Out of the Blue (6 page)

Despite all this, Duncan hired me straight out of a one-year master’s program with no teaching experience. Then when I got sick, he resisted considerable pressure to “retire” me. I was always wondering, though, if I was about to get the ax.

I didn’t feel altogether steady on my feet, and stood in his doorway with one hand on the frame. “I’m sorry. I got involved in a crisis …” I never knew whether to call him Duncan or Dr. Reese. One was too familiar, the other too formal, so I just left it out. “Michelle Cross’s father … maybe you’re aware …”

He gestured for me to sit. “The press is swarming already,” he said. “But since you’re late, we’re going to have to cut this short now. Anna, I’ve had some discussions with Jennifer Matthews’s parents.” He was one of those people who was always using your name when he talked to you. Another politician’s trick.

“The architecture project,” I said. “But I did find it.”

“I’m aware of that, but nonetheless they’re asking me to transfer Jennifer to another homeroom. She’s building her portfolio for her college applications, and they’re concerned about future problems.”

“Oh,” I said. Not much of a response, but this was a cruel twist. I looked forward to Jennifer’s sparkly face every day. Literally sparkly—she wears a lot of glitter in her makeup.

“Was this lapse a factor of your illness, Anna?”

I had given the matter a fair amount of thought already. One does, with MS. You second-guess yourself whenever anything out of the ordinary happens, wondering if a slip of the tongue or a momentary memory loss signals a relapse with permanent and sinister consequences.

“I’m thinking of it in context with the fact that you missed two faculty meetings,” Duncan went on.

I was beginning to hear those drumbeats in my head, like the ones that rattle when you’re approaching the gallows.

“Those are regular weekly meetings, Anna,” Duncan went on. “I know perfectly well how conscientious you are, but some people interpret these oversights as indifference or carelessness. Tell me, has the MS progressed?”

What
I
wanted to know was how he’d become aware of my missing those meetings, although I could make a wild stab at it.

“It’s not easy to measure,” I said, “but I can tell you that I’m feeling confident about my classwork and my relationship with my homeroom students. Will Jennifer really have to move out?”

Duncan nodded. I knew there was more he wasn’t telling me.

“Am I in danger of losing my job?”

There was the tiniest hesitation before the reassurance. “You’re a fine teacher, Anna. I have no intention of losing you.”

Well, there was a non-denial denial if I ever heard one. “I realize that there are drawbacks to having me on the faculty,” I said. “But I hope I make a contribution. I think I’ll know when to quit if I’m no longer effective.” I guess this was probably a lie, but I was desperate.

He stood up and walked around the desk, holding out a huge paw and aiming his Cheshire cat smile at me. I stood also, taking such pains to appear in perfect control that I lunged at him. That wasn’t spasticity! I wanted to say. Nerves, normal nerves!

“I’m glad you took some time with Michelle Cross,” he said, ushering me to the door. “I’m sure she’ll benefit by it.” He slipped through ahead of me and slid off down the hall with that odd walk he had, like he was on coasters.

That was it. There was little sense of relief since I knew I’d just received a serious warning. Furthermore, I realized that I’d left some file folders in the teachers’ lounge—another lapse? I felt myself dragging my feet—incipient foot drop? And I didn’t relish meeting up with anyone on the faculty. I wondered at the wisdom of teaching in a school where I’d been a student for so long. It was too easy to feel relegated back to the ranks of adolescence.

Only one of my colleagues was in the lounge: Leonard Chubb. He was coiled on the couch with his feet tucked under him, shoes on. It always irritated me when he did that. After all, who knew where those shoes had been?

Chubb had a pair of cobra eyes, small black irises that peered out from epicanthic hoods. They told me that he knew exactly where I’d been and why. “‘Morning, Anna,” he said. He also licked his lips a lot, so they were always chapped.

“Don’t ‘’morning’ me, Leonard, you venomous snake. I know exactly what you’ve been up to.” Actually, I just said “‘Morning.”

“How are you feeling?” He swung his filthy dog-doo-covered feet to the floor.

“Great. You?”
You back-stabbing sly grub.
I picked up my notes from the coffee table.

“I wondered who’d forgotten those,” he said. “I could have dropped them by your homeroom.”

And then slithered right on down the hall to Reese’s office to express your concern about my forgetfulness.

But Leonard was a good teacher, especially of poetry. The kids didn’t like him much, but they learned the material.

