The English Teacher

by Lily King

  He was now the last person on the bus. He forced himself to stand. It was Fran he dreaded most. Stuart would intimidate him, reduce him. But Fran would bring back the shame of that night he kissed her and disgusted her so thoroughly. He didn’t know why she had written, why she’d wanted to include him in her visit with Stuart. He wondered if Tom had pushed them into it.

  They were right there at the bottom of the steps, as if they were about to get on the bus themselves.

  “We thought you’d blown us off.” Her voice brought back breakfasts at the green table.

  “I didn’t,” Stuart said. He was fuller, not fat, just inflated to the proper size.

  They didn’t hug.

  “It’s weird to see you guys,” Peter said, aware that he was only looking at Stuart. He hadn’t seen Fran yet, just heard her voice and felt the vague mass of her body to his right.

  Fran and Stuart agreed but Peter could feel the old lopsided attachment. He wondered again why he had come. He felt tired already from the effort the day was going to take.

  “How’s Caleb?” he asked as they walked through the terminal to the street. It was the most innocuous place to start.

  “He’s moved into your guys’ room,” Fran said.

  “What?” Stuart yelled.

  Your guys’. His mother would have a fit over the expression, but Peter marveled at it for other reasons. He’d only been in that room six weeks. Was it really still partly his?

  Fran laughed at her brother’s outrage. She’d probably been saving this piece of information since September, to deliver it in person for the reaction. “He’s painted all the lightbulbs different colors and he lights the incense and has his little friends over and they recite all that crap on the walls.”

  “What is one is not one,” Peter said.

  “And what is not one is also one,” Fran finished.

  “Does he have girls tapping at his window at night?”

  “Watch it, Pete.” Stuart gave him a shove with his shoulder and Peter bumped into Fran.

  “Sorry,” he said to the sleeve of her red jacket.

  “You’re different,” she said, too quietly for Stuart to hear.

  “Where are we going?” Peter asked, hopeful now, for different could only mean improved. They’d been walking fast and purposefully down one street, across to another, and were now headed up a hill.

  “I’ve got class in ten minutes,” Stuart said. “I thought you guys could drop me off, then we can grab lunch after.”

  “How long’s your class?” Peter asked, too quickly, not concealing his panic.

  “An hour and forty minutes.”

  Holy shit, he thought.

  Soon Stuart veered up a long flight of stone steps and was gone.

  They were in a large quad that had been drained of people within seconds. A clock at the top of a tower struck the quarter hour.

  “College,” he said, thinking of Stuart’s imitation of Tom, and the great relief Tom must feel now, thinking, too, what a mystery it was to him, this kind of life.

  “Yeah,” Fran said uneasily.

  They walked toward a fountain in the center of the quad.

  “I never got it,” she said, “why Stuart dragged his feet about all this. But now that it’s my turn I feel like I’d be abandoning her. My mother, I mean.” But Peter knew who she was talking about.

  He nodded. “She’s a pretty powerful presence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Her love. It was really strong. She loved you so much.”

  Fran’s eyes filled even though she was smiling. “She did,” she whispered.

  He could tell she knew he was going to hug her and she let her chin fall heavily on his shoulder. She smelled like the shampoo they all used to use, and he remembered what it felt like to stand in the bathroom after a shower looking at the picture of her mother. He wondered if there was a word for missing something you never had.

  When they stopped hugging, he said, “I’m sorry about the kiss.”

  “Oh God. Don’t be. I wanted you to kiss me.”

  He thought about reminding her of what she’d said. Instead he kept quiet, and they sat on the rim of the fountain, shoulders touching.

  A guy wearing sandals with thick noisy buckles trudged past, looking at all the buildings, then back down at his map.

  “That’s going to be me next year. Completely clueless,” she said.

  He thought of how his mother was taking a training class to teach self-defense in addition to her English classes at the community college. “Go help him.”

  “What?”

  “Go help him find where he’s going.”

  “I’ve been here a day.”

  “He’s got a map. How hard can it be?”

  “Peter.”

  “Do it.”

  “Shit,” she said, and pushed herself off.

  He watched her in her red jacket smoothing down her hair just before she reached the guy and tapped him on the the back. He spun around, and a smile bloomed. Together they looked at the large map. Fran turned it around for him, and pointed to the clock tower. The guy laughed and shook his head. Peter remembered the way Fran could make pancakes, bacon, toast, and scrambled eggs and have it all arrive hot on the table at the same time. And when Tom brought home a game for Caleb, a three-tiered maze for marbles that had loops and pulleys and zillions of tiny plastic pieces, Fran put it together without taking the directions out of the box.

  They were talking now. Peter watched the guy’s eyes dart to her face, wondering how he’d see her again, daring himself to ask.

  It was all about courage. To live even a day on this earth required courage. All these things they read in school—The Odyssey, Beowulf, Huckleberry Finn—were all about courage, but the teacher never said, You may not have to kill a Cyclops or a dragon but you will need just as much courage to get through each day.

  They shook hands and Fran came back carrying a corner of the map.

  “His phone number?”

  “Address.” She was flushed and happy. “We can be pen pals, like your mom and my dad. He asked if you were my boyfriend.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said you were my little brother.”

