The Abstinence Teacher (35 page)

“Thank you for offering,” Ruth said. “I’m glad our kids have become such good friends.”

“I am, too.” Esther’s teardrop face crinkled with delight as she glanced at her daughter, a solidly built girl just an inch or two shorter than she was, with a bigger bust. Grace smiled back, her mouth busy
with orthodontia. “We just moved here from Chicago a few months ago, and it takes a while to get acclimated.”

“Chicago,” Ruth repeated, feeling a bit foolish. Somehow she’d gotten the impression that the Parks were newly arrived from Korea. “I didn’t know you were from Chicago.”

“The Windy City,” Mr. Park said, by way of confirmation. He was a boyish-looking man with a high shiny forehead, dressed in a dark suit and an open-collared white shirt. “Ever been there?”

“Just once,” Ruth said. “Quite a while ago. I had a nice time.”

“We didn’t live in the city proper,” Esther explained. “We had a place in Evanston. That’s where Henry grew up.”

“But we like it here in Stonewood Heights,” he assured her. “It’s got a real small-town feel to it. Almost Midwestern.”

“It’s got its good points,” Ruth allowed.

“Grace says you’re a teacher.”

“That’s right,” Ruth said. “In the high school. I’m not sure it’s the brightest idea to teach in the town where you live, but that’s how it worked out.”

“What subject?”

Ruth felt her daughters watching her, silently pleading.

“Health,” she said, to their obvious relief.

Henry smiled politely but didn’t follow up.

“It must be hard,” Esther observed. “Working full-time and caring for your children.” She didn’t say
without a husband
, but Ruth heard the words nonetheless.

“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s not so bad now that they’re older. Besides, I always wanted to work. I’m not sure what I’d do with myself at home all day.”

“You keep busy,” Esther told her. “I used to be a biomedical researcher before Grace was born. I did a lot of work on autoimmune disorders. But once I quit I never really looked back. Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of tennis.”

Henry took an expensive-looking digital camera out of his pocket and asked Eliza and Maggie if they’d mind posing for some pictures with Grace.

“This is a momentous occasion,” he said. “I’d like to record it for posterity.”

In the first couple of photos, the three girls stood smiling in front of the couch, arms around each others’ shoulders. Grace was dressed just like Eliza and Maggie—dark skirt and tights, light-colored blouse—and seeing them all in a row like that, Ruth suddenly realized that they’d coordinated their wardrobes over the phone last night, the way she and her high-school friends used to agree to wear their tightest designer jeans on Fridays.

“Let’s get a couple of Maggie kneeling in front,” Henry suggested. “Big girls, you each put a hand on her shoulder.”

When they were finished with that series, Henry asked the girls if they’d mind heading out to the front lawn for a few more shots, considering that it was such a lovely fall day. The girls were more than happy to oblige, and Henry herded them out the front door, leaving Esther and Ruth alone in the living room. It all happened so smoothly that it took Ruth a couple of seconds to realize that she’d been set up.

“Your daughters are lovely people,” Esther observed, with an incongruous note of sadness in her voice.

“Thank you,” Ruth replied. “Grace seems sweet.”

Esther laid a nearly weightless hand on Ruth’s shoulder.

“Why don’t you come with us?” she said. “It’s good to keep the family together.”

“No thanks.” Ruth smiled over her irritation. “I think I’ll just stay here and read the paper.”

“It’s a very low-key service,” Esther informed her. “And very non-judgmental. Nobody cares if you’re single or divorced. And the sermons are really good. Thought-provoking, but not too heavy. The Reverend’s got a real sense of humor.”

“It’s nice of you to offer,” Ruth said, “but I’m not the least bit interested.”

Esther’s face betrayed a fleeting hint of distaste.

“Are you sure? Won’t it be lonely for you, all by yourself on Sunday morning?”

“I’ll be fine,” Ruth assured her. “But thanks for asking.”

THE THREE
giggling girls piled into the backseat of the Parks’ Volvo wagon. Watching them drive away, Ruth couldn’t help thinking, just for a second, that maybe she should’ve accepted Esther’s invitation, because at least then she would’ve been with her kids, and not just standing here stupidly on her front porch,
all by herself on Sunday morning
, waving good-bye to a carload of people who weren’t even looking at her, wondering what the hell she was supposed to do until they came back.

