John Irving - Until I Find You

As for Jack, he was surprised by how gently Mrs. McQuat took hold of his ear. Her thumb and index finger, which pinched his earlobe, were ice-cold, but when The Gray Ghost led him from the classroom, he was not in pain. And in the corridor, where she released his ear—her cold hand still steering him by the back of his neck—they struck up quite a cordial conversation, considering the circumstances.

“And what is … Miss Wurtz’s problem … this time?” Mrs. McQuat whispered.

He’d been afraid that the issue of the kiss itself might come up, but he hesitated only a second. To lie to The Gray Ghost was unthinkable. “I kissed Lucinda Fleming,” Jack confessed.

Mrs. McQuat nodded, seemingly unsurprised. “Where?” she whispered.

“On the back of her neck.”

“That’s not … so bad,” The Gray Ghost said. “I expected … much worse.”

There was no one in the chapel, where Jack regarded the prospect of turning his back on God with the greatest trepidation. But Mrs. McQuat steered him into one of the foremost pews. They sat down together, facing the altar. “Don’t you want me to turn around?” Jack asked.

“Not you, Jack.”

“Why not?”

“I think you need to face … the right way,” The Gray Ghost said. “Don’t you ever turn your back on God, Jack … in your case, I’m sure … He’s looking.”

“He is ?”

“Definitely.”

“Oh.”

“You’re … only eight, Jack. You’re … already kissing girls at eight!”

“It was just on the neck.”

“What you did was nothing … but you saw … the consequences.” (Urination, bleeding, rigor mortis, stitches !)

“What should I do, Mrs. McQuat?”

“Pray,” she said. “You should be … facing the right way for prayers.”

“Pray what ?”

“That you can … control your urges,” The Gray Ghost said.

“Control my what ?”

“Pray for the strength to … restrain yourself, Jack.”

“From kissing?”

“From … worse than that, Jack.”

From his father inside him, Mrs. McQuat might as well have said. When she’d added, “Pray for the strength to … restrain yourself,” she hadn’t been able to look him in the eye—she was staring at his lap ! She meant the little guy, and all that he might be up to. Whatever was worse than kissing, Jack prayed for the strength to resist it. He prayed and prayed.

“Excuse me for … interrupting your prayers, Jack, but I have … a question.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Have you ever done … worse than kiss a girl?”

“What would be worse?”

“Something … more than kissing … perhaps.”

Jack prayed that The Gray Ghost would forgive him if he told her. “I slept with Mrs. Oastler’s bra.”

“ Emma Oastler? She gave you … her bra?”

“Not Emma’s—it was her mom’s bra.”

“But Emma … gave it to you ?”

“Yes. My mom took it back.”

“Mercy!” Mrs. McQuat said.

“It was a push-up bra,” he explained further.

“Go back … to your prayers, Jack.”

In her ghostly way, she left—genuflecting in the aisle and making the sign of the cross. In her kindness to him, Jack couldn’t help but feel that she was more alive than he first thought; yet the message Mrs. McQuat had left with him was as chilling as an admonition from the grave.

God was watching Jack Burns. If Jack turned his back on God, He would see. And if God was looking so closely at him, this was because He was certain Jack would err. (The Gray Ghost seemed fairly certain of this herself.) Whether the fault lay with his father inside him, or with the independence of mind and imagination already exhibited by the little guy, Jack seemed as predestined for sexual transgression as Emma Oastler had predicted.

He prayed and prayed. His knees were sore, his back was aching. Moments later, he recognized the smell of chewing gum in the pew behind him—this time, it was a fruity flavor. “What are you doing, baby cakes?” Emma whispered.

Jack didn’t dare turn around. “Praying,” he answered. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

“I heard you kissed her, Jack. It took four stitches to close her lip! Boy, have we got our homework cut out for us! You can’t kiss a girl like she’s a steak !”

“She bit herself,” he explained, to no avail.

“Passion of the moment, eh?” Emma asked.

“I’m praying, ” Jack said, still not turning around.

“Prayers won’t help you, honey pie. Homework will.”

Thus did Emma Oastler distract him from his prayers. If Emma hadn’t found him in the chapel, he might have followed The Gray Ghost’s instructions to the letter. And if he’d successfully prayed for the strength to restrain himself, which of course meant restraining the little guy, too—well, who knows what Jack Burns might have been spared, or what he might have spared others?

Years later, Lucinda Fleming would still include Jack among the bored recipients of her Christmas letter. He didn’t know why. He never kissed her again. He hadn’t kept in touch.

Emma Oastler’s theory was that Jack’s third-grade kiss on Lucinda’s neck was her first and best—possibly her last. But given the sheer number of children Lucinda Fleming would have—they were mentioned by name, together with their ages, in those repetitive Christmas letters—Jack would be inclined to refute Emma’s theory. Spellbound as he was by Lucinda’s prodigious childbearing, Jack could conclude only that her husband had been kissing her—even happily. And in all likelihood, the husband who had spent the better part of his life kissing Lucinda Fleming had not caused her to bite through her lower lip and pee all over herself.

Looking back, Jack wouldn’t miss Lucinda—or the rage she saved seemingly just for him. It was The Gray Ghost he would miss. Mrs. McQuat had done her best to help him not become like his father. It wasn’t her fault that Jack didn’t pray hard enough, or that he lacked the strength to control what The Gray Ghost called his “urges”; that he turned his back on God was more Jack’s failure than Mrs. McQuat’s or his dad’s.

He had a ton of homework in grade four. Emma genuinely helped him with it. Jack’s other homework, his sexual education, remained Emma’s responsibility; she was tireless in her role as his self-appointed initiator.

As his grade-four teacher, Mrs. McQuat stayed after school two days a week to help Jack with his math. He actually concentrated on the math; with The Gray Ghost, there were no distractions, no conflicting desires to breathe her in. He never dreamed about Mrs. McQuat in anyone’s underwear. In fact, Jack should have thanked her for the sympathy she showed him—not only for what she said to him in the chapel, but the degree to which she tried to counteract the command Caroline Wurtz took of the boy whenever she turned him loose onstage. (Or turned him not-so-loose, as was more often the case with Jack’s performances under The Wurtz’s uptight direction.)

He was cast as Adam in Miss Wurtz’s cloying rendition of Adam Bede. THEY KISS EACH OTHER WITH A DEEP JOY, the stage directions read. Overlooking the disastrous results of the Lucinda Fleming kiss, which afforded no joy of any kind, Jack devoted himself to the task. Given that The Wurtz had cast Heather Booth as Dinah, the kiss was indeed a daunting one. Not only did Heather make her disturbing blanket-sucking sounds when he kissed her, but her twin, Patsy, made identical sucking sounds backstage.