  Peter punched her. It was exactly what he’d hoped she’d say.

  Stuart emerged in a thick wave of people and stood at the top of the stairs for a few minutes talking to a girl. Others joined them and Stuart broke off, descending the stairs alone.

  When he saw Peter and Fran, he didn’t hide his pleasure that they were still there, waiting for him. He had that wide smile from the cube of pictures in the living room. He led them off campus and down a side street to a tiny shop. He disappeared inside and came out with a bag of sandwiches. Then he turned up a path off the crowded sidewalk and soon the street was far below them. It was a steep incline, with thick tree roots bulging up out of the damp earth which smelled like old flowers and toothpaste.

  “So who was she?” Fran asked.

  “Who?”

  “The girl you were talking to.”

  “Her name’s Mary. She’s in my Mandarin class.”

  “You didn’t want to introduce us?”

  “That was our second conversation ever. It might have seemed a little odd to her.”

  “You’re worried what she’ll think of you. You like her.”

  “I do.”

  “Of course her name’s Mary.”

  “Me and Oedipus.” He crossed his fingers. “We’re tight.”

  They kept walking.

  “Your mother’s not stringing my father along, is she?” Fran stopped and turned back to face Peter. “I mean, he really believes what she writes.”

  “What does she write?” He wanted to keep moving, but Fran sat on a boulder.

  “I don’t know really, but he goes around humming and giggling after he gets a letter.”

  “My mother,” he began, but he suddenly felt too dispirited to continue.

&nbs
p; “What do you mean, Fran, ‘you don’t know really’?” Stuart said.

  “I don’t read them. I swear I don’t. I’m dying to. But I don’t. He reads parts to us. The funny parts. But I think there are definitely juicy parts because he’s always trying to cover up the back of the page he’s reading from.”

  Peter started walking again, and after a little while he heard them following behind. He wasn’t going to try to explain his mother to them anymore.

  They came abruptly to the top, which was a patch of grass overlooking the cities: Berkeley, then Oakland, then San Francisco across the glossy water. They sat in a line facing the view. Stuart passed out the sandwiches.

  “This should be interesting,” Fran said as she unwrapped hers.

  Peter took a bite. The flavors were unrecognizable, but not awful. It was the texture that was challenging, so dry and mealy it sucked the moisture from his tongue.

  “Gross!” Fran spat her bite out on the grass. “That is definitely the worst yet.”

  “I’ve been stretching her palate since she got here.”

  “‘Stretching my palate’? You’ve been trying to kill me. Can we get a jar of this stuff for Caleb? God, Peter, you’re not actually eating that, are you?”

  He shook his head and spat his out, too. “I think it was trying to eat me.”

  They all laughed.

  Peter noticed that Stuart’s sandwich had regular lettuce in it. He snatched the other half and opened it. “Ham and cheese!” he yelled.

  “Bastard!”

  Peter split the half with Fran.

  They ate and looked out at the foreign landscape, the valleys and hills covered in buildings and asphalt, the sea vacant.

  “What do you think our real purpose is here?” Stuart said.

  Fran groaned. “Can we have one day when we don’t have to talk about the meaning of life?”

  “I don’t think we ever talk about anything else. It just depends how honest we want to be about it.”

  “I want to ask Peter about his life out here, about Vida, about when my father is going to get to see her.”

  “You want to know how much meaning Vida finds in her correspondence with Dad.”

  There was something different in the way they said Vida, something more hopeful.

  “I bought my mother The Thorn Birds.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did. And she read it and she cried like a baby when Ralph died.”

  “You have to be lying,” she said, grinning.

  “I think she’s hoping Tom will come out in January.”

  He could feel Fran relax beside him. “Good.”

  There had been talk, if visits went well, of Tom’s moving out here with Fran and Caleb by summer, but Peter saw they didn’t know that yet. They were all ready for a change, Tom had said.

  They shoved their wax paper back in the bag and stretched out on the grass. There were insects gnawing on something nearby.

  Stuart, placing his hands on his bony knees, said, “Heaven and Earth and I were born at the same time, and all life and I are one.”

  Chuang Tzu, Peter guessed. “I’ve missed you,” he said. He hadn’t meant to. It just blurted itself out, and he blushed.

  “I’ve missed you, too.” Stuart put his arm around Peter’s neck and didn’t take it off until they all stood up.

  Before they left, they went to the edge of the drop down to the city. They stood close with their arms brushing and Peter smelled Fran’s hair again and heard Stuart’s familiar deep slow breaths in and out. It felt good to be with them, but it would feel good to be on the bus in a little while. His mother would be waiting at the stop for him and she would know the effort it had taken for him to see them and he would know the courage it had taken for her to be there, standing in the dark with strangers.

  FIFTEEN

  January, 1981

  SHE WAITED FOR HIM OUTSIDE. IT WAS POINTLESS TO TRY AND BE ANYWHERE else. At first she sat in the orchard, as Gena called it, which consisted of the four fruit trees they’d planted last spring: a lemon, a lime, and two avocados. For her birthday, Peter and Gena had given her a wrought iron table and chair and she’d placed it between the avocados. She’d written to Carol at that table finally—without notes or quotes, just her own small words. And all her letters to Tom.

