Lily King - The English Teacher

“Good morning, early birds,” she said cheerfully, trying to establish that playful authority she found so easily in the classroom.

“How old is that dog?” Fran said.

“Sixteen.”

“Same as Peter,” Caleb said.

“Peter’s not sixteen yet.” Children could be so loose with their ages. Peter wouldn’t be sixteen until August. “Who’s the chef?”

“Fran is. Want some French toast, Mom?”

“Cup of coffee’s fine for me.”

“It’s over there.” Fran pointed to a percolator in the corner. “I just made a second pot.”

Vida hoped to find the mugs in the first cupboard she opened, but it took three tries. She scanned the counters and shelves for sugar.

“In the canister,” Fran said finally. She was clearly enjoying herself.

“You ready?” Vida said to Peter, scooping her schoolbag (the freshman quizzes uncorrected, Tess unopened, the junior author profiles untouched) off the hook with her free hand.

He nodded, but took his time with the few bites left on his plate. Fran slapped another piece of French toast on Caleb’s plate, then doused it with syrup.

Vida felt she should ask when their bus came and if they’d done their homework, but they’d been carrying on without her inquiries all their lives. She asked instead if they would let Walt in before they left.

Peter walked ahead of her to the car, his knapsack stuffed with books he hadn’t opened all weekend. He wouldn’t get away with it; he couldn’t charm his teachers with an elaborate tale and heart-crossed promises.

The temperature had fallen further and though the ground still gave slightly beneath her shoes, the hard dead smell of winter seemed to be rising up from it. The trees in the yard jerked in the cold wind, trying to dislodge the few remaining clusters of brown leaves. It was a dreadful time of year. She hated teaching Tess, though for years she had been told it was her signature book. The experience of reading Tess with Mrs. Avery sophomore year was reenacted in skits and referred to in yearbooks. It lived on in countless mentions by reminiscing alumni in the triannual bulletin. But for Vida, the book was a torture. She had never cared about that overly naive, peony-mouthed girl who is buffeted by a series of impossible coincidences from one gloomy town to another and across four hundred and sixteen pages before she gets her just deserts at the scaffold. She did have an appreciation for Hardy’s descriptions and his worries about the effects of the Industrial Age on the land and its people. She used to believe it was her discussions of this “ache of modernism” that made the book meaningful to her students, but she had come to realize that it was her own lack of sympathy for the girl that galvanized them. By the end their attachment to Tess herself was fierce, and their devastation at her demise profound.

They got behind a garbage truck. Vida lit a cigarette as the two men in back leapt from the runner, separated to opposite sides of the street, hurled bags three at a time up and over the truck’s backside, and hopped back on just as the truck jerked ahead. White steam streamed from their nostrils. They wore no gloves and drank no coffee and yet they seemed warm and full of energy. They’d probably been up since three, and soon they would be done. They’d go to a diner for lunch — Reubens, french fries, a few beers. Then they’d sleep — at a girlfriend’s, or their mother’s, or in their own solitary bed in a one-room apartment on Water Street, their muscles tired, their bellies full, their minds thoughtless as cows. The truck stopped again, and the man on the left, having caught Vida’s covetous eye, grinned at her. She glanced quickly away in what felt like fright. The truck veered off then, but the acknowledgment made her uneasy for several more blocks, as if a character in a book had addressed her by name.

The sun hung small and naked above the rooftops, unable to push itself fully through the pale cloud bank. They passed a 7-Eleven and a launderette. In both windows middle-aged women stared blankly out. She thought again of Tess and wondered whether she might like it better if she assigned it in the spring.

Ahead of them the bridge to Fayer rose up in a high arc, and its sides were a series of thin squat rails, allowing for a full view of the harbor and its boatyards on the right and the open ocean on the left, with a few fishing trawlers heading toward the horizon. There was often heated talk, especially in the weeks following an accident, of building a wall on either side of this bridge, but Vida was pleased the view had remained, unimpeded by safety and common sense.

It ran nine-tenths of a mile and she took it slowly, like a tourist. Light poured into the car from all sides, an opaque blue wavering light, as they rose toward the height of the bridge. She loved the carnival-like ride of it, the web of patina-green supports above and the false yet convincing sense of sheer solidity beneath her tires. She remembered the few times last summer when she had crossed the water back to Fayer after an evening with Tom, and though she had felt at the time confused and conflicted, the memory now was peaceful. She took a long sip of the coffee she’d wedged between her knees. They were falling now, falling through the early light over cold blue water. She felt happy and even slightly sexual until she remembered the two nights since her wedding, and the feeling recoiled.

“Why is your hair like that?”

Damn. Her hair. “Will you check in there for my barrette?”

Peter flipped open the glove compartment and plunged his hand into the mass of candy wrappers and receipts. “Nope. Nothing.”

Vida pulled out the ashtray, stuck her fingers into other dark cubbyholes of the Dodge’s dash, then slid her hand beneath the seat. “Damn.” In nineteen years, she’d never taught a class without her hair firmly yanked back.

“They have rubber bands in the office,” Peter said.

It was true. But she avoided the office, and Carol, now.

They drove through Fayer’s tiny center, a small deposit of buildings: a brick police station, a white clapboard church, a stone library, and a few green store awnings. Several people were out, tugged along by dogs or children. She had never known these streets well, never seen them at this time of day. And yet they beckoned to her now.

The road out of town clung to the ocean. Even when a patch of woods or a summer estate blocked it from view, it was always with you, in the wet morning mist, the sandy roadsides, and the seagulls crying out.

“Do you think those people will be killed?” Peter said. He reminded her of Tom already, the concern in his voice as if he personally knew each one of those unlucky paper pushers halfway around the world.

“Not a chance. It would be suicide for the Iranians. There’ll be some sort of negotiations today and by supper they’ll be free. These things wrap up very quickly.” She tried to think of an example and couldn’t. She was hopeless when it came to historical facts. The events didn’t adhere properly in her brain. She never understood why moments in novels were unforgettable, while in real life the details slipped quickly away. A few weeks ago she couldn’t even explain the Bay of Pigs to Peter. All she knew was that she was reading Middlemarch at the time. She remembered Dorothea and the wretched Casaubon, and how they had just arrived in Rome for their wedding journey when her mother called her in to listen to President Kennedy’s speech. But she couldn’t recall what he’d said or in what order the events had unfolded or exactly how it had been resolved. All that came to her when she tried was Dorothea and Will’s trembling kiss by the window at the end.