One of the files fell out of my hands and slid across the floor. Leonard bolted to scoop it up. As he handed it to me he asked, “You sure you’re feeling all right?” I think he’d convinced himself he was looking out for my best interests, and the school’s. He’d decided that everybody, me included, would benefit by my departure.

“Never better” I said. On my way out I turned with an afterthought. “Don’t forget the faculty meeting, Leonard. Monday, four o’clock.”

He blinked his eyes in that slow way, waved, and tucked his feet back under him.

Joe had left a long distance message on the departmental machine and there was another one when I got home, just:
Why haven’t you called me back?
No whine, no blame. I found his unreadable intonation both maddening and sexy. With me, the simplest “hello” waves a huge flag:
I’m happy! I’m mad! I’m tired!
The fact was, I hadn’t spoken with him since our “date,” which was a pretty feeble word to describe what had happened in that pool.

I dialed the number he’d left, something with a 315 area code. “I guess I’ve been trying to figure out what to say to you,” was all I could think up. I heard moonlit pool water lapping at me, and along with it the sudden rush of excitement between my legs. “Damn nation,” I muttered.

He laughed. “Well, that’s a start.”

“I should tell you that I don’t ordinarily behave—”

“Look, Anna, there’s nothing ordinary about any of it. I’m flying in again first thing tomorrow and then I want to take you upstate.”

It was difficult enough adjusting to the fact that I’d had underwater sex with this man on our second date. I wasn’t ready for relatives. I could hear him smiling. “Just up the Taconic Parkway. There’s something I want to photograph. There ought to be some leaves left.”

“Okay,” I said.

Thinking back days later, and ruminating on my resulting scars, both psychic and physical, I probably should have passed. But it seemed like a harmless enough invitation at the time, and truthfully, if he’d asked me to join him on a trek to the Staten Island landfill, I probably would have said yes.

“Excellent,” he said. “I wanted to celebrate Halloween with you.” Our first holiday. It made me wonder if our future held a Thanksgiving or a Christmas. I forced myself to draw the line at New Year’s Eve.

Halloween is busy for Ma, and I made sure she was already at the bakery when Joe was supposed to pick me up. I waited in the lobby with the
New York Times
Saturday killer crossword. I’d pretty much decided Joe was blowing me off, and had already resorted to magic thinking:
If I figure out the answer to 4 Across, he’ll come.
After twenty minutes of mind games, he drove up. The doorman, Big Bob, flung himself at the car so he could check Joe out. Actually, it was a good thing he was there. I needed a hand getting into the front seat.

Joe made a fairly big deal about leaning across to give me a kiss. I refused to look at Big Bob but I could feel his beady eyes making a thorough scrutiny for the future police report:
The perp was wearing a yellow crew-neck sweater, blue jeans, tennis shoes. Hole in left elbow of said sweater…
Big Bob was always ready. He used to be a cop, but got terminated due to what he refers to as “philosophical differences” with his superiors, and subsequently went to work as a bodyguard. His boss, a “Mister G,” was currently conducting business out of maximum security in Ossining, hence the doorman job. Anyhow, Big Bob made me feel very secure in contrast to Joe Malone, whose presence was already giving me
agita.
It was a damn good thing that Bob wasn’t at the door when we got back, considering what I looked like. He would have rolled Joe flat as a lasagne noodle.

“Sorry I’m late,” Joe said. “The garage forgot where they put my car.” Big Bob backed off with a salute as Joe pulled out onto First Avenue. Standard shift. Like many Manhattanites, I find automobiles baffling, even intimidating. Most of us didn’t learn to drive until we were in college, and even then we never approach a steering wheel with the same ease as our suburban contemporaries. Cars are what you rent to get someplace you can’t go by subway.

“What kind of car is this?” I asked.

“A ’seventy-nine BMW.”

“Is that cool?”

“Very,” he said, flashing me a grin. I stared at his profile and marveled at what we had done together in the moonlight, the intimacy of it. After a few blocks, I began to feel as if there was somebody else in the car with us, somebody large and pushy. I wish I could do something about my mouth, like learn to keep it shut, but when there’s something working at me like that, I become physically uncomfortable. I’m reminded of aliens who burst out of people’s chests. Well, there was a beast swelling inside me, and no ignoring it.

“You’re going to have to pull over,” I said.

