The English Teacher

by Lily King

  “Where y’all headed?” she said when he reappeared at her counter with the bill and a twenty, trying to maintain the incurious tone she usually had with out-of-towners.

  “Uh.” The boy looked at her desperately. He was the kind of kid who seemed incapable of a lie.

  “You’re just heading out,” she said dramatically, sweeping her arm westward. She shrugged up her shoulders, turned down her lips, and said, “Maybe all the way to California.”

  The boy laughed. “Maybe,” he said, and then with the first animation she’d heard in his voice, “Maybe!”

  He took the change with another smile, shoved two dollars into the tip jar, and called out, “C’mon, Ma.”

  It was rude to not even call out good-bye, but she felt like she’d been punched in the chest, hearing Ma, knowing now this was that sweet boy’s mother. Why hadn’t she guessed they were related? Because there are just some women who you know have never raised a child. It’s in their eyes. April herself was one of them. That woman, she’d have sworn, was another.

  Just before they stepped off the curb, the boy tried to take his mother’s arm. But she jerked away fast, as if his touch would burn. She lay down in the back, disappearing from April’s view. With the engine running, his hands on the wheel, the boy sat stockstill, his face set and his mouth so pale it seemed to disappear.

  April wiped her tears quick away. Dave would make such fun if he saw.

  ELEVEN

  CALIFORNIA, THE LADY HAD SAID. SHE MADE IT SOUND SO CLOSE.

  He’d been driving for three days. For a few hours each night he’d gotten off the highway and found an empty parking lot. In one of the far corners, he’d park, lock the doors, and sleep. Then he’d find some doughnuts and coffee and be off again.

  He loved coffee. He loved driving. There were long stretches each morning when the road was empty, the music was good, and he didn’t even care about his mother behind him. That time of day, the coffee zinging inside him, he could think of anything without defeat. He relived his night with Kristina, the shape of her sleeping lips, the weight of her against him. And his kiss with Fran, the sound of which he often replicated with his mouth on the back of his hand. And when those memories made him too horny (if he were alone in this car he’d be masturbating round the clock), he just let his mind drift to other pleasant times. The consequences came later, in the afternoon, when the caffeine had gone and he was light-headed with hunger. He rarely stopped for lunch. Lunch places were always crawling with cops. They had early dinners at remote diners. He wished he could leave his mother in the car—she never ate more than a french fry, and without shoes or a brush or an interest in speaking, she called so much unnecessary attention to the two of them. But she couldn’t be anywhere by herself. And she was always terrified they were driving through Texas. After hours of silence, she’d suddenly rise up from the back and demand to know where they were. After he reassured her, she slept. She dreamed. She yelled out things he couldn’t understand. She kicked at the back of his seat and he had to scold her. He turned the radio up louder and louder. He’d almost left her in Nelson, Missouri, and Silverthorne, Colorado.

  California 174 mi. He thought the sign was a joke. But then, an hour later, California 110 mi. He had thought it took weeks to cross the country. California. Gena. He’d never written her a letter but he knew her address by heart. 363 Pajaro Way, Santa Lucia. He began to follow signs for San Francisco. Her town, Gena had told him at the wedding, was just south of there.

  There were long stretches of time in which she believed she was in the Oldsmobile, her father behind the wheel, her mother foraging through her purse. She could hear them bickering, not the regular bickering about when to eat or which road to take but the helpless flailing sound of their disillusionment with each other. They would be moving again. “On to the next wacko scheme,” her mother would say, slowly poisoning her father’s optimism with her presentiments of doom. Vida often thought that if her mother were the man and her father the woman they would be happy together. If her mother didn’t have to conceal from the world her intelligence and ambition, if her father wasn’t expected to squeeze money out of his dreams, there might be peace. But pressed up so close to their pain, Vida learned that true life was in books, life that was, no matter the foulness and misery, beautiful and symmetrical and comforting. The Portrait of a Lady from Virginia to Albuquerque, Madame Bovary from Albuquerque to San Antonio.

  She was aware of having left the highway, of being on slower roads, of the car moving with sudden purpose: a left turn, a long straightaway, a right turn. The car hit gravel and stopped. All she could see was the upper half of an orange house, a small strange house, a playhouse maybe that had been shaped from clay by a child. She shut her eyes.

  One thing she admired about Hardy was the inevitability of his tragedies. He was right up there with the Greeks, the way Tess for example picked up steam. You felt the first spasm of motion in the very first scene, then with each subsequent scene the tragedy gathered power. But life itself was nothing like that. In life the lack of inevitability—the lack of any design at all—was the tragedy.

  “I told you you wouldn’t call first.” She knew that voice. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

  Gena. No! She kicked the seat in front of her. But Peter was already out of the car, his feet scuffling through the gravel. No! Not here. Please dear God not here. She tried to get back to her thoughts—she still had something more to think about Hardy and design—but Gena was crying, then snuffling, then saying, “Come in. Are you hungry? Come in.”

  And Vida was left outside in the car like a dog.

  “You’re not all that surprised we’re here,” Peter said.

  “Tom’s been calling about every hour practically. All we could do was hope you’d turn up somewhere.”

