Terry McLaughlin - Learning Curve

“It sounds as awful as it was. But it had its moments.” Emily wrapped her hands around her mug and leaned forward. “I wish you could have seen the students’ faces—all those expectations. I’m going to love it, I just know it. If I survive the planning, the teaching, the paperwork, the assignments for my university classes and all the extracurricular activities I plan to squeeze in.”

“Oh, you’ll survive. You thrive on hard work. You always have.” Kay smoothed a hand over the paper in her lap as if it were fine linen. “Now, when are you going to let me take you shopping and buy you something special to brighten up this place a bit?”

Emily blew on her tea to cool it. She wasn’t surprised by the shift in topic. Her mother was far more comfortable discussing homemaking than career planning. “Somehow I knew that’s where this conversation was heading all along.”

“Conversations are like the wind. They go where they will.” Kay rose from her seat. “Sometimes they’re wild and stormy, and sometimes they’re just as fickle as a little breeze, blowing every which way and never keeping to any one direction.”

“And sometimes they’re as steady and predictable as a trade wind.” Emily knew better than to assume that Kay’s meandering didn’t have an eventual destination. “Is that why you drove all this way out from the city this afternoon? Because you were looking for a fresh excuse to drag me out on a shopping trip?”

“Not entirely. I wanted to see for myself if my youngest chick was healthy and happy.” Kay leaned down and placed a kiss on her daughter’s head with a loud smack.

Emily smiled. “Definitely both.”

“It’s working out then?” Kay carried her mug to the sink. “This teaching assignment?”

“After just one day filling in at that naval base classroom in Naples, I knew I was meant to be a teacher.” Emily twisted her mug in a circle. “This is the one career that will make the best use of all my studies. And all my travels and experiences.”

She sipped her tea. “I wanted this assignment at Caldwell with Joe Wisniewski, and I did everything but hold my breath until I turned blue to get it.”

Kay found a dish towel to scrub over the counter. “How is The Wiz? Do they still call him that?”

“Yes, he’s still The Wiz.”

She watched her mother fussily fold the dish towel and then shake it out to start the process again. Emily was surprised to see a blush creep into her cheeks. “Mom?”

“Is he still a hunk?” Kay dropped the towel over the edge of the sink and faced her daughter. “He used to be. Is he still? A hunk?”

HUMILIATION ALERT. Did Kay know about Emily’s adolescent fantasies? Did she suspect they were the real reason for this student teaching assignment? Not that a tiny crush had anything to do with anything, Emily was quick to reassure herself.

“Well, is he?” asked Kay. “A hunk?”

“Oh, yes.” Emily sighed. “He’s definitely still a hunk.”

Kay slipped back into her seat and leaned forward in conspiracy mode. “Rumor had it he was carrying on with Ginny Krubek, all those years ago.”

“Ginny Krubek?” Emily frowned. “Wasn’t she the stylist at The Cow Lick?”

Kay nodded, and then broke a cookie in two and put half on her plate. “The Wiz came roaring into town on his motorcycle late that summer, looking like sin on wheels.”

“I saw him walk out of the post office one morning.” Tall and tanned, so dangerously different than everyone else on the street. “I remember he had a ponytail.”

“He had Ginny cut it off the second week of school.” Kay lowered her voice to a whisper. “That was the same week Patsy Velasco started telling anyone who’d take the time to listen that Wiz had a tattoo. Of course, plenty of people around this town had plenty of time to gossip over information of that nature.”

Gossip temporarily knocked Piaget off the list of priorities. “I never heard anything about tattoos,” said Emily.

“That’s what made Patsy’s news so interesting. She said it wasn’t exactly available for public viewing.”

Imagining middle-aged Patsy Velasco viewing any of Joe’s less public places was doing something nasty to the butterscotch in Emily’s stomach. “Go back to the part about Ginny Krubek.”

“Oh, yes. Well,” Kay said, crossing her arms on the table, “like I said, rumors were flying fast and thick that there was something going on between Wiz and Ginny, too. Ginny was sure talking it up around town, at any rate.”

“Wasn’t there a Krubek in Jack’s class?”

“Yes, Steve Krubek. And the principal back then, Mr. Rockman, was fit to be tied. He threatened to withdraw Wiz’s contract. After all, Ginny’s husband was a school board member back then. I’m sure the poor man was putting a lot of pressure on Mr. Rockman, behind the scenes.”

“I knew there was something weird going on.” Emily drummed her fingers on the table. “I figured there had to be more than one reason Dad was always getting so upset about that new teacher.”

“Your father liked Wiz just fine, in spite of all their political disagreements. I think those two rather enjoyed arguing with each other. Dad used to say Wiz was one of the few intelligent life forms this side of Seattle. He did think Wiz could have been a little more discreet, though. Or at least discouraged Ginny’s attentions. I always thought she was inventing most of what she was spreading around. Maybe even all of it. Who knows for sure?”

Emily finished off the broken cookie. “Why would Wiz put up with Ginny’s big mouth? Or Patsy’s, for that matter?”

“I got the impression that Joseph P. Wisniewski wasn’t the kind of man who would give a hoot what other people said about him. Or thought about him, at any rate. That’s one of the things the women found so exciting.” Kay shook her head and laughed. “Lord, we were all so jealous of Ginny and Patsy back in those days.”

“Even you, Mom?”

Kay straightened in her chair and brushed at the front of her dress. “You forget I’m married to a hunk of my own. I have neither the time nor the inclination to notice anything about another man. Even if he does look like a gypsy with the very devil in his eyes.”

Emily grinned. “That’s still a pretty good description.”

“Oh, I imagine he’s even more attractive now. Men get that chiseled look to their faces when they get a little older. Unless they go doughy. I can’t imagine Wiz ever getting doughy, though. He was already a little chiseled to begin with, and besides, he had plenty of room for some more meat on those bones.” Kay twitched a wrinkle out of the tablecloth. “Is he going gray? Losing his hair?”

“I don’t think gray hair or male pattern baldness are in the picture yet.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Kay shook her head and settled back. “He’s only about ten years older than you, if that. He always did seem so much older, even back then. Some people do, you know.”

Emily thought for a moment about all she’d heard of Joe’s unconventional lifestyle and his reckless choices in women. Living like that would probably age anyone—and not the way a fine wine aged. “Well, he’s had an interesting life.”

“Yes, he certainly has, hasn’t he? Up to and including the moment he decided to settle down to teach at that tiny school in this speck of a town. Why a man like that would ever choose to live in a place like this has always been a mystery to me.”

Kay nibbled a bit more on her cookie and stared out the window. Emily studied her mother, certain now that Kay had just pulled off another fast one. This afternoon’s meandering conversation had ended up precisely where she’d meant it to end. With a subtle warning to steer clear of any involvement with a man who was completely wrong for her daughter under any circumstances.