She went inside and lay down on the couch, knowing even as she did so that it was a bad idea, that this was one of those days when the couch should be avoided at all costs. The newspaper was sitting on the coffee table, a fat slab of distraction wrapped inside a blue plastic bag, but she couldn’t seem to make herself sit up and get it.

Come on
, she thought.
You can’t just lie here
.

She knew what she was supposed to do. She’d checked her e-mail last night, and had found messages from Arlene Zabel and Matt Friedman, informing her of what had happened at the game and offering to add their names to her letter of complaint to the Soccer Association. Both of them said they felt betrayed by Coach Tim, who had verbally assured them that there would be no more prayers on the playing field.

“I gave him the benefit of the doubt,” Matt wrote, “and he took full advantage.”

“I don’t care what my husband thinks,” Arlene declared. “This has gone far enough. It’s time to make a stand.”

On some level, Ruth understood this development as good news.
She had allies now and could no longer be written off as an isolated crank. She could just print out another copy of the letter, send it off to Matt and Arlene, and then to Bill Derzarian, and wait for the war to start. But for some reason, all the fire had gone out of her. She no longer felt any anger toward Tim Mason, only a kind of wounded bewilderment.

All she really wanted was a chance to talk to him, to have him explain why he’d taken the trouble to visit her twice last week and make her like him so much—and why, for that matter, he’d looked at her so hungrily on Friday night—if all he was going to do was break his word and leave them both right back where they’d started.

As she pondered this it occurred to her that it was almost like there were Two Tims: Silky-Hair Tim and Greasy-Hair Tim. Silky-Hair Tim was charming and honest, a decent guy with a complicated history and fuck-up tendencies, who was trying his best to do right by everyone. Greasy-Hair Tim was a liar and a manipulator, a smooth talker who couldn’t be trusted and was only out for himself. This theory didn’t make sense on a literal level—his hair had been greased back on Wednesday night, when he’d behaved like his silky-haired alter ego—but it was such a good metaphor for his duplicitous behavior that she decided to call Randall and tell him about it.

She owed him a call anyway. Randall had left a message on Friday night, checking to see how her date had gone, and she still hadn’t gotten back to him. It wasn’t embarrassment that was holding her back—he was the kind of friend with whom she’d happily share an embarrassing anecdote—so much as it was uncertainty about how to tell the story. To make him understand why she’d walked out on Paul, she’d have to describe her recent interactions with Tim, and she hadn’t known how to do that in a way that would make sense to herself, let alone to Randall. But now that she’d developed the theory of the Two Tims, she thought she might be able to explain it in a way that was amusing as well as true, or at least true enough to get away with.

She was a little nervous about calling so early on Sunday morning, but Randall and Gregory were already out. Either that or they were still in bed—drinking coffee, maybe, or making love—and happily ignoring the ringing phone.
Good for them
, Ruth thought. Nothing brings a couple closer than ignoring a summons from the outside world.

“Hi, guys,” she told the machine. “It’s me, just checking in after my not-so-big date. Call me when you get a chance.”

Ruth thought it would probably be a good idea to put on some coffee, but instead she lay back down on the couch and closed her eyes. She wasn’t planning on napping, or even “resting her eyes,” as her father used to put it, but she must have drifted off because the next thing she knew the doorbell was ringing, and she was sitting up, blinking in confusion, and mumbling things like, “Whuh? All right. Okay. I’m coming.”

The clock on her VCR said it was only 9:37, way too early for it to be the girls, unless one of them had gotten cold feet and asked to be taken home. She trudged over to the door with a sticky mouth and that sense of muddleheaded urgency that comes with not being fully awake, and pulled it open. She felt oddly unsurprised to see Greasy-Hair Tim standing on her welcome mat, muttering about how he needed to have a word with her, and very surprised indeed by just how good it felt to slap him across the face.

“WHOA!” TIM
raised both hands in front of his face in a cringing attitude of self-defense. “Take it easy!”

In reality, he didn’t mind the slap, which he thought he probably deserved. It didn’t hurt too bad—all that remained after the initial shock was a tingly sensation where her hand had been—and it seemed to take some of the edge off her anger.

