Lily King: The English Teacher

Time passed, Peter wasn’t sure how much. Fran scooped up Caleb, who’d fallen asleep with his head on the arm of his chair, and took him down the hallway. He could hear the water running and Caleb moaning about having to brush his teeth.

Having been interrupted the first time, Peter still had to go to the bathroom. He didn’t want to return to Mrs. Belou, didn’t want to run awkwardly into Fran back there. Did you say hello to your own siblings in the hallway as you passed them? He didn’t know the first thing about how regular families behaved. So he went down the other hallway instead. There was only one room here, at the end, and he went in. Tom’s bedroom, he determined, from the size of the bed and his mother’s boxes in the corner. He found a bathroom off to the left, but the light was out. He shut the door anyway and pushed open the curtain of the small window to let in a wedge of streetlight. He peed, then stood at the window. There had been no street lamps on campus. He tried not to miss his house, tried not to think of Mrs. Belou either, that this was her bathroom and she’d stood right here, too, at times thinking about the past, with maybe her hand on the sill just like this. He put his hand in his pocket and looked across the street into another family’s life. They had the TV on, too, and there was lots of movement — a woman carried a bowl into the room, a child hopped on one foot, a man stood up and fiddled with the antenna, the woman ran out, perhaps to answer the telephone. Were they friends with the Belous? Had they been at the wedding? He couldn’t see them well enough to know. Maybe the phone call was someone wanting to hear all about it. What was she like? Did they seem happy? And what about the kids, those poor kids?

When Peter had learned Tom was a widower, he’d been relieved. It meant his kids lived with him full-time, and didn’t just visit every other weekend like Craig Hager’s stepsisters. It meant, ultimately, a real union, a true synthesis, without any loose ends. He’d put their mother in the same category with his own father: permanently absent, wholly and completely unpresent. How mistaken he’d been. He could feel her. It was like she was standing beside him here in the dark, saying, You’re touching my flowered curtains, you know. I know, he said back. I’m sorry.

Through the closed door, out in the bedroom, he heard footsteps on the carpet and then breathing, long, whistly, staccato breaths. Inhuman breaths. Then a final heave out, nearly a whimper, and his mother’s voice: “I can’t do this.”

For many more minutes there was only silence. Peter kept his hand on the knob, to prevent her from coming in and finding him lurking in the dark of her bathroom.

Then he heard the bedroom door shut. He relaxed his grip, deciding to wait a few seconds before escaping.

“Hey.” It was Tom’s whisper, playfully loud and exaggerated. “What’re you doing in the dark?”

“I thought I’d get out of this dress.”

“Oh no you don’t. I’ve been waiting all day to take this dress off myself.”

Please no. Peter looked around for another exit from this room. His bathroom at his old house had had three different doors. This one didn’t even have a closet, and the window was too high and too small. He’d make a racket just hoisting himself up. Maybe he should at least hide behind the shower curtain.

“You look so serious.” Tom’s voice was closer now, on the bed with her, only a few feet from where Peter stood.

“Marriage is serious.”

“Not all the time.”

“It’s like teaching a class. You have to make all the right choices at the beginning or it’s a wash.”

“Trial and error.”

“No, no errors.”

He laughed. “Maybe not on your part, but I’m going to make some.” Peter heard the beetlelike buzz of the long zipper of his mother’s dress. “But not tonight. I’m not going to make one mistake tonight.”

“Maybe I should go say good-night to Peter first.”

“Not yet.” His voice was muffled.

“Quickly, I promise.”

The zipper went back up, the door opened and closed. He had to go now. His mother would call the police when she couldn’t find him. But Tom was pulling off his shoes. Item by item his clothes fell to the floor. Now he was going to come into the bathroom. Peter held the knob firmly, readying himself for the fight he would surely lose with one shoulder shove from Tom.

Instead, his mother returned.

“How is he?” Tom asked.

“Better.”

Better?

“What’s he up to?”

“They’re all still glued to the tube.”

“Where’d you find that?”

“In the fridge.”

“Must be vinegar by now. Now let’s get this thing off and see what’s going on under there.”

“One sec.” A pause, then a glass being set on the bedside table.

The dress was unzipped all the way down this time. Peter heard it rustle to the floor. He moved in swift silence to the other side of the room and stepped into the tub. His shoes squeaked but the sound was drowned out by Tom, whom he could still, unfortunately, hear clearly. “God, you are beautiful. So long and smooth. You’re like an oboe. I’m finally going to learn to play an instrument.” After a while he said, “Do you know how long I’ve waited to have you, have all of you? God, we’ve been living like teenagers.”

At first Peter tried to fight the great and horrifying waves of words, but soon he surrendered and let them crash over him. At least he could hear none of his mother’s responses, and it became easy, after a while, to imagine she had left the room. The problem was, once he got his mother out of the room his disgust abated, and other feelings began to creep in.

“God I want to fuck you.” Tom started laughing, then said in a wholly different, tender voice, “Oh, Vida, you are the first thing I’ve wanted in so long.” He said other things, some vulgar, some tender, and suddenly Peter understood the word juxtaposition, a term Miss Rezo had introduced recently. Juxtaposition of words, of tone, of mood. He understood it all now. He felt it in his body.

“Are you ready now, Vida? Are you ready for me?” There was shifting, rustling, Tom laughing. “I can’t quite. Let’s … Is this hurting? Am I hurting you? Let’s try a different.” More shifting and swishing. “Oh Vida you are so. I just want. I can’t seem. Let’s try.”

Peter didn’t know it was so complicated.

“Let’s try some of this stuff.” It was quiet for a long while, then, “Oh sweetheart, I am so sorry. It’s all my fault. We’ve got to get you relaxed. I’m so sorry. We should have taken a honeymoon, a big fancy hot-weather honeymoon. I did this all wrong. All wrong. Here, there’s a little more wine left. What can I do? Let me give you a back rub. God, you are all clenched up like a big fist.”

When he left the room, he no longer cared if they heard him. He didn’t even try to be particularly quiet. His mother was lying on her stomach, her arms bent beneath her like tiny wings. Tom’s big arm lay on top of her. Defeated soldiers. He’d never known sex was such a battle, and that people who wanted to win could lose. He slid out the door. The glow of the TV, like moonlight along the living room wall, and the murmur of voices, Stuart and Fran’s, and the smell of something warm like toast or muffins, all seemed like things from another era of his life. His legs were stiff.

Stuart was sprawled on the floor. “Holy shit, where have you been?”

There was no hiding where he’d been. There was only that one room down the hallway he’d come from. “I got trapped. In the bathroom.”

“No way.”

“I did.”

“We thought you’d gone to bed,” Fran said.