Hummingbirds (14 page)

It is another half hour, however, before Ted Hughes shows up with a woman on his arm. She’s pretty in a degenerate sort of way, with a wide red mouth and a pile of hair on her head, and her name is Paulette.

Sibyl is the first one to see her. Paulette is wearing a bright red dress, the same color and even the same satiny texture as her lips. Sibyl, who has been worried that her exposed shoulders and fitted bodice will draw too much attention, now worries that no one will notice her at all. She actually deflates a little—you can see it—and that’s when everybody else, Binhammer, the Abramsons, Pepper and her red-bearded boyfriend, all turn around to gaze upon the woman who’s just walked in with Ted Hughes.

“Oh my god.”

To Sibyl, the woman gives the impression of having been roughed up by life. She is still young, maybe twenty-nine, but it is a youth that has been damaged—a cracked kind of girlishness that might sell for ten dollars at a flea market. And her smile, when you see it, seems degraded—a smile that might have long ago known something about innocence, purity, and
clean-sheeted childhood. She keeps digging cigarettes out of her small purse and placing them between her lips before remembering that she’s not allowed to smoke inside the hotel. Men, Sibyl supposes, cannot help being attracted to her because she seems to invite depravity—and they find themselves wanting to stick their tongues between those thick red lips of hers, wanting to sink themselves into that crooked, smeared chasm smelling of wine dregs and cigarette butts.

About Paulette, women think, “I could be dirty like that, too, if I wanted to.” But: “That’s not really what men want. They only
think
they want it. It’s rather sad, actually.” And then they look haughtily in the other direction.

“Can you get me some zinfandel, Teddy?” Paulette says as they come through the doors of the ballroom. “I’m in a zinfandel mood.”

Sibyl wonders where Ted Hughes found this woman, and she conjures up a history for Paulette: cocktail waitress—now retired, after her uncle, who had made some semblance of a fortune investing in questionable Florida real estate, died and left her buckets of money. She spends her time reading magazines about posh living and trying to picture herself in those rooms decorated to look like seaside resort hotels, in those clothes that seem superior to sex, that seem to roll their eyes at sex.

Ted Hughes spots his colleagues and brings her over. He does not seem at all embarrassed to be introducing her—perhaps because he is not paying much attention to her at all. As soon as the introductions are made, he runs his hand through his hair and tells everyone to sit tight, he’s going to get a drink from the bar.

“Don’t forget my zinfandel, Teddy,” Paulette calls after him, then turns back to the others. “Hey, this is some swank party.”

“Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it?” Lonnie says, as someone else who can appreciate the finer things in life.

“You said it. We never had anything like this when I went to school. All I remember is fish sticks.” She grimaces with great
authenticity, as though she has just eaten a steaming platter full of subpar fish sticks. But then she brushes it off with a sound like a cat clearing its throat and pivots on her heel to take everyone in. “So you’re all English teachers, huh?”

“That’s right,” Binhammer says smilingly to her. He leans in close and adds, confidentially, “The soul of the school.”

Sibyl can see he is already enamored of her. The cute trashy little thing. So predictable. For the first time in many months, she feels like she wants to be alone with the other women, Lonnie and Pepper, to talk about this grubby little interloper. She assures herself that it will only be a matter of minutes before Binhammer gets bored of her. And Ted Hughes—well, Ted Hughes must be performing some philanthropic act.

“Teddy and I only met three months ago,” Paulette is saying. “It was at an art gallery. I like to invest in art, you know?” She winks at Binhammer. “The colors. Anyway, there was this professor there giving a lecture that seemed like it was going on for—”

“You know,” Sibyl interrupts, unable to help herself, “Binhammer’s wife is a professor. You should meet her. She would adore you.”

But, Sibyl should have known, Paulette is not the type to be immobilized by wives.

“Is she really?” Paulette says, giving Binhammer, who is now looking nervously toward the bar, a playful slap on the arm. “I bet she’s smart as a firecracker, isn’t she?”

