The Way Back to Happiness (15 page)

“No,” she told Diana.

“What about Mama?”

“She’s at work. Anyway, there’s nothing she could do.”

Diana sank onto the bed in exasperation. “Well, I can’t let you die, can I? Mama would
love
that.”

“I’m not going to die.” She was about 60 percent certain.

“Really? Because if it were me, and I looked in the mirror and saw my face all puffy like that, and I knew my boyfriend was showing up tonight, I’d probably want to die.”

Bev groaned. “Is it really bad?”

Diana leaned in for a closer inspection. “It looks like you’ve got a goiter.”

Bev lifted a hand to her neck, which felt tender. She didn’t understand. She’d never heard pregnant women complain of puffy necks. What was going on there?

Unless . . . oh God. Three empty chairs in a classroom flashed through her mind. All out sick.

But it couldn’t be.

But what if it was?

“I think you’d better call Dr. Gary.”

An hour and a half later, the doctor was there, confirming her fears. The mumps. Several children in her classroom had come down with it, but she’d never dreamed she could be at risk. The avalanche of problems this would bring down on her crowded her mind.

And then, embarrassing though it was, she confessed to Dr. Gary that she thought she was pregnant.

He responded with an avuncular chuckle. “You’ve got the mumps. Pregnancy causes swelling in other places.”

A comedian. “But I’ve missed my period. And I . . .” She lowered her voice. Really, his lack of shock was stupefying. Didn’t he realize how much this confession was costing her? “. . . I had relations.”

“Do you have a young man?”

What did he think? That she’d done this to herself?

“My fiancé.” Honesty forced her to add, “Practically. He’s visiting here. He arrives tonight.”

“Has he had the mumps?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Don’t they vaccinate them in the army?”

“Could be. The vaccination’s relatively recent, and not one hundred percent effective. He’d be well advised to stay away from you anyway. No close contact. No”—that chuckle again—“relations.” He pulled out a needle attached to a tube. “I’ll draw some blood for a rabbit test.”

While he poked her, she took deep breaths to calm herself.

“Young man have prospects?” he asked, finishing.

“He’s about to begin officer’s training.”

“Ah—a wartime romance! Well, I’ve seen a lot of those in my day.”

“How do they usually turn out?”

“Fine—except for the ones that don’t.” He rooted around in his bag, placing the vial there. Then he pulled out a lollipop and handed it to her. “You always liked green, didn’t you?”

Soon after Dr. Gary left, her mother came home from the bank and rushed into Bev’s room still in the gabardine dress, short jacket, and matching shoes that was her workaday uniform. “I ran into Dr. Gary in the driveway,” she said, clearly distressed. “I’ve never heard of an adult getting mumps. How did you manage it?”

“I didn’t mean to.” Had he told her about the other thing? Obviously not, or her mother would have shut the door to give her a real talking to.

“And Dr. Gary said he’d be calling back early next week about tests.” Gladys’s brow furrowed. “Why would he be testing if he’d already diagnosed you as having the mumps? Does he think it could be something more serious?”

Diana appeared in the doorway and cleared her throat as if she was trying to rescue Bev from an awkward moment. How much had she heard when the doctor was here? “You want me to go to the store and get some groceries?” she asked. Diana loved to go on grocery runs. Gladys always let her keep the change.

“Soup and juices, the doctor said.” Gladys dug through her handbag and handed over a five.

“What about food for the honored guest?”

Their mother looked confused for a moment. “Is he still coming?”

“I should call and tell him not to,” Bev said.

“You sure you want to do that?” Diana asked. “Given the circumstances ?”

Bev eyed her sharply. She must have overheard her talking to Dr. Gary. And if she had, she knew Bev’s secret.

Gladys looked from one to the other. “What circumstances?”

Diana smiled. “The boy’s about to go off to training camp, then to war.”

Gladys frowned. “Oh, yes. I forgot.”

“I’ll try to call him,” Bev said, “but he might already be on his way.” She frowned. What a mess. “But he probably won’t want to stay anyway.”

“That’s right.” Her mother looked relieved. “Of course he won’t want to stay. Why would he?”

But she was wrong. Tom
had
stayed, and in retrospect, the reason was obvious.

E
very day on her way to lunch, when she passed the auditorium, Alabama’s gaze was drawn to the sign-up for the talent show posted on the school bulletin board. Stuart’s name was easiest to read, because it was first, written in big block letters, and he’d decorated his name with shooting stars inked in with a yellow highlighter. He was super-excited about the talent show, especially since he’d failed to get a part in the fall school play. For a while, his was the only name on the list, but as the weeks went by, other names appeared.

