Nine Inches (5 page)

“It’s not like you need it,” she said.

Jessica blinked and shook her head, as if maybe she hadn’t heard right, and Vicki took advantage of her confusion to snatch the candy bar right out of her hand.

“Hey!” Jessica cried out, loudly enough that several heads snapped in their direction.

Now it was Vicki’s turn to do the ignoring. She marched back to her desk and dropped the stub of the Snickers into her empty wastebasket, where it landed with an unexpectedly resonant thud. By now, everyone in the room was looking at her.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she told them. “Food is not allowed in this room.”

Th
at was it, the whole ridiculous, deeply forgettable incident. Vicki was more than willing to admit that it wasn’t her
fi
nest hour as an educator, but she hadn’t called anyone a fat pig and didn’t think she had anything to apologize for. If anyone was at fault it was Jessica, who’d knowingly broken a rule and then treated a teacher with blatant disrespect. So it was frustrating for Vicki — humiliating, even — to see herself portrayed in a public forum as a nasty woman in un
fl
attering pants, nothing more than a joke to the kids she was trying to help.

Like a lot of people her age, Vicki had grown accustomed to taking the punishment life dished out. Most of the time she didn’t even bother to complain. But every once in a while she found it necessary to stand up and defend her dignity — her worth as a human being — and this was apparently one of those occasions, because a
ft
er the bell rang, instead of sitting quietly at her desk and organizing her papers as the students
fi
led out, she found herself moving toward the door with an unusual sense of purpose, arriving just in time to form a barrier between Jessica Grasso and the hallway. She couldn’t deny that she derived some pleasure from the look of confusion on the girl’s face, the slow-dawning knowledge that she’d been busted.

“Greensleeves,” Vicki told her. “You and I need to talk.”

THEY SHOULD
have had it out there and then, when Vicki had a head of steam and the element of surprise working in her favor, but Jessica was rushing o
ff
to a big chem test; apparently Mr. Holquist took points o
ff
if you were late, even if you had a pass. She o
ff
ered to come back right a
ft
er school let out, but Vicki had to nix that due to a faculty meeting. Not keen on hanging around for an extra hour, Jessica suggested postponing their talk till the morning. Vicki was adamant that it couldn’t wait that long, and a
ft
er a brief, somewhat hectic negotiation, they settled on Starbucks at four-thirty in the a
ft
ernoon.

As soon as she sat down with her cup of green tea, Vicki began to suspect she’d made a mistake in agreeing to meet in the co
ff
ee shop, the atmosphere too mellow and uno
ffi
cial — Joni Mitchell on the sound system, retired men playing chess, young hipsters tapping on their laptops — for the kind of chilly confrontation she’d been rehearsing in her mind.
Th
is conviction only deepened when Jessica arrived a few minutes later, waving to Vicki and miming the act of drinking as she took her place on the co
ff
ee line.
Th
e girl seemed perfectly happy to be there, as if the two of them were regular co
ff
ee buddies, and Vicki found herself momentarily disarmed, unable to muster any of the feelings of anger or shame that had made this rendezvous seem so urgent in the
fi
rst place.

“Sorry I’m late.” Jessica smiled as she took her seat, her cheeks rosy from the damp April breeze. “My mom made me fold the laundry.”

“
Th
at’s okay. I just got here myself.”

“Mmmm.” Jessica sipped from her enormous drink, a clear, domed cup full of what looked like a milk shake with whipped cream on top. “
Th
is is awesome.”

“What is it?”

“Venti caramel Frappuccino.” She held out the cup. “Want some?”

Vicki was horri
fi
ed — there must have been a thousand calories in there — but she just smiled politely and shook her head. What Jessica ate and drank outside of class was none of her business.

“I’m
fi
ne with my tea,” Vicki said. “How’d you do on your chemistry test?”

“Terrible.” Jessica gave a cheerful shrug, as if
terrible
were a synonym for
pretty good.
“I suck at science even worse than I suck at math, if you can believe that.”

“You don’t suck at math. I just don’t think you apply yourself.”