“I’m sorry,” Ruth said, touching her own cheek as if in sympathy. “I shouldn’t have done that. But you lied to me.”

He nodded contritely, though he couldn’t help feeling like the word “lie” was stronger than the circumstances warranted.

“I’m sorry about the misunderstanding,” he told her.

“Misunderstanding?”
She laughed bitterly. “That’s a good one. I guess I misunderstood you to be an honest person.”

Tim found himself gazing contemplatively at his fingernails. He’d done this all his life, when he was forced to account for something stupid or hurtful or selfish that he’d done.

“I meant to give you a heads-up,” he said. “That’s why I came here the other night.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“You didn’t give me a chance.”

“I’m not a mind reader, Tim. How could I give you a chance if I didn’t know you needed one?”

“I get your point,” he said. “I could’ve handled this a lot better.”

“Yeah. You could’ve told the truth.”

He made himself meet her eyes. Ever since he could remember, women had been looking at him with this same baffled, disappointed expression.

“Look, Ruth, I don’t blame you for being pissed, and if you want me to go, I’ll go. But if you want to talk, I’ll be happy to tell you my side of the story. I doubt it’ll make you feel any better, but at least you’ll know where I’m coming from.”

“Believe me,” she said. “I know exactly where you’re coming from.”

“All right, fine. I won’t waste your time.”

“No,” she said, opening the door wider and stepping to one side. “It’s okay. I’ve got nothing else to do.”

HE FOLLOWED
her into the kitchen, steeling himself to receive his second scolding of the still-young day. At least this time he knew what was coming. The first one had been a sneak attack, sprung on him when he dropped Abby off at her mother’s.

“Morning,” Mitchell had said, greeting them in Allison’s place at the front door. He tousled Abby’s hair. “Welcome home, sport.”

She kissed his cheek and slipped into the house, which seemed quieter than usual.

“Your wife around?” Tim inquired.

Mitchell winced, as if this were a sore subject.

“She took Logan to the playground. It’s such a nice morning.”

“Oh.” Tim wasn’t quite sure what to make of this departure from protocol. Ever since Abby had started doing overnight visits, Allison had been present for the Sunday-morning handoff. “Think she’ll be back soon?”

“Why don’t we go downstairs,” Mitchell said. “We need to talk.”

“Why? Something wrong?”

“Come on, Tim. This is serious. You got yourself way out on a limb here.”

Tim had never been down to the basement before, and it was predictably impressive, a vast subterranean kingdom containing a cavernous laundry room, a carpeted play space/entertainment center for the kids with a wall-mounted wide-screen TV, and a gym equipped with a StairMaster, treadmill, stationary bike, weight bench, and sauna.

“This is something,” said Tim. “You work out down here?”

“I try,” Mitchell replied. “Allison uses it a lot more than me.”

Mitchell’s home office was smaller and funkier than Tim would have expected, with an old, clunky-looking PC hulking on a beige metal desk suitable for crawling under during a nuclear war. He was surprised to see an electric guitar propped on a stand near the three-drawer file cabinet, then taken aback to discover, upon closer inspection, that it was a vintage Telecaster.

“Jeez,” he said, squatting to examine the headstock. “This isn’t a reissue.”

“No way.” Mitchell looked pleased. “It’s the real thing—1952, mint condition, all original hardware. I got it on eBay.”

“I didn’t even know you played.”

“Just a few chords. Allison got me some lessons for my birthday, but I haven’t been able to take ‘em. Work’s been pretty hectic lately, not that I’m complaining.”

“Maybe when you retire.”

“That’s what I’m figuring.” Mitchell grinned sheepishly and strummed an air guitar. “I’ll be rocking the assisted-living facility.”

Tim wouldn’t have minded giving the Tele a test-drive—he’d never touched a ’52 before—but he could tell by the sudden improvement in Mitchell’s posture that playtime was over.

“So, uh, why don’t you have a seat?”

Adopting an expression of professional sternness that must have served him well in the courtroom—if he ever set foot in a courtroom—Mitchell sat down in the Aeron desk chair and waited for Tim to get himself settled on the couch, a big, low-slung piece of furniture upholstered in outrageously soft black leather, the kind of venue on which it was all too easy to imagine your ex-wife getting fucked on a sunny weekend afternoon.