Getting Warmer (31 page)

I didn’t smile.

“Oh, come on, Natalie!” she said. “So one kid doesn’t like you. It’s not the end of the world. Cody Gold has problems that have nothing to do with you.”

“Has he been acting out with any of his other teachers?”

“Well, no,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Of course it does,” I said. A girl at the counter called our number. I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got five minutes to eat,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

 

* * *

I didn’t go to the meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Gold. When the final bell rang, I packed up my bag, locked up my classroom and hurried off to my car before anyone could stop me.

I was a coward, true, but it was more than that. It hit me during my third college prep class of the day, with a third group of students reading the same Dickens passages aloud, their bodies slumped just so, sneakered feet splayed out, elbows on the desks, eyes glazed, hands holding up faces that would topple over without the support. I didn’t want to be here anymore than they did. I wasn’t saving the world. I was boring the world.

Dr. White had two good candidates for Lars’s job. Why turn one away?

I felt oddly free and jubilant. If I hadn’t wasted the bathtub champagne, I’d pop it now. No matter. When I got home, I’d turn on the spa, slip into my bathing suit and soak away the tensions from the last year and a half.

Marjorie Wamsley ruined everything. “Shoot,” I said when I saw her white SUV parked out front. Then, remembering that my role-model days were numbered, I amended my exclamation to, “Shit.” Saying a bad word felt so good, I said it again. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Marjorie and the Sandlers were standing out by the spa.
My
spa. I stuck a smile on my face and strode outside.

“Oh, hello, Natalie! Did your mother reach you?”

“What?” Oh, right. I’d never returned my mother’s call. “I was just going to call her back.”

“We have some exciting news!” Marjorie said. Mr. and Mrs. Sandler smiled shyly behind her. “The Sandlers have made a very nice offer on the home.”

“On this home?” I said stupidly.

“This very one!” Marjorie chirped.

By the time they left, two hours later, I didn’t really want to go in the spa anymore but I did anyway, recognizing that my backyard-as-resort days were numbered. The sun was just starting to fade, and the air was chilly. The flagstones iced my feet; I should have worn flip-flops. As I slipped into the spa, I had one of those cold-to-hot, agony-to-ecstacy moments. The steamy water thawed my feet and stung my legs. I halted halfway into the water, my bottom half too hot, my top half too cold, until, with a squeal, I plunged myself up to my chin in the Pebble Tec cauldron, settling at last into the blood-warming brew.

I left the jets off, immersing myself in the dusk sounds of the desert. Mourning doves cooed, their voices soothing rather than sad. Owls hooted in the distance. My heart thudded in my ears. Above the stucco wall that surrounded the yard, jagged mountains rose brown and purple against a dusty pink and blue sky, while the majestic saguaros held their prickly green arms aloft.

This is “When I Lived in Arizona,” I told myself, as the clouds darkened and the present faded into the past.

“No,” she said, placing the letter on her desk.

“Excuse me?” I stood across from her, one foot pointing toward the door, poised to make my exit.

Dr. White crossed her arms across her chest. She was wearing a new suit today: Christmas red. Her blouse was white and had a wide, pointy collar. Her glossy lipstick matched the suit. Her skin shone dark and brown. Dr. White had the right complexion for Arizona. “You’re upset about Cody Gold. You’re being impulsive.”

I shook my head. “I’m not. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. This was just the thing that pushed me over the edge. The tipping point. The final straw.”

She smiled, just a little. “Have you started your writing unit yet? The part about avoiding clichés?”

“No, that’s next quarter. Or, it would have been.”

She held the letter out to me. “Finish out the year. Then decide.”

I left the sheet in her hand. “I’ve already decided. This is the right thing to do.”

She put the letter back on her desk. “The first two years are the hardest. You’re a good teacher, Natalie. Don’t give up.”

I backed away. “I’m sorry, Dr. White. I hate to disappoint you. But I can’t do this anymore.”

