Getting Warmer (19 page)

“You didn’t do my laundry, did you?”

“I was doing a load anyway. Well, three loads.”

“I can do my own laundry.”

“You were almost out of underwear.”

I hauled my tote bag stuffed with
Odyssey
essays, comma quizzes and
Our Town
worksheets upstairs, shut myself in my room and crawled into bed.

The thermostat plunged without warning. We traded daily high temperatures hovering just under a hundred for crisp mornings and sunny, breezy afternoons.

I had never been so cold in my life.

I piled on layers and tried not to shiver, even as I told myself that sixty-five degrees wasn’t cold. The thing is, after five months of heat that ranged from stifling to suffocating, my inner thermostat was completely out of whack.

“This is why we moved to Arizona!” my father proclaimed each morning and evening, stepping out on the covered patio to survey his gravel-and-cactus domain. Well, at least until my mother declared that “Shelly needs us right now” and “the goddamned cactuses will still be here when we get back.” As soon as she was back on her feet, she and my father walked out the door, bound for Sky Harbor Airport.

And so I got the house to myself again.

I tried a couple more times to explain myself to Jonathan. My prepared speech wasn’t bad, I thought:

 

The actual conversations went something like this:

“Jonathan. You have every right to be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“Really? That’s . . . that’s wonderful.”

“I have to go now.”

“But . . . I thought you weren’t angry with me.”

“I’m not angry. I’m disappointed. I had feelings for a person who, it turned out, didn’t exist.”

I edited my speech for the next phone call:

“Jonathan. You have every right to be disappointed in me. It was childish to make up that story, even more childish to keep it going. I never lied about my feelings for you. And I think your feelings for me were real, too.”

“The person I had feelings for would never do what you did. And, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work now.”

The whole thing would have been enough to cause sleepless nights if I actually had time to go to bed. Play rehearsals meant staying up until the early morning to grade papers. To make my sleep deprivation even more severe, I was getting up almost an hour earlier than before, meeting Robert in my classroom forty-five minutes before the first bell. I brought the Starbucks; he brought the baked goods. Robert wasn’t completely illiterate, it turned out, just lacking in fluency. Had he spent half as much time with reading specialists as he’d led me to believe, he probably would have been reading long ago. But he had switched schools so many times, both because of moves (there had been three) and redistricting (four), that he had slipped through the cracks, at least partly because he was so good at faking higher abilities than he actually possessed.

Unfortunately, Robert’s enthusiasm for his double espresso far outweighed his enthusiasm for learning to read.

“How much of the
Magic Treehouse
book did you manage to read last night?” I had given Robert books intended for third graders.

“Didn’t have time. Work.”

“Okay, let’s look at the first page. What does this say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sound it out.”

“I’m too tired.”

Mrs. Clausen—who I had become convinced was a Liz Claiborne- clad deity—lent me a couple of books about reading strategies and even sat in on a couple of sessions with Robert. Still, it was painful. Robert looked downtrodden and unhappy to be in school. If not for his scones and muffins (oh, those muffins!), I might have just hit my snooze button and said the heck with him.

We finally took a leap forward, almost by accident. One afternoon, I popped into Jill’s office and found her reading
Food & Wine.
After some initial irritation—I didn’t have time for leisure reading at home, much less at work—I asked to borrow the magazine.

Robert liked it. He couldn’t fully understand it, but at least he wanted to. That was a start. I hit a thrift store and picked up some old cookbooks and back issues of
Saveur.
At last, Robert had a reason to read.

A couple of weeks after Nicolette and Rodney’s elopement (which is to say, a couple of weeks after my weekend with Jonathan—though it seemed so long ago), Jill planned a post-wedding surprise party. It was after school on Friday in the teacher’s lounge. Lars even cancelled rehearsal. The entire faculty was invited, though at least half begged off, saying they had to get on the road before rush hour.

