What can I do for you?”

  Tell me that you love me. That I am not fat, and ugly, and stupid—and my father is embarrassed by me.

  Mr. Kessler’s office was a small space he shared with another young teacher. Bookshelves were made of an inexpensive metal and were crammed with mostly paperbacks. On the wall above Mr. Kessler’s aluminum desk was a dazzling photograph of Earth as a biosphere, and on his desk were several small photographs in frames. Nadia’s heart clenched with worry, that one of these photos was of a girlfriend.

  She said, trying not to stammer, “I—I was wondering, Mr. Kessler—about time—like, you said there is no future and there is no—past. . . .”

  “Well, yes. Those are ways of speaking rather than entities—things. For instance, this is a pencil—you can see it, touch it, use it. But ‘past’—‘future’—are what we call abstractions. They are a kind of shorthand vocabulary.”

  Eagerly Nadia nodded. In her classes, she often nodded without knowing what her teacher was saying, really—though she felt the truth, the plausibility, of her teachers’ statements. And so her nodding wasn’t phony or hypocritical but genuine.

  “But—if there could be a time machine—”

  “We’ve gone over that, Nadia. There can’t be anything like a sci-fi ‘time machine.’”

  “But then—maybe—if there could be”—words came to Nadia heedlessly, wildly—“something like—a hypnotist—”

  “A hypnotist? I don’t understand, Nadia.”

  “Well, I mean—someone to hypnotize you—to take you back to the past—in your memory. In the memory cells in the—brain? Like, you could be hypnotized, to remember? And what you remembered from long ago would be the past.”

  Nadia spoke with such pleading, and the expression in her eyes was so yearning, the smile faded from Mr. Kessler’s lips. He seemed to be looking at his girl-student as if he’d never really seen her before.

  “Why, yes, Nadia. I suppose you’re right. You could—theoretically—be hypnotized and remember the past. And you could be—theoretically—in the past, then. Or so it would seem.”

  “I’m sorry—I guess I’m really stupid. I mean—science is hard for me—almost as hard as algebra. Because you have to know something real, you can’t just be making things up the way you do in English, discussing a book, or in art. But the idea of a time machine—hypnotizing—”

  Mr. Kessler made a gesture to slow Nadia down—she’d been speaking rapidly. “Now, Nadia—please don’t be hypercritical of yourself. You’re a very intelligent girl even if you aren’t always entirely articulate about your thoughts. You must have faith in yourself.”

  Very intelligent girl.

  Have faith in yourself.

  Nadia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was sure that none of her other teachers, though they were all very nice, thoughtful men and women, had ever spoken so encouragingly to her.

  “Then—the past isn’t gone, exactly? It’s in the brain? Some part of the brain?”

  “What you’re saying is very interesting, Nadia. I’ve never thought of it that way—though perhaps others have, and have written about it. Neuroscientists have found that deeply imprinted memories are recorded in parts of the brain, and these cells can be activated electronically. Of course, it would probably be difficult to locate the right part of the brain, and it might be dangerous.”

  “Oh—dangerous? Why?”

  “Because there are things we have all forgotten—suppressed. And there might be good reasons why.”

  “But—but—if it would make you happy, then—it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?—to be hypnotized, and to risk the danger.”

  Nadia spoke so urgently, again Mr. Kessler paused, smiling uncertainly.

  In his classes—in most classes at Quaker Heights—teachers were warmly engaging, direct, and friendly, but there was an invisible border no one crossed, which involved the intensity with which teachers and students communicated. The tone of their discourse was invariably light, even playful; where there was earnestness, there was also a degree of detachment. But here was Nadia Stillinger gazing at her teacher with such a look of raw, childlike need—her teacher was made to feel uneasy about how to respond.

  “What is there about the past, Nadia, that so intrigues you?”

  Nadia was dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Worse, her nose was running.

  She heard herself laughing—her nervous little-girl laugh.

  “I—I—I—c-can’t . . . I d-don’t want to t-t-talk about myself. . . .”

  “What is it, Nadia? Has something—happened?”

  Nadia was wiping her eyes and at the same time trying to smile. Her mind seemed to be working slowly—oh, she felt clumsy!—like hauling herself out of a pool, suddenly heavy after the magical buoyancy of water.

  Nadia remembered a girl at her previous school in Connecticut remarking in PE class, at the school pool, Swimming’s a whole lot easier if you’re kind of—like—fat. The girl hadn’t been trying to insult Nadia, but clearly she was speaking of Nadia’s example; she’d only been stating an obvious fact.

  He knows about Tink. Must know.

  But maybe not that Tink was my best friend.

  “The reason I was emotional before—it comes over me at times I can’t predict. There was somebody in my family who died . . . last month.”

  “Nadia, I’m sorry. Who was it?”

  “My g-grandmother . . .”

  This was true. Nadia’s grandmother—her father’s mother—had died just after Christmas. Nadia had never been encouraged to be close to this grandmother, who’d been in a nursing home for years, and, it was said, hadn’t been able to recognize even her son for a long time; but the fact that the white-haired elderly woman had died, and had gone away, as her mother had done when Nadia was six, had been upsetting to her.

  Like Mommy. And not saying good-bye.

  Like Tink. No good-bye.

  In fact, Tink had texted her cl
osest friends on the eve of her d***h. But she hadn’t said a personal good-bye to anyone, and that was hard to accept.

  Since her grandmother had died, Nadia had been thinking about her mother as she hadn’t for some time. And (maybe) dreaming of her.

  Waking with tears on her face, and a sharp, cramped sensation in her chest, as of irrevocable loss. Wanting to protest, But Nadia Stillinger is too silly—shallow—to feel anything deep. This is wrong.

  Nadia knew the importance of maintaining an air of breathy girlishness. Lowered eyes, slightly parted lips, quickened breath—even her frowning father might give in and feel sorry for her, and not scold her as she deserved.

  Tink had told Nadia not to smile so much.

  Nadia had been shocked, that anyone would say such a thing.

  Because if you’re female and you smile, it just means that you want to please whoever it is you’re smiling at.

  A person with her own sense of dignity and self-worth only smiles when she wants to. That was why Tink rarely smiled when she was being photographed. And when she met people, Tink might smile, or not smile, according to how she felt.

  But Nadia wasn’t Tink. Nadia so wished that Tink might have taken Mr. Kessler’s course; Tink might be alive now.

  It had long been a secret that Nadia’s mother had died. In fact, Nadia’s father had never exactly revealed this fact to her—Nadia had learned, almost incidentally, from her aunt Harriet, who was her father’s sister but seemed to have felt an allegiance and loyalty to Nadia’s mother. No one will tell you anything directly in this family, Nadia dear—and you don’t dare ask.

  Mr. Kessler didn’t seem to know anything about Nadia Stillinger’s family life, which was a relief to her. Most of her teachers and certainly the headmaster knew that Roger Stillinger was a Very Important Executive with a Very Important Pharmaceutical Company; Nadia supposed that many of her classmates knew, too. (Of course, most of Nadia’s classmates were from affluent homes, as Quaker Heights, New Jersey, was one of the most affluent communities in the United States.)

  But no one seemed to know that Nadia’s biological mother had died ten years ago when they’d lived in Connecticut; and that Mr. Stillinger had acquired not one but two young, attractive wives—stepmothers for Nadia—in that brief interim.