4
Sailor Knots
‘You look terrible.’
I usually didn’t take Veronica Bliss seriously when she said this to me. My fellow preschool teacher expressed concern over my looks so often that it was practically a greeting. But as she stared at me through her thick, plastic-framed glasses, a newspaper mashed into her pillowy chest like a saved baby, I k>
‘I had a rough weekend.’
I saw envy creep into her studious gray eyes, and I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.
I’d barely slept since Friday. And since
Addie
’s dismal attendance meant I wasn’t scheduled to work at the box office, I’d left my apartment only once, to go to the corner deli and buy enough bread, peanut butter, Diet Coke and M&M’s to subsist on until Monday.
I could hardly sleep for fear of nightmares. I couldn’t go out for fear of what I might see. I couldn’t speak to anyone because if somebody said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I didn’t think I’d be able to answer.
So I’d stayed in, letting my machine pick up the phone, eating peanut butter sandwiches in front of the TV, alternating between the shopping channel and the porn channel so consistently that, when I closed my eyes, I saw dicks wearing collectible doll dresses and nipples pierced with cubic zirconia rings.
But I couldn’t help remembering what I’d seen at the river. It made me want to get up and pace the room in compulsive circles. Not a good idea, because of my downstairs neighbor, Elmira Bean.
A sixtyish woman with a penchant for Day-Glo negligees and matching mules, Elmira had moved in around six months earlier. As soon as boot season started, she took to pounding on her ceiling with a broom handle, or possibly a battering ram, whenever I left or returned from work. I’d thought maybe it was some kind of greeting - until she’d shown up at my door threatening to call the police if I didn’t remove my boots immediately.
I doubted I’d get arrested for wearing shoes in my own apartment, but I always tried to comply anyway. The woman scared me a little.
At eleven o’clock on Sunday evening, I’d called Sydney.
She answered the phone like a doorbell (‘Ye-hes!’), which told me she was in a bad mood. The angrier my mother was, the more singsongy her phone voice became.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, Samantha,’ she sighed. ‘It’s Vito.’
I sighed right back. Vito Paradise was her hairstylist, with whom she was involved in a consuming, vaguely masochistic relationship that had outlasted three of her four marriages. They fought and reconciled and fought again, but the topic - Sydney’s hair - never changed. ‘What did he do this time?’
‘It’s not what he
did
do, it’s what he
didn’t
do. He
did
my roots today, but he
didn’t
put the deep conditioner in. Vito said I didn’t need the deep conditioner. Vito said my hair had graduated beyond infusion treatments. Well, now it looks like I’ve got a goddamn wad of cotton candy stuck to my head and I’m on
AM Los Angeles
first thing tomorrow morning and the passive-aggressive bastard won’t return my callspolturn my.’
‘I’m sure it doesn’t look that bad.’
‘You should see me, Samantha. I swear to God you could insulate a house with it. He’s violated me. The overpriced son of a bitch has violated—’
‘Mom, I need to talk to you.’
Click
. ‘That’s my call waiting. Hold on a sec. It might be
him
.’
When she returned to the line, announcing, ‘Well, I think Vito and I may have reached an understanding . . .’ I said, ‘Does seeing people who may not exist make you insane?’
‘What?’
‘I saw a man with . . . mirrored eyes.’
‘You mean mirrored sunglasses.’
‘No. I mean mirrored eyes. They refracted sunlight, just like a mirror.’
‘Okay . . .’
‘And he and a woman, they were . . . putting something in the Hudson River.’
‘Samantha, what were you doing at the Hudson River?’
‘I was at a construction site, trying to relax.’
There was a long pause - so long that I’d thought our connection might have died. ‘Hello?’
‘You’re on drugs.’
‘I am not on drugs.’
‘Don’t tell me that. I am an expert in human behavior and I know what “trying to relax” means, and let me tell you I am deeply disappointed in you.’
‘Mother . . .’