Seeing his name there always made her throat tighten. Stuart might have parade float self-confidence, but she was nervous for him. He changed his mind about what he was going to perform every week. One moment he was going to recite Shakespeare, the next he would be planning a lip-synching routine or a tap dance.

“You don’t know tap,” Alabama pointed out.

“You do,” he said. “You could teach me.”

And here she suffered even more, because she risked being unmasked as a liar. All her tap-dancing knowledge was what she’d learned in a kiddie class—waltz clog, grapevine, time step. Her mother had combined these into a routine set to “Rock Lobster”—basically a series of time steps connected by grapevines. This didn’t qualify her to choreograph the Ben Vereen-Gene Kelly-Baryshnikov-style Broadway extravaganza number that Stuart envisioned. He didn’t seem to understand pesky things like learning curves, and limits. And he hadn’t figured out that she was way out of her depth.

But before she’d been forced to confess, he had already switched to the idea of lip-synching a Madonna song. That made Alabama uncomfortable, too. Stuart seemed oblivious to what he was setting himself up for. She imagined herself squirming in her auditorium seat among the hooting throngs of students, watching her only friend in the school make himself into a walking target for teasing.

As she passed the list today, she stopped in her tracks. A new name had appeared: hers. It was number twelve on the list, and it also had stars trailing after it that had been inked in with a yellow highlighter.

Quickly, she thrust her hand into her purse and fumbled for a pen or pencil, or an eraser. Anything. She had to get her name off of there. In her panic, her books slid out of her arms and crashed to the ground.

Kevin Kerrigan happened to be walking by and knelt down to help her gather her stuff. For a moment, Alabama wondered if she was hallucinating. Kevin was the boy both she and Stuart worshipped from afar and speculated about. Never in a realistic way, of course. Kevin was an upperclassman god, the son of the mayor, and had a car. A date with Kevin Kerrigan for either of them seemed about as likely as a date with Harrison Ford.

He picked her stuff up and handed the pile back to her, grinning. His skin was bronzed from his afternoons of playing tennis, and the contrast between his deep tan and his Pepsodent-white teeth dazzled her.

“Gotta watch those books,” he said. “They’re always trying to make a run for it.”

“I’m such a klutz,” she moaned, flustered.

He laughed, and then the list caught his eye, and her name on it. “You signed up. Brave girl!”

Wait. “You know my name?” As soon as she said it, she realized how dorky she sounded.

“I make it a point to find out the names of all the new girls.” He leaned closer. “And you’re sort of hard to miss.”

As soon as that statement lifted her spirits, they crashed right back down. He meant that she stood out because of her hair.

She looked back at the list. How could she confess to self-confident sun god Kevin that she’d been about to chicken out?
Stuart and his stupid highlighter
.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

He started walking and she tripped after him. “I-I haven’t decided yet. Maybe . . . dance?”

“Of course—you’re the graceful type.”

He was kidding her, but she didn’t detect malice in it, so she didn’t mind.

They went into the cafeteria together. Kevin, of course, didn’t pick up a tray. He probably ate off campus, since he had a car, but she’d seen him hanging out here before with his friends. The moment they crossed the threshold, he veered toward the table of boys he usually sat with. Alabama snatched a carton of milk and two pieces of bread from the end of the line. She could almost feel her aunt’s disapproval of her poor nutritional choices beaming in waves at her from the faculty table.

She made a beeline to where Stuart was sitting.

He gawped at her. “Did you just walk in here with Kevin Kerrigan?”

She flopped down as if it were no big deal, even though she still felt a glow from being in the presence of so much upperclassman hotness.

“Did he say anything to you?”

Her lips tightened. “He said it was cool that I signed up for the talent show. Which is weird, because I didn’t even remember putting my name up there.”

She’d expected an apology or at least a shamefaced expression, but Stuart lit up at the reminder. “What do you think?”

“That it would have been nice to be consulted?”

“I’ve got the perfect idea for you. Here’s how I see it.” He put down his sandwich and suddenly was all showbiz and jazz hands. “A dance. We incorporate the beehive look of the B-52’s, Miss Havisham from
Great Expectations,
and your expert tap moves, and
voilà!
Magic!”

Her stomach knotted. “I wouldn’t call my moves expert.”

“People around here won’t be able to tell. Besides, what’s important is how you sell it. We’ll need the dress.”

“What dress?” she asked.

“The one from your aunt’s attic.”

“I can’t use that dress,” Alabama argued. “Aunt Bev seemed kind of funny about it, in case you didn’t notice.”

“She was just mad because she thought we’d been snooping. And the cigarette didn’t help matters. I told you smoking was hazardous to your health. Mine too.”

