Getting Warmer (4 page)

I glanced at the man sitting next to me. He wore a shirt with wide, horizontal stripes.

“I teach prisoners to read,” I said. “Out at the, you know. Prison.” Whenever I drove to the nearest outlet mall, I passed signs that read, PRISON NEARBY; DO NOT PICK UP HITCHHIKERS. Besides, there were always chain gangs picking up garbage on Scottsdale Road.

“That’s intense,” he said. “What are they in for?”

“The prisoners? Oh, all kinds of things.” I’d already started this thing. I might as well give it my all. “Drugs, violent crimes. There’s some sex offenders, but I try to avoid them.”

“Murderers?”

“Oh, sure. Murderers. Lots of murderers.”

He sat back and sipped his Blue Hawaiian thoughtfully. “I can’t believe that Paul guy walked out because of that.”

He was criticizing Paul, I knew, but it made me feel that my story was somehow inadequate. “Then there’s my living situation. I live with my parents.”

He shrugged, looked puzzled as if to say: loser-ly, yes, but not worth such an abrupt exit.

“My mother’s senile. Crazy. Alzheimer’s. She howls at the moon and chases people. Sometimes she chases dogs.”

“Oh, my God,” he said.

“Yeah. My father is completely overwhelmed, so the caretaking all falls to me. So you can see why Paul left.”

He shook his head. “Because he’s a complete jerk.”

I shrugged. “It’s a lot to deal with. Most men can’t.”

“Maybe you’ve been meeting the wrong men.”

“I won’t argue with you there.”

The bartender came over. “Jim called,” he said to Jonathan. “Said to tell you he’s had a family emergency and can’t make it in tonight. Said you should call him tomorrow to set up another meeting. Or, if you want, you can wait around. Cherie will be here in about a half hour.”

Jonathan paused. “Cherie Williamson?”

“Yeah. You know her? She used to work at that barbecue place around the corner. Anyway, drinks are on the house. You want another?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just give Jim a call in the morning.” Remembering his manners, he looked at me. “You want another drink?”

“No, thanks—I’ve got to drive,” I said, even though I wasn’t quite ready to say good-bye.

He pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his khakis and extracted a generous tip for the bartender.

“You were waiting for someone?” I asked.

“The manager,” he said. “I’m in restaurant supplies. Trying to drum up some new business.” He looked up at me. His eyes twinkled. “What did you think? That I was a drunk on the prowl?”

“No!” I said, blinking furiously. “Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so. You wouldn’t have been so honest about yourself if you had.” He put his wallet back in his pocket and scanned the room. “Looks like the tables here are all taken. You want to go somewhere else and grab a bite to eat?”

I would have woken up smiling if I were the type; my evening with Jonathan had been the best I’d had since moving to Arizona. Instead I woke up swearing. “Gosh dang it!” I know: a pathetic excuse for an expletive. But I’d been scared straight. Last year, I’d knocked an enormous textbook onto my foot and started screaming my former favorite word, which, if you must know, begins with “s.” The class stared at me, shocked. I was terrified they’d tell on me. They didn’t, as far as I know. The incident made me realize, though, that I had to watch myself at all times; the goshes, darns and dangs had to be second nature so nothing R-rated would slip out. A couple of Mormon teachers recommended, “Oh, my heck” and, when utterly overwhelmed, upset and/or angry, “CHEESE and rice!” As yet, I hadn’t fallen that far.

Anyway, I didn’t wake up to a falling textbook but to the realization that the power had gone out in the middle of the night. My alarm clock was blinking. I had only ten minutes to get out of the house.

I made it. I was greasy and dirty and possibly even smelly, but I dropped my bag next to my desk with at least four seconds to spare.

The students were all on time and sitting in their seats, ready to learn. This was not Adventures in English, but freshman honors. We had a rotating schedule, which meant that every day I had a different first-period class. The rationale: students are more alert at certain times of the day. With a rotating schedule they’d be “optimally receptive to learning” in every class—at least some of the time. The reality was that I almost always had students from the wrong class wandering in, scrunching their noses and saying, “Am I here today? Is it Tuesday?” The schedule confounded me; I was immensely grateful to be able to stick with one classroom.

