Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

Instead of going home, he turned off the light and climbed into the sofa bed. The mattress was thin and lumpy, but it felt good to be off his feet. He didn’t mind that this was the bed on which Lonny had died, the bed his wife had shared with another man. Right now, it was just a place to rest. He drew the sheet up to his chin, closed his eyes, and waited for sleep to come.

Everything would have been fine if it weren’t for the oak tree rustling and scraping overhead, groaning as though in pain. A few times Gus thought he heard a distinct cracking sound, as if one of the big limbs were splitting off from the trunk, about to come crashing down through the roof. He pulled the sheet all the way over his head and began humming to drown out the noise. It wasn’t a song, just a random succession of notes — hum dee dum dee dee dee do — and he couldn’t help wondering if Lonny had done something similar near the end of his own life, on those nights he’d spent in the garage. Because he was an old man, and he was scared. Because he was alone out here, and no one was coming to comfort him.

ETHAN DIDN’T WANT TO GO TO THE MIDDLE SCHOOL dance, but the vice principal twisted his arm. He said it was like jury duty: the system only made sense if everybody stepped up and nobody got special treatment. Besides, he added, you might as well do it now, get it over with before the new baby comes and things get even crazier.

Ethan saw the logic in this, but it didn’t make him feel any less guilty about leaving the house on Friday evening with the dishes unwashed and Fiona just getting started on her nightly meltdown — apparently her busy-toddler day wasn’t complete unless she spent an hour or two shrieking her head off before bedtime. Donna smiled coldly at him from the couch, as if he’d volunteered to be a chaperone out of spite, just to make her life that much more difficult.

“Don’t worry about us,” she called out as he buttoned his coat. “We’ll be fine.”

She had to speak in a louder-than-normal voice to make herself heard over Fiona, who was standing in the middle of the living room in yellow Dr. Denton’s, her fists balled and her face smeared with a familiar glaze of snot, tears, and unquenchable fury.

“No, Daddy!” she bellowed. “You stay home!”

“I’m sorry,” Ethan said, not quite sure if he was apologizing to his wife or his child. “I tried to get out of it.”

Donna scoffed, as if this were a likely story. She was usually a more understanding person, but this pregnancy wasn’t bringing out the best in her. Only five months along, she had already begun groaning like a martyr every time she hoisted herself out of a chair or bent down to tie her shoe. She was also sweating a lot, and her face had taken on a permanent pink flush, as if she were embarrassed by her entire life. Ethan couldn’t say he was looking forward to the next several months. Or the next several years, for that matter.

“Love you guys,” he said, inching toward the door.

HIS SPIRITS lifted as he got into his car. It was a crisp March night with a faraway whiff of spring sweetening the breeze, and he couldn’t help noticing what a relief it was to be out of the house, going somewhere — anywhere — in the dark on a weekend. He just wished his destination could have been a little more exciting.

When Ethan first got hired at the Daniel Webster Middle School, teachers weren’t expected to babysit the kids at social functions. But that was back in a more innocent time, before the notorious Jamaican Beach Party of 2009, a high school dance that degenerated into a drunken brawl/gropefest and scandalized the entire community. Six kids were arrested for fighting, three for misdemeanor sexual assault, and two for pot; eight more were hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. Cell-phone videos of some shockingly dirty dancing made their way onto the Internet, causing severe embarrassment for several senior girls-gone-wild who had stripped down to bikinis during the festivities and become the focus of unwanted attention from a rowdy group of varsity lacrosse and hockey players. Dances were canceled for an entire year, then reinstated under a host of strict new rules, including one that required the presence of faculty chaperones, who would presumably impose the kind of professional discipline that had been lacking in the past.

Ethan thought the new rules made sense for high school, where the kids were old enough and resourceful enough to get into real trouble, but it felt like overkill to extend it to the middle school, one more burden added to a job that already didn’t pay nearly enough, though he knew better than to complain to anyone who wasn’t a teacher. He was sick and tired of people reminding him that he got summers off and should therefore consider himself lucky.

Yeah, he didn’t have to teach in July and August, but so what? It wasn’t like he got to while away eight weeks at the beach or lounge in a hammock by the lake. He didn’t even get to sit home reading fat biographies of the founding fathers or take his kid to the playground. He was a thirty-two-year-old man with a master’s degree in history, and he still spent his summer vacations the same way he had when he was sixteen — standing behind the counter of his father’s auto parts store, ringing up wiper blades and air filters to make a little extra cash.

FOR THE second time in less than twelve hours, he parked in the faculty lot and made the familiar trudge around the side of the building to the main entrance, where a crowd of boisterous seventh- and eighth-graders had already begun to gather; there was no such thing as being fashionably late to a dance that went from seven to nine-thirty. Ethan was popu­lar with the kids — he was, he knew, widely considered to be one of the cool teachers — and a number of them shouted out his name as he passed: Mr. Weller! Hey, it’s Mr. Weller! Oddly gratified by the recognition, he acknowledged his fans with a quick wave as he approached the double doors, onto one of which someone had taped a single sheet of red paper, its message printed in big black letters: THIS IS HOW WE PARTY.

The main hallway was deserted, faintly ominous despite — or maybe because of — the Mylar balloons taped to classroom doorknobs and the festive hand-lettered signs posted on the walls to mark the big occasion: DREAM BIG! THE SKY’S THE LIMIT!! PREPARE TO MEET YOUR FUTURE!!! Ethan was a little puzzled by these phrases — they seemed off-message for a dance, more like motivational slogans than manifestos of fun — but he wasn’t all that surprised. The kids at Daniel Webster were products of their time and place, dogged little achievers who were already taking SAT prep courses and padding their résumés for college. Apparently they were ambitious even when they danced.

As far as he knew, the other chaperones on duty were Rudy Battista and Sam Spillman, so he wasn’t sure what to make of it when he spied Charlotte Murray checking her reflection in the glass of a vending machine outside the cafeteria. She turned at the sound of his footsteps, looking unusually pleased to see him. Her expression changed as he got closer, her mouth stretching into a comical grimace of despair.

“Help,” she cried, flinging her arms around his neck as if he were a long-lost relative. “I’m trapped at an eighth-grade dance!”

Charlotte was an art teacher, a bit of a Bohemian, one of the more interesting women on the faculty. Ethan patted her cautiously on the upper arm, struck by how pretty her reddish-gold hair looked against the green of her sweater. There was a nice clean smell coming off her, a humid aura of shampoo and something faintly lemony.