  Peter was aware of a strange lack of disappointment in not having surprised her. It just felt good to be here.

  “Though I didn’t expect you’d be the one driving.”

  He laughed.

  “Sit,” she said, pointing to a foldout chair, the only chair at the small kitchen table. Gena stood at the sink, looking through the window. “You really think she’s asleep?”

  “I don’t know and I’m not sure I really care at this point.”

  “It’s been a rough few days, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.

  “Has she eaten?”

  “About six onion rings and a french fry.”

  “Water?”

  “A few sips.”

  “Alcohol?” Tom must have told her about that.

  “No. But she was drunk when we started out.” Peter felt the room moving past him, like a highway, and stood up. “I don’t want to get in a car for a long time.”

  He went into Gena’s living room. For all the sunlight outside, the house was buried in darkness. He felt like turning on a light. He walked around the room slowly, though there was little to see, just a brown flowered chair facing a television. He heard scratching beneath it and squatted to lift the skirt of the chair. It wasn’t a cat that bolted out past his feet to the kitchen.

  “What was that?”

  “You’ll have to meet all my babies.” She scooped up something brown and white at her feet. It was a guinea pig. “This is Fluffanutter.”

  Peter tried to stroke the top of its quivering head but it quickly tucked itself into Gena’s elbow. “They’re all going to be a little shy at first.”

  It was too much of an effort to stand, so he sank into the brown chair. Gena dragged the metal chair from the kitchen and sat beside him.

  “Either you drove a hundred miles an hour or you didn’t sleep much.”

  “I didn’t sleep much.”

  “I should call Tom. Do you want to talk to him?”

  Peter shook his head. He didn’t really believe the Belous still existed. That chapter of his life was over. He knew he should get up and check on his mother; the car would be getting pretty hot. But he didn’t have the str
ength. He shut his eyes and highway lines rushed past. Someone laughed, Fran or Stuart. A huge yellow ribbon was being tied in a bow. He was in history class, in the front row, away from the window, and Kristina was unzipping his fly. His erection jerked him awake. But Gena wasn’t looking. She was on the phone in the kitchen, facing the window. She was speaking quietly but not whispering. He heard “… exhausted but otherwise fine … yes … yes, I know.”

  He remembered Stuart’s trip with his mother, and Tom’s worry back at home. He wouldn’t be feeling anything like that now, not for a wife of a few weeks, not for a boy he’d done a little woodworking with, that was all. He’d been so stupid to think the Belous would become family, that you could press people together and they’d stick. Look at him and his mother. They’d been pressed together all his life and they still weren’t a family. He’d always thought that was because two was too small a number for a family, but that wasn’t it. He knew now that wasn’t it.

  “Oh God,” he heard Gena say. “Peter. Here.” She held the phone out as far as it would reach.

  “What?” He didn’t want to get up.

  “Talk to him. I’ve got to go get your mother. She’s walking away.” She put the receiver down on the counter and went out the door. He could hear the gravel being thrown in the air behind her as she ran.

  He lifted the phone to his ear. Out the window he saw his mother, still in her trench coat, hobbling toward the road.

  “Hello?” he said as Gena caught up to her.

  “Peter?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re okay. Thank God you’re okay.” There was all sorts of emotion in Tom’s voice. He pressed the receiver closer.

  “I’m fine.” His mother kept walking and when Gena tried to take her arm she flung it away, just as she’d done to Peter for the past few days. But she was no match for Gena, who stood in her path and clutched her by both shoulders.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah. I’m just watching.” He was so tired. He hadn’t meant to say that.

  “Watching what? TV?”

  “No. Gena and Ma. I’ve never seen women fight before.”

  “They’re fighting?”

  “Wrestling.”

  “Wrestling?”

  “They’re in a sort of lock right now. Gena’s heavier so you’d think she could just shove her down, but Mom’s got the height.”

  “Peter, is your mother okay?”

  “I don’t know. I found her on the JV field that morning. I had to carry her.”

  “I’m so sorry.” From the way he said it, Peter could tell he already knew that part.

  “They’re down.”

  “They’re done?”

  “Down. On the gravel.”

  At first Peter thought his mother was laughing. Her mouth was open wide and her arms were wrapped around her stomach as if so much laughing hurt.

  “What’s she doing now?”

  “She’s laughing.”

  After a long time, Gena led her into the house.

  “I’m going to run your mama a bath.”

  “All right,” he said loudly, cheerfully, hoping his mother would look up. But she didn’t. She was watching her feet move along the floor. Her tights had holes in the toes now. Her trench coat was bent up in the back. Her whole body seemed as delicate and precarious as a dried leaf. He wasn’t on the phone with Tom anymore, though he didn’t remember saying good-bye.

  From the flowered chair he could hear Gena’s voice above the rush of the water into the tub. The faucet stopped running and there was only the sound of water tinkling as his mother stepped into the bath.

  Gena’s face was pink and glistening. She sat on the metal chair again and put a hand on his knee. There were no more noises from the bathroom, not even a few drips from an arm reaching for soap. Could you really drown in a tub? Wouldn’t your head, after you went unconscious, bob up automatically and gulp for air?

