Diane Cook - Man V. Nature - Stories

Janet was flustered. Obsession did pay off. Just not for her. Meredith was the magician. She slumped. “I wasn’t following you,” she lied morosely.

Meredith waved her hand. “Oh, pooh, I don’t know why I thought that. I let silly lounge gossip get the better of me.”

What had she heard? Could be any number of things. Janet winced. Since when did she care?

“You know,” Meredith said, “the teachers here, they’re so prim. I couldn’t tell them that story. But I think we’re probably similar.” She was smiling at Janet in such a genuine way, with the openness, the small-scale arousal that comes from meeting someone just like you. “We should hang out.”

Janet stood and moved things around on her desk, cycloning them into a shape. She should go home with Meredith Santana, cozy herself into the couch with wine, laugh like best girlfriends, and be there when Dave walked in. She should cross the room to him, squeeze his surprised hand, and say, “I loved your work,” or “I still need my meteorologist,” and play it off like it’s what any cheeky at-home watcher would say, wink at Meredith, make her laugh, get her on her side. She could make Meredith love her so that Dave cracked. She knew she could. Her mind screamed, Do it! Wreck it! Ruin it all! She tasted bile. “I’m late,” she sputtered and threw a stapler into her bag.

Meredith glanced at the school clock. It was still thirty minutes before the next period. “For what?”

Janet shook her head. “I’m just too late.” She left.

Sitting in the car in front of her town house, Janet scolded herself. She’d let a moment pass. Since when was what she wanted not part of the plan? She let the tears come. She’d succumbed to this new era of sentimentality and weakness, in which possibility was dead and buried and there were actually some things you just don’t do .

Though she knew Meredith was a temporary fill-in who, most likely, would not return after summer, Janet arranged a transfer to the high school in the next town over. With her awards she easily convinced them to make room for her on the faculty. Her female students wept. Some promised to transfer. But she said, “Stay put, do well, don’t get pregnant. For me.” The teachers in the lounge peppered her with questions that feigned concern. Is everything all right? Family emergency? Hidden secret? As a last gasp at insult, she just smiled and said she wanted something better for herself. Still, they offered her cookies more readily than they ever had before. Meredith, oblivious, genuinely wished her luck, her hand absentmindedly protecting the growing Santana in her belly.

In her new school, Janet ran through the single men, and some of the married ones, finally settling on a well-built phys ed teacher who had no idea that he should have striven for more. He didn’t mind her gray hairs that popped up here, there. Her older breasts weren’t as pert, but he still thought she was sexy when she bounced astride him, and this had an effect on her; it filled her with a terrible feeling of gratitude. The phys ed teacher was a solid lover, and she inched down closer to his level. The sex ranged from fine to good, more tender than wild or frightening. It was nothing like with Dave Santana, but she’d known, during those too-brief encounters, that would likely be the case. She was at her best with electrifying men.

She and the phys ed teacher settled into something surprisingly monogamous, though they remained unmarried. Eventually they forgot why they’d wanted to hide their relationship at school and began timing their lunch break to sit at the same table. They spent nights at each other’s house, each stashing their belongings in an emptied drawer of the other’s dresser. She met his aunt. She’d never met a lover’s aunt before. Occasionally they drove to school together. But neither mentioned wanting more. Janet dreaded that conversation, but also couldn’t help wondering why it never came.

A little girl shrieked at a man in the diner, horrified in the way children often are; big tears for small problems. Janet cupped her ears dramatically, scowled in their direction. But then, the slump of the man’s shoulders, the squatness of his neck, the beige; she knew it was Dave without even seeing his face. And if there were any doubt, his likeness marred the towheaded little girl with long curling pigtails; beyond the raging tantrum lay that same blankness. Janet’s stomach flipped.

She slid out of her booth and sidled up to him and his daughter.

The girl regarded her warily when Janet drew a line down Dave’s back with her finger, playfully accusing, “I know you.”

Dave’s back arched away from her finger instinctively. He turned and for a second — she saw it in his eyes — wondered who she was.

“It’s the hair,” she said, fluffing the ends of her now shorter bob, mildly flustered. The girl’s big eyes darted from Janet to Dave and back, narrowing into slits. Dave’s own eyes narrowed, remembering.

“Janet.” He adjusted his windbreaker. “Well,” he said curtly.

“I miss you on TV, Dave,” she growled. His mildness made her feel predatory. She wanted to drop to her knees, suck him in front of the entire dinner crowd.

“Well, you know I haven’t been on television for some time, Janet.” Being with the phys ed teacher, she’d gotten used to a certain standard of the male form that Dave had never possessed. But he was trimmer than the last time she’d seen him, looked a little more rugged — was that a tan? — a little more ready for anything.

“You look good, Dave,” she flirted, and waited for him to respond in kind. He did not.

“You know, Dave, I miss you other places too.”

He bent down and fidgeted with his daughter’s backpack. The girl wiggled away from him.

Janet tried a new tactic. “You know, Dave, I met your wife a couple years ago.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said, flashing anger, certain he had kept his worlds apart.

She had always liked being someone’s secret, but it was clear being known held more power. “Yes. I did. She was a nurse in my school.”

His face tightened with ugly anxiety. A face, she realized, he’d made often, when reporting on the nicest, balmiest weather or all those nor’easters, while being seduced, when he came. She pictured the face in some confessional moment with his wife. But no. He would never. Would he?

“Don’t worry,” she said, disgusting herself by backing down.

The cashier called his name. “Stay there, Hannah,” he barked.

“Hannah,” Janet cooed. “That’s a good girl’s name. Are you a good girl?”

Hannah shook her head and pouted.

“You know, Hannah, the last time I saw you, you were in your mommy’s belly. And how old are you now?”

“Five,” the girl said, her eyes big and wet.

Janet nodded, bored by the information, and smoothed her own hair, let her hand trail down her body to rest on her hip, hoping Dave would notice. But it was the girl who watched. She mimicked the move.

How adorable, Janet thought. She reached out and fondled one of the girl’s pigtails, silky like a dog’s ear. She coiled it around her finger and gave it a sharp tug. The girl winced and then stared at her with a mysterious smile. If I were a man, Janet mused, I’d insist on a paternity test.

“You remind me of me,” she whispered to the girl.

Hannah curtsied, then said, “You’re ugly.”

Janet clapped, delighted. She tugged both pigtails, and the girl succumbed to the move, the tension on her scalp pleasurable. It took Janet’s breath away.

Dave returned, swatted at Janet’s hand. “Please stop touching my daughter’s hair.”

“If you insist,” she said, and reached for his hair instead.