Ms. Hempel Chronicles (7 page)

Ms. Hempel wondered if her story of that morning could be true, or if it were, factually speaking, impossible. The detail about chloroform bothered her; it struck her as transparently dramatic, like a woman who dashes about with a long, fragile scarf fluttering behind her. It was an anachronism; something from the days of white slavery, and opium smuggling, and jewel heists. Where had she learned about chloroform, anyway? Probably Tintin.

“If you wanted to kidnap someone, what would you use?” she asked Amit. They were lying in bed, with the lights off! “To knock them unconscious. So that you could drag them into the back of your van."

"Chloroform, I guess.”

"Really?” She brightened. It made her happy that the per-on she was marrying would commit crimes in the same way as she would. “There isn’t anything more modern you would se? Aren’t there all sorts of new chemicals?"

“No, I think chloroform would do the trick,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“Are you planning on kidnapping anyone?” he asked.

"Maybe.”

Then, "Of course not!” she said, and laughed, and slapped him on the arm. They settled into each other.

She had gone to the same high school as Amit, even graduated the same year, but they had barely spoken then. She remembered him as black-haired and elfin and somewhat aloof: in an innocent, not a superior, way. His one distinguishing trait had been his devotion to cross-country running. Sometimes her carpool passed him on the road, and she would lean her forehead against the cool glass, wondering how many miles he had already covered and feeling glad that she was splayed across the backseat of a station wagon. She never once saw him panting; it seemed as if he could bound along interminably. Both of her best friends had seen his penis. As part of a short-lived weight-loss regimen, they had joined the crosscountry team, and as they straddled the lawn, stretching their muscles, they glimpsed the head of his penis, appearing from beneath the edge of his delicate, shimmering shorts.

When she saw him again, years later, this detail reared up before her as soon as she sat down beside him. It was an alumni event, an idea that embarrassed her, but her school had reserved seats at a French-Canadian circus that she badly wanted to see. Amit was there, he said, for exactly the same reason. They discovered many other things in common: warm

feelings for Mrs. Kravatz, the biology teacher; a passion for the novels of Thomas Hardy; regret that they hadn't joined a circus themselves. They admitted to each other that even though, as students, they had regarded their high school as detestable and oppressive, they now sometimes caught themselves yearning for it.

The circus, too, filled her with longing. As soon as the lights fell, and the audience hushed, and the circus master appeared barking out his welcome, and the acrobats came tumbling into the ring, and the quaint little orchestra struck up its tinkling song, and the lovely women pranced about with thin velvet ribbons tied around their necks, as soon as all this began, she felt herself missing the circus even as it unfolded before her. Folded and unfolded—this circus was famous for its contortionists. But what they did seemed like the most normal thing in the world; their bodies, glittering in the blue light, appeared enormously relieved, as if they had been permitted, finally, to relax into their most natural states. Clearly she saw how the feet longed to roost behind the ears, how the spine was as stretchy as chewing gum. It made her feel sorry for her own creaking vessel, shuffling along dimly, made to stand upright on two feet. No, not vessel—because if this circus, so full of secrets, revealed anything, it was that the body does not contain, but is contained; rather than comb through the jungles of Asia and Africa and bring back, in shackles, the wildlife found there, this circus had coaxed out of hiding a strange beast, the body.

“Oh, those Canadians!” she murmured, and Amit nodded ardently, as if he understood precisely what she wasn’t able to say.

It was the circus, she felt sure, that had made possible all that followed. Where else but in the company of acrobats could she imagine her own body fitting with his? Watching

him from the station wagon, his black hair, his small frame skimming along the road, she could not have imagined it. Her imagination would have balked, recoiled: why, she wasn’t sure. But it was subdued now, compliant; she sat beside him at the circus and the unimaginable became suddenly, forcefully possible. Everything else seemed easy: the long correspondence, the breaking off with his girlfriend, the bringing together of their two libraries.

And his penis she forgot all about, even after she had herself encountered it. Her two best friends had to remind her of the story.

Her best friends, Greta and Kate, had their hearts set on a bridal shower. It was held at a Victorian tearoom, with mismatched china and plates of watercress sandwiches. Only the three of them were invited.

