“They didn’t know each other that long. Hell, Frances, she just got hired in September. You know that, and I’ll bet everything I own, they didn’t know each other before she got here. Did they?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I think they make a nice couple.” Frances took a sip of her drink.
“Yeah, a nice couple of hypocrites.”
“Janine, you’re just jealous.” Frances laughed.
“Well, to tell you the honest-to-God truth, I am jealous and why shouldn’t I be? I liked Al. Hell, I still like Al, and before Hester was hired, he was coming on to me all the time. He just never asked me out.” Janine sounded terribly disappointed.
“He didn’t take Hester out either, that I know of. He never took anybody he slept with out. All Al Murphy ever wanted out of anybody was sex.”
“Really? So who else has he had sex with?”
“Well, let’s see.” Frances’s eyes shot up toward the ceiling, and she started silently counting on her fingers before she looked back at Janine. “Everybody on staff under the age of forty.”
“Get out of here. Even Dr. Vanguard? I don’t believe you!”
“Oh, Janine, under that heavy sweater and behind those bifocals is a tigress. Why, she knows more about the reproductive habits of whales than the president of National Geographic. She shows this video of them doing it, and you can see the male whale’s enormous penis. It’s six feet long, and all of the kids go wild when they see it. They say she just stands in the back staring at that screen. Personally, I think it’s creepy, the way she exposes her students to such suggestive things.”
“She’s just plain weird.”
“An understatement.”
“Then Mr. VP Murphy must be even weirder to screw around with her.”
“Oh, he’s harmless really, just completely insatiable. You know how some men are just oversexed.”
“So why’s he marrying Hester?” Janine sucked the last of her drink through the straw.
Frances lowered her voice and Hester lost what was said. Then Janine said, “Huh? I can’t hear you.”
“Maybe she’s…you know,” shouted Frances.
“No way, no way, she’s way too thin to be, you know.” Janine’s voice was full of authority.
“Okay, so if she’s not pregnant, then she must know some tricks nobody else knows. Or maybe she’s just able to keep up with him. They used to do it every day in Stalmeyer’s old office.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, you’ve got to be kidding, you didn’t know that? Everybody knew that. Even the students knew that.”
“I’d heard it, but I didn’t think it was true.”
“You didn’t want to think it was true, but just ask Gladys. Every day, ninth period, Hester would come looking for him and pretend they had to discuss something. Murphy would always be down at the gym, and she’d go down there. They’d lock the door, and, well, you know.”
“That’s disgusting. What a little tramp. How could Al marry someone like that?”
“Because he’s a bigger tramp.” Frances fiddled with a speared maraschino. “What do I know? Maybe he’s in love. Whatever that means. Like I said, they look like they make a nice couple.”
“Nice couple, my ass. She’s a…” Janine looked up. Al and Hester were walking toward where she and Frances were seated. She sat back quickly and folded her arms beneath her chest, which pushed her large breasts upward and deepened the V of her almost totally visible cleavage even more. She smiled up at newlyweds.
Hester had assumed Janine was nice, had even hoped they could be friends, since they were the same age and taught the same subject. Not now, not ever, thought Hester, trying not to get upset; but it bothered her—and she couldn’t deny it—that Janine might have been with Al. How could he? Look at her. Her hair was over-processed, bleached, probably with straight peroxide, and teased on top in a lame attempt to get it to look fuller. To Hester it looked frizzled and ratty. And her makeup was an even worse disaster—thick foundation a shade too dark for the skin on her neck, red-orange lipstick a shade too bright for the dark foundation, too much eyeliner, and even though she couldn’t see them now, Hester knew Janine had humongous thighs, chubby knees, and skinny calves. In a dress or skirt her legs looked like upside-down triangles. The worst, though, was the way she acted when she wasn’t in the classroom—naive and stupid, like a girl instead of a woman. No, there would never be any friendship here.