Dinner is about to be served, so they all go to sit down at a big round table, the English department table in the middle of the room. Sibyl can’t bear sitting down with these people yet and excuses herself. She walks over to the small bar set up in the corner of the ballroom, where the boy serving drinks gives her a wink and she blushes like an idiot. She leaves before he has a chance to call her “ma’am.” When she returns to the table Ted Hughes is back, Paulette has two glasses of zinfandel in front of her, and there is a conversation in motion—though she can’t figure out what it’s about, so she just looks from face to face for a while.

When she sees her opportunity, she leans over and whispers to Ted Hughes, who is sitting next to her:

“Are you trying to make a point?”

“What do you mean?”

“The girl.” She juts her chin in the direction of Paulette.

Ted Hughes looks at Paulette and then back at Sibyl.

“I don’t get it,” he says, puzzled. “A point?”

Then she gets up again and wanders out to the lobby, which is mostly empty by now. She goes back into the ballroom, where she stands with her back against the wall for a few minutes, watching little satellites of girls circling the table where Binhammer and Ted Hughes are sitting, oblivious. The girls make quick fly-bys, looking at the men out of the corners of their eyes, pretending to be on important missions while making their way to the other side of the room.

While she’s watching, two of these girls decide to talk to Sibyl.

“Ms. Lockhart, what do you think of Mr. Binhammer in a tuxedo?” one of them asks.

“Very nice.”

“What about Mr. Hughes?” the other girl says. “I can’t decide if I like the white tie or the black tie better.”

“They both look nice.”

The two girls look at each other and giggle. Then one of them, smiling furtively at Sibyl as though the teacher were just another student sharing gossip, says, “Ms. Lockhart, do you know who that woman is sitting next to Mr. Hughes?”

“Is that his date?” the other asks.

“She’s pretty.”

“Do you like her dress?”

Sibyl takes all of these questions in and answers them as a set:

“Her name is Paulette. Yes, I do. Why don’t you go talk to her?”

But the girls indicate that this would be impossible and go back to their stealthy rounds of reconnaissance.

Sibyl heads back to the table, where Paulette is dipping her fingertips in her wine and sucking on them as she talks. Fifteen minutes later, she’s drunk.

“So what do you think of Hughes’s girl?” Binhammer says to Sibyl when nobody else is listening. There is a hint of cruelty in his voice.

“I like her,” Sibyl says, making her face as blank as she can.

“You do?”

She nods. “Very pretty, don’t you think?”

Binhammer looks at her suspiciously. “I guess so.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, Paulette is laughing raucously at Ted Hughes and exclaiming to Lonnie Abramson: “Isn’t he just a riot? It’s like he doesn’t even know how to be a man! You know what I mean—in a good way.” She snorts a little when she laughs, and waves her napkin around as though it were a flag of surrender.

“Still…it’s kind of sad, isn’t it?” Sibyl continues to Binhammer.

“What is?”

“Well, she’s a little needy, isn’t she?”

“Needy? Is she?” This seems to astonish him. He looks at Sibyl and then at Paulette, who now seems to be flirting with the busboy. “She doesn’t look needy.”

“Yes, she puts on a good show, doesn’t she? But you can see right through it.” She dislikes herself for saying these things, but she can’t seem to find the middle ground between victim and attacker. “She thinks it’ll fool you and Hughes—but you two are woman savvy.”

“Well…”

“Still, it’s nice of you both to pay attention to her. It seems to make her feel good. I just feel sorry for her—it’s going to be hard when Hughes gets bored of her.”

Binhammer considers this. She watches his face as he gazes across the table at Paulette, who is now talking about bras with Pepper, pushing her breasts around as though they were tokens
in a board game. Finally, he begins to nod slowly. A look of concerned pity sweeps across his brow, and he says, “Yes. It
is
sad.”

The rest of the evening unravels in much the same way. Paulette is a big hit. Sibyl is not surprised. Everyone wants to be around the woman—driven by the same impulse, no doubt, that causes one to write one’s name on a grimy car window. The desire to be around something that was once clean but is now a little spoiled. They disengage themselves from anxious conversations with parents, administration, other faculty members—conversations that make them feel like actors who have failed to be convincing in their roles—and they encounter Paulette with great billowing sighs of relief. “Paulette, are you having fun?” “Paulette, can I bring you a drink?” “So, Paulette, what do you think about all this ridiculousness?” It is not necessary to put on any performances around Paulette. She has the integrity of coarseness—an empathetic candor derived from the belief that every person in the world, on some level, is just as vulgar as she is.