  From the kitchen window, Peter watched his mother wander in the grass beside the driveway. Occasionally she stopped without knowing it, her mind caught on some snag. He could tell she was nervous from the way she scratched the inside of her wrists.

  “I can’t remember what he looks like,” she’d said last night. “All I can picture is the mustache.”

  “Sometimes I can hear it against the receiver,” he’d said.

  “Yes! Scritch scritch.” The guinea pig in her lap had leapt off at the sound. “I feel like I never really looked at him.”

  “Tomorrow’s your chance,” Gena had said. She’d tried to sound cheerful about it, but she knew that change was afoot, and she liked things the way they were.

  A silver rental car pulled in the driveway. Vida stood in the grass in her lucky dress, barefoot, her wrists scraped red.

  Tom didn’t bother parking properly or shutting the door when he got out. He just went to her as if she were dying, the way Peter himself had gone to her that morning in the field, leaving his pencil and his history books on the desk. And when Tom reached her they sank into each other like neither could have taken another step without the other and even Peter felt weakened by watching, a bit like he’d felt two nights ago when they’d seen the fifty-two hostages come off a plane and fall into the arms of the people who’d waited for them. They’d been given parkas with enormous fur-trimmed hoods and they came down the set of metal stairs in groups of twos and threes, then separated as their families found them. A little girl in a red coat leapt into the arms of her big brother; a mother kept kissing her middle-aged son’s hand over and over as they walked away. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” a reporter asked a man on the tarmac. “Take my wife in my arms.” They’d been sitting down on the new couch, but by the time all the hostages had disembarked, he, Gena, and his mother were all standing a few inches from the screen, clutching hands without knowing it.

  He smelled, even in California, of maple syrup. Vida held him and let him hold her. She felt herself opening, her whole being spreading not just over Tom but over the yard, over the orchard behind her, over the palms clicking in the wind. Over the Dodge which had carried her so many places. Over her son, her very own son, watching at the window. She pressed her mouth to the warm stubble on the back of Tom’s neck. Desire rose easily. He’d waited, and had come when she asked. And yet she did not feel as Tess had felt when Angel finally came. Unlike Tess, her urge was not to die. This happiness was too much, Tess said. I have had enough. But Vida had not had near enough. Oh God, she thought, nearly unable to reckon with the vastness of the moment. This is it and I am right here. This is what there is.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  EVERYONE IN MY LIFE HAS HAD A HAND IN HELPING ME WRITE THIS BOOK. Thank you to each one of you. I would still be stuck in chapter nine without the extraordinary help of Judith Burwell, who opened all the doors and windows. I am grateful for the support and encouragement of my writers’ group: Susan Conley, Debra Spark, Anja Hanson, and Sara Corbett. I am indebted to the following people for all their help: Sue Loomis, Fabiola Parra, Alix Bowman, Tina Barber, Paula Price, Nidia Restrepo, Holly Adams, and Hannah McCain. I’d also like to thank my mother, Don Lee, Maryanne O’Hara, Ann and Jack Cobb, Anita Demetropoulos, Cornelia Walworth, Cammie McGovern, Lisa Adams, and Becky Dilworth. And I need to acknowledge a real-life high school English teacher, Tony Paulus, who introduced me to both literature and creative writing, and without whom I would never have begun writing stories. I am blessed with a fantastic agent, Wendy Weil, and an exceptionally talented editor, Elisabeth Schmitz, who speaks my language, only better.

  I
need to give a special thanks to Susan Conley who, in a true act of friendship, somehow managed to read my manuscript twice in one week despite her responsibilities as teacher, writer, and mother of two small boys. Her feedback was invaluable to me. And to my husband, Tyler, who listened, and read, and made me go on when I wanted to give up. And to my daughters, Calla and Eloise, for their love and understanding, and for the expression on their faces when they took turns holding the pile of pages that night I finished.

  A GROVE PRESS READING GROUP GUIDE

  The English Teacher

  Lilly King

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  We hope that these discussion questions

  will enhance your reading group’s exploration

  of Lily King’s The English Teacher. They are

  meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints,

  and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

  More reading group guides and additional information, including

  summaries, author tours, and author sites for

  other fine Grove Press titles, may be found on

  our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. At the heart of the novel is the quest of Vida to find truth through fiction. The epigraph for The English Teacher, “Life is beginning. I now break into my hoard of life,” is from Virginia Woolf. How would you describe Vida as an English teacher? What are her strengths? What are her dramatic limitations? What distinguishes an English teacher from other teachers? Does living in the world of books hamper Vida, or does it expand her experience? Do the students of an imaginative English teacher—and readers of good books—suspend disbelief in order to grow or live on multiple levels?

  2. Why does Vida hate teaching Tess of the D’Urbervilles? Why is she afraid of Peter reading it? (See pages 33–38.) What is perverse about her students’ taking the book to their hearts, adding it to Mrs. Avery’s legendary status? How does the teaching of the novel continue to correlate with events in the book? See the last page, for instance.