When I was finished I had tears in my eyes. At the bottom of the last page, I wrote,
Can you come to see me after class so we can talk? I want to help. If you can’t come after class, what about Jolito’s. Can you meet me there? I really do think I can help.
I knew damn well I could help.
40
First Lessons
I didn’t even think about asking Annie about it. I went right to Doreen because I trusted her and I knew she would not judge me. At the end of that day I cornered her in the parking lot. The wind had calmed down a bit, but now the cold rain seemed to fall more steadily, though it was still closer to a mist than a downpour. She was standing by her car, trying to close her umbrella when I approached her and said, “Can we talk?”
“What?” she said impatiently.
“If you’re busy …”
She finally got the umbrella closed and opened the car door. “I don’t have any cigarettes,” she said, throwing the umbrella on the floor in the back of her car.
“I don’t want a cigarette. I need to tell you something and ask your advice.”
“Well get in the car.” She walked around and got in on the driver side. I cleared some papers off the front seat and got in next to her.
“Well?” she said.
I told her I had a student who was pregnant. I didn’t tell her who. I told her I wanted to help if I could, that the student was paralyzed with fear and self-loathing and that it would be the best thing if she got an abortion. But Doreen surprised me. The first thing she said was, “Well it’s none of your business. It’s a family matter. She has to work it out with her mother and father.”
“She can’t tell her family.”
“Well she has to.”
“Could you?”
“Why should I tell them?”
“No, I mean could you tell your own parents if you were pregnant?”
“If I had to. Who is it?”
“I can’t tell you that. And I don’t want you to ask me again.”
She started her car and turned on the heater and the windshield wipers. “You can tell me,” she said. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
“Right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. I just can’t tell you or anyone.” There was no way I was going to broach the subject of Professor Bible’s illness and her fortitude and resolve where that secret was concerned.
“You don’t trust me,” she said.
“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t be sitting here asking for your help.”
“Well what do you want?”
“Okay,” I said. “What if she wanted to get an abortion? What would she have to do?”
“Why would I know that?”
“You go to a clinic. You see a woman’s doctor, a gynecologist, right?”
“Yes.”
“Does he do abortions?”
“Every other weekend.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. That’s the truth. He performs them at the open clinic in Alexandria. Every other weekend.”
“How do you know that?”
“He’s got pamphlets about it all over his office.”
“So, if I took her to him …” The windows were fogging up pretty badly.
“Whoever it is, I would definitely not take her anywhere.”
“I mean, if I gave her his address and she went to him, he would do it?”
“Yes.”
“Would he insist that her parents know about it?”
“How old is she?”
“Eighteen.”
“It’s Leslie. It’s Leslie isn’t it? Come on, you can tell me now. She’s the only one who’s already eighteen.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“It’s Leslie isn’t it,” she said again.
“She’s not the only eighteen-year-old in the school,” I said.
“I think she is. I bet she is.”
“Of course not.”
“I know it’s her already, you don’t have to try to backpedal away from it.”
“It doesn’t matter. If I tell this student to go to your gynecologist he’ll arrange the …”
Doreen interrupted me. “He won’t arrange anything. She has to go to the free clinic in Alexandria on one of the Saturdays he’s there.”
I nodded. In the silence that followed I became aware of the windshield wipers sloshing back and forth in the rain, which had increased now, and was steady and forceful. Then I said, “How can I find out if he’ll be there this Saturday?”
She picked up her purse and opened it. “Here,” she said, and handed me a piece of notepaper and a pen. “It’s the Alexandria Free Clinic and Family Planning Center. It’s in Arlington Ridge Shopping Center. You can get the phone number from information.”
I wrote down what she said, then handed back the pen.
“It’s just too bad,” Doreen said. “Leslie was doing so well, finally.”
I said nothing.
“And here you are,” she said. “Stepping up to be the hero once again.” She smiled and her eyes seemed to sparkle with it.
“I’m not a hero,” I said.
She leaned toward me. I didn’t want to embarrass her by recoiling from her, but that is what I wanted to do. I looked into those hard, steel-glinted eyes—saw close up some of the scars on her cheeks, and before I could pull back, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me. It was a very soft kiss—and longer than a mere friendship smack on the lips. She missed the mark a little, and it wasn’t open-mouthed, but it got to me anyway. It was sexual and with the steamy windows provoked a kind of license. I put my arms around her and kissed her back. Now we sort of found the right position and got centered for it and it blossomed into a full-blown kiss with all the accoutrements. I realized we were both suddenly breathing very fast. I pulled back first, I think. Or perhaps she did. It’s possible that we both stopped at exactly the same time. I said, “What was that?”
She laughed. “It was a kiss you dodo.”
