I'm Your Girl (28 page)

“It’s not that I don’t want to, Diane. Really.”

From the way he, um, grew down there, I believe it, too.

“It’s just…I’m…I’m not ready. I know that sounds cliché.”

A man whom I was about to let be my first…isn’t ready to
be
my first? This is definitely a first. “I understand, Jack.”

“You do?”

I nod.

“Well,” he says, “I wish you could explain it to me.”

Now
what do I say? “Noël, um, she was your first love.”

He nods.

“And, uh, you still love her.”

He nods again.

Shoot. I’m in competition with a dead woman. It’s as if
Wuthering Heights
has broken out in my living room. “And you still love her enough…to remain faithful to her.”

“Yeah.” His eyes are tearing up again. “Yeah, that’s what I’m feeling.” He turns to me. “It’s not fair to you, though.”

True. “We’ll have to take it slow then.”

“Thank you.” He sighs. “I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

I slide next to him, putting my head on his shoulder. “Yes, Jack, you are a mess.”

He laughs a little. “I’m sorry, Diane. I thought I could…let it all go.” He kisses my forehead. “But I can’t.”

“We have time,” I say. “I’m a patient woman.”

He kisses me tenderly. “You’re one of a kind, Diane Anderson.”

“You’re pretty unique yourself, Jack Browning.”

And then…we snuggle, not speaking, for a few hours, just sharing each other’s company—and warmth—occasionally kissing, squeezing, smiling, sighing…until I fall asleep.

And when the sunlight wakes me on the sofa a few hours later, Jack is gone.

W
hy did you leave? She wanted you to stay!

I couldn’t stay. I can’t stay.

Grandma Ella would say “can’t” really means—

I
might
stay someday. Just not today. This is all too soon, too soon. It feels like I’m cheating.

You’re not
.

I know I’m not. It just feels like I am. I’m not done being faithful, okay? We went out to eat, went to church, kissed a bit—

You two were doing some grinding on that sofa, too. Don’t forget that
.

I almost lost control.

You’re human, Jack.

I know.

And she seemed willing, right?

She was so soft, so…
there
.

Is Diane who you’re thinking about right now in Noël’s bed?

No.

Then turn off that tape!

I had found the tape in the tape player under the bed, cued up to “Right Here Waiting” by Richard Marx.
That’s where I am, Noël
, I was thinking,
just oceans apart from you
. “All I Want Is You” by U2 made me think of the promises I had made to her, from the cradle to the grave. Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly” didn’t give my life any new meaning, Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” reminded me that my box of wishes is empty, and now…

Turn it off, Jack.

But it’s “Back in the High Life” by Steve Winwood.

Then do as the song says and let the good parts last.

What good parts?

It’s supposed to be a happy song, Jack! You’re supposed to be drinking and dancing. Aren’t you listening to the chorus?

I only hear the verses.

The song fades out and fades in to Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight.”

Please, turn it off. Get some sleep
.

No.

This song always depresses you.

I know.

Then turn it off!

No…Here come the drums—

Don’t—

“The hurt doesn’t show, but the pain still grows…,” I sing, and then I sit up and play the “air drums.”

I need a drink.

No, Jack.

Am I hearing myself correctly?

Yes.

But you’re Dan Pace. You’re the party animal. I thought for sure that
you
would be thirsty.

Now isn’t the time. Rest.

But it’s a brand-new year! Drinking is the thing to do on New Year’s Day!

Don’t.

Why? Are you afraid I’ll drown in my memories?

No. I’m afraid you won’t want to make new ones.

Oh, shut up.

I go to the kitchen, grab a full bottle of Boone’s Farm Melon Ball, and down half of it in one gulp. Then I make a toast: “Okay, then. Here’s to
no
memories.”

I
wake up alone.

I’m used to it, so it doesn’t bother me that much. At least he locked the front door after him. And he did leave the disk on the kitchen counter. At least I have that.

“Happy New Year, Diane.”