True to her word, Bev had called Stuart’s parents and told them about the incident. But while Alabama had sacrificed two weeks’ allowance, the only punishment Stuart had received was a stern talking-to. Which was fair, since he really hadn’t done anything. Still, he took his “punishment” harder than she did.

“I’m sorry, Stuart.”

He shrugged. “To tell the truth, I think my parents feel relieved when I get into normal teenager trouble.”

She frowned in confusion.

He leaned toward her. “You know—the same reason they’re happy when they see us together. They think it makes me more normal.”

She thought about the over-the-top reception she always received at the Looney house. The big smiles, the brownies. Anything she and Stuart wanted to do together was always okay, even if it meant Stuart’s missing a lovingly prepared meal, or required picking them up late from the movies. Never mind that they went to the movies to ogle the same heartthrobs.

They exchanged glances and laughed.

“So . . . what do you think of my idea for your number?” Stuart asked.

She looked over at the teachers’ table, where Bev was. “I still might have trouble using the dress.”
Or getting on a stage.

“Your aunt won’t care, I know she won’t. She promised to help me work on my costume in home ec.”

“During class?”

“We’re doing sewing basics, but I already picked up most of that stuff from my mom.”

“So you’re going to do Madonna?”

“No—I think I want to try something more serious, after all. Maybe
Hamlet.
Every actor needs to tackle it sometime.”

From his book bag, he produced an old oversized library book with black-and-white photos. One plate he pointed to showed Laurence Olivier wearing a white shirt with flowing sleeves, a vest, and tights. “What do you think?”

“Madonna might be safer.”

“No kidding.” He shook his head. “Getting those sleeves right will be murder.”

No, standing up in a vest-and-tights getup in front of an auditorium full of teenagers would be murder . . . but that fear didn’t register with Stuart. His crazy enthusiasm humbled her.

Even better, it distracted her. For the first time in months she was focused on something that wasn’t depressing. Something besides her mom. At the thought, guilt shivered through her.
How could not thinking about Mom be a good thing?
But despite her mixed emotions and her many doubts, she found herself seduced by Stuart’s mad visions of talent-show glory.

B
ev picked at her salad and cottage cheese and pretended not to watch Alabama and Stuart. They looked as though they were plotting something.

Her attention was jerked away suddenly by what felt like an insect dive-bombing her. She slapped the back of her neck and thought she felt a bug back there, but her hand came up empty. She returned it to her lap, uneasy. Her spastic movements drew a few curious glances from the other end of the faculty table, including a concerned look from Glen. He was seated at the center of a group that included Leah Kirby, Jackie Kirby, and Sonya Hendricks, the Spanish teacher. Bev was alone at her end. This was her day to be cafeteria monitor, so she would be stuck here for the full forty-five minutes, watching the others come and go until the last student had shoved the last filthy tray onto the discard counter.

Underneath the normal cafeteria noise—trays, plates, and cutlery clattering over the hum of conversation, punctuated by shouts or shrieks of laughter—Bev heard snickers behind her. She tensed, waiting. A second missile hit her hair. She looked down as a sunflower seed dropped to the floor. Evidence.

She shot to her feet and turned.

Marvin Nickerson slumped in his chair and regarded her with a practiced blank stare. He was seated with a crowd of older boys, including Kevin Kerrigan, who often were involved in shenanigans of some kind.

Bev held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

Marvin’s eyes widened. “What?”

“The straw, or pea shooter, or whatever it is you’re using.”

There were titters around the table, but Marvin had the sang-froid of a seasoned troublemaker. His innocent expression didn’t break. “I didn’t do anything.”

Bev rolled her eyes. “I know you did. You were tossing seeds.”

“What seeds?” Marvin said.

She pointed to the ground. “There.”

The table glanced down, and now the faculty table was taking notice of the argument, too. “That sunflower seed,” she said.

The boy shrugged. “That could have dropped off your salad.”

“Or anyone’s,” his friend Kevin said.

“Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t do anything,” Marvin insisted.

“All fibbing will gain you is a detention,” she said. “Do you want me to send you to the principal’s office?”

To her relief, Lon Kirby appeared at her side. “It might save time if we clear the matter up right now. What’s going on?”

“These boys have been tossing food,” Bev said. “Sunflower seeds.”

Lon shook his head, but there was no mistaking the smirk on his lips. “Is this true, gentlemen?”

“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Marvin said.

The others around the table agreed. “We didn’t do anything.”

“She found a seed on the floor and freaked out, blaming us.”

“It hit me,” Bev insisted.

“And you saw who did it?” Lon asked.

