In the Fall They Come Back

by Robert Bausch

  She nodded, still smiling.

  “Well,” I said, sitting down across from her. “What’s up?”

  She looked down at her hands, began playing with the tips of her fingernails. “I was just wondering what you were thinking.”

  “What I’m thinking?”

  “About … stuff.”

  “What’s the matter, Leslie?”

  She shook her head, then looked at me. “What do you think of me?”

  What could I say to her? She stared at me, anticipating some kind of response. She was eighteen and I was twenty-six. The only thing between us it seemed to me was that I was her teacher. At that moment, I did not even remember Annie. “You know what I think of you,” I said.

  “No I don’t.”

  “I think you are beautiful, that you …” I saw her face change. You would have thought I had called her “babe.” She did not look away. “What do you want me to say?”

  She raised her brows slightly, letting her eyes fall.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I think we might … if I wasn’t your teacher …”

  “Do you think I’m a killer?”

  “What?”

  “A killer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I killed my baby.” With this, she started to gulp, to choke back tears. She took a quick sip of her Coke and then wiped her mouth with a napkin. “I’m sorry.”

  “Leslie, you did not kill your baby.”

  “Raphael doesn’t want to see me anymore.”

  “You told him?”

  She couldn’t look at me now. She studied her hands, the slow toying of her forefinger with the edge of her thumb. “He’s Catholic. He got angry when I told him what I’d done. He called me a murderer.”

  “It was not murder. Raphael is an idiot.”

  “I thought he loved me.” Her voice broke. I waited for her to begin sobbing again. But she didn’t. She took the straw out of her Coke and started bending and folding it. I could not take my eyes off her face.

  “It will be all right, Leslie.”

  “My father talked about abortion last night. He had friends over for cards and I heard him say it. That it’s murder.”

  “You told him about it?”

  “No. That’s what they were all talking about. My father and his friends and my mother.”

  “Well it’s not murder.”

  “They all agreed.”

  “They’re wrong.”

  She did not seem convinced.

  “Look here,” I said. “It’s just name-calling. People say things like that because they have pea brains and they don’t know any other way to argue.”

  “My father doesn’t have a pea brain.”

  “Forgive me. But if he thinks like that, he’s got a pea brain.”

  “He says it’s murder.”

  “You know how many women are on the pill? Millions of them. And every last one of them is having spontaneous abortions almost every month, but you never hear anybody calling them murderers.”

  She looked puzzled but she was definitely interested. She didn’t understand how the pill worked. She’d never been on the pill, so I had to explain it to her. “The pill convinces the body that it is already pregnant. So all fertilized eggs—all of the tiniest embryos—get sloughed off by the body. They can’t attach to the uterus. But they’re still embryos.”

  She took a slow sip of her Coke, meeting my gaze now with a kind of warmth. Her eyes still glittered, but she’d mastered it. She was not going to cry. We sat there for a long time without saying anything. Then she said, “Thank you, Mr. Jameson.”

  “For what?”

  “Everything. For helping me.”

  I almost took her in my arms right then. I wish I had. I might be holding her right now, if I could have had the courage to reach across the table and just touch the side of her face. But I was a mere mortal, engaged to be married. I knew for certain that if I pulled back from the light of her eyes, I would remember that I was in love with Annie. Everything I loved about Leslie had to do with her allure, her unmatchable beauty, and I knew it. I cared for her, I wasn’t in love with her. So I didn’t say anything. We finished our Cokes and I drove her back to the school so she could call her mother to come and pick her up. When she got out of the car, she smiled at me again, reaching back in to get her books. “See you in class tomorrow,” she said.

  I went home feeling as though I had made a real difference in her life. And perhaps I’d made a difference in my own. I felt clean, to tell the truth. Ethical. It was not a bad feeling.

  I cruised into April not thinking much about what the end of the year would mean. Leslie came to every class. She was quiet, and never happy, but she was getting through it, or seemed to be.

  Annie talked a lot about law school and she kept telling me if I was going I needed to begin sending out applications. So finally one weekend I got everything together, wrote a few application letters, and sent them off. But I was going through the motions. I figured I could stall at least until the end of the decade. I applied at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, and The American University. Of course we hoped for American or Georgetown, since both were close to home and all. But I was willing to move to Charlottesville.

  At the end of April, I found another poem from Suzanne on my desk.

  Under ground

  In the dark

  Seeds have secrets

  Small chances

  Where walls come down and

  Membranes fuse in damp

  Breathe in dark soil

  Everything small

  Big as the earth

  I wanted so bad to write membranes fuse? Yikes. And hand it back to her. Get some sort of dialogue going about the work because I think she did have talent. But I was just too afraid of what might happen if I came at these little gifts critically.

  I went to Mrs. Creighton’s office and started searching among the English texts in there, trying to find a poem to return to her. I searched all through my break and was almost late for class, but I finally found another by Blake that at least seemed appropriate for the time of year. It was the last poem I gave her.