In a wobbly rattan chair, her legs firmly planted, sat Kate. “Don’t sit there,” she said to Greta. “Floral chintz is for Beatrice. The Angel in the House.”

Greta tucked herself into a wing chair. With a great show of ceremony, she unclipped her beeper and stuffed it deep inside her purse. “No interruptions!” she declared. The symmetry was pleasing: a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, the professions you aspire to when you’re a child, before you learn about all the other possibilities.

“Ooooh, look at you!” Greta said to Beatrice, who had removed her sweater.

Beatrice looked down at her breasts. “Do you think it’s too much?”

“No!” they said at once.

"You wore that to school?” Greta asked, and Beatrice nodded.

“Those poor boys," said Kate, reaching for the sugar cubes

“Pup tent!" Greta cried, and though Beatrice tried to protest, tried to explain that her students didn’t look at her that way, that they were inflamed by other teachers like Ms Burnes, who taught science, and Madame Planchon, who wore seamed stockings, her two best friends were already slapping hands above the teapot.

“Your breasts are lovelyGreta leaned over and squeezed Beatrice’s leg. “You should show them off.”

“Absolutely,” Kate said.

This type of flattery—excessive, heartfelt, slightly barbed—was their favorite activity. They served as each other's most passionate advocates: no one, in Beatrice’s mind, was as intelligent and beautiful and kind and brave and talented as Kate and Greta. And Kate and Greta, in turn, would insist the same of Beatrice. It was puzzling, then, that together they had managed to collect such a number of men who seemed less alert to these qualities. Amit was a departure in this regard. And Beatrice wondered if she might be a disappointment to her friends, not because she was getting married, but because she had stopped falling in love with men who were childlike, or ill-tempered, or flat-footed, or unkind. Or maybe simply indifferent.

Which was not at all what they had planned when they were in high school. These plans had imagined graceful men with slim hips and luminous skin. At least that was what Greta described. The fact that he might be gay to begin with would only make his conversion all the more remarkable. Kate wanted a looming, overpowering man, one who could make her feel petite (for once) and envelop her entirely. And then? A nighttime wedding, with Japanese lanterns. Quails and asparagus. A honeymoon in Prague. Nearly every lunch period was spent in this fashion. Pushing their trays to one ide, they huddled over the table and spangled their futures with intrigues and travels and children and accolades. For the sake of realism, they threw in obstacles: a callous lover for Kate (she eventually comes to her senses); Beatrice’s close call with pharmaceuticals (from which she emerges chastened, but stronger). Then they liked to skip far ahead and picture themselves on a porch, widowed, delighting in each other’s company once again.

Now, having arrived at the future, they liked nothing better than to recall their days around the lunch table. They exclaimed over their miscalculations. Holding up their tearoom selves and measuring them against their lunchroom selves, they tried to account for the discrepancies. How did wild-eyed Beatrice become a teacher? How did she succeed in getting engaged before anyone else? The trajectory was not at all what they had predicted.

“Who would have thought,” Greta asked, loosening a strawberry from its stem, “that you would marry Amit Hawkins?”

“Can you imagine,” Kate said, “sitting there in practice and knowing, That penis, one day, is going to penetrate our beloved Bea.”

“I bet he never would have dreamt it,” Greta said.

“Did he?” Kate asked, excited. “Did he notice you then?” Beatrice had asked him that very question, even though she felt it vain and somewhat despicable to do so.

"Oh no, not in that way. He was scared of me.”

“He was?” Kate and Greta laughed.

"Yes!” Beatrice said. “I can see why.”

Her infected nose piercing. Her scarlet bra straps. Her eagerness to take off her clothes: for the spring play, for the

advanced photography class, for any tedious game of Truth or Dare. Her fits of weeping. Her steel-toed boots. Her term papers on “Edie Sedgwick: Little Girl Lost and Get Your Motors Running: The Rise and Fall of the Hells Angels.” A quote on her yearbook page from the Marquis de Sade.

“But who could be scared of Ms. Hempel?" Kate asked, cheerfully.

"Speaking of which—we have a present for you!” Greta said and dove beneath the tea table.

Kate cleared a space in front in Beatrice: "Whenever you wear it, you must think of us."