  “She’s going to be all right, honey, she really is.”

  If his mother died would he start looking for his father? Whenever he thought of finding his father the same image always came to mind, of a man outside a small unpainted house, raking leaves. The man had a kind flat face and wore a wool sweater. He was lonely and distracted, and even in his dreams Peter couldn’t get his attention when he called to him.

  Was there somewhere among his mother’s possessions, somewhere he hadn’t checked in all his years of rifling through her things, a clue? He’d forgotten until a few minutes ago how Gena always said your mama. Mama was such a cozy word, absolutely the wrong word for what he had.

  In the bathroom water thundered out of the faucet again. He pictured her huddled up near it. She wasn’t like those women in ads who could sprawl out under a blanket of bubbles. His mother didn’t know how to relax. He thought of their trips to York Beach, her pile of books, her dash to the bookshop when she got halfway through the second-to-last one. She huddled on her towel on the beach just like she’d be huddling now. She never swam, never wanted to play Ping-Pong in the rec room. After dinner she might agree to a game of Scrabble, but never Monopoly or Stratego. And she took it so seriously. He tried to think if he’d ever seen his mother having fun. Even her wedding was more like a dentist’s appointment to her, the way she’d put on her dress at the last moment, and let out a big “uhhhh” when they reached the church parking lot. There was only one time he could think of, years ago, when she’d had people over to the house after he’d gone to sleep. He’d awoken to the sound of the blender and talking. He listened at the top of the stairs to his mother imitating people, other teachers who weren’t there. Suddenly she turned and ran up the stairs, giggling to herself. She ran right past him without even noticing him, into her room. Then she went downstairs again, wearing a wig, and everyone exploded into laughter.

  The water was still running. He needed to get out of this house. Gena looked relieved when he said he was going to take a walk.

  Her street, though narrow and quiet, extended perfectly straight in both directions. He went left because there were more palm trees that way. He’d never seen a palm tree before, and was surprised to find on the sidewalk long stiff straw-colored fronds that cracked under his feet like regular leaves. He didn’t recognize anything else on the sidewalk, not the smashed purple berries or the hairy red stalks. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen and Peter kept expecting to get hot and sweaty beneath the uninterrupted sun, but it just seemed to keep everything at room temperature. A car drove by, fast, with many people in it playing music he didn’t know.

  All the houses were small and sunless like Gena’s, all made out of the same smooth clay. After about ten blocks they started to get fatter, their grass shorn, their driveways more elaborate. Some had gates with a keypad. There were beat-up trucks out in front of many of these houses, and small groups of men bent over a cluster of shrubs or flowers. They spoke in Spanish and did not look up when he passed by.

  He had thought that the dark rim of blue on the horizon was part of the sky, but as he got closer it became the ocean. Stuart was right: it was so blue it looked fake. Gena’s long street dead-ended into a path that led down a steep incline to a strip of sand. Waves boomed against walls of rock on either side of the beach. He was too scared for some reason to go down there alone.

  He wondered where on this coast Stuart and his mother had been. Perhaps one day they had stood right here on this cliff. Mrs. Belou, knowing what she did, might have held Stuart’s hand or put her arms around him, her chin on his shoulder. She might never have wanted to let go. She might have hidden her tears, pretended it was the wind coming off the ocean as she caught them on her fingers. She had loved her son, and she wouldn’t have been able to imagine saying good-bye.

  Peter felt his own eyes begin to fill. Stupid, he said aloud, wiping them with his sleeve. Stupid, he said again, angry, unable to stop the tears or the clutch in his chest that was forcing them up. He squatted in the long grass as if there were people ar
ound, as if he had a cramp. He wasn’t a crier. He took pride in that. Even in grammar school, even when he got struck in the back of the head with a softball, he managed to get up and say he was okay. But now he was crying about a woman he never knew. Then he was crying for Stuart not knowing about the cancer and for Fran trying on her dresses and protecting her lilacs and for Caleb in his huge reading chair and for Tom on the phone asking, “What’s she doing now?” And then after a while it was just for himself and all that driving and his mother who was nothing, nothing like a mother, whining and complaining from the backseat but never explaining what she was doing on that soggy field, never explaining anything.

  It wasn’t just her silence for the past four days but her silence all of his life. She’d drawn him a goddamn picture of his father and that was it. And she didn’t even know how to draw. She drew like a child, worse than a child. He could have done better than that, better than a few lines of hair and smashed-in mouth. There wasn’t even a nose. Maybe that would have been fine if she had made up for it—Mrs. Belou would have made up for it—but she hadn’t, she couldn’t, she didn’t like him. His own mother didn’t like him. It was true and he’d never seen it before. All the ways he disappointed her. His very first memory was her saying he needed to grow up. You need to grow up. It was her refrain. Until it happened and then she’d get angry when his pants were too short or he’d walked to the gas station alone for candy. Only those nights when she’d tiptoe into his room and sit on the side of his bed and listen to what he’d watched with Lucy on TV did she seem to accept him the way he was. She’d stroke the hair off his forehead and sometimes, maybe twice, she’d told him that she loved him. He should have convinced Tom that she was better off drinking.