Well, at least old Frances, the math teacher, had stuck up for Al and her. Boy, had Hester misjudged her. To look at Frances, you would have thought she was as uptight as an algebraic formula. She had this look about her that made you think she was always thinking a zillion steps ahead of you, like she had a brain the size of a watermelon, a brain that could burn rubber as it sped through a secret series of logarithms at the same time she was talking about the latest movie she’d seen or what she’d had for dinner the night before. She wore her hair short, and never completely brushed out the perfect circles left by her small sponge rollers, as though their geometric perfection outweighed any aesthetic consideration on her part. She wore her eyeglasses around her neck, attached to a chain with links made up of plus, minus, multiplication, and division signs. She always wore a white shirt, a box-pleated skirt. She wore thick panty hose and brown walking shoes. Her one nod to whimsy was a patch with the face of Einstein on it which she’d stitched on the breast pocket of her navy blazer. Although everything she wore was crisp and clean, she still looked astonishingly frumpy.
But Hester was feeling warm and fuzzy about Ms. Frances Middleton and thought at the moment that she looked just right, uniquely herself, almost classic. Hester studied her lovingly as one might study an old masterpiece in a museum when she realized that beneath all the dowdy trappings was a woman who wasn’t all that bad looking, a woman who wasn’t all that old, a woman who had probably only recently turned forty.
Holy shit. Another woman Al might’ve done it with.
“Ladies, it is so great to see you here. There’s nothing like being vice principal of a place where the whole staff supports you.” Al was schmoozing the women. “Frances, I love your dress. Why, I barely recognized you without old Einstein close to your heart.” Hester knew if they’d been somewhere else like in the faculty room, what Al would have said would’ve been something more like, without old Einstein sucking your tit. He was vulgar, but he made you laugh, sometimes. “And Janine, Janine, I haven’t seen you much lately. How’s that Shakespeare festival going? Doing The Taming of the Shrew this year?”
“Oh, Mr. Murphy, you really do have such a charming sense of literary humor, but you know me better. I’m playing it safe and sticking to Julius Caesar. All war, blood, and guts, lots of corpses and no sex, unless you count the scene where the boy plays the harp.”
“You mean lute, don’t you, Janine?” Hester pounced.
“Harp? Lute? Who cares, Hester? You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t. What’s sexual about what goes on in that scene? Have you even read it?”
“Of course I’ve read it! What are you trying to insinuate?” Janine still had her arms folded, and as she wagged her head at Hester, the mounds of her breasts jiggled nearly out of her plunging neckline.
“Now, now, ladies, calm down.” Al was smiling, staring at the mounds.
Janine took the chance to talk to him directly. “You know, Al, I really want to get tenure, and the English classroom is a minefield. You say the wrong thing, and people start thinking and talking, and then everything gets blown out of perspective. Now everybody wants to put Catcher in the Rye in the curriculum. Can you imagine? All that cursing, and there’s even a character, Sunny, who’s a prostitute.”
Hester wanted to jump in, yeah, Janine, but Holden only gets beat up, he never gets laid, you goddamn phony, you! But she didn’t want to make Al mad, so she smiled a fake smile—the kind that makes your lips go stiff—and envisioned en
dless hours of English department meetings stretching out before her, where her sole purpose in life would be to disagree with anything Janine Apgar said.
“Your invitation came as such a surprise, Murphy.” Frances was speaking with a genuine lilt in her voice. Al leaned over a little in her direction.
“I know, Fran…”
Fran! Hester never heard anyone ever call Frances, Fran. Christ, maybe Al really had done it with her.
Hester listened as Al continued, “But you know when it’s right. You know when you’ve found the one, and Hester is the one for me.”
Al looked up at Hester with those dark eyes of his, his smile natural, easy, his straight white teeth perfect. Hester inhaled and reached for his hand. It warmly encircled hers. This is what she’d wanted all along—Mr. Wonderful, a wonderful man. The kind of man other women wanted, but who only wanted you. Hester, who’d been dumped by a long-haired hippie, who’d done the worst thing she’d ever done for him, and who’d been deserted by him in her hour of need, was now, thank God, Al Murphy’s wife—till death do them part.
