Tough Day for the Army (20 page)

I switched off the projector as I made my way to the front. Señora Nuborgen was busy stacking the books from her shelves into boxes.

“Why are you packing up everything?” I asked.

“I'm not going to be back next year, Josh,” she replied.

“Why not?”

She paused with her back still to me, reaching for the highest shelf with her fingertips. “Can you get these for me?” she said.

I came around the desk and began handing her the books one by one. “Where are you going?” I said.

I handed her three more books before she spoke. “I'm moving on, Josh.”

“Don't you like it here?”

She paused again. Her chin quivered and I looked away. “I love it here.”

“Then why not stay?” I asked.

I silently passed down more books until she wiped her arm across her eyes and said, “So have you figured out what you're going to do?”

I had, sort of. There would be an end-of-year party at someone's house whose parents believed it was safer to let the kids drink under some adult supervision. I'd never gone to any of these, but I'd go to this one, and once there I'd figure out how to show Jennifer Mecklen-berg I loved her.

“Good,” Señora Nuborgen said. “It's important to remember that whatever happens, it's the right thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trust me, Josh,” she said. “I know what I'm talking about. The worst thing is to wonder.”

I handed her the last book, and she dropped it in the box without looking. Then she reached up and placed her hands on my cheeks and pulled my forehead down to her lips and kissed me there. Her lips were dry and cracked against my skin. “Good luck, Josh,” she said. When I looked at her again, she was crying.

I also talk to my students about the necessity of suspense in their stories, of the need for tension, even for surprise that is built in, that is organic to the story, unexpected, yet also right.

But I will spare you any attempt to build suspense over what happened at the party. There is nothing to show. There were no surprises. Jennifer Mecklenberg was there, Andrew Collins was not, the seemingly perfect scenario. But if she was Saturn, her friends were her rings, while I was some kind of moon in a very distant orbit. I hugged the perimeter of the party, circling for a chance to get closer, hoping I would do the right thing when the time came. She had signed my yearbook that last week, “You're awesome!!!!!! Let's hang out this summer xoxo, Jennifer.” I took it as encouragement even as I knew that Jennifer Mecklenberg's name was in a lot of yearbooks and that “awesome” was probably her most frequently used word.

At one point during the party she saw me and waved with the tips of her fingers, and I tilted my warm cup of beer back in salute. Even from a distance her eyes looked glazed over from the alcohol, and who even knows if she knew who she was waving to. It soon became apparent to me that if this was the time, it was not the place, or vice versa. At some point, while playing a drinking game, she sprinted from the room to go vomit in the bushes. I don't think I stopped loving her then, but I at least stopped wondering about whether or not it was possible for me to show her this. The chance that Jennifer Mecklen-berg might also love me seemed vanishingly small.

Later that summer, just a few days before I was to leave for college, I sat at the breakfast table, shoveling cereal into my mouth, and my mother handed me an open page of our tabloid-format local weekly. It was turned to the obituaries. “Wasn't she one of yours?” she said, tapping the page.

The heading just said “Nuborgen” in bold type. The text said that Sylvia Nuborgen, longtime teacher at Greenbrook High School, had passed away the previous week after a several-month battle with ovarian cancer. She was survived by her husband, Jameson P. Nuborgen, and her parents, Theodore and Beverly Portnoy. The couple had no children. Donations to the American Cancer Society were requested in lieu of flowers. The service was to be held the day after I was scheduled to leave for school.

When I looked up, I could not see my mother for the tears in my eyes.

Is that surprising? I don't know. At the time, I should've seen it coming, but I didn't.

And so, because I am not capable of telling Beth how I love her and why I love her, I will have to show her. I will show her by writing a story. I will show her by writing these stories.

This book is dedicated to my teachers, of which there are too many to name them all, but special thanks to Philip Graham, Robert Olen Butler, and John Wood. Thanks as well to friends and colleagues from whom I've had the pleasure to learn much along the way, including, but not limited to Nick Johnson, John Griswold, and Marlene Preston.

Thanks to Michael Griffith for his brilliant editorial touch, Susan Murray for her careful copyediting that saved me from more than one embarrassment, Michelle Neustrom for the elegant design, and to Rand Dotson and Lee Sioles at LSU Press for shepherding the book into the world. It takes a village.

College of Charleston has been good enough to provide a secure place from which to do my work, and I'm grateful for the kindness and care of my colleagues.

The title and one of the book's epigraphs belong to my friend Mark Brookstein, lead singer and drummer for Chicago's legendary band The Rolls. I've borrowed them without permission, but he'll understand.

As always, this would be impossible without the support of my loved ones: the families Warner and Sennello.

Finally, thanks and love to Kathy. My love
is
like a reflex.