Circle of Three (13 page)

Eventually Mr. Tambor poked his head out the door. “Who’s next, please?”

The blackboard across the front of the room was covered with formulas and equations; just the sight gave me a queasy feeling. Unlike Ruth, my worst subject had always been math. Plump, swarthy Mr. Tambor had a fringe of black hair ringing the back of his head and exactly three strands, very long, combed across the dome. How easy, I knew from experience, to make fun of a teacher who looked like that. But Mr. Tambor’s brown doe eyes were kind, and when he smiled he looked like an Indian prophet, Meher Baba perhaps. I liked him immediately. Instead of sitting behind his metal desk, he gestured to a student desk in the front row, and took the one across from it only after making sure I was settled.

I introduced myself, and he said, “Ah, Ruth’s mother,” very sadly. “I am sorry for the loss of your husband.”

“Thank you.” He had a formal way of speaking, but surely I was imagining the eastern accent; he wasn’t really
from
India. “I’m concerned about Ruth’s math scores lately, Mr. Tambor. She’s always been so good in math—she talks about majoring in it in college. I can’t imagine what’s happened,” I said. Disingenuously. “I mean, to go from A’s and A-minuses to a D-plus in three months—it’s very worrisome.”

“Yes. Yes, it is worrisome.” He put his fingertips together thoughtfully, or maybe prayerfully. “Have you asked Ruth what might be the problem?”

“She says the class has gotten harder. She also admits she’s not studying quite as hard.”

Mr. Tambor pursed his lips. “Mr. Van Allen taught mathematics at the college,” he observed.

“That’s right, yes.”

“Advanced courses, topology, numerical methods, number theory, so on.”

“Yes.”

“And Ruth was very close to her father?”

I’d seen the question coming, so it didn’t surprise me. “Not really. Not as close as she always wanted to be.” The fact that I had told this complete stranger the truth—that surprised me.

“Ah?” His lips made a small, fleshy circle. “She spoke of him in class sometimes. Always with great pride.”

“Did she?” Oh, why was that so sad?

“But of course Ruth doesn’t really have a mathematical mind. I wish it were otherwise—she’s so very bright. But she won’t study mathematics in college now. Clearly.”

“She won’t? Why not?”

He smiled and didn’t answer.

“Why not? Are you saying she was only good in math to please her father? And now that he’s gone—?”

“I believe so, yes. Don’t you think?”

“I…Well, I have no idea.” Yes, of course, it was obvious. Still, I resisted. I hated the thought of Ruth trying so hard to make Stephen notice her, even going against her own
nature
to get his love and attention.

“It’s not so sad,” Mr. Tambor said, leaning toward me, chubby shoulders straining against the seams of his cheap white shirt. “We’ll help her. She’ll make C’s and B’s, as she should. It’ll be all right. Yes? Come. Everything will be fine.”

I took the immaculate folded handkerchief he handed me, warm from his back pocket. Why be embarrassed? I’d already cried in front of a policeman tonight, why not Ruth’s algebra teacher, too?

“Thank you,” I told him, handing the handkerchief back after blotting my cheeks but thoughtfully not blowing my nose. “You’re very nice. Now I know why Ruth’s so fond of you.”

He made a little bow of gratitude, palms together.

“Are you from India?” I asked. He’d lulled me into un-wonted familiarity. “Or…Pakistan?”

Mr. Tambor looked amazed. “No, no. Italy.”

“
Really
.”

“Used to be Tamborini. We shortened it to Tambor when Uncle Guido was gunned down in the barbershop.”

“No!”

“No.” His smile stretched from ear to ear. “I come from Ahmadabad. That was a joke.”

I laughed, and blushed, and decided I was in love.

I didn’t recognize Bonnie Driver at first, probably because in the back of my mind I’d been thinking she was at home supervising three teenagers, including my daughter. She was walking down the hall ahead of me, and I thought,
That looks like Bonnie Driver’s perky little butt
—you notice things like that on your ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife. The swingy, chin-length hair looked familiar, too, but I didn’t know it was Bonnie until she turned slightly and I saw her in profile. Long, intelligent nose, mild brown eyes, a friendly mouth—she was lovely, and a kind person, and everyone liked her. I liked her myself. Too bad she’d never liked me.