I stretch and wander into the kitchen, start the coffeemaker, and look at my tiny kitchen. There’s only room for one cook in this kitchen. I can stand right here on this tile and almost touch everything—

Okay, it bothers me.

Shoot.

I wanted to wake up with him. I wanted to cook him breakfast in this tiny kitchen. I wanted to spend the first day of the brand-new year with him, reading his book while he…What would he do? Hmm. I would have sent him home for his laptop, and he could be writing his next book while I’m reading the first. We could have had lunch together. We could have maybe even watched the Rose Bowl parade or even a football game or two. We could have, I don’t know, had dinner at his place—Wait, there was no food in the fridge. Well, we would have driven around and found something at maybe a convenience store.

I miss him.

He should still be here.

I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, but I felt so…something I’ve never felt before. I felt needed, wanted, cherished. I felt…

Lord, I felt
home
.

I pick up the disk. “Looks as if it’s just you and me.”

I take my cup of coffee to my library, taking sips and nodding to myself, and boot up the computer. He just needs more time, that’s all. He’ll come around. I mean, he practically stayed the night, right? He knows a good thing, and I am a
good
thing. And next time—and there
will
be a next time—he’ll stay even longer, maybe even the whole night. And one day, when we least expect it, we’ll be in my bedroom…

I should have opened that door on the tour, you know, to give him ideas.

I double-click the Word icon, then load “WT,” the only file on the disk. And then I start reading the screen with a new set of eyes.

And I get an eyeful.

What I read hardly matches the advance review copy. Dan is so much more endearing and much less of a pervert, Ty is softer and not nearly as rugged, and though they still bump into each other before that teacher conference, it’s so much more romantic…and realistic. Pat the freak and Mike the gay guy don’t even make an appearance, and I get a clearer glimpse of Dan the teacher—
and
Jack the man:

…I’m a grumpy man who stayed up late pounding nails into boards. I leave a message with the real estate company that owns the Cube to replace my door—“steel preferred,” I tell them. There’s just not that much wood left to nail into anymore.

As whipped and tired and grumpy as I am, I still manage to muddle through traffic to Monterey, and on a whim—and because I really don’t have a lesson planned—I have my first class redesign then rearrange the room. And, of course, the principal, Mrs. Wine, chooses the moment we begin scraping desks noisily around the room to enter, settle her rump behind my desk, and start taking notes for my preliminary evaluation.

I’m in trouble.

The students decide they need to be able to see me and each other (not always a good idea), so they design a room arrangement that can best be called “the wagon wheel.” The desks are “spokes” radiating from a circular “hub” (me) in six directions. One of the spokes can’t be completed because my desk is in the way. And because my students and their education come first, I ask Mrs. Wine to get up from my desk.

Oh no he didn’t! I’ll bet all this really happened, too.

“Pardon me?”

“We need to move my desk to complete the spoke, Mrs. Wine.”

A full minute later, the monolithic Mrs. Wine extricates herself from my chair and hovers nearby. “Hovers” is probably the wrong word. She, uh, wobbles nearby. The faculty really needs to buy her one of those electric scooters to get around.

Once the last spoke is finished, we slide my desk into a corner where only skinny me could possibly get into my chair.

Mrs. Wine, then, has to stand and sway.

She is not pleased.

“Okay, class,” I say from the hub, “I need someone to give us a review of what we covered Monday.” Mainly because I can’t honestly remember myself. The kids don’t call me “Mr. Space” for nothing.

Dan is
definitely
Jack here. I wish the book coming out in April had more of him in it, too. Why do editors cut out reality in favor of sensationalism? Not all books have to be complete escapes from reality!

Kendra raises her hand. “We were talking about the Greeks.”

We were? Hmm. “And what did we learn about the Greeks?” No hands, not even Kendra’s. Help me out here, kids! “Tony,”—the student who usually has his hand raised more than Kendra does—“what did we learn about the Greeks?”

“I was absent Monday, Mr. Pace,” Tony says.

I wince. I should have known that! “Raise your hand if you were here Monday.”