“But, but …” I sputtered. “What was that?”
This made her laugh harder. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not trying to seduce you.”
“Doreen,” I said.
“Don’t be so shocked,” she said. “I always wanted to kiss a hero.”
“Really.”
Now she smiled in a ruined sort of way. I know she wanted to be seductive, but it really only looked as though her shoes might be pinching a bit. “I didn’t dream that my hero would kiss me back.”
And goddamn it that is what I had done. I sat there, looking at the gray, steam-covered windows, the heat from under the dash beginning to cook the skin around my collar. I didn’t know what to say.
Doreen still smiling said very quietly, “Well?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I’m engaged to be married.”
“Don’t be so paranoid,” she said. “I’m not trying to break up your stupid wedding.”
I looked at her.
“Or whatever it is,” she said. “You’re safe.” Now she moved her purse from the seat between us to the floor in the back. I watched this, wondering what she was about to do. We were in the parking lot of Glenn Acres School. The windows were so fogged by now we could have taken all our clothes off and humped away and nobody would have seen us—although they might’ve noticed her Malibu wobbling a bit. I wondered who saw me get in with her, if we might get away with something. But then I remembered myself. I didn’t want to do anything like that. I really didn’t. I knew what kind of trouble that would cause in my life and Doreen’s.
She moved over and pressed herself against me. She ran her hand down the side of my face and whispered, “Don’t fret my heroic little coward. I was just interested in a nice little roll in the hay. Nothing more serious than that.”
I swallowed something that felt the size of a tennis ball. It wouldn’t go down.
She traced
my jawline with her fingernail. I looked into her eyes and felt the most profound sadness. So I said, “You were right. It’s Leslie.”
She scarcely reacted to what I said, but I saw her eyebrows weaken a bit. Then something seemed to occur to her and she pulled back. “She’s not pregnant because of you is she?”
“Of course not,” I said way too loud. It took her back a bit. It also had the beneficial effect of destroying the ambience of the moment, or whatever it was that she was working on before I said it. She moved back behind the wheel.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely and immediately regretted it.
“Don’t be.” She put the defrost fan on high, turned the heat down to cold, stared at the windows as they started to clear.
“Look,” I said. “I want to be faithful. That too is heroic, right?”
“Sure.”
“That’s all. I wanted to kiss you. And I guess I must have wanted …”
“Don’t be so analytical about it.”
“I’m sorry.”
It was quiet for a while, then she said, “You have the name of the clinic?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you get out?”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure.” I opened the door. She still gazed straight ahead, waiting for me to shut the door. The windshield wipers threw water at me. “Please don’t tell anybody about this.”
“I won’t.”
“I mean it. You can’t tell anybody.”
“Okay,” she said impatiently.
“I’m sorry,” I said again and shut the door. “I’m not really a coward.” She put the car in gear and drove off. I don’t think she heard that last part.
All the way home I was kicking myself for being so vulnerable to Doreen—or more accurately for letting her be so vulnerable to me. I swear it never even occurred to me that she might be interested in me that way. I thought she was gay, for Christ’s sake. I was also fairly certain I would not tell Annie about it. In fact, I would never tell Annie about it.
By the time I had parked my car and walked to the front door of my apartment, I was thinking about how perfect it would be if Doreen looked like Leslie and only wanted a friendly “roll in the hay.” I didn’t want to have that thought, but by Christ that’s what I was thinking. And I didn’t believe I would be able to resist, either. I think I’m a fairly ordinary man—believe me, I know I’m no hero—and still there I was, fumbling for my key, thinking about what it might be like to have Leslie offer herself to me like that. How great it would be. I actually got to the part about wondering where we would go, and then of course it hit me—what a rotten, snout-like thing a man is when he’s enthralled by a beautiful woman who suddenly appears to be possible. I wonder: Do women seek men the same way? Would a woman be so turned on by a gorgeous man? So deeply beguiled by something as meaningless and superficial as physique?
I opened the door, pondering this issue, and I almost decided I could find a way to ask Annie about it, without letting her know specifically why I was asking, but once again the apartment was empty. She wasn’t home.
By the time she came clamoring in, apologizing for being so late and all (she’d stopped off with “the gang” to celebrate some terrific budgetary reconciliation, a “real breakthrough”), I didn’t want to talk about desire and men and women anymore. I didn’t want to talk about anything.
