Nine Inches (6 page)

“I’ll tell you what sucks.
Th
ree months later he got engaged to a pretty, young gym teacher. And guess who got invited to their wedding? Good old Vicki.”

“Mr. Turley?” Jessica gasped. “You hooked up with Mr. Turley?”

“It was just that once.”

“He’s cute for an old guy,” Jessica said. “Didn’t Ms. Leoni just have a baby?”

“Yeah. Sweet little boy.”

“Ouch.”

Vicki nodded.
Ouch
was right. She didn’t tell Jessica about how drunk she’d gotten at the wedding, how the bride’s mother found her crying in the bathroom and listened to Vicki’s confession of her love for the groom with surprising compassion, telling Vicki that she understood how hard it must be, that she’d gone through something similar back when she was single.
You have to forget him,
she said.
You have to move on with your life.

Jessica slurped the last of her Frappuccino and studied Vicki with a look of anxious sympathy. “You think you’re ever gonna meet someone else?”

Vicki wasn’t surprised by the question. It was something she’d asked herself frequently in recent years. If she’d been honest, she would’ve said that she’d come to the conclusion that Mr. Turley had been her last shot, and that she’d pretty much resigned herself to spending the remainder of her life alone. But it was clear from the way Jessica was looking at her — hungrily, with the kind of focus Vicki rarely inspired in the classroom — that she was asking an entirely di
ff
erent question.

“Of course,” Vicki told her. “Of course I’ll meet someone. I just have to be patient.”

THAT NIGHT
she ate dinner alone, graded some homework assignments she should’ve handed back a week ago, and called her son, who was a junior at Rutgers. As usual, Ben didn’t pick up, so she just le
ft
a brief message:
Hey, honey, it’s your mom. Give me a call when you get a chance. Love you.
Th
en she watched an episode of
CSI: Miami
and the
fi
rst part of the news before
fi
nally working up the nerve to turn on her computer.

She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous. She and Jessica had parted on good terms, joking in the Starbucks parking lot about heading across the street to Bruno’s for a large sausage-and-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. It was early evening, and the light had seemed unusually so
ft
and forgiving as they said goodbye. Le
ft
to her own devices, Vicki wasn’t much of a hugger — she saw how people hesitated sometimes, and it took a lot of the pleasure out of it — but Jessica didn’t share her qualms. Before Vicki understood what was happening, the girl was moving toward her with her arms out, their two bodies bumping together, the sensation so familiar it was almost as if she were embracing herself.

“So,” Jessica said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay.” Vicki felt a sudden odd emptiness as the girl let go. She was surprised to realize that she was close to tears “You have a nice night.”

Jessica had promised to delete the o
ff
ensive post on grademyteacher.com, and Vicki was pretty sure she trusted her to keep her word. Still, she felt a vague sense of foreboding as she scrolled down the alphabetical list of Gi
ff
ord teachers — there was Becky Leoni (6.7) and good old Sam Turley (7.2) — a queasy suspicion that something unpleasant was about to unfold.

But it was okay.
Th
e post was gone, wiped away as if it had never even existed. Vicki felt a moment of pure satisfaction — justice had been done, a crooked thing made straight — as well as a rush of a
ff
ection for the girl, who really was a lovely person despite the awful things she’d written. Her attack was just a projection, an attempt to displace negative feelings for herself onto someone else. Vicki understood all too well how that sort of thing worked.

Her relief didn’t last for long, though. Without meaning to, she found herself reading the review that had taken the place of Jessica’s at the top of the Vicki Wiggins’s page on grademyteacher.com. It was several months old, written by a student who called himself “Mr. Amazing”:

All in all Ms. Wiggins is a pretty good math teacher, except she’s pretty strict about stupid little things. Like she gave this one kid detention cause his cellphone rang in class. Ok he should have turned it o
ff
, but was it his fault that someone called him? But like I said she’s not that bad. I don’t care what anybody says there is no way she’s more boring than Mr. Ferrone.

Vicki had read this post when it
fi
rst appeared and had barely given it a second thought. It was actually pretty good as far as these things went — Mr. Amazing had given her a higher-than-average overall rating of 6.0 — but right now it just seemed heartbreaking. Was this what she would be remembered for when all was said and done?
Th
at she gave some kid detention for a minor o
ff
ense?
Th
at maybe — just maybe — she wasn’t as mind-numbingly dull as Dennis Ferrone?

I have so much to o
ff
er
.
And no one even notices.

For a few seconds, she thought about approaching Jessica a
ft
er class tomorrow, suggesting that she post a new, more generous review on the site just to set the record straight. But it was a lot to ask. And the thought of making such a request was embarrassing beyond words.

She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but it did. It just did. Why wouldn’t it? She was a good person, she worked hard, and it seemed crazy — crazy and wrong — that these things went unacknowledged.

It turned out to be easier than she expected to register on grademyteacher.com. You just typed in an e-mail address and checked a box that said
I
AM
A
STUDENT
AT
GIFFORD
HIGH
SCHOOL
.
She chose the username Frappuccinogrrrl and wrote the following in the comments box:

My math teacher Vicki Wiggins is really nice. She’s pretty and really cares about us kids. Like if you were having a problem she’d meet you a
ft
er school and try to make you feel better because she just wants everybody to be happy. And she knows a lot about math too.

