The English Teacher (18 page)

“Has she always had a few drinks at night?”

“No, not always. I think it was more on weekends, if she went out.”

“Did she go out a lot?”

“Probably once a month.” Peter kept staining, watching how quickly the wood absorbed the color.

Tom nodded, then asked softly, “And would she come home drunk?”

“Not drunk. Not like she couldn’t walk or talk. Just kind of happy. She’s actually a lot nicer that way.” Ever since that fight in the kitchen, he’d wanted to tell Tom this.

“My father drank himself into his grave before he was fifty.” Tom’s voice was slow and hard and his mouth had fallen down into his chin. “I won’t let that happen to anyone else I love.”

The front door and all the first-story windows of the Larabys’ house were open. As he and Jason crossed a circle of wet grass, the
machinelike hum they’d hardly been aware of broke into separate human voices. Kristina. Kristina would be here. His heart thumped heavily. Peter could see people holding beers.

“Aren’t they worried about the neighbors telling?” he said.

“What neighbors?”

It was true. The property was encased in woods; the last house Peter had seen was miles back.

“I’m going to get laid tonight,” Jason said.

“Yeah, right.” But Jason’s confidence made him uneasy, and Peter worried that that was how you had to be to get a girl, even just to kiss a girl.

They stepped into the front hall, where a group of seniors leaned against paintings on the wall.

“Hey, J-man,” Kent Scully said. “Keg’s in the kitchen.”

“Cool.”

Peter wasn’t exactly sure what a keg looked like. Jason was starting to know a lot more than he did. Peter watched him lead the way, greeting juniors and seniors, being greeted. There was no mockery in it anymore for him. Peter got the same twisted smiles and the funny voices he got in the hallways at school. “Does your mommy-mommy know where you are?” he heard someone say behind him. Peter had learned to block it out. Kristina was his only thought. It was the only thought he’d ever had since he’d started going to parties. And so useless. He’d heard that week at school that she’d broken up with Brian again, but even that, if he was really honest with himself, would never matter.

They passed a small den filled with kids from his grade holding plastic cups and trying to act like they’d been to senior parties before. Kristina, who certainly didn’t have to fake that, would never be among them.

Scott Laraby, the host, lay spread-eagle and fast asleep on the kitchen table. A girl with a few of Scott’s features, the same stunned
eyes and pushed-in nose, was in the corner, operating what Peter guessed was the keg. It didn’t need an operator—all you had to do was press a little button at the end of a hose—but she had put herself on a stool with the cups stacked between her knees just to be able to talk to everybody. It was the kind of thing Peter would do if he had the chance, and it made him instantly dislike her.

He and Jason got in line.

“Easy does it this round, sailor,” she said to a guy in a blue-and-white-striped shirt.

When it was their turn Jason asked if she was Scott’s sister.

She nodded at her brother, passed out on the table. “Some girls have all the luck.”

“So why don’t you go to Fayer?”

“Oh, it was decided long ago I’m not private school material. Red or blue?”

“Whichever’s bigger,” Jason said, though of course he knew the cups were the same size.

“You like ’em big?” she said.

“Always have.”

Peter was left out of these kinds of provocative, senseless exchanges. He couldn’t respond to them any better than he could initiate them. As if sensing this, Scott’s sister handed Peter a blue cup without a word and poured. Other people, even girls, even now Jason, exuded something he did not. He was as bland as water, as unremarkable as air. He and his cup of foam moved on while Jason stayed at the keg bantering with the sister.

Peter had no choice but to head to the room of tenth graders. He took the long way around, glancing into the dining room. At the far end of the long table was Kristina with two guys he’d never seen before, older guys, maybe even older than seniors. She was holding a small pleated paper cup, the kind you rinse with at the dentist’s, up to the mouth of a bottle with a fancy gold necklace
around it. When it was full, she knocked back the liquor in one swallow. Her throat was much paler than her face and arms. The guys were smiling at each other. Peter knew what they were after; probably Kristina knew, too. She wouldn’t want him to intervene. Although the sight disgusted him, something—that oval of pale skin, the already drunken shape of her lips—aroused him and he tugged down the front of his sweatshirt over the tightening of his pants.

He tried to imagine Stuart at this party, standing with his perfect posture. He’d drink water instead of beer and make it seem cool. In a half hour he’d be able to get any girl he wanted. Trying to invoke Stuart’s spirit through the meditative techniques he’d taught him, Peter straightened his spine, became aware of his organs, and dissolved his tension. He took a long deep breath, a long gulp of beer, and vowed he’d fool around with someone, nearly anyone (it didn’t have to be Kristina—it could never be Kristina), tonight.

When he turned away from the dining room, he noticed that the three most lusted-after junior girls were watching him. He tried to look at them the way Stuart looked at his girls through the window, pleased but unsurprised. They buckled, all three of them, to the floor in heaves of laughter. He retreated immediately to the den, grateful for the flat chests and sympathetic voices of the unpopular girls.

Jenny Mead made room for him in the circle. She asked about the game yesterday, and about the French test he’d barely passed. As she listened, she ran a finger around the lip of her cup. Did she have a thing for him? He could see her searching for another topic.

“Your mom’s the hardest English teacher I’ve ever had,” she said at last.

Everyone said this to him. “Really?” he said, stretching his spine as high as it would go. She was tall, and her bushy hair didn’t help.

“I don’t understand what she’s talking about half the time.” But Jenny had clear blue-green eyes and a small nose like a fawn’s. It wouldn’t be awful, kissing her.

“She probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about either.”

Jenny snorted, her upper lip revealing too much gum. He looked away, at a funny kind of sofa across the room. It was like a figure eight, with the two cushioned seats facing in opposite directions.