Cody Gold was sitting in the front row, as usual. “You look nice today, Miss Quackenbush,” he squeaked, gazing up at me. I did not look nice. I looked like hell. Sorry. Like heck. But love is blind.

“Thank you, Cody,” I said dutifully.

Next to Cody sat Claudia Pimpernel. (I referred to this as my “C” class: in addition to Cody and Claudia, we had Carlos, Callie, Candace, Christina, two Christophers and a Christian.) “Thank you for your comments on my essay,” she said. “They are really helping me grow as a writer.” Claudia was not in love with me. Claudia was in love with the image of herself starting Harvard in four years.

“I’m glad I could help, Claudia,” I said. “Just remember: semicolons are not the same as commas.” She nodded her enthusiastic assent and pulled out her Lisa Frank notebook so she could record my wisdom.

The first day of class, I had announced that students could choose their own seats. It seemed safe; honors kids almost never have behavior problems. Claudia secured her place in the front row early; Cody followed a couple of days later, when he mistook a sudden release of adolescent testosterone for love.

And then there was Jared. For Jared, I had no choice but to break my no-obscenity rule, at least in private, as he was, quite simply, a little shit. Before teaching, I had this absurd idea that my compassion and understanding could extend to anyone. Anyone! I discovered early that there were some students that I simply didn’t care for. They were sullen, apathetic, rude—whatever. I looked forward to the last day of school and hoped I would not encounter these students again. At the same time, I congratulated myself for taking pains to set my feelings aside and grade fairly.

And then I met Jared. It wasn’t his hyperactivity that made me despise him, though of course that didn’t help. It wasn’t that he had no business being in this class of bright-eyed overachievers; his parents had screamed at the principal and flashed some privately administered intelligence test scores until she finally relented. It was that, at his core, Jared was evil.

Jared sat in the front row—not by choice, of course. The first day of school he planted himself in the back, where he had no trouble convincing Carlos and one of the Christophers, two normally genial, placid boys, to throw spit balls. After four or five final warnings, I moved Jared to a seat next to the exemplary Sarah Levine. It worked for a day, and I congratulated myself on my problem-solving skills. Day two Jared had Sarah giggling and passing notes. Sarah teared up when I scolded them: “This is not the kind of behavior I expect from honors students.” (Yeah, I know: major gag.) Sarah stayed after class to apologize and had looked frightened in my presence ever since.

Finally, I had no choice but to place Jared front row center, displacing a heartbroken Cody. Now I spent every class trying to block out the sound of Jared’s pen tapping and squeaky sneaker thumping. Since neither Cody nor Claudia had fallen prey to his charms, he talked to himself behind his palm, saying things that sounded an awful lot like, “This class sucks,” and, “Who gives a fart.”

Today, partly because I had asked Mrs. Clausen for advice on how to maximize class discussion and partly because I couldn’t bear forty-five minutes of Jared staring at me with his rodent eyes, I had the kids move their desks into a circle. The discussion was pretty much the same as always (Sarah said something brilliant; Claudia interrupted her to say something inane; Cody thanked me for my insights), but at least the rearrangement killed three minutes (ninety seconds to put the desks into the circle, another ninety to put them back). Also, Jared wasn’t quite so much in my face, and he even stopped tapping his pen for a few minutes.

Once the bell rang and the kids shuffled out, I straightened the desks. They were all mixed up, as I had told the kids to stick the desks back into rows before they left; I didn’t say they had to return them to their original position. In the second row back, a desk on the end had new blue ballpoint graffiti: “Fuck the Duck.”

Stupidly, I teared up. I doused the spot with some Comet that I kept in my desk. It left scratch marks on the beige laminate desk, but at least it obliterated the words. Thank God he hadn’t had time to dig any deeper.

I fled to the English teachers’ lounge. This was my prep period, but right now maintaining the caffeine level in my blood seemed like a more important priority than doing any actual work. Besides, Jared’s evil karma still hung over my classroom. I dropped a dime into the can next to the coffeepot and poured myself a mug that managed to be both bitter and tasteless at the same time. I added plenty of nondairy creamer to make sure I got my ten cents’ worth.