Th
ere was more to say — much more — but space was limited and she decided to stop there. She checked her work, pressed
SEND
, and turned o
ff
her computer.
Th
ere would be time enough in the morning to wake up and drink a cup of co
ff
ee, then maybe google herself before heading o
ff
to work. It would be nice, she thought, clicking on her own name and, just for once,
fi
nding something that felt like the truth.

TH
E SMILE ON
HAPPY CHANG’S FACE

THE SUPERIOR WALLCOVERINGS WILDCATS WERE
playing in the Little League championship game, and I wanted them to lose. I wanted the Town Pizza Ravens and their star pitcher, Lori Chang, to humiliate them, to run up the score and taunt them mercilessly from the
fi
rst-base dugout. I know this isn’t an admirable thing for a grown man to admit — especially a grown man who has agreed to serve as home-plate umpire — but there are feelings you can’t hide from yourself, even if you’d just as soon chop o
ff
your hand as admit them to anyone else.

I had nothing against the Wildcat players. It was their coach I didn’t like, my next-door neighbor, Carl DiSalvo, the Kitchen Kabinet King of northern New Jersey. I stood behind the backstop, feeling huge and bloated in my cushiony chest protector, and watched him hit in
fi
eld practice. A shamelessly vain man, Carl had ripped the sleeves o
ff
his sweatshirt, the better to display the rippling muscles he worked for like a dog down at Bally’s. I knew all about his rippling muscles. Our driveways were adjacent, and Carl always seemed to be returning from an exhilarating session at the gym just as I was trudging o
ff
to work in the morning, my head still foggy from another rotten night’s sleep.

“I’m getting pretty bu
ff
,” he would tell me, proudly rubbing his pecs or biceps. “Wish I’d been built like this when I was younger.”

Fuck you,
I invariably thought, but I always said something polite like “Keep it up” or “I gotta start working out myself.”

Carl and I had known each other forever. In high school we played football together — I was a starter, a second-team all-county linebacker, while Carl barely dirtied his uniform — and hung out in the same athletic crowd. When he and Marie bought the Detmeyers’ house nine years ago, it had seemed like a lucky break for both of us, a chance to renew a friendship that had died of natural causes when we graduated and went our separate ways — me to college and into the management sector, Carl into his father’s remodeling business. I helped him with the move, and when we
fi
nished, we sat on my patio with our wives, drinking beer and laughing as the summer light faded and our kids played tag on the grass. We called each other “neighbor” and imagined barbecues and block parties stretching far into the future.

“Nice pickup, Trevor,” he called to his third baseman. “But let’s keep working on that throw, okay, pal?”

Go fuck yourself,
I thought.
Okay, pal?

•••

“JACKIE
BOY
.”
Tim Tolbert, the
fi
rst-base umpire and president of the Little League, pummeled my chest protector as though it were a punching bag. “Championship
game
.” He looked happier than a grown man has a right to be. “
Very
exciting.”

As usual, I wanted to grab him by the collar and ask what the hell he had to be so cheerful about. He was a baby-faced, prematurely bald man who sold satellite dishes all day, then came home to his wife, a scrawny exercise freak obsessed with her son’s peanut allergy. She’d made a big stink about it when the kid entered kindergarten, and now the school cafeteria wasn’t allowed to serve PB&J sandwiches anymore.

“Very exciting,” I agreed. “Two best teams in the league.”

“Not to mention the two best umps,” he said, giving me a brotherly squeeze on the shoulder.

Th
is much I owed to Tim — he was the guy who convinced me to volunteer as an umpire. He must have known how isolated I was feeling, alone in my house, my wife and kids living with my mother-in-law, nothing to do at night but stare at the TV and stu
ff
my face with sandwich cream cookies. I resisted at
fi
rst, not wanting to give people a new opportunity to whisper about me, but he kept at it until I
fi
nally gave in.

And I loved it. Crouching behind the plate, peering through the bars of my mask, my whole being focused on the crucial, necessary di
ff
erence between a ball and a strike, I felt clearheaded and almost serene, free of the bitterness and shame that were my constant companions during the rest of my life.

“Two best umps?” I glanced around in mock confusion. “Me and who else?”

An errant throw rolled against the backstop, and Carl jogged over to retrieve it. He grabbed the ball and straightened up, turning to Tim and me as if we’d asked for his opinion.

“Kids are wound tight,” he said. “I keep telling them it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but I don’t think they believe me.”

Carl grinned, letting us know he didn’t believe it, either. Like me, he was in his midforties, but he was carrying it o
ff
with a little more panache than I was. He had thick gray hair that made for a striking contrast with his still-youthful body, and a gap between his front teeth that women supposedly found irresistible (at least that’s what Jeanie used to tell me). His thick gold necklace glinted in the sun, spelling his name to the world.

“You’re modeling the proper attitude,” Tim told him. “
Th
at’s all you can do.”

Th
e previous fall, a guy named Joe Funkhauser, the father of one of our high school football players, got into an argument with an opposing player’s father in the parking lot a
ft
er a bitterly contested game. Funkhauser beat the guy into a coma and was later charged with attempted murder.
Th
e Funkhauser Incident, as the papers called it, attracted a lot of unfavorable attention to our town and triggered a painful round of soul-searching among people concerned with youth sports. In response to the crisis, Tim had organized a workshop for Little League coaches and parents, trying to get them to focus on fun rather than competition, but it takes more than a two-hour seminar to change people’s attitudes about something as basic as the di
ff
erence between winning and losing.