He shot me a look of alarm.

“No, I’m okay. But I need to say something.”

He pulled next to a fireplug and turned off the ignition.

“What we did …” I started. “I mean, as mature adults we have to address—” He reached for my hand, which didn’t help. “Where was everybody anyway? Up at the pool.” Although the thought had occurred to me that anyone might have stepped out of the locker room, spotted us doing our moonlight water ballet, and made a hasty retreat. Some nice mommy with her little girl, no doubt. Or a nun. Probably a nun.

“Are you sorry?” he asked. “Because I’m not.”

“I’m a teacher, Joe. I spend my professional life trying to train kids to … to construct order out of a chaotic world so they can function safely. The unexpected. So that they’re prepared to handle …” This part I’d rehearsed, but it wasn’t going well.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

A horn blared nearby, one of those ear-splitting truck blasts. It was an exclamation point at the end of my answer.
No, I’m not sorry!

“I should be sorry,” I said, and laid a hand to my chest where the squatter from outer space was squirming to get out. “The thing is, I could do it right here,” I wailed. “I could throw you down on the backseat and jump you right here.”

He laughed, but when he saw my distress he began kissing my fingers one by one. Suddenly I was disgusted with myself—for being craven, for hoping he’d explain the inexplicable, for trying to dump the responsibility on him. I didn’t know what it was I wanted from him anyhow. Absolution, maybe, but more likely exactly what I’d heard, that he wasn’t sorry.

“Let’s just go,” I said, and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. Then I snapped me and my alien into our seat belt and off we went. For no discernible reason, I suddenly felt great.

I’ve noticed that people’s driving styles elucidate their character. I’ll never forget a death-defying trip with Grant Hurst to visit his mother in Connecticut. Grant is one of those drivers who strictly obeys the speed limit but insists on doing it in the left lane. Cars pile up behind him for miles as he coasts serenely along at sixty-five. I once suggested to him that perhaps he might switch lanes, but he just fixed me with his avian eyeballs and pronounced that he was observing the law and so should everyone else. Grant also tends to stray over the white lines when one engages him in conversation, so the wise thing is to keep quiet, close your eyes, and remember to take the bus next time.

Joe, on the other hand, shifted expertly through four gears while negotiating the traffic hurtling up the FDR Drive. He was confident but courteous, occasionally waving other drivers ahead and never cutting anyone off. Here was a man who knew how to take charge yet whose ego would not prevent him from delegating. Portrait of a successful executive. Encouraged to surrender my natural proclivity for backseat driving, I leaned back and watched an airplane from LaGuardia rise into the west.

“What’s your biggest regret?” I asked him.

He smiled at me. “You want to tell me what prompted that?”

It was the plane, but I didn’t want to say so. “You seem rueful sometimes and I can’t tell why.”

“I’m not right now,” he said.

“But you are ducking my question.”

“Give me a minute.”

I’d give him hours as long as I could just sit there and look at him. The dreariness of the Bronx landscape made his beauty all the more startling. Not that there was anything conventionally pretty about Joe, not with that beak and the sheared angularity of his face. But the warmth of his eyes took my breath away. They reminded me of the water I’d once seen on vacation in Florida, when I was little and my father was still around—a mixture of improbable aqua, the pale gold of the sand, and deeper blues and greens. The darker colors seemed to predominate when he was thoughtful, like now. His hands rested comfortably on the wheel. Hands that had moved across my body with such tenderness and skill.

“I could have spent a year studying in Rome,” he said.

It took me a second to haul myself up out of the pool. “During college?” I asked.

He nodded. “My father has family in Tuscany. His mother was Italian. But I was worried about screwing up my grades.” His voice, ordinarily so guarded, was edgy.

“Did you ever just go for a visit?” I asked. “To see your family.”

“I was supposed to, with my brother, but then something happened. I don’t remember exactly what. Something about my mother, her health, though that seems strange. She’s never sick.” I was interpreting like crazy. Misinterpreting, more likely. “It’s been a long time since I thought about that,” he said, then typically threw the ball back into my lap. “What’s your biggest?”

I thought for a second. Interesting that the MS didn’t occur to me, though I guess that’s too complicated for regret.