  To Spring

  O thou, with dewy locks, who lookest down

  Thro’ the clear windows of the morning; turn

  Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,

  Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

  The hills tell each other, and the list’ning

  Vallies hear; all our longing eyes are turned

  Up to thy bright pavillions: issue forth,

  And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

  Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds

  Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste

  Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls

  Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

  O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour

  Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put

  Thy golden crown upon her languish’d head,

  Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee!

  I put it on her desk, but I didn’t see what she did with it. I assumed she put it with the others she was saving.

  As the weather warmed, we could take breaks outside again and smoke cigarettes. Doreen and I had gradually overcome our embarrassment over that kiss, so we could stand outside my room and talk about the weather, or about one of the students in our classes. We never ever talked about the kiss, but it was always there between us, like some sort of gauze we had to speak through. Every now and then she would smile knowingly at me, but I’d look away not wanting to be appraised. I told her about my application to law school, but not anything else. She never pressed me to find out what happened with Leslie and I didn’t volunteer it.

  I don’t know if I could say I was hoping for anything. I was so busy with schoolwork—grading paper after paper, reading journals, or riffling through them pretending to, and just trying to keep my head
above water. Five classes a day are hard to manage for an entire year.

  Early in May, I noticed that Leslie was beginning to slip a little. Her demeanor was the same, pretty much, but now she brooded more in classes. Her journal entries were beginning to scare me. She wrote about killing, about how it feels to have ended a life for a man she was “completely in love with,” and being thrown away “because of her desire to protect him.” I wrote back of course and told her again that she had not actually done that. A life begins, I wrote, when a baby is born or is viable outside the womb, not before. And Raphael simply did not have the courage to leave his wife.

  In another entry she wrote:

  My baby is there in me or she is and I am the earth. I am the world and how could I take away all color and music and taste and softness and summer fragrance. It was my baby. My baby. I have killed my baby.

  I wrote:

  Leslie honey, you have not killed your baby. It might have been your baby if you had waited a very long time and perhaps suffered through a lot of illness and discomfort. But you did not kill a baby. Millions of women take the pill because they want to stop their pregnancy before a baby is even possible. That’s what you did. You chose for your body not to keep a fertilized egg. You sloughed it off before a baby was possible. It was not a baby. A human being is only a baby when it can live outside of you. Don’t you see?

  But she seemed to pay no attention to that at all. In class she began to stare out the window, and she stopped taking care of her hair. She no longer looked like a fashion model, that’s for sure. She didn’t have to wear much makeup to adorn that face; her eyebrows were naturally curved perfectly over her light blue eyes, and her lips were fairly puffy and dark to begin with. But I noticed she was not paying the same attention to her appearance. She began to look sort of pale and weak; as if it took all of her energy to remain upright.

  Mrs. Creighton came to me one day and wanted to know if I’d noticed anything different about Leslie. I told her I saw that she was not so prissy anymore about her beauty. I think that is how I put it. I was a little scared of what would happen if Mrs. Creighton found out what I had helped Leslie to do, so I didn’t want the old woman to notice anything at all if I could help it. “She’s just growing up,” I said.

  “I think something’s wrong. Is she writing in her journal? The folded pages?”

  “She just wrote an A paper for me.” I was standing in front of my desk, in the first week of May, putting papers in my briefcase. I wanted to get out of there.

  “I’m worried about her.”

  “She’s fine.”

  “I think she’s losing weight.”

  I hadn’t noticed that and said so. “I’ll have her write in her journal tomorrow and I’ll let you know if she says anything.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” She turned, made her way through the rows of chairs to the back of the room, but before she went out, she stopped. “I should tell you I’m a little worried about Suzanne, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Has she said anything to you about death? Or dying?”

  “In one of her poems she said something about it. She said she doesn’t like to dream when she sleeps.”

  She waited there for me to say more, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  “She wrote in a note to me that she’d rather be dead,” Mrs. Creighton whispered, almost to herself.

  “I think she’s just coming out to us,” I said. “Just letting us in a little bit. It’s probably a good thing.”

  She nodded, slightly, then waved her hand and went out.

  In her journal, Leslie started talking about loving another man.

  (Leslie) unfolded

  4-08-87

  I learned so much from my experience with Raphael. Now I think I really know what love is. Someone else taught me by everything he did for me. I think I understand now why people talk about how important it is what is inside a person. Who a person is. No one is what they look like and I am not beautiful until I learn what it means to care for and love another person without thinking about how they look or if they are cute or handsome or not. The only thing that matters is if they are too interested in their own selves rather than others. I broke up with Randy. I didn’t want to hurt him but he is so imature he is not like a real man yet and I don’t care anymore how good looking he is. I’ve fallen in love with a man who is so much better and so much more beautiful in every way.

  She drew a little smiley face after the last word. She had one page folded over. On it, she wrote, I love you, Mr. Jameson.