Now she could stop missing her mother, her sister, her father. Al was her whole family now rolled into one. Hester happily contemplated her good fortune. She let her eyes drift over the heads of the seated guests, let the music the DJ was playing wash over her.
“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” by the Shirelles was on, and Hester thought, yes, yes, I know he will still love me tomorrow and forever. I’ll make sure he will.
Al suddenly squeezed her hand hard. She looked at him, thinking, poor Al, he doesn’t know his own strength. She saw him look back at Frances and Janine. Hester tried to pull her hand away, but his hand tightened around hers. Her rings pressed into the soft flesh of her fingers.
“Al, you’re hurting me.” Hester whispered it as quietly as she could. He looked at her blankly, as though he didn’t recognize her, then looked away. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. There was so much noise. Maybe he’d had too much to drink. He didn’t loosen his grip.
“Al,” Hester said louder and closer to his ear, “you’re hurting me.”
He acted like he didn’t hear her. Hester wanted to wrench her hand away, but they were right by Frances and Janine. What would they think if she made a scene? She didn’t want to ruin her own wedding, but why was Al hurting her? Really hurting her. She thought her fingers might bleed; the larger diamond was pressing into bone. The DJ was playing “Love Me Tender.”
“Al, dance with me,” she shouted above the din, took her other hand, and grabbed the wrist of the hand he had clenched around hers. She dug into him with her fake nails. She didn’t care if they all broke off.
He looked at her, looked down at her nails digging into his wrist, smiled stupidly. She let go.
“Your wish is my command, wife.” The stress he put on the last word made Hester wince. Al chuckled, let go of her hand, and ushered her onto the dance floor.
“Love me true…never let me go…” He pulled Hester close, his chin warm against her temple. Everyone on the dance floor backed away and watched them. Hester could feel their eyes on her and knew they must be thinking how in love Al and she must be, how there was such chemistry between them, such a special spark.
Elvis’s voice was sweet and sexy. It made Hester want to cry, she was so confused. He’s got to be drunk, she thought. What else could it be? I’ll have to monitor how much he drinks, pay more attention.
“Never let me go…” Al was singing along with Elvis, the sound of his voice lovely. It filled Hester’s whole head, made her feel like he was inside it. He seemed happy and oblivious about what he’d done. He held Hester gently.
Maybe, he was only fooling around. It couldn’t have been on purpose. She wanted to ask, but was afraid to draw attention to the incident, afraid to hear how he might answer her. He probably didn’t realize how delicate her fingers were.
She began to let herself relax into his arms, and by the end of the song, Hester had almost forgiven him entirely for hurting her. When the music stopped and Al leaned in to kiss her, she let him. Everyone clapped, and they both took a corny bow.
After they cut the cake, Al took the garter off her leg and threw it over his shoulder to one of the single men; Hester threw her bouquet to, of all people, Janine Apgar.
It was time for the last dance, Johnny Mathis’s “Wonderful, Wonderful.” Hester had requested it in advance because in her mind it expressed perfectly the way she felt about Al. He was “oh so wonderful.” The DJ put it on, and Al started spinning her around too quickly, ahead of the music. They were off the beat, but Hester was happy now, enjoying herself and anxious to go home to their new apartment and make love. Everything finally seemed as perfect as Johnny Mathis’s pitch.
Then Hester remembered a small thing she heard and let slip by. It was what Frances had implied about Al marrying her because she was pregnant. It made her feel bad. Honestly, she hadn’t wanted to trap Al. Once in her life, being pregnant had ruined everything; she couldn’t let not being pregnant ruin her life now.
She knew a good thing when she saw it now, and Al Murphy was better than good—great job, great personality, great in bed. If somebody like Janine would’ve gotten him instead her, it would’ve driven her crazy. It would have been all downhill from there. She pictured herself bludgeoning Beth Humbolt to death with a stapler the next time she tried to correct Hester in class or stabbing Robby Pherson with a pair of scissors. That’s how she would’ve ended up: insane.
And if she ever did reconcile with her parents and her sister, wouldn’t they be so happy that she’d made a good life with someone stable like Alexander Murphy?