The word most associated with Paulette this evening, spilling from the lips of sagely nodding faculty members, is
refreshing.

At one point, nearing the dying fall of the evening, Binhammer finds Ted Hughes looking silent and pensive, turning an empty wineglass around and around by its stem. Paulette is next to him, talking to the husband of one of the math teachers. Everyone else at the table has either gone home or is mingling elsewhere.

Binhammer goes over and takes the empty seat next to Ted Hughes. The two men look at each other for a while without saying anything. Instead, they just smile and nod—as though in tacit agreement on the condition of the universe.

“I like her,” Binhammer says quietly.

“Hmm?”

Binhammer gestures toward Paulette, who is talking animatedly on the other side of Hughes.

“Oh, her. Sure. She’s my cousin’s friend. She doesn’t really fit here. But I like her.”

“She’s nice.”

Hughes shrugs and nods. Then he says:

“I was just thinking about women. In general, I mean.”

“What about them?”

“Everything.” He waves his hand as though it is impossible to encapsulate his thoughts. Binhammer smiles and nods again. There is something sad about Ted Hughes, and, at this moment, he wishes there were a way to reach out and clasp the man’s shoulder. If there were a way, he would.

Instead, they just go on talking quietly, enclosed by the lilting white noise around them, like two boys strategizing in a fort made of packed snow or couch cushions. They lean in toward each other until their knees are almost touching. They are trying to figure out something—nothing concrete or of great importance, but rather just an impression, the shadow of a puzzle. Whatever it is, they turn it over in their hands, they hand it back and forth, they set it on the table and take turns tapping at it. They hold it up between them and gaze at it together—and that’s what they are looking at when it seems like they are looking at each other.

Then, some time later, they look around and realize that Paulette is missing.

“Oh no.”

When they find her, she’s sitting at a table with three girls from the junior class—all Ted Hughes’s students. It was originally a parent table, but all these parents have gone home, and Paulette is picking at a pile of mashed potatoes on one of their abandoned plates. As she talks, she scoops a finger into the potatoes and punctuates her sentences by putting her finger in her mouth and making a popping sound with her lips as she swallows. Through all this, she does a little swaying dance in her chair.

What she’s saying is:

“Come on now—let’s be serious. You must all have crushes on him.”

The girls smile and nod. This seems to be the place where it’s okay to admit you have a crush on your teacher. One of the girls finds on the table a quarter glass of red wine that has some
body else’s lipstick on it and drains it furtively while Paulette is between thoughts.

“I tell you,” Paulette continues, “if I had him as a teacher when I was in school…” She rolls her eyes as if the rest goes without saying. “Well, let’s just say I’d never uncross my legs, if you know what I mean.”

She cackles, sucks some more potatoes from the end of her fingertip—and realizes that, no, the girls don’t know what she means.

“Aw, fuck,” she says. “I guess I shouldn’t be saying these things to you. Boundary issues, that’s what I’ve got. Hey, don’t listen to me. I don’t know what the hell I’m saying. What do I know about teenagers? Just—I don’t know—just don’t get into trouble, I guess.”

That’s when Ted Hughes and Binhammer find her and take her by the arms back to their own table, where they cajole her into drinking some coffee.

She rubs her eyes and says, “I’m not embarrassing you, am I? Am I an embarrassment?”

“No,” Ted Hughes says. “You’re beautiful. You’re Paulette.”

The two men take turns complimenting her while she smiles abstractedly into the bouquet of flowers at the center of the table. Some of the flowers already look dead.

“My teeth are crooked,” she says. “I should get them fixed.”

Half an hour later, the annual dinner has just about run its course, and Sibyl walks across the almost empty ballroom to say good-bye to the Abramsons and Pepper Carmichael. She embraces them. It is easy to be warm to people at the end of a party—the solidarity of the last ones still standing. Then she goes into the big restroom in the lobby outside and stands in front of the mirror, thinking about what will happen next. She will go home. She will undress, hanging up her clothes with delicacy. She will turn off the light and make her way in the pitch-black to her bed. She has done it many, many times now.