Greta resurfaced, beaming, and brandishing a box.

“Open it!”

Carefully Beatrice tugged at the bow, lifted the lid, burrowed through the crackling tissue paper.

"What is it?” she asked.

"Keep going,” Kate said. “It's in there somewhere."

She felt something slippery and grabbed it. -"What can it be?” she asked, as she imagined, very clearly, a silk nightgown. She pulled her present from its box.

Greta and Kate shrieked. “Do you love them?” ,

Beatrice nodded.

“Crotchless panties!" they cried, and clapped their hands, as if applauding all the stunts she would perform while wearing them.

They weren't at all silky. Beatrice brushed her cheek against them: 100 percent polyester. And smelling of something sweetly, sickly rubbery.

The saucers rattled. Greta leaned forward, dunking her lovely beads into her cup. "Do you like them? Really?”

Beatrice smiled bravely. “They’re perfect,” she said, though they absolutely weren’t. They were woefully inadequate. Not
_u
p to the task.

“I hope they won’t shock Amit,” Greta said, as Beatrice g
_en
tly returned them to their box. She looked up from the present at her two best friends, her two talented, brilliant, unintuitive friends. They had no idea.

If someone had asked, Beatrice might have described her notion of sex thus: warm bodies in the dark, sighing and rustling, then arcing up in perfect tandem, like synchronized swimmers. Amit’s concept involved something much more strenuous and well lit and out of the ordinary. His requests often alarmed her. She knew the crotchless panties would strike him as silly, or simply beside the point. This thought made her feel sad, both sad and spooked.

Even worse, she felt duplicitous, as though she had worked on him an unforgivable deception. He now carried about with him a baffled, slightly disappointed air. But she couldn’t help it: how her body clenched, how the alarm was raised, how her every muscle responded with a panicked shout of Sodomy! He had mistaken her for something else entirely, and who could blame him? The scarlet bra straps, the Marquis de Sade. The fondness for acrobats.

She wondered at what point his appetite had turned. As far as she understood, an interest in anal sex was not something one was born with. She imagined an early, unsuccessful coupling; flickering filmstrips; a summer spent in Europe. All it took were some crooked signposts, some conspiracy of events and influences. Because he couldn’t have always wanted this. Why hadn’t she stopped the car? Why hadn’t she sprung out of the station wagon and loved him then? When a kiss was a surprise, the introduction of tongue an astonishment. When a small, black-haired boy would have swooned at the though of her underwear. Would have died, nearly, at the touch of h
_e
hands, her chewing gum breath, her permission to enter ft would have been enough; it would have been the whole world then.

So much more was asked of her now. Stamina, flexibility, imagination (or, perhaps, a quieting of her imagination). A willingness to endure, and to enjoy, what she feared would be a rupturing pain. It all made her feel exhausted and very fg
_r
away from him, as if he were standing atop a flight of stairs and she were stranded at the bottom, too breathless to climb up. Even though he waited there, full of love, full of patience, full of expectancy, she wondered how long it would be before he stretched out his hamstrings, took a deep breath, and bounded off

But maybe she was remembering it all wrong; maybe there was never a time when a kiss could stun and astonish. Maybe, if she aligned the years correctly, she would discover that while Amit was devoting himself to cross-country running, Greta was contorted (the true contortionist) over the stick shift in her mother’s car, offering an illustration of how to manage a penis inside one’s mouth, and Beatrice was sitting in the backseat, watching very closely. Greta, who now leaned across the tea table and grasped Beatrice’s hand and said, suddenly, “We love you so much, Bea.”

To Beatrice’s surprise, Amit liked the crotchless panties. He wore them on his head and danced around the apartment. All of me, he sang. Why not take all of me.

He sang and danced with his eyes closed. He snatched her up, and held her close, and, with a snap of his wrist, unfurled her. She dangled out in space, teetering on her tiptoes, ready to crash into the snake tank—but then he spooled her back in again- Together they danced wildly. They dipped and spun and almost knocked over a lamp. He tried to lift her off the floor, but he wasn’t quite tall enough, so she gave a little push and folded up her legs, and it was nearly the same as being swept off her feet. Can't you see, he sang. I’m no good without you.