“
Th
at’s exactly what my dad says.”

“You should listen to him.”

Jessica rolled her eyes.
Th
ey were honey-colored, and there was an appealing cluster of freckles spattered across the bridge of her nose that Vicki had never noticed before
. It’s the makeup,
Vicki thought.
She’s not wearing that awful makeup
. She wished she knew the girl well enough to tell her she was better o
ff
without it.

Something caught Jessica’s eye and she leaned to the le
ft
, a look of such longing on her face that Vicki couldn’t help turning to see what had caused it. At a table near the front window, a slender blond woman in a boldly patterned wraparound dress was
fl
irting with a cop, a big-bellied, broad-shouldered man holding a co
ff
ee cup in each hand. He said something that made her laugh, then reluctantly took his leave, shu
ffl
ing backward out the door so he could keep his eyes on her for as long as possible. When he was gone, the woman smiled to herself and re
fl
exively checked the messages on her cell phone. Vicki felt a sharp stab of envy — something that happened to her several times a day — irrational hatred for the smug woman coupled with an intense desire to
be
her, or at least to be looked at the way the cop had looked at her.

“So you read it, huh?”

Vicki turned around, her mind a beat behind the question. She felt
fl
ustered, as if Jessica had caught her in a private moment.

“Excuse me?”

“
Th
at thing I wrote?
Th
at’s why you wanted to talk to me, right?”

“Yes.” Vicki straightened up, hoping to regain some of her teacherly authority. “I was hurt by it. You said some really awful things about me.”

Jessica nodded contritely. “I know.”

“You really need to be more considerate of other people’s feelings.”

“I didn’t think you’d read it.”

“Well, I did.” Vicki’s eyes locked on Jessica’s. “I cried myself to sleep last night.”

“Wow.” Jessica didn’t seem to know what to do with this information, and Vicki wondered if she’d made a mistake in revealing it. “I’m really sorry.”

“I’m only human,” Vicki continued, a slight tremor entering her voice. “You think I like reading about my big backside on the Internet? You think that makes me feel good about myself?”

“Well, how do you think I felt?” Jessica shot back. “You called me a fat pig.”

She said this with such conviction that Vicki couldn’t help wondering if it might actually be true, if she really could have said something so mean and then repressed the memory. But it didn’t make sense. If she’d called Jessica a horrible name like that, she would have remembered. She would have gotten down on her knees and begged for forgiveness.

“I never said that.” Vicki’s voice was calm but insistent. “You know I didn’t.”

“But you thought it.” Jessica was blushing
fi
ercely. “I remember the way you were looking at me. Judging me.
You don’t need that candy bar.
”

“No,” Vicki murmured, but the certainty had drained from her voice. “I wasn’t judging you.”

Jessica took a long pull on her Frappuccino, squinting at Vicki the whole time.

“I didn’t ask to be fat, you know.”

“You’re a lovely girl,” Vicki told her. “You have a very pretty face.”

“My mother tells me that
fi
ve times a day.”

“It’s true.”

“I used to be really cute.” Jessica laughed, but all Vicki heard was pain. “People used to tell me I looked just like my big sister.”

“How old’s your sister?”

“She’s a senior. Jenny Grasso? Cheerleader? Like the hottest girl in the whole school?”

“Oh.” Vicki knew Jenny Grasso. You couldn’t spend a day in Gi
ff
ord High School and not be aware of her. It was like living in America and not knowing about Britney Spears. “I didn’t realize that the two of you — ”

“Why would you? It’s not like we have the same last name or anything.”

“It’s a big school,” Vicki replied lamely. “You could be cousins.”

Jessica shook her head. She didn’t seem upset, just defeated. “Her clothes are so tiny. You can’t believe she
fi
ts in them.”

Vicki had never taught Jessica’s sister, never even spoken to her, but she had an oddly vivid image in her mind of Jenny Grasso walking slowly past her classroom in tight jeans and a pink tank top, clutching a single red rose.

“Do you get along?”