She turned around when I called to her. “Carrie—hi! Ruth said you’d be here. I left Dan at home with the girls, I ran right over as soon as we finished dinner. Don’t you hate these nights? How are you?”

“I didn’t know she was going to your house—I’m sorry if that was an inconvenience. We had a mix-up—”

“Oh, not at all, Ruth’s wonderful, I love having her, so does Becky. So tell me, how is your new job?”

She was so nice. When Stephen died she sent me a sweet, gentle note that made me cry. We didn’t even know each other—and yet we did. She was the kind of person who would send a gracious sympathy note to someone she didn’t like simply because it was the decent thing to do.

“Oh, the job’s all right. Well—not exactly what I was hoping for,” I said, truthfully for some reason, “but it’s okay. Pays the bills.” Barely.

“Maybe it’ll get better.” She smiled encouragingly. “Sometimes you have to break a new job in.”

It was possible she didn’t really dislike me. Well, why
would she? Certainly not because of jealousy over Jess. She won, after all; she married him, then she divorced him, all long after I was out of the picture. I always felt a certain coolness, though, under the friendliness, as if she were watching me, collecting data, reserving judgment. She
wanted
to like me, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. We fascinated each other. God knew we had a lot in common. Well, one thing.

“I hear Jess asked you to help him out with the ark.” She smiled less naturally, not as amused as she wanted to appear. “Such a crazy thing, isn’t it? Poor old Landy, he’s the one I feel sorry for.”

I’d forgotten she knew Landy—he’d have moved next door while she and Jess were still married. “Crazy,” I agreed. “In a way, I wish I
could
help out.”

“Oh, it just seems so strange to me, something you’re better off staying away from. It could swallow you up if you weren’t careful.” The generic
you
, she was using; surely she didn’t mean me personally. “And now that the whole thing is public knowledge, it’s just going to get bigger. I really wouldn’t want any part of it—but that’s me.”

“What do you mean, it’s public knowledge?”

“Didn’t you see the paper yesterday?”

“No. The
Record
?”

“Page one—Eldon Pletcher’s promised to buy all new playground equipment for Point Park if they’ll let him build the ark on the fishing piers, right on the water. And then sail it on the river for forty days. The city council’s taking it up at the next meeting. I’m not kidding.”

And Jess was on the council. “Wow,” was all I could say.

We talked a little longer, about our daughters and their mutual friends, then used the excuse of teacher appointments to separate. “Good to see you,” we said, and “Take care,” but neither of us was hypocritical enough to say, “Call me,” or “Let’s get together.” I didn’t know why her marriage failed—Jess would probably have told me if I’d asked, but I wouldn’t. As much as I’d have liked to know. But the fact of
their marriage, or rather the fact that it ended, was what kept Bonnie and me at arm’s length. Which must’ve meant—well, I didn’t know what it meant. It
seemed
to mean that I was mixed up in it somehow, and I didn’t know what to think about that. So I didn’t think about it. Much.

Three mothers and a father were waiting in line to see Mrs. Fitzgerald, Ruth’s English teacher. My heart sank; if I joined them, it would mean at least a half-hour wait, maybe longer. No, I decided, to hell with it, I was going home. Ruth was doing well in English—that’s why I’d wanted to talk to Mrs. Fitzgerald in the first place, to hear some good news for a change. But now I was just too tired.

The way out of the building led past closed double doors to a staircase.
Locked
double doors now, I was sure, but in my day they were always left open. Foolishly—because the stairs went down to the janitor’s room, the furnace room, and the infamous Utility Room, No. B–45. Also known as the Make-out Room. This many years later, I could still remember the muffled blast of boilers and water heaters through cinder block walls, the smells of oil and electricity and disinfectant, the dim, grainy light from one flickering fluorescent tube high up in the pipe-lined ceiling. Senior year, the winter months, I had met Jess down there every day at 12:35, for the precious fifteen-minute interval our lunch periods overlapped. We were never alone, other couples trysted in dark corners nearby, but for a public place the utility room had been remarkably intimate.

Since then I’d had a handful of lovers and a longtime husband, and with one or the other of them I imagined I’d done most if not everything that healthy, reasonably inventive people did in the sexual area. But kissing Jess was still my lifetime’s most erotic memory, the touchstone, the baseline for all physical passion. Arrested development, I called it after we broke up. I tried to demystify the experience by talking about it to my college friends, describing it, laughing about it. “Up against the wall in this smelly utility closet,
kissing and kissing till our mouths hurt! Oh God, it was so funny.” A lie. And I even knew I was betraying him. No help for it, though, I’d had to save myself. I was young, stupid, myopic; too much self-knowledge would’ve been like shining white light in my eyes.

