John Irving - Until I Find You

“What’s this, Jack?” she asked, holding up the stinking bra. The way she looked at her son—well, he would never forget it. It was as if she’d discovered Emma’s mother in the bed between them; it was as if she’d caught Jack in flagrante delicto, the little guy in intimate contact with that hairy, private place.

“It’s a push-up bra,” he explained.

“I know what it is—I mean whose. ” Alice sniffed the bra and made a face. She pulled back the covers and stared at the little guy, who was protruding, at attention, from the boy’s pajamas. “Start talking, Jack.”

“It belongs to Emma Oastler’s mom—Emma stole it and gave it to me. I don’t know why.”

“I know why,” Alice said. Jack started to cry. His mom’s visible disgust was withering; the little guy was looking withered, too.

“Stop sniveling—don’t snivel, ” Alice said. He needed to blow his nose. His mom handed him the bra, but Jack hesitated. “Go on —blow !” she ordered. “I’m going to wash it before I give it back to her, anyway.”

“Oh.”

“You can start anytime, Jack. The whole story. What games are you playing with Emma? You better begin there.”

He told her everything—well, maybe not everything. Possibly not the part about Emma baring her breasts; probably not every time Emma asked to have a look at the little guy; certainly not the part about his penis making actual contact with Emma’s hairy, private place. But his mother must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on. “She’s fifteen, Jack—you’re eight. I’ll have a little talk with Mrs. Oastler.”

“Is Emma going to get in trouble?”

“I sincerely hope so,” Alice said.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked.

What a look she gave him! Jack hadn’t known what she meant when she’d said they were “becoming like strangers.” Now he knew. His mom looked at him as if he were a stranger. “You’re going to be in trouble soon enough,” was all she said.

Compared to the drama unfolding between Jack and Emma, and what lay ahead between Alice and Mrs. Oastler, the inability of Miss Wurtz to manage her grade-three classroom was minor; yet there was drama there as well, however improvisational.

Lucinda Fleming, whom Jack couldn’t see over, sat at the desk in front of his. She would routinely and deliberately whip his face with her huge ponytail, which hung halfway down her back and was as thick as a broom. In exasperation, Jack would respond by grabbing it with both his hands and pulling it. He could barely manage to pin the back of her head to the top of his desk. Jack found he could restrain her there by pressing his chin against her forehead, but it hurt. Nothing appeared to hurt Lucinda, except her alleged proclivity to hurt herself, which Jack was beginning to doubt. Maybe Lucinda had despised playing Dimmesdale to Jack-as-Hester, or she hated being a head taller than he was; possibly she believed that by whipping Jack with her ponytail, she could make him grow.

Caroline Wurtz never saw Lucinda lash out at Jack with her broom of hair. Miss Wurtz only became aware of the situation after he’d pinned Lucinda’s head to his desk. “Please, Jack,” Miss Wurtz would say. “Don’t disappoint me.”

In his dreams, when The Wurtz would say “Don’t disappoint me,” her tone of voice was deeply seductive. Not so in the grade-three classroom. In reality, disappointing Miss Wurtz was a bad idea—she did not handle it well. Yet the grade-three children often disappointed her deliberately. They resented what a well-organized tyrant she was in her other capacity, as their drama teacher; that she couldn’t maintain order in the classroom was a weakness they exploited.

Gordon French once released his pet hamster into his hostile twin’s hair. From Caroline’s reaction, one might have guessed that the hamster was rabid and bit her. But all the stupid hamster did was race around and around her head, as if it were running on its incessant wheel. Miss Wurtz, perhaps fearful that the hamster would be harmed, began to cry. Crying was the last resort of her disappointment, and she resorted to it with tiresome frequency. “Oh, I never thought I’d be this disappointed!” she would wail. “Oh, my feelings are hurt more than I can say !” But when Miss Wurtz began to cry, the kids stopped paying attention to what she said. They were concentrating on what they knew would happen next, for which there was no preparing themselves. The Gray Ghost’s sudden appearances, even when they were anticipated, were always startling.

There was only one door to the grade-three classroom, and despite her reputedly supernatural powers, Mrs. McQuat could not pass through walls; yet even though the children saw the doorknob turning, they could not protect themselves from the shock. Sometimes the door would swing open, but no one would be there. They would hear The Gray Ghost’s labored breathing from the hall, while Jimmy Bacon moaned and the two sets of twins sounded their predictable alarms. At other times, Mrs. McQuat seemed to leap inside the classroom before the doorknob so much as twitched. Only Roland Simpson, the class’s future criminal, purposely closed his eyes. (Roland liked being startled.)

According to Mrs. Wicksteed, The Gray Ghost had lost a lung in the war. What war and which lung were unknown to Jack. Mrs. McQuat had been a combat nurse, and she’d been gassed. Hence her labored breathing; The Gray Ghost was always out of breath. Gassed where and with what were also a mystery to Jack.

The third graders could have written Mrs. McQuat’s dialogue for her. Upon her unpreventable sudden appearance, The Gray Ghost would address the class as if she were a character in a dramatization Caroline Wurtz had scripted. In her cold-as-the-grave, out-of-breath voice, Mrs. McQuat would ask: “Which of you … made Miss Wurtz … cry ?”

Without hesitation, the children identified the guilty party. They would betray anyone when asked that terrifying question. At that moment, they had no friends, no loyalties. Because here is the dark heart of what they believed: if Mrs. McQuat had been gassed and lost a lung, wasn’t it possible that she had died ? Who could say for certain that she wasn’t a ghost? Her skin, her hair, her clothes—gray on gray on gray. And why were her hands so cold? Why did no one ever see her arrive at school, or leave? Why was she always so suddenly there ?

Jack would long remember The Gray Ghost asking Gordon French: “You put … a what … in your sister’s … hair?”

Gordon answered: “Just a hamster, a friendly one!”

“It felt like a small dog, Gordon,” Caroline said. Gordon knew the drill. He stood like a soldier in the aisle beside his desk, immobilized by his foreknowledge of what he was about to endure.

“I hope … you didn’t … hurt the hamster … Caroline,” Mrs. McQuat said, granting Gordon brief reprieve.

“It’s no fun having one in your hair,” Caroline replied.

“Where is the hamster?” Miss Wurtz suddenly cried. (That her first name was also Caroline was confusing.)

“Please find … the hamster … Caroline,” The Gray Ghost said. But before Caroline French could begin to look, Miss Wurtz dropped to all fours and crawled under Caroline’s desk. “Not you … dear,” Mrs. McQuat said reprovingly. All the children had joined Miss Wurtz on the floor.

“What’s its name, Gordon?” Maureen Yap asked.