“Sometimes. I mean, she’s pretty nice most of the time. But it kinda sucks living in the same house with her. Boys are always texting her and she’s always going to the mall with her friends and coming home with these really cute out
fi
ts. It’s just — her life’s so great and mine . . .” Jessica’s eyes pleaded with Vicki. “Sometimes I want to kill her.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t see why she gets to have all that and I don’t. It’s like I’m being punished and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“
Th
ere’s no justice.”

Jessica nodded grimly, as if she’d
fi
gured that out a long time ago. “You want to see something?” She picked up her phone, took a couple of swipes at the screen, then handed it to Vicki. “I mean, look at this.”

Even on the small screen, the photograph was heartbreaking. It had been taken on prom night, the two Grasso sisters — the fat one and the pretty one — standing side by side on the stoop of a pale blue house, the camera far enough away that their bodies were visible from the knees up: Jenny in a slinky, low-cut yellow dress, not smiling but looking deeply pleased with the world, Jessica in a tentlike hoodie, grinning till it hurt, her face at once large and indistinct, one beefy arm draped over her sister’s delicate shoulder.

Poor thing,
Vicki thought as she handed back the phone.

“I know,” Jessica said, as if Vicki had spoken the words aloud. “Story of my life.”

“Believe me,” Vicki told her, “I know just how you feel. I mean, I was never petite or anything, just normal-sized. But then I put on
fift
y pounds when I was pregnant with my son. Fi
ft
y pounds, can you believe that? And I couldn’t take it o
ff
. I did Weight Watchers, I fasted, I exercised, I tried every diet in the world, but I just got bigger and bigger. It was like my body was saying,
Guess what, this is how it’s gonna be from now on. Better get used to it.
My husband told me he didn’t care, said he loved me no matter what, but a few years later he le
ft
me for a Chinese woman, I don’t think she weighed a hundred pounds.
Th
ey have three kids now.”

“He sounds like a jerk.”

“I loved him.” Vicki
fl
icked her hand in front of her face as if it wasn’t worth talking about. “
Th
at was almost twenty years ago.”

“You ever get married again?”

“Nope.”

“Any boyfriends?”

“Nothing serious. I was a divorced working mother. Not young and not thin. My phone wasn’t ringing o
ff
the hook.” Vicki hesitated long enough to realize she was making a mistake, then kept going. “For a lot of that time, I had a crush on another teacher.”

Jessica’s eyes widened. “At Gi
ff
ord?”

“I was crazy about this guy. He was divorced, too. We ate lunch together every day, went to the movies with a group of other single teachers, even played on a coed so
ft
ball team. It was a lot of fun.”

“Was it Mr. Oberman?”

“Mr. Oberman?”
Vicki couldn’t help laughing. Dan Oberman was a slovenly history teacher, a sadsack who lived with his mother and had been wearing the same three sweater vests for the past ten years. “You think I’d have a crush on Mr. Oberman?”

“He’s not so bad.”

“Anyway, I got really motivated about walking every day and watching what I ate, and I lost about twenty pounds. I could see he was looking at me in a di
ff
erent way, complimenting my out
fi
ts, and you know, just paying attention, and I
fi
nally decided to go for it. At the faculty Christmas party, I took him aside and told him how I felt. He said he had feelings for me, too. He drove me home that night and we . . .” A bit late, Vicki’s sense of decorum kicked in.

“You hooked up?” Jessica pretended to be scandalized. “Was it Mr. McAdams?”

“He’s a married man.”

“Come on, just tell me.”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we had that one night together and I was so happy. I could see my whole life laid out in front of me.” Vicki laughed at herself, a short, scornful bark. “But he didn’t call the next day, or the day a
ft
er that . . .”

“Or the day a
ft
er that,” Jessica continued. “Been there.”

“Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I called him. He got all serious on me. You know that voice, like a doctor telling you you’re gonna die.
You have to understand, Vicki, I like you a lot but what happened the other night was a mistake. I had too much to drink, blah, blah, blah . . .
”

“Let’s be friends,” Jessica added knowingly. “
Th
at totally sucks.”