I was aroused, I realized, buttoning my coat, trying to remember what row I’d parked the car in. Ridiculous. But I was; my stomach felt tight and heavy, pulled down by gravity. It was the atmosphere, the circumstances, the power of setting. Well, if you were going to feel like a hormonal schoolgirl, what more logical place than your old high school?

Did Ruth feel like this? Disconcerting thought. Of course she did, she must. We talked about sex occasionally, the wisdom of waiting, the importance of protection, all that sort of thing. What we never talked about was how it was for women, what its place might be in our lives, not with any frankness. We never put sex in context. She was still too young, I told myself, but that was just a cop-out.

My mother was fairly open about sex, even when I was little—open as in willing to speak her mind, that is, not as in liberal or permissive. From the age of about six, the message I received was loud and clear:
don’t
. Nice girls wait, cheap girls don’t.
Tacky
girls don’t—that was the thing. Because in Mama’s book being
tacky
was as low as a human being could go. Better to be morally bankrupt, a pervert, better to be a serial killer than
tacky
. It was her strongest prejudice. In a sense, it defined her; it was the motive behind all her life’s decisions, large and small.

Well, everybody needed a code, a model for right conduct. Not being tacky: in its way it was a standard, no worse than a lot of others for civilized human behavior. Its limitations—snobbery, intolerance, racism, classism—had driven me crazy for most of my life. It wasn’t the philosophy, though, as much as the strength of my mother’s belief in it and the power of her personality that had made me a confused, unwilling follower all through my childhood. I think
it was the main reason—not the only one—that I never went all the way with Jess. As much as I loved him, as much as I wanted him. Amazing, in retrospect.

Or maybe not. No, probably not. You could only blame your mother for so much. I was the one who was intimidated by his passion for me, his wild, excessive ardor—so it seemed to me. Not giving in to him was the only way I knew to control him. Instinctively, I feared chaos if I gave in, some kind of annihilation.

Another way of saying I chickened out.

So many regrets. I shivered as the car heater blew cold air on my shins, slowing self-consciously at the spot where the policeman had pulled me over. Right…there. If I’d left work on time, if Ruth had been where she was supposed to be, if I’d left Krystal’s a little later, a little earlier…

If only, if only. What if I’d married Jess? He’d asked me. Over Thanksgiving break, my freshman year of college. I almost said yes. He didn’t bully me, he said he’d wait till I graduated, but then he wanted me to come back to Clayborne and live with him on the farm.

At first the prospect tantalized me. I loved his house, the land. Live there with Jess? Paradise. But by Christmas I had doubts. College was incredible, everything I’d expected and more, I could
feel
myself turning into the kind of person my childhood, my family—my mother—had been preparing me to be. Men who were going to be lawyers, artists, scientists, wanted to go out with me. I started letting them. Eventually, the idea of spending the rest of my life tending cows on a little farm in Virginia began to seem less and less plausible, until finally it seemed—outlandish.

So I’d told Jess no. We were growing apart, couldn’t he see that? We didn’t have as much in common anymore, we wanted different things. What pains me now, all this time afterward, is that I honestly didn’t think it would hurt him—I thought surely he could see I was right, he must agree, it was so clear. What a shallow, self-involved little twit I was. And when I saw that I
had
hurt him—I offered to sleep with him!
At last! What a magnanimous gesture; the perfect farewell present. Oh, that memory can still make me cringe. To Jess’s credit and to my everlasting shock and shame, he refused. I didn’t see him again for fifteen years.

I unlocked the front door to the dark, chilly house with a shuddery feeling, even a sense of dread.
I’m as empty as this hall. I’m as cold as this living room
. It was only a little after nine, Ruth wouldn’t be home for at least half an hour. Sometimes loneliness felt like panic, a low, thudding sensation in the diaphragm. A drink? No, I might end up in tears. Again. But coffee would keep me awake. I hung my coat in the hall closet and went upstairs. Maybe a bath to soak the chill out of my bones. Maybe I was coming down with something.