41
The Typical Offerings of an Ordinary Adult
Leslie and Suzanne were in my fifth period class, the last one of the day. I spent most of my time that day trying to avoid seeing Doreen, feeling quite certain that if I did the embarrassment would kill both of us. Of course she must have been avoiding me as well because I didn’t see her that whole day, and there was no way we could miss each other in a building so small. I only saw Mrs. Creighton once, in the hallway between first and second period. I went out there to get a drink and she was standing outside her office tacking something on the bulletin board about the coming Spring Festival. This was in early March, but she was already excited because she had found jonquils in her backyard over the weekend. She announced this to me as I was rushing to gulp all the cold water I could get before I dashed back into my classroom to avoid Doreen. When I was finished, I stood up and wiped my chin where plenty of water had dripped down onto my neck and shirt collar.
Mrs. Creighton ran her hands down the outside of my arms and then took both my hands in hers. “Mr. Jameson,” she said. “You have done a wonderful job with Suzanne Rule.”
“Thank you,” I muttered, trying ever so slightly to free my hands and back away.
“She is actually beginning to thrive.”
“Really?”
“She’s started writing me little notes.”
“And you write back?”
“Oh yes.” She smiled. “We have a correspondence. I’m actually getting to talk to her through those notes.”
“Good.” I pulled again slightly and she let go my hands.
“That was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“What?”
“Communicating through notes?”
“No,” I said. “It started with Suzanne. She started leaving those poems for me in the mornings before class.”
“But you had them writing in their journals so much, and that’s a way of communicating with their teacher, right?”
I agreed it was—but I felt kind of like a fraud. I had them writing in their journals so often because I hadn’t prepared anything for class and I had a stack of their papers to grade.
“Well,” Mrs. Creighton said, “I’m so glad it got started, no matter whose idea it was. Do you know that little girl tried to kill herself last year? And now, maybe …”
“She tried to kill herself?”
“Yes.”
I thought about her last journal entry. “Has she written poems for any of the other teachers?”
“Just notes and such. But you know, since she’s been here, mostly all she’s ever done is listen. Do what we say. Now she asks questions in her notes. She’s actually breaking out. Communicating, for the first time; you had something to do with that.”
I nodded, and then I said I had to get back to my classroom to prepare for second period.
Once I knew Suzanne had tried to kill herself, I didn’t care that she was writing to her other teachers and to Mrs. Creighton. I had no control over what any of them might say to her, but now I realized how important it was to respond exactly right to her poems. I was glad that I had been so careful up to that point, although I worried even more about letting Drummond publish some of them. I don’t know if I can accurately describe how it felt to have that whole thing hanging over me so completely. I was sick with both anticipation and dread; I had set something in motion that might be dangerous or really good and I didn’t have the wherewithal to stop it if I wanted to.
Leslie put a note on my desk when she walked into class the next day. It said, Did you read my journal? Can we meet again at Jolito’s? I immediately turned the note over and wrote, Have you told anyone else about this yet? When I gave it to her, she read it, then looked up at me with a look of shock on her face and shook her head no. I nodded and said, “Good.”
She crumpled the note up and put it in her pocket, then seemed to relax a bit, as though everything was settled. But I still didn’t know what time we would meet at Jolito’s. I had their journals piled on the corner of my desk, so I said, “You’ll all be glad to know that I will return your journals today.” Of course they groaned. Getting the journals back meant they’d have to do more writing in them. Before I passed them back, I pretended to be getting a last look at some of them. I even made some notes in one or two—you know, Thank you for sharing, and good—then when I got to Leslie’s journal I found what I’d written at the end and I added, Three today? I handed it to her and saw her go to the back of it to read my comments. She looked up and nodded. There was such hope in that look; I don’t think I will ever forget it.
After schoo
l that day I went right to Jolito’s. The place was almost empty. It took a while for my eyes to get used to the darkness in there, so I went immediately to the bar and sat down.
When I turned around and faced the light of the entrance, I saw Leslie sitting in the same corner where we had sat before. I ordered two Cokes and carried them over to the table. “I assumed you’d want a Coke,” I said, and sat down across from her.
She said nothing. Her face was so beautifully sad—as though she were waiting for the last breath of life; as if she knew in the next moment she would have to say farewell to everything and everyone she loved. She took the Coke when I handed it to her, then looked around the room, still holding the Coke in her hand. She did not take a sip. When her eyes met mine I felt the need to say something soothing but I couldn’t think of anything. Perhaps I wanted to offer her the possibility of simply having the baby. Couldn’t I convince her that she would come to see her child as a wondrous gift? My plan was to get her to tell her parents about it. I went over all the ways I could say that to her, but nothing presented itself. What I saw in her eyes told me for certain that she would not want me to say anything that sounded like the typical offerings of an ordinary adult. A long silence ensued while I tried to figure out what to say. She looked at me blankly, waiting there. Finally I said, “Looks like the dart crowd isn’t here today.”
In the Fall They Come Back Page 30