Bev was suddenly aware of the quiet around her. Conversation had died at the surrounding tables, and both faculty and students were focused on her.

“No,” she confessed. “But I know it came from this table.”

Lon chuckled. “Well, I’d say that’s insufficient evidence, Miss Putterman. I’m not sure that I’d be up for punishing six students over one sunflower seed anyway. Let’s just give the young men a caution, shall we?”

A caution?
“For hurling things at a teacher?”

Lon leaned into her. “It was a seed, Bev,” he whispered. “Get over it.”

He strolled out of the cafeteria, leaving Bev standing there like a fool. She turned and sank back into her chair.

The other teachers—even Glen—cut their glances away from her.
“We’re all on the same team,”
Lon had told them at the last faculty meeting. But evidently some of the team members were varsity, while others were bench warmers and water carriers. Some could be harassed by students without any repercussions.

Heat crept into her face. No one was on her side. And what was more, the other faculty members seemed influenced—cowed, even—by the fact that she was now a persona non grata in the eyes of Lon Kirby. Even after Lon was no longer there, no one commiserated with her. But of course he’d left his B team—Leah and Jackie, his second eyes and ears. Seeing the way Glen was smiling at the two women, sucking up, made Bev nauseated.

In high school, it was sometimes hard to tell who the real adolescents were.

She couldn’t imagine that in years past one of her colleagues wouldn’t have piped up on her behalf. Letting hooligan students bully teachers? Was this New York City?

Alabama and Stuart got up and left together, but before they disappeared, Alabama flashed a scornful look Bev’s way.

Had she truly overreacted to the sunflower seed incident? Maybe—and yet, sometimes the small crimes were the hardest to deal with. But let them slide and what did you have? Chaos. It didn’t take many Marvins to create a blackboard jungle.

Bev focused on her plate again as the other teachers at the table filtered away.

When lunch hour finally ended, she had an hour as study hall proctor before she could get back to her classroom, which was being used for biology. O time.

She wished she could be in her old classroom. For years before, the portable building had been her own kingdom. Of course, even more than the loss of her building, she mourned the cancellation of advanced home ec. Important lesson blocks from her second-year class lesson plans—such as sewing projects, smart consumerism, and presentation and professional poise—now needed to be wedged in to the two short semesters. And students who took Home Economics 1 last year would never receive important information—that was the tragedy. Thanks to the stats-crunching standards of Principal Kirby, an entire batch of students would be launched into the world underprepared for the most important subject of all: living.

But of course they would be standardized tested within an inch of their lives.

When study hall ended, she was finally free to get back to the room. Walking in the door, inhaling that initial whiff of formaldehyde and rabbit urine, she noticed immediately that one of her unit one posters had fallen since that morning and lay curled against the wall near the rabbit. As she leaned over to pick it up, she looked at Bugs. She wasn’t normally fond of rodents, but her heart went out to this one. He seemed so lonely. And were rabbits supposed to be this tubby and lethargic? Sometimes the only sign of life from him was the frantic twitching of his little nose. Often when she had her free period in the classroom—her B time—or when she stayed after school, she would let Bugs out of his cage to hop around the classroom. It was hardly a frolic in a field, but at least it allowed him some freedom.

She let him out now and set her egg timer for twenty minutes so she wouldn’t forget to put him back before the students came in for eighth-period health.

Meanwhile, she had to get the poster back up. First she hunted down the fallen tacks. She really needed a stepladder, but she decided to make do with a chair.

Her poster series—
Get Ready! Get Set! Sew!
—was one she’d made the previous year, and the blame for its falling rested squarely on her shoulders. The
Get Ready!
poster in particular featured “The right tools for your task” and had all sorts of items glued to it—an old measuring tape, spools of thread, and a pair of scissors she’d painstakingly cut from cardboard and painted to look almost real. She liked the collage effect, but the thing was so heavy it wouldn’t stay up. Of course, she’d had the poster last year and it hadn’t fallen from the old portable building’s Sheetrock walls. These old plaster walls, on the other hand, crumbled like chalk.

Just as she was wobbling up on the chair, leaning to push the first thumbtack in, the classroom door opened and shut quickly. Glen hurried over and stood at the foot of her chair. “What are you doing?”

In spite of herself, her pulse sped up a notch. Whether to put that down to anger from the scene at lunch or some residual feeling for Glen, she wasn’t sure.

He nodded to the message beneath her fingers. “The right tools? In this case, wouldn’t that mean a ladder?”

“I didn’t have time to hunt down maintenance,” she said. “I have so little prep time with the classroom to myself.”

He seemed to understand. “Well, at least let me spot you.”