She didn’t give up. First she sicced Mrs. Clausen on me. “We don’t want to lose you from teaching, Natalie. You’re incredibly talented.”

Then she moved on to Jill.

“Cody Gold’s parents are separating just as he is hitting puberty. He felt a kind of Oedipal attraction for you. It’s only natural he would lash out.”

She even had the vice principal, some guy named Mr. Flynn, talk to me. “Dr. White tells me you’re one of our finest history teachers.”

“I teach English.”

“Oh, right. Well, best of luck to you.”

When I had a free period, I stayed in my classroom to avoid any more ambushes. I shut the door and called my parents. We had spoken last night. I told them the Sandlers seemed like nice people, that my parents’ house was going to a good home, as it were. I didn’t tell them I was going to quit my job; I thought I should tell Dr. White first.

My sister answered the phone. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I said.

“I have a cold.”

“Bad one?”

“Not really. But Mom made this big deal, says I have to be especially careful because of the baby, and God forbid I should get pneumonia, blah, blah, blah.” Shelly sighed. “She’s driving me crazy. She’s completely taking over my life. She treats me like I’m twelve.”

“A pregnant twelve-year-old, no less.”

She moaned. “My life is so fucked up.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is Mom around?”

“She went to the store. She’s buying chicken soup and ginger ale.”

“What about Dad?”

“He went with Mom. He’s driving me crazy, too. He keeps saying if he were in Scottsdale, he could be playing golf.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m moving back East.”

“
What
?”

“I’ve quit my job. I’m moving home. Or, home-ish. I’ll probably go back to Boston.”

“But—why? You have a job, friends . . . Mom said you have a boyfriend.” Her voice dropped. I think I heard her sniffle, whether from her cold or the memory of Frederick, I wasn’t sure.

“I hate my job, and I don’t have any real friends,” I said as evenly as I could manage. “There’s no boyfriend. That’s over.”

“Men are assholes,” Shelly said.

The kids made it harder. Katerina stayed after class to talk about the winter play. “I’ve got this idea, and, like, tell me if you don’t think it’s going to work. But you know how you said you were, like, not feeling confident about directing? Well, the thing is, I’ve always wanted to direct. So, I was wondering—would you consider taking me on as your student director? It would be, like, the biggest thrill of my life.”

Sarah Levine lent me a poetry anthology she had read at home. “I love Keats, especially. Sometimes I start reading him, and an hour goes by and I don’t even notice.” She smiled shyly. “I waste so much time that way.”

Even Claudia got to me. “Mrs. Quackenbush, do you think you could read this short story I wrote? It’s about this girl, nobody really understands her, so she runs away to New York to be a dancer. Everybody thinks she’s dead, but then she gets to be really famous, and they realize who it is. And there’s this guy, she loved him when they were young, but when he drives to see her dance, there’s this snow-storm and his car crashes and he dies.” She took a breath. “Anyway, I think it could be better, but I’ve taken it as far as I know how.”

Cody wasn’t in class. Jared and I ignored each other.

Robert handed in his homework, a short descriptive paragraph. So did Marisol. Actually, over half of the other Adventures students did the work. I glanced at Robert’s paper and managed to catch him before he walked out the door. “Did Ladd help you with this?”

He shook his head sheepishly. “The thing with Ladd is, well—he’s not really a good tutor. He’s not even that good a cook.”

“You got all your punctuation correct,” I said. “Everything! Even the quotation marks.”

“It took a long time,” he admitted. “I spent a lot of time looking at the stuff we worked on together. The comma exercises and stuff.”

“Keep it up,” I said.

He looked at the ground. “If you have any time, well . . . could we go back to meeting in the mornings?”

“Of course!” I said without thinking. “At least until the holiday break.” He looked at me quizzically. “I just can’t schedule anything after that.”

It went on like that for the rest of the week. Every day, Dr. White asked me if I’d changed my mind. Every day, I told her no.