Eighteen of thirty hands drift into the air. I zero in on Angie. “Angie, what did we learn about the Greeks?”

Angie shrugs.

“Kevin?”

Kevin shrugs.

“James?”

James takes a deep breath, and I hold mine. Yes! I taught them something! James exhales loudly and says, “I dunno.”

I’m in serious trouble. Because I’m standing in the middle of the hub, I can’t get to the board to write anything without half the wagon wheel having to turn completely around.

“Um, did I tell you any stories?”

Thirty heads shake back and forth. Wait, only eighteen of you were here! How could all of you be shaking your heads?

I will never be a teacher. There’s entirely too much drama!

“So I didn’t tell you the story of…” Think! I look at Mrs. Wine, her long, stringy hair plastered to her head like a squid with tentacles curling up at the ends and resting on her more than ample bosom. “Medusa?”

Perfect!

“Who?” Kendra asks.

I am now in my element. Teaching history to me is really telling stories in the past tense about the past.

“Medusa was a gorgon.”

“A what?” Kendra asks. She loves to ask questions, and at times, I think she’s the only one in the class listening.

I spell “gorgon” for them, but only some of them write it down. “A gorgon was a monster with snakes for hair whose look turned the beholder to stone.” Lots of blinking. Hmm. “Beholder” isn’t in their vocabulary. “That means, if you looked at her, Angie, you would turn to stone.”

“This isn’t real, then,” Angie says.

“You’re right, Angie,” I say. “This isn’t real. It’s a myth. Do we all remember what a myth is?” Please, for the love of God, please nod your heads!

But we all don’t remember what a myth is because I didn’t tell them what a myth is on Monday, and Mrs. Wine is writing furiously, and I look like a fool, and—Ah, screw it. If you’re going down in flames, at least have some fun.

“Then I must have made a myth-take,” I say.

“Boo,” I say aloud. But it’s cute.

No one giggles.

“Thith ith information that you’re myth-ing.” A few smiles. “We must put this myth-ing information about myths in your notebooks, no myth-ing around.”

I go to the board and write “Greek Mythology,” then return to the hub. “Mythology is a collection of stories that have been passed down by word of mouth for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Most myths have supernatural beings, monsters, and powerful heroes in them. One Greek myth is about Medusa.”

I pause and cut my eyes to Mrs. Wine. A few kids notice and smile at me. They understand.

“Medusa was one of three sisters, but only Medusa was mortal, meaning that she was somewhat human.”

The same could be said for Mrs. Wine. I think there’s a human being in there somewhere.

“Perseus is our hero in this story. It is his task to kill Medusa, but if Perseus looks at her, he’ll be turned to stone. How can Perseus kill Medusa without looking at her?”

For the next few minutes, my students give me every possible method from throwing a running chain saw at her to dropping an atomic bomb on her.

Time to refocus.

“This myth is over three thousand years old. All you have to kill Medusa are some armor, a sword, a shield…and some magic.”

Mrs. Wine coughs—or is she gasping?—and toddles out of the room, and the class and I relax.

“Whew,” I say, wiping imaginary sweat from my forehead, “it’s about time she left. I was scared she would turn me to stone!”

Those kids will never forget the story of Perseus and Medusa.

Jack had to have been a wonderful teacher. I wonder if he misses it.

Later, however, at my evaluation conference, I have to look Medusa in the eye as she rags my ass.

“Absolutely no organization, Mr. Pace. None. Your lesson was sheer bedlam….”

Like that “office” of his downstairs. It’s not “bedlam,” but it’s getting close.

My God, she can blather, can’t she? Does she use that Botox stuff? Maybe she secretes it naturally, her face is so tight. Her ears must have little hands holding them onto her face.

HAAAA!

“And you must re-rearrange your room to something that resembles an approved diagram from
Instruments for Instruction….”

Is “re-rearrange” a word? How does she get her hair to loop up at the ends like that? The rest of her body doesn’t defy gravity, so how can her hair?

