Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

“I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t see why she gets to have all that and I don’t. It’s like I’m being punished and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“There’s no justice.”

Jessica nodded grimly, as if she’d figured that out a long time ago. “You want to see something?” She picked up her phone, took a couple of swipes at the screen, then handed it to Vicki. “I mean, look at this.”

Even on the small screen, the photograph was heartbreaking. It had been taken on prom night, the two Grasso sisters — the fat one and the pretty one — standing side by side on the stoop of a pale blue house, the camera far enough away that their bodies were visible from the knees up: Jenny in a slinky, low-cut yellow dress, not smiling but looking deeply pleased with the world, Jessica in a tentlike hoodie, grinning till it hurt, her face at once large and indistinct, one beefy arm draped over her sister’s delicate shoulder.

Poor thing, Vicki thought as she handed back the phone.

“I know,” Jessica said, as if Vicki had spoken the words aloud. “Story of my life.”

“Believe me,” Vicki told her, “I know just how you feel. I mean, I was never petite or anything, just normal-sized. But then I put on fifty pounds when I was pregnant with my son. Fifty pounds, can you believe that? And I couldn’t take it off. I did Weight Watchers, I fasted, I exercised, I tried every diet in the world, but I just got bigger and bigger. It was like my body was saying, Guess what, this is how it’s gonna be from now on. Better get used to it. My husband told me he didn’t care, said he loved me no matter what, but a few years later he left me for a Chinese woman, I don’t think she weighed a hundred pounds. They have three kids now.”

“He sounds like a jerk.”

“I loved him.” Vicki flicked her hand in front of her face as if it wasn’t worth talking about. “That was almost twenty years ago.”

“You ever get married again?”

“Nope.”

“Any boyfriends?”

“Nothing serious. I was a divorced working mother. Not young and not thin. My phone wasn’t ringing off the hook.” Vicki hesitated long enough to realize she was making a mistake, then kept going. “For a lot of that time, I had a crush on another teacher.”

Jessica’s eyes widened. “At Gifford?”

“I was crazy about this guy. He was divorced, too. We ate lunch together every day, went to the movies with a group of other single teachers, even played on a coed softball team. It was a lot of fun.”

“Was it Mr. Oberman?”

“Mr. Oberman?” Vicki couldn’t help laughing. Dan Oberman was a slovenly history teacher, a sadsack who lived with his mother and had been wearing the same three sweater vests for the past ten years. “You think I’d have a crush on Mr. Oberman?”

“He’s not so bad.”

“Anyway, I got really motivated about walking every day and watching what I ate, and I lost about twenty pounds. I could see he was looking at me in a different way, complimenting my outfits, and you know, just paying attention, and I finally decided to go for it. At the faculty Christmas party, I took him aside and told him how I felt. He said he had feelings for me, too. He drove me home that night and we…” A bit late, Vicki’s sense of decorum kicked in.

“You hooked up?” Jessica pretended to be scandalized. “Was it Mr. McAdams?”

“He’s a married man.”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we had that one night together and I was so happy. I could see my whole life laid out in front of me.” Vicki laughed at herself, a short, scornful bark. “But he didn’t call the next day, or the day after that…”

“Or the day after that,” Jessica continued. “Been there.”

“Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I called him. He got all serious on me. You know that voice, like a doctor telling you you’re gonna die. You have to understand, Vicki, I like you a lot but what happened the other night was a mistake. I had too much to drink, blah, blah, blah… ”

“Let’s be friends,” Jessica added knowingly. “That totally sucks.”

“I’ll tell you what sucks. Three months later he got engaged to a pretty, young gym teacher. And guess who got invited to their wedding? Good old Vicki.”

“Mr. Turley?” Jessica gasped. “You hooked up with Mr. Turley?”

“It was just that once.”

“He’s cute for an old guy,” Jessica said. “Didn’t Ms. Leoni just have a baby?”

“Yeah. Sweet little boy.”

“Ouch.”

Vicki nodded. Ouch was right. She didn’t tell Jessica about how drunk she’d gotten at the wedding, how the bride’s mother found her crying in the bathroom and listened to Vicki’s confession of her love for the groom with surprising compassion, telling Vicki that she understood how hard it must be, that she’d gone through something similar back when she was single. You have to forget him, she said. You have to move on with your life.

Jessica slurped the last of her Frappuccino and studied Vicki with a look of anxious sympathy. “You think you’re ever gonna meet someone else?”

Vicki wasn’t surprised by the question. It was something she’d asked herself frequently in recent years. If she’d been honest, she would’ve said that she’d come to the conclusion that Mr. Turley had been her last shot, and that she’d pretty much resigned herself to spending the remainder of her life alone. But it was clear from the way Jessica was looking at her — hungrily, with the kind of focus Vicki rarely inspired in the classroom — that she was asking an entirely different question.

“Of course,” Vicki told her. “Of course I’ll meet someone. I just have to be patient.”

THAT NIGHT she ate dinner alone, graded some homework assignments she should’ve handed back a week ago, and called her son, who was a junior at Rutgers. As usual, Ben didn’t pick up, so she just left a brief message: Hey, honey, it’s your mom. Give me a call when you get a chance. Love you. Then she watched an episode of CSI: Miami and the first part of the news before finally working up the nerve to turn on her computer.

She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous. She and Jessica had parted on good terms, joking in the Starbucks parking lot about heading across the street to Bruno’s for a large sausage-and-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. It was early evening, and the light had seemed unusually soft and forgiving as they said goodbye. Left to her own devices, Vicki wasn’t much of a hugger — she saw how people hesitated sometimes, and it took a lot of the pleasure out of it — but Jessica didn’t share her qualms. Before Vicki understood what was happening, the girl was moving toward her with her arms out, their two bodies bumping together, the sensation so familiar it was almost as if she were embracing herself.

“So,” Jessica said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Vicki felt a sudden odd emptiness as the girl let go. She was surprised to realize that she was close to tears “You have a nice night.”

Jessica had promised to delete the offensive post on grademyteacher.com, and Vicki was pretty sure she trusted her to keep her word. Still, she felt a vague sense of foreboding as she scrolled down the alphabetical list of Gifford teachers — there was Becky Leoni (6.7) and good old Sam Turley (7.2) — a queasy suspicion that something unpleasant was about to unfold.

But it was okay. The post was gone, wiped away as if it had never even existed. Vicki felt a moment of pure satisfaction — justice had been done, a crooked thing made straight — as well as a rush of affection for the girl, who really was a lovely person despite the awful things she’d written. Her attack was just a projection, an attempt to displace negative feelings for herself onto someone else. Vicki understood all too well how that sort of thing worked.