“When I stuffed Mr. Gross’s correspondence in the wastebasket,” I replied. The alien must have made me say it. I didn’t feel like elaborating but it was too late now. “I had this summer secretarial job in an accounting office when I was in college,” I explained. “I’ve never been so bored in my life. That’s no excuse, I realize. But the very last day, when I was feeling so pleased with myself—a paycheck, then two weeks at the beach before school started up again—I was cleaning out my desk and here was a pile of mail all done up in a rubber band dating back to June first. I’d somehow neglected to give it to Mr. Gross. He had this terrible toupee.” I glanced at Joe. “That’s no excuse either. So I was petrified he’d yell at me and probably wouldn’t pay me. When nobody was looking, I buried it at the bottom of my wastebasket. There. Now you know the worst.”

It had been truly awful. The incident clearly indicated a fatal flaw in my character. There were times I even believed I’d gotten MS as a punishment for trashing Mr. Gross’s mail. I imagined a crucial piece of correspondence:
Dear Mr. Gross: You have been selected to represent your company in Geneva at the upcoming International Association of Accountants. If you wish to accept this extraordinary honor, which is the accountants’ equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize, please answer by return mail
… I’d been too panicked to check. I imagined that Mr. Gross had been reprimanded or even fired on account of my cowardice. He was supporting a wife and a bald baby who looked just like him. Six months later, I’d woken Ma in the middle of the night to confess. We drank tea in bed and talked.

“So what do you want to do about it?” she had asked me.

“I don’t know. Own up.”

“Which would result in what?”

“I guess I’d sleep a lot better.”

“What would it do for Mr. Gross?”

I thought it over. “Not a lot.”

“We all screw up, babe. Sometimes badly. You’d better find a way to live with the damage because it won’t be the last time.”

I had toyed with the idea of converting to Catholicism—the truly appealing notion of confession and forgiveness. Obviously, Mr. Gross was still peering over my shoulder, toupee askew and reeking of breath mints.

“Does that qualify as tampering with the mail?” I asked Joe. “I bet they could have sent me to jail.”

Joe was driving in the fast lane now, and kept shooting glances at me.

He shook his head, absently and I could see he had something on his mind. Maybe he hadn’t even heard my heart-rending confession.

“You look great,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I keep thinking back to the wheelchair,” he said. “It’s hard to believe.”

“Mm,” I said, not helping him out. If he was inclined to spend time with me, he’d have to learn to ask the hard questions. Otherwise, I felt we might as well kiss the whole thing good-bye right now.

There was silence for half a mile. A sign announced that we’d entered Westchester County. I hadn’t been out of the city for such a long time, not since before my last relapse. Scarsdale seemed as exotic as the Desert of the Kalahari.

“Are you pain-free?” he went on. “What I mean is, how would you know you have MS, right now?”

It was unusual for him to raise the subject, and I wanted to be careful with my response. The temptation was to lie, to tell him that if he stopped the car I could do a couple hundred push-ups. On the other hand, there was no reason to regale him with this morning’s ritual, when I crawled out of bed so stiff that I had to grab on to the edge of my dresser in order to take my first steps. Then the miniexercises to get myself limbered up enough to grip a toothbrush. This morning I’d experienced my yin and yang syndrome in the shower. As if I were split down the middle from mid-torso to knees, half of me couldn’t feel the water at all and the other half seemed scalded. It doesn’t happen every day, but more frequently as the months go by. Also, Joe hadn’t noticed my difficulty getting into his car. My left leg wouldn’t bend, so Big Bob had to sort of back me in. It was natural for Joe to have questions. Any relationship with me meant a relationship with my disease as well.

“For one thing,” I said, “I feel like I’m wearing a corset around my midsection. The left side of me burns as if I’ve been out in the sun too long. And my feet feel as if they’re tap dancing but they’re not moving.” I thought a minute. “I think that’s all at the moment. It varies.” I looked at him and saw the dismay on his face. “I’m sorry, Joe. But it’s not so bad and you did ask.” I let it sink in for a minute. Then I said, “Can we talk about your rear end now?”

He laughed, and some of the sun-drenched seawater flooded back into his eyes. “What about it?”

“I’ve been meaning to complain. It’s messed up my mantra.”

The traffic had thinned out and the road north stretched into a landscape of rolling hills and woods. Joe was right, that there were still some bright autumn leaves clinging to the upper branches. “When I was first diagnosed,” I went on, “my neurologist suggested that I find a word or a sound to use as a response to stress. It’s a relaxation technique. I chose the word ‘moon.’”