‘What kind of drugs are you on? Special K? Ice? Methamphetamines?’
During the next half-hour, I somehow managed to convince Sydney not to fly out to New York and stage an intervention. By the time we hung up, my voice was hoarse and my head was pounding. But for the first time that weekend, I wasn’t afraid of what was going
on inside it
.
I left my apartment and walked six blocks in the freezing cold to the nearest place to get a drink - a nautical-themed gay bar called Great White. There, I’d downed three Scotch/rocks and watched abnormally gorgeous men interacting with each other amidst the billowing fishing nets, dotted with sequined shells and starfish, that had been suspended like fake ghosts from the high ceilings. No one seemed to notice me, which was nice. No one seemed to have mirror eyes, which was nicer.
s aont sizHalf a Scotch more, and I gave the abnormally gorgeous bartender a huge tip, walked home in the dark and passed out on top of my pull-out couch with my coat still on.
This morning, I’d awakened with throbbing eyes, tapioca-colored skin and a tongue that felt like it was wearing a sock.
I knew it could only get worse. A nursery school classroom is no place to be when you have a hangover. And dependably, the bright red table, taxicab-yellow chairs, electric-blue bookshelves and whitest of white walls made me squint as soon as I opened the door and flicked on the fluorescent lights.
I’d collapsed into my desk chair, leaned back and closed my eyes gingerly, craving a cold compress and praying that Daniel wouldn’t show up any earlier than he normally did.
That’s when Veronica had barged in, screaming, ‘Do you have any extra chalk?’
‘Take all the chalk you want, Veronica,’ I said now, as she continued to eye me enviously.
How could anyone be jealous of a hangover?
‘Just leave me one piece. And some aspirin if you have any, please.’
‘I don’t have any aspirin!’ she said. ‘Try water. You should be drinking eight glasses a day, anyway, for your skin. My mother’s been doing that for years, and she looks a
lot
better than you do.’ She smiled. Her teeth matched my walls.
Veronica had always resented me; I couldn’t figure out why. There wasn’t anything about my life that was remotely resentable - except, possibly, for my hours. I taught an eight a.m. to noon class for kids whose parents could pick them up in the middle of the day, while she went straight through to five o’clock. Her class was a good deal bigger than mine was, but she had two assistants to help her out, plus she made twice as much as I did and Terry seemed to trust her more.
So recently, I’d begun to suspect a different reason for the resentment. Observing her over the past two years, I’d noticed certain things about Veronica - how she blushed when any man addressed her directly; how she’d never once mentioned a boyfriend, or an ex-boyfriend, or even a date, but talked about the lives of her parents (with whom she lived) with an attention to detail that bordered on obsessive; how (according to one of her assistants) she’d nearly swallowed her own tongue when a girl in her class asked her what a penis was. At thirty-five, Veronica Bliss was still a virgin. I was pretty sure she resented most of us who weren’t, but, since my classroom was right next to hers, I was the most convenient target.
‘Wasn’t that actor you used to date named Nate Gundersen?’ she asked.
My stomach flopped over like an empty hot water bottle. ‘You have an excellent memory.’
‘Well, my memory was jogged a little bit this morning.’ Veronica’s smile grew to chilling proportions as she opened the
New York Post
she’d been clutching and placed it on the desk in front of me. ‘No wonder you were so upset when he dumped you. He’s
dreamy
.’
Just in case I didn’t notice the forty-eight-point type or the breathtakingly shirtless photo of Nate, Veronica had outlined the article - which graced the front page of the entertainment section - in red Magic Marker. ‘Nate Gundersen,’ the headline read. ‘TV’s Newest, Hottest Heartthrob.’
Veronica said, ‘You can keep the paper if you like.’
I grabbed the bathroom key out of my desk and ran down the hall. Fortunately, I made it into the girls’ room before I threw up.