“Are you close, you and your mom?”

Girls loved to ask him this. “I guess,” he said. Then he looked at the little sofa as if he were just noticing it for the first time. “The guy who made that must have lost his job pretty quick.”

Jenny laughed, though he could tell it was fake. “It’s a Victorian love seat.”

He’d been about to ask her if she wanted to sit in it, but he couldn’t now that she’d used the word love. They stood there staring at it.

“Should we try it out?” she said. In the end, girls were so much braver.

Peter chose the seat that faced the doorway, in case Kristina walked by. It was far more comfortable than it looked.

“Hey.” Jenny’s face was unnaturally close. It was a Victorian make-out couch. Stuart would kiss her right now. Right
now.
But Peter couldn’t.

Disappointed but not discouraged, she asked, “What kind of things do you talk about?”

“When?”

“With your mom?”

“Let’s see.” He knew it had to be provocative. “Marijuana, condoms, pornography—the usual topics.”

She flung her head back, leaving her mouth wide open. He couldn’t tell if she was really laughing now or just putting together
all the elements of laughing—except the sound. When she tipped her head forward again, she said, “No, really. Does she ever talk about what she was like when she was our age? I mean, some teachers you can completely imagine as teenagers, but your mom …” Jenny’s clear eyes widened as if she were staring into the pitch dark. “No amount of rationality can convince you that she was ever young.”

He’d forgotten that if you talked to Jenny Mead long enough, her sentences would start getting weird.

He looked around the room for other possibilities. The handful of other girls were either unobtainable or unthinkable. He had this awful feeling that Kristina had left the party with those two guys. It was Jenny Mead or nothing. The thought of hinting to Stuart when he got home that he had gotten some action spurred him on.

“Of course my mother was young once. She was wild. She grew up in Skaneateles, New York.”

“I thought she was from the South. She has that accent.”

“She was born in New York, then moved away later. Her parents were so strict they wouldn’t let her go to any parties, so she had to sneak out onto the roof and shimmy down a rope she hid up there.”

“Why wouldn’t her parents let her go out?”

“They were Christian Scientists.” He couldn’t remember exactly what Stuart had said.

“They go to parties. They just don’t go to the hospital.”

“Mormon. Sorry. Mormon.”

“But—”

“Do you want to talk about religion or hear about my mother?”

He meant to be playful but it came out snippy, the way Fran was to him sometimes. He wondered if she, too, didn’t always mean her snips. He remembered his conversation with Tom this afternoon, and his stomach rolled over. It wasn’t just a little chat; it was a warning.

He saw the extent of Jenny Mead’s interest and excitement only as it drained out of her face. Just as he was about to apologize, Kristina came into the den and flopped sideways in an armchair. Alone. Not just her lips but all around her mouth was red, like someone had been scrubbing it clean. Her cheeks were flushed in two bright splotches and her eyes moved around the room without latching onto anything. She was smashed. He remembered a time when she wasn’t like this, when at parties they made lemonade from scratch and had cookie-eating competitions. He remembered Stephen Ball’s birthday party and how she asked to be Peter’s partner in the three-legged race and how when they’d fallen her hair had gone in his mouth and it tasted like pizza he’d said and they’d laughed because she’d actually had three slices of pizza for breakfast. He ached with a love for her that had existed for as long as he could remember.

“It was nice talking to you, Peter,” Jenny said bitterly and rejoined her clique in the corner.

Peter remained in his side of the love seat, pretending to read the spines of the hardcover mysteries on the wall. He tried to catch Kristina’s eye for a sort of comradely shrug about being alone in chairs at a party. But her eyes were three-quarters closed. He didn’t know if she was actually seeing through the quarter that was left, though he remained prepared for anything.

Then one of the older guys from the kitchen was in the doorway. He was pointing Kristina out to someone else, some tall, thickarmed guy with lime-green hair. A swimmer. He crouched in front of her chair and whispered into her right ear. Her feet twitched, her stomach bobbed, then a smile came across her flushed face. It was like he was breathing life into her one puff at a time. When he straightened up and left the room she followed, holding on to his fingers in front of her with both hands.

The swimmer led her up a flight of stairs. It was easy to trail them. Everyone in the hallway and on the staircase was moving, shifting, craning necks in search of a better place or better companions. Peter didn’t recognize any of them. The house was now packed with kids from other schools who had sniffed out a party. They wore varsity jackets from Sutton High and Whaley High and St. Andrew’s Prep. As he climbed he became aware of tension down below. Scott Laraby was awake and asking people to get off the piano. It was a Steinway, he said apologetically. People were arguing in the kitchen. The back of the swimmer’s shirt said B
eer: It’s Not Just for Breakfast Anymore.
Upstairs the hallways were empty but there were small parties in each of the bedrooms he passed. Someone lying stomach-down on a beanbag chair called out to Kristina. She didn’t turn. In one room with a linoleum floor Peter saw an oven and smelled brownies baking. The swimmer opened the next door with one hand and pulled Kristina in with the other. The door shut quickly behind them.

Peter listened. The party below made it impossible to hear within. He gave them thirty seconds to come out. Then he went in.

The swimmer stood a few feet from the door. Peter expected him to be furious, maybe even to punch him, but he just shook his head. “She’s really out of it, man. You can give her a try. I’m not into laying corpses.”

“Get out of here,” Peter said, but the guy was already gone.

Peter pulled the door shut and locked it. The bedroom was huge, with several mahogany bureaus the size of mastodons hulking around its edges. In the center of the bed, her head wrenched up on overstuffed pillows, was Kristina. Her eyelids were still lowered; her eyes didn’t seem to follow his approach.