Lily King - The English Teacher

Jenny Mead made room for him in the circle. She asked about the game yesterday, and about the French test he’d barely passed. As she listened, she ran a finger around the lip of her cup. Did she have a thing for him? He could see her searching for another topic.

“Your mom’s the hardest English teacher I’ve ever had,” she said at last.

Everyone said this to him. “Really?” he said, stretching his spine as high as it would go. She was tall, and her bushy hair didn’t help.

“I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.” But Jenny had clear blue-green eyes and a small nose like a fawn’s. It wouldn’t be awful, kissing her.

“She probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about either.”

Jenny snorted, her upper lip revealing too much gum. He looked away, at a funny kind of sofa across the room. It was like a figure eight, with the two cushioned seats facing in opposite directions.

“Are you close, you and your mom?”

Girls loved to ask him this. “I guess,” he said. Then he looked at the little sofa as if he were just noticing it for the first time. “The guy who made that must have lost his job pretty quick.”

Jenny laughed, though he could tell it was fake. “It’s a Victorian love seat.”

He’d been about to ask her if she wanted to sit in it, but he couldn’t now that she’d used the word love. They stood there staring at it.

“Should we try it out?” she said. In the end, girls were so much braver.

Peter chose the seat that faced the doorway, in case Kristina walked by. It was far more comfortable than it looked.

“Hey.” Jenny’s face was unnaturally close. It was a Victorian make-out couch. Stuart would kiss her right now. Right now. But Peter couldn’t.

Disappointed but not discouraged, she asked, “What kind of things do you talk about?”

“When?”

“With your mom?”

“Let’s see.” He knew it had to be provocative. “Marijuana, condoms, pornography — the usual topics.”

She flung her head back, leaving her mouth wide open. He couldn’t tell if she was really laughing now or just putting together all the elements of laughing — except the sound. When she tipped her head forward again, she said, “No, really. Does she ever talk about what she was like when she was our age? I mean, some teachers you can completely imagine as teenagers, but your mom …” Jenny’s clear eyes widened as if she were staring into the pitch dark. “No amount of rationality can convince you that she was ever young.”

He’d forgotten that if you talked to Jenny Mead long enough, her sentences would start getting weird.

He looked around the room for other possibilities. The handful of other girls were either unobtainable or unthinkable. He had this awful feeling that Kristina had left the party with those two guys. It was Jenny Mead or nothing. The thought of hinting to Stuart when he got home that he had gotten some action spurred him on.

“Of course my mother was young once. She was wild. She grew up in Skaneateles, New York.”

“I thought she was from the South. She has that accent.”

“She was born in New York, then moved away later. Her parents were so strict they wouldn’t let her go to any parties, so she had to sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a rope she hid up there.”

“Why wouldn’t her parents let her go out?”

“They were Christian Scientists.” He couldn’t remember exactly what Stuart had said.

“They go to parties. They just don’t go to the hospital.”

“Mormon. Sorry. Mormon.”

“But—”

“Do you want to talk about religion or hear about my mother?”

He meant to be playful but it came out snippy, the way Fran was to him sometimes. He wondered if she, too, didn’t always mean her snips. He remembered his conversation with Tom this afternoon, and his stomach rolled over. It wasn’t just a little chat; it was a warning.

He saw the extent of Jenny Mead’s interest and excitement only as it drained out of her face. Just as he was about to apologize, Kristina came into the den and flopped sideways in an armchair. Alone. Not just her lips but all around her mouth was red, like someone had been scrubbing it clean. Her cheeks were flushed in two bright splotches and her eyes moved around the room without latching onto anything. She was smashed. He remembered a time when she wasn’t like this, when at parties they made lemonade from scratch and had cookie-eating competitions. He remembered Stephen Ball’s birthday party and how she asked to be Peter’s partner in the three-legged race and how when they’d fallen her hair had gone in his mouth and it tasted like pizza he’d said and they’d laughed because she’d actually had three slices of pizza for breakfast. He ached with a love for her that had existed for as long as he could remember.

“It was nice talking to you, Peter,” Jenny said bitterly and rejoined her clique in the corner.

Peter remained in his side of the love seat, pretending to read the spines of the hardcover mysteries on the wall. He tried to catch Kristina’s eye for a sort of comradely shrug about being alone in chairs at a party. But her eyes were three-quarters closed. He didn’t know if she was actually seeing through the quarter that was left, though he remained prepared for anything.

Then one of the older guys from the kitchen was in the doorway. He was pointing Kristina out to someone else, some tall, thickarmed guy with lime-green hair. A swimmer. He crouched in front of her chair and whispered into her right ear. Her feet twitched, her stomach bobbed, then a smile came across her flushed face. It was like he was breathing life into her one puff at a time. When he straightened up and left the room she followed, holding on to his fingers in front of her with both hands.

The swimmer led her up a flight of stairs. It was easy to trail them. Everyone in the hallway and on the staircase was moving, shifting, craning necks in search of a better place or better companions. Peter didn’t recognize any of them. The house was now packed with kids from other schools who had sniffed out a party. They wore varsity jackets from Sutton High and Whaley High and St. Andrew’s Prep. As he climbed he became aware of tension down below. Scott Laraby was awake and asking people to get off the piano. It was a Steinway, he said apologetically. People were arguing in the kitchen. The back of the swimmer’s shirt said B eer: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore. Upstairs the hallways were empty but there were small parties in each of the bedrooms he passed. Someone lying stomach-down on a beanbag chair called out to Kristina. She didn’t turn. In one room with a linoleum floor Peter saw an oven and smelled brownies baking. The swimmer opened the next door with one hand and pulled Kristina in with the other. The door shut quickly behind them.

Peter listened. The party below made it impossible to hear within. He gave them thirty seconds to come out. Then he went in.

The swimmer stood a few feet from the door. Peter expected him to be furious, maybe even to punch him, but he just shook his head. “She’s really out of it, man. You can give her a try. I’m not into laying corpses.”

“Get out of here,” Peter said, but the guy was already gone.

Peter pulled the door shut and locked it. The bedroom was huge, with several mahogany bureaus the size of mastodons hulking around its edges. In the center of the bed, her head wrenched up on overstuffed pillows, was Kristina. Her eyelids were still lowered; her eyes didn’t seem to follow his approach.

He sat, like a doctor, at her left side, one foot raised, one foot firmly on the ground.

At the sudden depression in the mattress, she tilted her head. Then she said his name. Her parents were Russian, and though she had arrived in this country with no English, not a trace of an accent remained. Except if you listened very carefully to her saying your name. Then you would hear a faint long o where the first e should be. Poter. If there was one sound he could take with him into eternity, that would be it.