When Nicolette walked into the room, she displayed the open mouth and wide, recently mascara-ed eyes of a person who knows darn well she is about to walk into a roomful of people, cake and presents but doesn’t want to ruin the moment.

Rodney was there. So were Nicolette’s parents, who were shockingly young. One of the laminated tables had been designated for gifts. Jill had arranged them as best as she could, but there was no way to make the take look anything but paltry.

After everyone hugged Nicolette and Rodney, we drank a toast of Welch’s sparkling grape juice (Jill had begged Dr. White to allow champagne, to no avail). Nicolette and Rodney cut the three-tiered white cake from Safeway and fed each other pieces. Rodney pretended he was going to smash his piece into Nicolette’s face, but he wisely stopped at the first flicker of panic in her eyes.

Once everyone had received a piece of cake on a paper plate, Nicolette sat on a molded plastic chair next to the gift table. She unwrapped slowly, peeling back the tape without ripping the white and silver wrap and folding the paper precisely.

Mrs. Clausen gave them a rice cooker.

Dr. White gave them a set of knives.

Dawna gave them a white Creative Memories album and a plastic bag full of dove, heart and wedding bell stickers.

The rest of us had pitched in for a gift card to Linens ’n Things. Jill had used some of the money to pay for the cake and paper plates, leaving $165 in credit. Nicolette could buy linens or she could buy things, but there was no way she could afford both.

Her eyes welled up as she looked at the card. She smiled as if in gratitude, but I could see she was in deep pain. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you all.”

We were out of there by three thirty.

Jill said it wasn’t too early to start drinking because it was Friday and we’d just been to a party. I wanted to go home to change first; I was wearing the first clean, pressed, matching clothing I had found that morning: my navy blue skirt and a white blouse, without even a scarf or a pair of earrings to jazz things up. I looked like a flight attendant who had forgotten to pin on her wings.

Lars said we should just go because he lived an hour away, so why waste time, and anyway, I looked elegant. Jill said, “Look at me, I don’t look any better”—even though she did, in a tight black sweater, straight black skirt and chunky gold jewelry.

We went to the Happy Cactus because they served two-for-one margaritas before six. It had the added advantage of being near Jill’s apartment, which meant she got to ditch her car and, as she put it, become the Designated Drunk.

The Happy Cactus was dead—it was just a little after four at this point—and the margaritas were watery: half the booze for half the price.

We complained about the drinks even as we drank them and ordered (free) seconds. A basket of stale chips sat in the middle of the table.

“I didn’t think I’d be able to drink tonight,” Jill said. “Suicide watch.”

“Was the suicide rescheduled?” Lars asked.

“Nope. Girl’s been hospitalized. Second time.”

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Regina Spitzer. You know that kid Jared you’re having problems with? His sister.”

“I’m not
having problems
with Jared,” I said. “I hate Jared. Jared is the spawn of Satan.”

“You shouldn’t hate a student,” Jill said. “It’s a maladaptive coping mechanism.”

“Oh, please.” Lars reached for a chip. “You only say that because you don’t have a hundred and twenty kids assigned to you. Most of them are great, but for a few, hatred is the only reasonable response.”

“I met with the whole Spitzer family this week,” Jill said. “Majorly dysfunctional. Parents are still married, but they hate each other. Kids aren’t getting enough attention, and they’re each acting out in their own way. Jared is a very angry child.”

“He’s the spawn of Satan,” I said. And then, with some unwelcome sympathy wiggling into my heart: “What’s wrong with the sister? I thought she was bulimic.”

“She is. But apparently that wasn’t killing her fast enough, so she took a handful of pills this week.”

After we drained our second margaritas, Jill asked me, “Feeling any better?”

“No.”

“Why, what’s wrong, Nat?” Lars asked. Normally, I don’t like it when people call me Nat—it makes me think of tiny, itchy bugs—but from Lars, it was okay. I liked the familiarity. “Is this still about that Jared kid?”

“No,” I said.

“Natalie had her heart broken,” Jill announced.

“The swine,” Lars said.