I took to eating lunch with Jill again. Miss Rothstein (Stacey) ate with us one day; the next day, having heard that I’d handed in my resignation, she was back at the math table. I couldn’t blame her. I had one foot out the door; there was no point investing in a friendship.

My parents had already bought me plane tickets to Providence for Christmas. Maybe they could get a refund on the return flight.

In a week I’d be gone.

On Friday afternoon, I made a final visit to Dr. White’s office. “I’ve thought it over,” I told her for the fourth and final time. “I’m going to tell my students on Monday.”

She nodded. I waited for her to say something. She didn’t. She looked sad.

Jill caught up with me as I left the office. “I was just calling your cell phone. You’ve got to come out with me tomorrow night. A last hurrah.”

“Another night at the Happy Cactus?”

She shook her head. “Something nicer. It’s a surprise.”

Lars pulled up in front of my house—my parents’ house; the Sandlers’ house—in his Prius. Jill hadn’t told me that he was coming. I immediately vowed to act like I didn’t care—only to realize that I really didn’t.

“Nicolette’s going to meet us over there,” Jill told me.

“Over where?”

“You’ll see.”

“You look pretty,” Lars said.

“You do,” Jill echoed.

“Thanks.” I was wearing a new filmy black shirt and skirt.

“Your hair has grown,” Lars said.

“Yes.” I touched it without thinking. Portions fell below my chin, but it would take months to get rid of all the layers.

“You have any hair gel?” Lars asked, reaching out to tuck a strand behind my ear. “Or some pomade?”

“I don’t even know what pomade is.”

He reached out to smooth the hair on the other side of my head, squinting intently. “It’s kind of like mousse, only thicker. Like a paste.”

I looked at Jill. “Are you sure he’s straight?”

She shrugged. “That’s what he tells me.”

Jill reapplied my makeup and changed my jewelry (“Bold!” she said. “Go bold!”) and Lars pouffed up my hair using an assortment of salon products he kept in his car.

“Do your roommates know you buy this crap?” Jill asked Lars, holding up a thirty-dollar jar of hair gunk. “That you drive around with it? Because they might stop buying you beer. They might start stocking the fridge with wine coolers and Zima.”

Lars stepped back to survey his work. My hair was beginning to defy the laws of gravity. “I’m not worried,” he said. “Jeff gets manicures.”

“Jeff?” Jill shrieked. “You mean Jeff the belcher? Jeff who never flushes? You’re kidding me.”

“Where have all the cowboys gone?” I said.

Jill raised her eyebrows. “Where, indeed?”

Driving through the neighborhood, we admired the green Christmas lights wound around towering saguaros. White icicle lights hung above doors like shiny bangs, while giant red balls dangled from paloverde trees.

Last Christmas, my father bought a fake, pre-lit tree for our living room; cut evergreens don’t last long in the desert. My mother and I found chili pepper lights at Target, and my father strung them around the windows. We hung an evergreen wreath on the front door. Within days, the dry needles fell to the ground at the slightest touch.

Shelly and Frederick came for a few days. My mother, wearing her red reindeer sweater, cooked—well, heated—a Christmas ham and served side dishes from AJ’s: whole cranberry sauce, baked apples, duchess potatoes, green bean casserole. Frederick ate the corn bread stuffing with chorizo and jalapenos; the rest of us took one bite and left the rest on our plates. We ate on the patio; next to us, the spa’s waterfall gurgled into the pool. My father, in a green reindeer sweater, served margaritas and asked, “Can you believe we’re eating Christmas dinner outside?” at ten-minute intervals. It hadn’t felt like Christmas at all. It felt like a magical, once-in-a-lifetime party.

This year, I hadn’t even bothered to hang a wreath on the front door. I wondered where the chili pepper lights had been stored. Could we hang them up in Rhode Island, or would that look completely ridiculous?

“I can’t believe you’re leaving,” Jill said, twisting around from the front passenger seat to make eye contact.

“I never intended to stay forever.” I sat in the backseat, my hands clasped in my lap, and gazed out the window.