The door swung open; Mrs. Clausen scurried in. “I need the Globe for my next class,” she said breathlessly, grabbing the department’s model of Shakespeare’s theater. She looked immaculate, as always, in a tailored gray skirt, peach silk blouse and a thick gold chain. Her silver hair was short and expensively cut. “We’re starting
Hamlet
today—the kids are so excited!” Mrs. Clausen is the kind of committed, innovative teacher I want to be, assuming I keep teaching and don’t end up incarcerated for, say, sneaking poisonous oleander petals into Jared’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. “How did it go last night?” she asked.

I suddenly brightened. “It was wonderful. I haven’t had that much fun in ages.”

“I’m so happy for you!” she said. “I just knew you and Paul would hit it off!” With a little wave of her pinky (she was holding the model, after all), she disappeared out the door. Oh, well. I could explain later—assuming Paul didn’t explain first.

After guzzling my coffee, I made my way down to the counseling office, where I found Jill alone, relaxed and flipping through some paperwork. I swear: if I had it to do over, I would have gone the school psychology route. Yeah, sure, the job has its downsides: the Ritalin pushing, the suicide prevention, the STD talks. Last year Jill shared her file of syphilis photos with me; I haven’t had sex since. But she is spared the nightly task of grading ninety-two homework papers. She never has to make sense of
The Odyssey
. Kids don’t carve obscenities in her furniture. Genital warts just can’t compete.

I closed her door behind me (the anorexics, suicidals and general delinquents would just have to wait) and settled myself in one of the two chairs across from her desk (typically, one is for a wayward student, the other for the parent responsible for bringing up such a thug). I grinned.

“So?” she said.

“I had a nice evening.” I blushed. Behind Jill’s desk, a poster showed a clean-cut boy in a varsity jacket chastely holding hands with a pretty girl. Above them, giant letters read: WAITING FOR MARRIAGE: IT’S THE RIGHT DECISION.

 

Jill leaned forward. “Oh, my God! Did you get laid?”

“No!” I said. “I just had a couple of drinks. Ate a burrito. Had a nice kiss.” I blushed again.

“Who knew? Just when you were getting ready to swear off blind dates forever. I mean forever again.”

“That’s what’s so funny—it wasn’t the blind date guy!” I explained how Jonathan and I had met, the story I had told him. After chatting for a while at the bar, we’d gone for a walk out on the plaza to get away from the noise. Eventually, we got hungry, and Jonathan took me to this amazing hole-in-the-wall burrito place he knew of in Old Town Scottsdale. At this point, I regretted my lies, but I didn’t want to ruin the evening. Instead, I steered the conversation around to the things about me that were true: my childhood in Massachusetts, college, grad school—pretty much everything up to the point when I took the job at the prison and my mother completely lost her mind.

Jonathan, in turn, told me that he was a Phoenix native. He loved the desert, loved the heat, could tell the good snakes from the bad. He loved the summer monsoons: the black wall of clouds that moves across the desert, its approach announced by a chain lightning marquis, and finally arrives to unleash apocalyptic rain and wall-shaking thunder.

“I’ll come clean next time I see him,” I told Jill. “We’re going out on Friday. Hopefully, he won’t think I’m too much of a jerk.”

“Wow. Two dates in one week. You’ll be having sex in no time.”

“Would you stop?”

“I have some pamphlets if you want to refresh your memory,” she said, opening her desk.

There was a knock on the door. “Damn,” Jill said. “Just when it was getting good.”

It was Nicolette. “Oh! Hi, Miss Quackenbush!”

“You can call me Natalie,” I said, as patiently as I could.

“Right! Natalie! Anyways, did Jill tell you? That we’re going out on Friday?” Without waiting for my reply, she plopped into the chair next to me (the parent chair) and babbled on. “I’ve got the funniest idea! For the story we make up? I say I was abducted by aliens! But like, they’ve let me come back. I mean, obviously. And Jill is from the FBI. And we’re not supposed to tell anyone about it, and she keeps saying, like,
Shut up or we’ll get in trouble!
And Miss Qua—Natalie? You’re—you ready?—an
alien
! How funny is that?”

“It’s funny,” I said, not telling her the cardinal rule of bar lies: the story has to be at least minimally credible. “But I won’t be able to make it. I’ve got a date.” I tried not to look too smug, but when Nicolette asked for details, I simply told her the truth: “He’s thirty-three, never married, runs his own business and owns a house.” She gawked. Clearly, I’d found a man who was registry-worthy.