Philip Dick - In Milton Lumky Territory

“Oh no,” Susan said.

“Let me ask you one thing,” he said. “The accounts receivable file. Did you buy it at the full tally?”

“I believe so,” she said, hesitating.

“Suppose some of those people never pay. You assume all the risk. Do you remember about how much it came to?” Those were the customers who were billed each month for past purchases or services that they had charged.

“A couple hundred dollars, not much; not enough to worry about.”

“How much of this was done since I met you?” he asked. He had an idea that a great deal had been arranged months ago.

Susan, with a smile, said, “Remember, you met me years ago. When you were—” She calculated. “Eleven.”

“You know what I mean,” he said.

She said, “We worked out most of it last March. We had a terrible scrap. We were going to split up then. But my marriage was breaking up, and frankly I just couldn’t endure having everything fall to pieces around me. I patched it up with Zoe, and at least it lasted for a little while. But I knew it couldn’t go on much longer. When I came back from Mexico I knew I wanted to buy her out; I told you that. Didn’t I? When you first asked me.”

She had told him something along those lines; he could not recall the exact words.

“Bruce,” she said. “Or should I call you ‘Skip’?”

“Not Skip,” he said vehemently.

“When you were a little boy in grammar school, in my class, did you have any sex fantasies about me? It’s common.”

“No,” he said.

“How did you feel about me?” She had gotten her dead-serious tone. “Old Mrs. Jaffey was so lenient on all of you…did it seem to you as if I was too strict?”

The question could not easily be answered. “Do you want me to say what I thought then?” he said. “Or how it seems to me now? It’s not the same.”

She leaped up and paced about the room, her arms folded beneath her breasts, pushing them up and forward as if she were carefully carrying them. Lines of worry once more appeared on her forehead, and her lips pinched together. “How did you feel then?”

He said, “I was scared of you.”

“Did you feel guilty and you were afraid you’d be—discovered?”

“No,” he said with firmness. “I was simply scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of what you might do or say. You had complete power over us.”

Snorting, she said, “Oh come now. You know that’s not true; what about the parents? They terrorize teachers. They get them fired every day—one angry parent in the principal’s office throws around more weight than all the teachers’ unions in the world. Do you know why I left teaching?” She stopped pacing and intently smoothed and straightened her blouse. “I was asked to quit. I had to. Because of my politics. It was in 1948. During the election. I joined the Progressive Party; I was extremely active for Henry Wallace. So the next time when my contract came up, they didn’t renew it. And they asked me to quietly leave and not make a fuss. I naturally asked why.” She gestured. “And they told me. So I didn’t make a fuss. It was my own fault. And I signed that damn Stockholm Peace Proposal petition, later on. Walt got me to do that. He was very active in the Progressive Party, too. Of course that’s all in the past.”

“I never knew that,” he said.

“Some parents complained because I was teaching what they called ‘one-worldism’ in the classroom. I had material from the U.N. And then when they did research into me they discovered I had joined the I.P.P. So that was that. It seems like another era, like talking about Hoover and the W.P.A. I was resentful for a while, but anyhow it’s over with. I suppose I could teach again. Maybe not in Idaho, but in some other state like California. Now that they’re crying for teachers. They destroyed the school system with their witch hunts…they made teachers so timid it’s no wonder nothing gets taught. A teacher who opened her mouth about sex education or birth control or atomic war got fired. So I didn’t have so much power,” she wound up, remembering what she had asked. “How do you feel about me now?” She dropped down beside him and placed her hands on his shoulders. “I want you to give me an honest answer.”

“I always do,” he said, with heat.

“Don’t get hot under the collar. But you might imagine you should be polite. Not offend me. Remember, my period as a teacher is over with, so I don’t sink or swim according to how good I am as a teacher. I don’t conceive of myself in that role, and I haven’t in years. But I’ve always wondered what effect I had. Naturally I tend to think—especially when I’m despondent—that I had no effect. Children are subject to so many outside chaotic forces.”

He listened to this set speech, knowing that she was fortifying herself against what he might say.

“Listen,” she went on, “I honestly won’t be offended.”

“That’s not the point,” he said. Leaning forward he kissed her troubled, rigid mount. It did not respond in the slightest. “To me it’s much more important than it is to you; it’s not you I’m thinking about.”

“Why?” she said.

“You were grown-up. You were formed.” He did not want to come out and tell her that she had been one of the great factors affecting his life. “Suppose I had been the worst student you had; what real difference did that make? You had a lot of other students. And it was only a year!” That irked him. Just a year to her, less than that since she had not taught the entire term. But to him at that time—a reality that continued indefinitely. What fifth grader can imagine the end of the fifth grade? It will be with him forever. “Thirty pupils but only one teacher,” he pointed out.

“Tell me,” she said, becoming upset, now.

He said grudgingly, “You represented a major worry in my life.”

“You mean that I made you unhappy several times. I suppose you were unhappy after we marched you down to Mr. Hillings’ office, that day we caught you peeping.”

“No,” he said, “it carried on. Not just an incident. I mean I always was afraid of you. What’s so complicated about that? You mean you hadn’t even thought of that? Don’t you remember the day that Jack Koskoff refused to come to school because he was terrified of you?”

She nodded slowly, trying to understand.

“For years you scared me.”

Angrily she said, “I only taught your class for a trifle over a semester!”

“But I remembered you.”

“I had no authority, absolutely none, over you, after you got out of Garret A. Hobart. Why, I never even saw you again.”

“I delivered your goddamn newspaper,” he said, trembling with unhappiness, now that he realized that she did not remember that.

“Did you?” Her face remained blank.

He said, “When you had that big stone house with the other ladies. Don’t you remember when you tried to get me to collect just once every three months, and I patiently explained to you that I might not be on that route in three months, and in that case I’d lose the money, and the next carrier would get it for not doing anything?”

“I dimly recall. Was that you?” She laughed nervously. “Did you tell me at the time?”

Come to think of it, he did not know for certain if he ever had. She had said hello to him, at the time, as if she had known him, recognized him. But she might merely have realized that she had seen him before, perhaps had him as a student, without identifying him as an individual. Or thought of his name. Or placed him, beyond that general recognition.

“Maybe I only thought you knew it was me,” he said. “But you said hello to me every time you saw me. Also, you asked me how my mother was.”