“No,” I said. “It was my own stupid fault.”

From there, Jill launched into a colorful telling of my romance with Jonathan. Highlights: “So she tells him I’m the prison warden. Do I really look that butch?” And: “He drives a pickup.” And: “Guy must be loaded. He dropped a fortune on meals.” And: “They had sex in Sedona.”

“At least you got to have sex,” Lars said.

“That’s what I said!” Jill piped in.

By this time, we’d given up on the Happy Cactus and were standing in the parking lot. Lars suggested we head over to The Bunkhouse, an idea I greeted enthusiastically because it was close to my parents’ house. I dropped off my car and squeezed into Lars’s shiny Prius.

The Prius didn’t stay shiny for long. The Bunkhouse is a dusty, Wild West kind of place. The dirt parking lot was already crowded.

“I was thinking,” Lars said as we walked inside to the rustic bar to order margaritas and burgers (which was pretty much all they served at The Bunkhouse), “you’re better off without that guy. I mean, the story you told, the act you kept up—it’s like improv. It’s so cool. And if that guy can’t appreciate your originality, he’s just not worth your time.”

We took our plastic cups and burgers to a picnic table outside. There was a bonfire in the middle of the clearing and a little raised stage at the front. Later there would be live country music; for now, it was piped over loudspeakers.

“Should’ve worn my cowboy boots,” Lars said, biting into his burger. Grease dripped onto his paper plate.

“Do you even own a pair?” Jill asked. She picked up her own burger and pinched it delicately, as if trying to keep the grease from getting on her palms.

“Can’t live in Arizona without cowboy boots,” Lars said.

“Jonathan wore cowboy boots,” I piped in. That’s how my mind was working: everything went back to Jonathan. At least I hadn’t said, “Jonathan likes his hamburgers well-done,” or “Jonathan only drinks Cadillac margaritas”—both of which I’d thought but held in. A broken heart makes for a dull conversationalist.

“Could Jonathan two-step?” Lars asked.

“I have no idea.” It bothered me that I didn’t know.

“Well, I can. Let me show you.”

The dance floor—well, the dance dirt—next to the bonfire was empty.

“There’s no one dancing.”

“So we’ll be trendsetters.”

“Let me finish my burger first.” I hadn’t even started it.

“You’re stalling.”

“I’m hungry.”

But by the time we finished eating, the dance floor was still empty. Lars stood up and held out his hand. I rubbed my greasy hands on a white paper napkin and stood up to join him. I let him pull me toward the dance floor. Behind us, the sun was starting to set, turning Pinnacle Peak a startling purple.

Lars put one hand on my waist; with the other, he held my hand up loosely. I tried not to think about all the people watching us. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to count like this: one, two, one-and, two-and . . . just follow my lead.”

We started off okay, but when he tried to switch direction, we collided. I broke into a fit of giggles. “It’s all I can do to count,” I said.

“Guess I should have tried this with a math teacher. You ready? You can do it. One, two, one-and, two-and . . .” I slammed into him again. We held each other, laughing.

“I think I’ve got it,” I said as we broke apart. “Let’s try one more time.”

We managed to circle halfway around the dance floor before ramming into each other again and admitting defeat. Holding hands, we wound our way back among the picnic tables to find Jill chatting amicably with two very scary-looking bikers, one of whom had a handlebar mustache, the other several missing teeth. The one with the handlebar mustache was sitting very close to Jill; the other guy sat on the other side of the table.

“Hi!” Lars chirped, holding out his hand. “I’m Jed.” The bikers blinked at him before half-standing up and shaking his hand. Their arms were meaty. He gestured to me. “And this is Bobbie Sue.” I smiled. “And I guess you’ve met . . .” He looked at Jill.

“Theodora,” she said.

“Rudy,” said the guy with the missing teeth. The other guy was named Dave. They were both holding bottles of Bud. Rudy had a Harley tattoo on one of his arms. Dave was wearing long sleeves, so it was hard to see if they sported any art.