Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

Her relief didn’t last for long, though. Without meaning to, she found herself reading the review that had taken the place of Jessica’s at the top of the Vicki Wiggins’s page on grademyteacher.com. It was several months old, written by a student who called himself “Mr. Amazing”:

All in all Ms. Wiggins is a pretty good math teacher, except she’s pretty strict about stupid little things. Like she gave this one kid detention cause his cellphone rang in class. Ok he should have turned it off, but was it his fault that someone called him? But like I said she’s not that bad. I don’t care what anybody says there is no way she’s more boring than Mr. Ferrone.

Vicki had read this post when it first appeared and had barely given it a second thought. It was actually pretty good as far as these things went — Mr. Amazing had given her a higher-than-average overall rating of 6.0 — but right now it just seemed heartbreaking. Was this what she would be remembered for when all was said and done? That she gave some kid detention for a minor offense? That maybe — just maybe — she wasn’t as mind-numbingly dull as Dennis Ferrone?

I have so much to offer . And no one even notices.

For a few seconds, she thought about approaching Jessica after class tomorrow, suggesting that she post a new, more generous review on the site just to set the record straight. But it was a lot to ask. And the thought of making such a request was embarrassing beyond words.

She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but it did. It just did. Why wouldn’t it? She was a good person, she worked hard, and it seemed crazy — crazy and wrong — that these things went unacknowledged.

It turned out to be easier than she expected to register on grademyteacher.com. You just typed in an e-mail address and checked a box that said I AM A STUDENT AT GIFFORD HIGH SCHOOL. She chose the username Frappuccinogrrrl and wrote the following in the comments box:

My math teacher Vicki Wiggins is really nice. She’s pretty and really cares about us kids. Like if you were having a problem she’d meet you after school and try to make you feel better because she just wants everybody to be happy. And she knows a lot about math too.

There was more to say — much more — but space was limited and she decided to stop there. She checked her work, pressed SEND, and turned off her computer. There would be time enough in the morning to wake up and drink a cup of coffee, then maybe google herself before heading off to work. It would be nice, she thought, clicking on her own name and, just for once, finding something that felt like the truth.

THE SUPERIOR WALLCOVERINGS WILDCATS WERE playing in the Little League championship game, and I wanted them to lose. I wanted the Town Pizza Ravens and their star pitcher, Lori Chang, to humiliate them, to run up the score and taunt them mercilessly from the first-base dugout. I know this isn’t an admirable thing for a grown man to admit — especially a grown man who has agreed to serve as home-plate umpire — but there are feelings you can’t hide from yourself, even if you’d just as soon chop off your hand as admit them to anyone else.

I had nothing against the Wildcat players. It was their coach I didn’t like, my next-door neighbor, Carl DiSalvo, the Kitchen Kabinet King of northern New Jersey. I stood behind the backstop, feeling huge and bloated in my cushiony chest protector, and watched him hit infield practice. A shamelessly vain man, Carl had ripped the sleeves off his sweatshirt, the better to display the rippling muscles he worked for like a dog down at Bally’s. I knew all about his rippling muscles. Our driveways were adjacent, and Carl always seemed to be returning from an exhilarating session at the gym just as I was trudging off to work in the morning, my head still foggy from another rotten night’s sleep.

“I’m getting pretty buff,” he would tell me, proudly rubbing his pecs or biceps. “Wish I’d been built like this when I was younger.”

Fuck you, I invariably thought, but I always said something polite like “Keep it up” or “I gotta start working out myself.”

Carl and I had known each other forever. In high school we played football together — I was a starter, a second-team all-county linebacker, while Carl barely dirtied his uniform — and hung out in the same athletic crowd. When he and Marie bought the Detmeyers’ house nine years ago, it had seemed like a lucky break for both of us, a chance to renew a friendship that had died of natural causes when we graduated and went our separate ways — me to college and into the management sector, Carl into his father’s remodeling business. I helped him with the move, and when we finished, we sat on my patio with our wives, drinking beer and laughing as the summer light faded and our kids played tag on the grass. We called each other “neighbor” and imagined barbecues and block parties stretching far into the future.

“Nice pickup, Trevor,” he called to his third baseman. “But let’s keep working on that throw, okay, pal?”

Go fuck yourself, I thought. Okay, pal?

“JACKIE boy.” Tim Tolbert, the first-base umpire and president of the Little League, pummeled my chest protector as though it were a punching bag. “Championship game .” He looked happier than a grown man has a right to be. “ Very exciting.”

As usual, I wanted to grab him by the collar and ask what the hell he had to be so cheerful about. He was a baby-faced, prematurely bald man who sold satellite dishes all day, then came home to his wife, a scrawny exercise freak obsessed with her son’s peanut allergy. She’d made a big stink about it when the kid entered kindergarten, and now the school cafeteria wasn’t allowed to serve PB&J sandwiches anymore.

“Very exciting,” I agreed. “Two best teams in the league.”

“Not to mention the two best umps,” he said, giving me a brotherly squeeze on the shoulder.

This much I owed to Tim — he was the guy who convinced me to volunteer as an umpire. He must have known how isolated I was feeling, alone in my house, my wife and kids living with my mother-in-law, nothing to do at night but stare at the TV and stuff my face with sandwich cream cookies. I resisted at first, not wanting to give people a new opportunity to whisper about me, but he kept at it until I finally gave in.

And I loved it. Crouching behind the plate, peering through the bars of my mask, my whole being focused on the crucial, necessary difference between a ball and a strike, I felt clearheaded and almost serene, free of the bitterness and shame that were my constant companions during the rest of my life.

“Two best umps?” I glanced around in mock confusion. “Me and who else?”

An errant throw rolled against the backstop, and Carl jogged over to retrieve it. He grabbed the ball and straightened up, turning to Tim and me as if we’d asked for his opinion.

“Kids are wound tight,” he said. “I keep telling them it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but I don’t think they believe me.”

Carl grinned, letting us know he didn’t believe it, either. Like me, he was in his midforties, but he was carrying it off with a little more panache than I was. He had thick gray hair that made for a striking contrast with his still-youthful body, and a gap between his front teeth that women supposedly found irresistible (at least that’s what Jeanie used to tell me). His thick gold necklace glinted in the sun, spelling his name to the world.

“You’re modeling the proper attitude,” Tim told him. “That’s all you can do.”