HAAAA! Jack, I mean Dan, has a wonderful sense of humor. Why did the editor cut out so much of his humanity?

“As you know, this is the year during which either you earn tenure or we’ll have to let you go….”

This is my last year here anyway, Medusa. There’s nothing to keep me here in Roanoke, no one to keep me here. I have no friends, only colleagues. I am the oldest member of the single’s Sunday school class I sometimes attend when I’m looking for someone a lot purer than me. Yeah, I’m trolling for purity, but I’m sure not the right man for a righteous woman.

So, maybe this was before he met Noël. That means…that
she
kept him from moving away. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have ever met him.

“Your handwriting is atrocious. I’m surprised they can read anything you put on the board. And lisping? Really, Mr. Pace. I know you can enunciate better than that. And why begin with that horrible, violent story? I’m sure I’ll get phone calls this afternoon from parents who are up in arms….”

I have to face facts. The tread on the boots of my life have gotten thin, my laces are frayed, I have scuff marks, even gouges. I could maybe get a retread on life, get that new-hiking-boot smell. It wouldn’t take much to start over. I’d just load up my books in a little U-Haul trailer and go on a one-way trip to where snow is snow and not this ice storm stuff, where Ansel Adams skies take my breath away daily.

I wonder if he’s thinking these very things right now. I have to call him, but I’m afraid to. Maybe later.

“And bringing magic into your lesson? I thought I was very clear about any reference to magic for this grade level….”

Maybe Alaska? I’ve had plenty of offers from school systems in Anchorage. Six months of darkness…That would be magic. It would move me closer to Dysfunction Junction (San Francisco), but then I might be able to help my sister.

His sister? She didn’t appear in the first book.

“Are you following the Standards of Learning, Mr. Pace? I hardly think so. And another thing, Mr. Pace, I know you know we have a dress code here….”

I’m too much of a free spirit, I guess. Maybe I’ll be a mountain guide, an American sherpa, or I’ll work at a wilderness camp for kids. Despite what Medusa says, I can probably teach anywhere because male elementary teachers are in demand. So are male administrators. Nah. I’d have to get a suit, a tie, and an attitude. I’d quit and work at Blue Ridge Outdoors before that ever happened.

“Do you understand everything I’ve said to you today, Mr. Pace?”

Is she talking to me? I squint at her. She isn’t talking anymore, so it must be my turn. “Uh, yes, Mrs. Wine.”

“I’m marking ‘needs improvement’ for your overall preliminary evaluation.”

I nod.

“Sign here.”

I sign the form, nod again at Mrs. Wine, leave the office, then drift down the hall to the cafeteria. Watching students play “chew ‘n’ show” always makes me forget just about anything horrific.

“Mr. Pace?”

I look at Laverne, one of the lunch ladies, polishing the table in front of me. “Yes?”

“Don’t you have a class to teach?”

“Oh, yeah.” The bell has rung. The cafeteria is emptying. Thirty fourth-graders are sitting in a wagon wheel waiting for me to introduce them to Greek mythology and a lady with snakes for hair.

I am always late for class, and the kids think it is so cool.

I know I would have liked
this
version of the novel much better. This is four-star material at least.

“The man can write,” I say to my library. “If they will just
let
him write.”

I have to call and compliment him. I dial his number, and it rings ten times before he answers.

“Hello?”

He sounds sleepy.

“Jack, it’s me, Diane.”

“Hey.”

Hey? “Um, I’ve been reading your real book here, and I just wanted to tell you how wonderful it is.”

“Thanks.”

“I, uh, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“Nope. Haven’t been to sleep.”

“Oh.” So, what has he been doing? “Are you watching any of the games?”

“Nope.”

Nope and hey? What’s going on here? “Are you writing, then?”

“Nope.”

Another “nope” and I’m hanging up. “Is anything wrong, Jack?”

“Nothing this eggnog can’t cure.”

He’s drunk. The man left me on my nice soft sofa, went home, and got drunk. “I’ll, uh, I’ll let you go, then.”

“No, no, don’t hang up yet.”