Hester looked up at her new husband, and the priest’s word came back to her from the morning service: “You are no longer two separate people. By the grace of God, you have become one. What one of you does, so also does the other.”
Odd way of putting it, like one of them had to disappear into the other in order for a perfect union to exist. She knew enough about Al already to know he wasn’t about to fade away the least little bit. So what was left? Adam would take back his rib.
Stop it, stop overanalyzing, she told herself. But the terrible idea that she’d be the one who would have to give in, would always have to give in, had already taken hold of her.
They were still dancing, but for Hester the magic of the moment had passed. Two spots on her fingers were sore. She spread them apart on Al’s back, tucked her head into his shoulder, and tried like hell to get even a small bit of happiness back.
Sixteen
A month and a week after the hurricane, Hester was in the kitchen chopping parsley and basil for a salad. She looked out the window in time to catch the sun burst from behind a thick slab of gray clouds.
Al was on the patio sipping a Miller Light. In the shadow of what remained of the Bo tree, he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. He wore a faded pair of surfer trunks and an old Sourland High basketball shirt. His hair had grown long and was wavy from the humidity. His Best of Italy CD was playing on his boom box. He sang along to “Santa Lucia Lutana.”
Al’s injuries required four weeks of rehab, and his insurance paid for him to stay at the rehab center. While he was gone, Hester slowly returned to the land of living. There was nothing she could do to change things. Her feelings toward Al ran cold and hot. She missed Nina, but not as intensely as she had at first. Hester, lately, found herself thinking more often than not that there was a chance, though slim, Al hadn’t done anything wrong.
During Al’s absence, Eve and Dee nagged Hester into getting back to water aerobics. On Friday nights they invited her to play pinochle at the clubhouse. They even dragged her to shuffleboard, and that’s where she met Barb Hendleman.
After a tournament Barb won, she invited Hester back to her place to celebrate. Hester thought there’d be other women there, but discovered when she arrived, it was only the two of them.
Barb lit the tiki torches that lined her patio and b
ought out a bottle of Gallo zinfandel—the white kind that Hester was not at all fond of.
“You know, Hester, my husband, Cliff never bowled in his life till we came down here. He comes home from recycling the trash and tells me he joined the bowling team, which didn’t sit well with me. ‘What about your back, Cliff? If your back goes out again, I’m the one who suffers. Remember when you couldn’t get out of bed and had to pee in a jar? Who jumped up and got the jar, held the jar, emptied the jar? Me. No way, Cliff. I won’t allow it,’ I said to him. Quite frankly I was a little sick and tired of his back going out. He was such a big baby about it.”
Barb took a sip of the zinfandel and Hester did too, and almost gagged on it.
“Cliff, of course,” Barb continued, “started bowling every Friday with the Pleasant Palms’ team. He promised to be careful, and it seemed he was, about his back anyway, because soon he was out four nights a week practicing. I began not to mind because I had the remote control to myself and got to watch my own shows. At the end of the season, though, when the bowlers held their banquet at the Ocean Club House, I was surprised to learn the team was coed—seven men and this Lola Matson, a tall, raven-haired woman with milky skin, who looked like she was still in her early fifties for crying out loud!”
“I thought, no wonder Cliff can’t wait to go bowling. He’s been bowling with goddamn Snow White. Of the seven stupid dwarfs, Cliff must’ve been Dopey. Hester, you should’ve seen those men falling all over this Lola. Anyway, each member got a gag award for things like gutter balls, splits, and so on. I was sitting with Cliff, having a pretty good time despite being annoyed with him for not telling me about Lola, when it was announced that Cliff was getting the award for the biggest flirt!
“Everybody laughs. Then I catch Lola staring at Cliff, and Cliff raises his glass of Scotch in her direction and smiles this suave smile. I was furious, but decided to let it go until we got home. DJ Janet started the music with Carol King’s ‘It’s Too Late.’ Clifford doesn’t say a word to me, gets up, goes to Lola’s table, and asks her to dance. Right in front of me, like I wasn’t even there.
On the Edge of Dangerous Things (Dangerous Things Trilogy Book 1) Page 9