  I folded it back with tears in my eyes. My hands shook. Fear made my heart stutter and I couldn’t think. I was alone in my living room and Annie would be home any minute and I paced around as if Leslie was there and I had to get her out of the house. I knew this was dangerous. But, to be accurate and truthful, it was also incredibly thrilling. I knew what it was, though. She was only grateful to me for helping her and she would eventually come to see that she was not really in love with me at all. I knew that. And I knew what the right thing was. I knew I could do the right thing.

  Since I had promised not to read folded entries, I pretended I hadn’t seen what she wrote. I commented at the end of the unfolded entry:

  I am glad you have started to have feelings for another. Whoever this new man is, he is lucky to have you because now you are a fully grown young woman. You know, I’m getting married soon. Being in love is a wonderful thing, but it takes time to let it develop so don’t be in a hurry. My fiancée and I have known each other for three years. Love is the sweetest thing, especially in the spring, but you should be patient and watchful of how it develops especially when you are coming from heartache. The writing is still developing beautifully. You have talent Leslie and I’m proud of you.

  When I returned the journals next day, she turned to the back and unfolded the page to see if I’d written anything there. When she saw nothing her face changed slightly—almost as if she had confirmed something for herself—then she read my comments. She closed the journal and placed it in her book bag. Her face did not change, but I saw her brush her hair back a little with a trembling hand and I felt as though I had purposely injured her.

  I never saw anyone so completely transformed before; in spite of her former beauty and power, she was now vulnerable and sad and I had the temerity to feel sorry for her.

  44

  Small Triumphs

  The second week in May, Drummond called me with the news that he had magazines. I met him at the same restaurant where we’d gone before only now it was a beautiful spring day. Warm breezes caressed everything as I got out of the car and strolled into the bagel shop. “What a day, eh?” he said. “I love April and May in this area.”

  We decided to eat outside.

  When he handed me Hounds-Tooth I was shocked at its quality. It had a glossy cover, with a picture of an old mining town, high in the green mountains of Tennessee or Virginia, the sun crouching behind one of the mountain crests, making shadows along the dusty streets. The picture was taken sometime in the thirties or maybe the late twenties. A boxy black car seemed to be making its way toward the camera, and people in high hats and dark tresses walked on the streets.

  Inside, the pages were deeply white, with fine dark print and good pictures and artwork. The top of page thirty-eight read Poetry by, and at the top of thirty-nine it said, Suzanne Rule.

  Under that banner, printed down the middle of each page (with a little artwork along the sides that looked like the drooping leaves of a weeping willow tree) were three of Suzanne’s poems, including “Stampede.”

  It was really impressive and I said so.

  “You think she’ll like that?” Drum said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “You sure I can’t talk to her?”

  “That would be impossible,” I said, still gazing at the magazine.

  “Why?”

  “I told you. She’s so completely impossible, Drum.” I looked up at him. �
��I’ve been working with her all year and I still haven’t seen her eyes.”

  He took a bite of his bagel then wiped a bit of cream cheese away from his lip. He seemed in a hurry to chew what he’d bitten off, so he could continue trying to persuade me, but I went on. “She’s so utterly shy if you tried to talk to her it might do her harm.”

  “Harm?”

  “I’m serious. She’s not only shy, she’s very fragile. She has not spoken to anyone since I’ve been there. Except for the few times I’ve heard her cough and once or twice when she sneezed, I’ve never heard her voice. As far as I know, no one at the school has.”

  “Well, shit,” he said. “She sounds unbelievably interesting.”

  “Maybe to you.”

  “Come on,” he said, irritated at my ignorance. “Emily Dickinson was just as banked and withdrawn.”

  “Well, she’s no Emily Dickinson,” I said.

  “But she has talent. I’d like to work with her.”

  “I really can’t allow it.”

  He looked at me.

  “Thank you for this,” I said, holding up the magazine. “It really is a wonderful favor.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “I know.”

  “It was my idea, not yours.”

  “Well I wanted to show you the poems. I must have had a reason. Maybe I helped it along a little.”

  He smiled, then let out a very loud laugh. “Goddamn Jameson, you got into the wrong business. You ought to be selling insurance or Fords.”

  “Anyway,” I said. “Thank you for having the idea and for getting this done. It will mean a lot to her.”

  I couldn’t wait to show the magazine to Suzanne.

  I got to school very early the next day. It was May 10th and the deep blue sky was filled with high white puffs of cloud that opened just enough to let the earliest rays of sun leak through. North or South or both had left his usual morning deposit—it had been so long since I’d gotten to the place that early, I almost forgot the odor that always preceded Mrs. Creighton and her Mr. Clean and chlorine bleach. I stood outside with the magazine, waiting for Granby and Doreen so I could show off Suzanne’s work. But nobody was as early as I was. I waited awhile, then went back in my room and put the magazine in my desk drawer. All through the day, I tried to forget it was there. I didn’t show it to Doreen or Granby after all. I could have held onto it for a day and then showed it to them maybe in the smoking area after school or tomorrow, but I was too anxious to put it in Suzanne’s hands. In the end, I didn’t even do that. Right before the beginning of my last class of the day, before she got there, I put the magazine on her desk with a note attached that said, simply,