The hangover wasn’t Yale’s fault. Neither was the strange image that continued to haunt my brain; nor the sadistic virgin with whom I worked; nor the news - courtesy of the sadistic virgin and her overzealous Magic Marker - that Nate hadn’t become suicidal or penniless or even fat since I’d left him, but quite the opposite. He’d become a soap star -
Live and Let Live
’s Lucas, a.k.a. TV’s Newest, Hottest Heartthrob in forty-eight-point type.
The one thing I could pin on Yale, however, was the agonizing string of syllables I was now forced to wrap my acid-tasting tongue around. Why did the cat have to be named Jennyanydots? Why did she have to tie parts of the draperies into sailor knots?
I’ll tell you what I’d like to tie into sailor knots
. . .
Five months earlier, Yale - whose then-boyfriend was understudying the part of Rum Tum Tugger - had snagged free matinee tickets for me and my class to one of the last performances of
Cats
. I was never much of a musical theater fan to begin with, and I found the concept of grown men and women frisking around a stage in whiskers and spandex disturbing. But I’d figured the kids would love the show, and my instincts had proven correct. During recess, several of them regularly re-enacted scenes, leaping around the jungle gym like crazed, miniature theater majors. Ever since I’d told them that
Cats
was based on a book, they requested
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
at least three times a week for story hour. (The book was also courtesy of Yale, who’d been only too happy to donate it to my class after Rum Tum gave him the heave-ho.)
Terry thought it was marvelous that the kids enjoyed T.S. Eliot. So did I, most of the time. But on this particular day, with my hollow stomach sucking up against my spine and my mind tied into tighter sailor knots than any Gumbie Cat could ever hope to create, ‘The Wasteland’ would’ve been far more appropriate reading material.
‘Ms. Leiffer, read slower!’ shouted Kendrick, who was not heckling but making a legitimate request. I was rushing through the poem, in the hopes of speeding up story hour and the day and my life. If I had to say
Gumbie Cat
one more time I thought I might scream. And, as Daniel knew all too well, that wasn’t a sound any child should hear.
‘Louder please!’ said Nancy.
‘I want a cat,’ said Daniel.
‘I am a cat,’ said Serena, licking her palm. ‘See?’
‘No, you’re not,’ Nancy protested.
‘Am so. A Gumbie Cat.’
‘Gumbie Cats smell.’
‘Okay, listen up! You guys settle down or else I close the book.’
‘Sorry, Ms. Leiffer,’ Serena said.
‘That’s . . . all right. I’m just a little tired today, kids.’
I am a hungover, dried-up, gay-bar-frequenting preschool teacher. And Nate is a heartthrob
.
I cleared my throat, forced a smile and continued to read. A seemingly endless ode to a cat, sitting.
Since I’d more or less memorized this poem, I kept reciting it - as slowly as I could - as my eyes meandered from the book to my watch and back again.
On the facing page, over the title of ‘Growltiger’s Last Stand,’ was a hand-written word. It hadn’t been there on Valentine’s Day. I knew this because I’d read ‘Growltiger’s Last Stand’ on Valentine’s Day after the cops had left and, faint as the word was, I would have noticed it.
As I paused between stanzas, I squinted to make out the four ghostly letters - letters written by an adult, with a pencil that had barely touched the page.
I must’ve stretched out the pause a little too long because Daniel said, ‘What’s the matter?’ In an attempt to appear calm, I opened my mouth to say, ‘Nothing,’ but my breath caught in my throat and no sound came out.
The word on the page was
hide
.
‘Peekaboo, teach!’
Yale’s voice, achingly cheerful. The kids had finally left for the day and I’d been cleaning the room up slowly, avoiding the
Book of Practical Cats
, which sat, sprawled open, at the center of my desk. I looked up and saw Yale standing in the classroom with a poorly concealed grin and cheeks that were flushed for reasons other than the cold weather. ‘I’m in love and I’m taking you out to lunch!’
Oh, Christ almighty
. ‘I still have some stuff to do around here . . .’