She was glad to, even if she felt a little self-conscious about his being so close to her, his eyes at buttock level. She made quick work of the remaining pushpins, hopped down, and dusted off her hands. “Thank you. That should hold it for another hour or so. Now . . . what can I do for you?”

He returned the chair to the correct spot at the long table and pushed it in carefully. “I came to apologize for lunch today. It was awful.” He followed her to the oak teacher’s desk at the front of the room. “I should have told Lon that I saw Marvin toss that sunflower seed.”

She jerked her chin up. “Did you?”

“No . . . but I’m sure it happened like you said.”

“I wouldn’t want you to lie for my sake. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“But the way Lon treated you!” He pressed a fist into his palm.

His vehemence surprised her. “You didn’t seem to mind at lunch. Or was that because you were sitting next to Jackie?”

“I know it probably looked like I didn’t mind,” he said. “I’m not an acting teacher for nothing, I guess. This whole year, I’ve been pretending that I don’t care about what’s happened between us, that I barely notice you anymore. But it’s not true, and I never should have left you out on a limb like I did today.”

“It’s okay.” Gratifying as the apology was, she didn’t want to return to how things were last year, when Glen was the walking wounded. They were both moving on, which was for the best.

“I still don’t understand what happened last year,” he said, “but I respect your choices. And I hope that I never act so ungallant as I did today again.”

Gallant.
The word made her smile. It was hard to picture Glen as a knight in shining armor. That’s why she had held back before.

What had her mother said?
You tossed away a perfectly good boyfriend . . .

But what could she say? The spark with Glen had died out. Was it wrong to want a little sizzle in her life?

Glen’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that ticking sound?”

She gestured to the egg timer. “I have it set to let me know when Bugs’s time is up.”

His eyes grew wide as he looked at the open cage door and then searched around the room. Clearly, he expected to find the bunny in a pot over a Bunsen burner.

“I mean when it’s time to put him back in his cage.” She laughed. “Did you think I was cooking the school mascot?”

“No, I just . . .” He laughed, too.

“You looked like you were ready to call the ASPCA.”

Their shared laughter was a relief after the stresses of the day. It was good to have a normal moment with Glen again.

Normal didn’t last long. Something in his expression shifted, and the next thing she knew, he was staring at her intently.

“Are you still seeing that man?” he asked.

“Yes.” She began to fiddle with her class notes.
Seeing
at this point was theoretical. She hadn’t even heard from Derek since the day Alabama had found the wedding dress.

“I saw you and Alabama at the pizza parlor last weekend.”

“I spotted you there, too,” she said. “You didn’t come by and say hello.”

“I was picking up takeout. I wasn’t sure you were by yourselves, so I didn’t want to butt in.”

“Derek’s got an out-of-town job. He doesn’t come back here often.”

“Where’s the job?”

“Waxahachie.”

“That’s not so far,” Glen said. “He doesn’t come back to see you on weekends?”

She bristled, even though she had been thinking the same thing. But a break was probably good for her and Derek. Their relationship had definitely been more strained since Alabama had arrived. She couldn’t believe now how naive she’d been, thinking that she’d bring her niece home and they’d all settle down like a happy family. Crazy.
Happiness—just add water and stir
. Nothing was ever that simple.

“Derek and I are busy with our own work, but we’re still an item,” she assured Glen.

“Marriage plans?”

She eyed him with steady impatience. “No.”

He crossed his arms. “What do you see in him? What do you have in common?”

“What does anyone have in common with anyone else?” she asked. “Reading the same books, liking the same movies? That doesn’t always guarantee success.”

Look at us,
she wanted to say.

“It’s something, though.”

“Variety is the spice of life,” she said.

His lips tightened and curved down. “And that’s what you want—spice.”

“Yes. Also, Derek speaks his mind. I know how he feels.”

“
You
know?” He laughed bitterly. “In the year and a half we were together, I was the one who never knew where I stood with you. You always kept me at arm’s length.”

“I did?” Her voice rose in surprise.

“NASA?” he reminded her. “How could I feel sure about you when you were hatching harebrained schemes like that?”

“It wasn’t harebrained,” she said. “They picked a woman, even. It could have been me.”

“The point is, I couldn’t even tell if you wanted to be with me in a year’s time, or up in orbit. You certainly didn’t want to make a commitment.”

“Well, NASA didn’t pan out, obviously.” Nothing had.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shrugged. “Like you said, it was a long shot. Maybe I was using the application as an escapist tactic.”

“There—you said it. You wanted to escape.” He frowned. “Though I would have preferred your escaping into outer space than throwing me over for Derek.”