John Irving - Until I Find You

But Jack’s hesitation to tell Emma Oastler his last name had attracted the attention of a teacher—the one they called The Gray Ghost. Mrs. McQuat was a spectral presence. She’d mastered the art of the sudden appearance; no one ever saw her coming. In her previous life, she may have been a dead person. What else could explain the chill that accompanied her? Even her breath was cold.

“What have we here?” Mrs. McQuat asked.

“Jack somebody, ” Emma Oastler replied. “He forgot the rest of his name.”

“I’m sure you can inspire him to remember it, Emma,” Mrs. McQuat said.

Although The Gray Ghost was not Asian, her eyes were forcibly slanted by how tightly her hair had been pulled back and knotted into a steel-gray bun. Her thin lips looked sealed in contrast to Emma’s, which were usually parted. Emma’s mouth was as open as a flower, and on her upper lip, her mustache was as fine as powder—like a dusting of pollen on a petal.

Jack tried to hold back his hand, his right index finger in particular. As quickly as Mrs. McQuat had appeared, she’d disappeared—or else Jack had closed his eyes, in an effort to stop himself from touching Emma’s mustache, and he’d missed The Gray Ghost’s departure.

“ Think, Jack.” Emma Oastler’s breath was as warm as Mrs. McQuat’s was cold. “Your full name—you can do it.”

“Jack Burns,” the boy managed to whisper.

Was it his name or his finger that surprised her? Maybe both. The simultaneity of saying his name at the exact same moment he ran his index finger over her downy upper lip was completely unplanned. The incredible softness of her lip made him whisper: “What’s your name?”

She seized his index finger and bent it backward. He fell to his knees and cried out in pain. The Gray Ghost made another of her signature sudden appearances. “I said inspire him, Emma—not hurt him,” Mrs. McQuat admonished.

“Emma what?” Jack asked the big girl, who was breaking his finger.

“Emma Oastler,” she said, giving his finger an extra twist before she let it go. “And don’t you forget it.”

Forgetting Emma or her name would be impossible. Even the pain she caused him seemed natural—as if Jack had been born to serve her, or she’d been born to lead him. Mrs. McQuat may have recognized this in Jack’s pained expression. He would realize only later that The Gray Ghost had undoubtedly been at St. Hilda’s when Jack’s father was sleeping with a girl in grade eleven and impregnating a girl in grade thirteen. Why else would she have asked, “Aren’t you William Burns’s boy?”

That rekindled Emma Oastler’s interest in Jack’s eyelashes, in a hurry. “Then you’re the tattoo lady’s kid!” Emma exclaimed.

“Yes,” Jack said. (And to think he had worried that no one would know him!)

Another teacher was closely observing the new arrivals, and Jack recognized her perfect voice as if he’d heard it every night in his dreams—Miss Caroline Wurtz, who had cured his mother of her Scottish accent. Not only did she excel in enunciation and diction, but the pitch of her voice would have been recognizable anywhere—especially in Jack’s dreams. In Edmonton, where she was from, Miss Wurtz would have been considered beautiful—without qualification. In a more international city, like Toronto, her fragile prettiness was the perishable kind. (More likely, she may have suffered some disappointment in her personal life—an illusory love, or an encounter that had passed too quickly.)

“Please give my regards to your mom, Jack,” Miss Wurtz said.

“Yes, thank you—I will,” the boy replied.

“The tattoo lady has a limo ?” Emma asked.

“That is Mrs. Wicksteed’s car and driver, Emma,” Miss Wurtz said.

Once again, The Gray Ghost was gone—Mrs. McQuat had simply disappeared. Jack was aware of Emma’s guiding hand on his shoulder, and of his jaw brushing her hip. She bent over him and whispered in his ear; what she said was not for Miss Wurtz to hear: “It must be nice for your mom and you, baby cakes.” Jack thought she meant the Lincoln Town Car or Peewee, but Mrs. Wicksteed’s patronage of “the tattoo lady” and her bastard son was a story that had gained admittance to St. Hilda’s before Jack entered kindergarten. Emma Oastler was referring to Mrs. Wicksteed’s broader role as their patroness. The boy also misunderstood what Emma said next: “Way to go, Jack. Not everyone is lucky enough to be a rent-free boarder.”

“Thank you,” Jack replied, reaching for her hand. He was happy to have made a friend on his first day of school. Since Mrs. Wicksteed’s divorced daughter had also referred to Jack and his mom as rent-free boarders, Jack wondered if Emma’s mom might be divorced. Maybe women in that situation were particularly sympathetic to a good Old Girl like Mrs. Wicksteed taking Jack and Alice under her wing.

“Is your mother divorced?” Jack asked Emma Oastler. Unfortunately, Emma’s mother had been bitterly divorced for several years, and at least one consequence of her divorce had been so spectacularly ugly that she would permanently think of herself as Mrs. Oastler. For Emma, the subject was still as sore as a boil.

In what Jack misinterpreted as a gesture of intimacy and unspoken understanding, Emma squeezed his hand. He was sure she didn’t mean to hurt him, although her grip was as fierce as the handshake of the front-desk clerk at the Hotel Bristol in Oslo. “Are you Norwegian?” he asked her, but Emma was breathing too hard to hear him. Either in her concerted effort to crush his hand or because she was struggling to control her loathing of what a man-hating monster her mother had become in the aftermath of her divorce, Emma’s newly acquired chest was heaving. A tear, which Jack first mistook for a rivulet of sweat, had run down her cheek and now clung to her mustache—like a droplet of dew on new moss. Jack’s misgivings about attending St. Hilda’s momentarily evaporated. What a splendid idea it was to have the grade-six girls serve as guides to the younger children in the junior school!

On the stone stairs leading to the basement entrance, he stumbled, but Emma not only held him up; she hoisted him to her hip and carried him into his first day of school. Jack threw his arms around her in a flood of gratitude and affection; she returned his embrace so ferociously that he feared he might suffocate against her warm throat. They say that apparitions appear to those who are near fainting, which would explain why Jack first mistook The Gray Ghost for an apparition. There was Mrs. McQuat again—just as Emma Oastler was about to break his back or asphyxiate him with her twelve-year-old bosom.

“Let him go, Emma,” The Gray Ghost said. Jack’s shirt was untucked and hung almost to his bare knees, though it didn’t dangle as low as his tie. He was slightly dizzy and gasping for breath. “Help him tuck in his shirt, Emma,” The Gray Ghost said. As soon as she spoke, she was gone—returned to her world of the spirits.

Kneeling, Emma was Jack’s height. His gray Bermuda shorts were not only too short; they were too tight. Emma had to undo the top button and unzip the boy’s fly in order to tuck in his shirt. Under his shorts, her hands cupped and squeezed his buttocks as she whispered in his ear: “Nice tushy, Jack.”

Jack had caught his breath sufficiently to pay her a compliment in kind. “Nice mustache, ” he said—thus cementing their friendship for his remaining years at St. Hilda’s, and beyond. Jack thought it must be a good school, as his mom had said, and here—in his first, exciting meeting with Emma Oastler—was probable evidence (at least to Jack) that he would be safe with the girls.