The English Teacher (20 page)

“Kristina?”

Her eyes swam up slowly toward him. “Mmm?”

Her hands were gathered under her chin. He took one out and held it in both of his. It was warm and sticky. “Do you think you might have a problem, a problem with drinking too much alcohol like this, at parties?” Oh God, why had he said it? She had a vicious temper. She would bolt.

But she didn’t move. She just squeezed his hand hard. “Sometimes I think I might,” she whispered. “Oh God, Peter, I don’t want to be drunk right now. I wish I could just take a pill and feel normal. I don’t know what happens. The idea of going to a party and not being buzzed—and now my father’s going to come and—”

“Damn.” Peter looked at the clock. “It’s eleven-thirty-seven.”

“Shit!” She sat up as he knew she would. “Holy fuck. He’s here.
He’s never late.” She slapped her face. “And he’s going to know. He’s going to know.”

Out in the hallway her name was being called.

“See? He’s incapable of being late.”

“There’s a back staircase. There has to be. C’mon.” He yanked her up, unlocked the door, and led her down the hall, away from the way he came. People were yelling her name outside and in. He released his grip on her arm and took her hand. It felt familiar already. Why hadn’t he kissed her?

They came to a stairwell. He’d kiss her there at the bottom, before he delivered her to her father. With her free hand she wiped away tears and patted her face. “Sorry, I was in the bathroom,” she said to herself, practicing.

The steps bent around to the kitchen. Sarah was at the bottom looking up. “Jesus Christ. There you are. Your father is having a shit fit out there.”

Kristina let go of Peter, pushed past him, as if he’d been in her way this whole time. “Daddy, I’m right
here,
” he heard her call out, irritated, as if the only trouble had been her father’s eyesight.

From the front hall window, Peter watched them walk out into the driveway. Her father was examining her and she was pretending not to notice. When he had decided she was sober, he put his arm around her shoulder and guided her to the green Mercedes whose license plate, 210514, Peter knew by heart. She rolled down the window and waved to people on the grass as her father turned the car around. She didn’t look toward the house. Perhaps she had already forgotten him.

Carla came at midnight, and when they got on the highway, Jason leaned into the front seat. “Can you turn it up a bit?” This meant he wanted to talk. He sat back and waited for Peter to ask.

“You and the sister?”

“An hour and a half in the poolhouse.” Jason shut his eyes.

“Sounds cold.”

“I was amazing.”

“You were amazing?”

“I think she must have had fourteen orgasms.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

If Peter asked anything more specific, Jason would get prickly, so he kept quiet. Up front they were giggling. The roommate kept wiping the fogged-up windshield with what looked like a brown bra.

“So where were you?” Jason asked, expecting little.

“With Kristina.”

“Kristina
Luhzin
?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Yes,” Peter said. A small elated laugh slipped out.

“Where?”

“Upstairs.”

“In a bedroom?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“We talked.”

“Talked? I saw her. She was bombed.”

“I was trying to sober her up. Before her father came.”

“You were alone in a bedroom with her all that time and nothing happened? You got nothing off her?”

“A lot
happened.
I mean, I could have kissed her. She wanted me to, I think.”

“But you didn’t.”

“She was drunk.”

“Of course she was drunk. That’s the
point
of parties. Girls get drunk because they want us and can’t ask for it unless they’re drunk.”

“Kristina doesn’t want me.”

Even Jason couldn’t argue with that. “Well, she asked for it tonight and you didn’t have the cojones to do it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck me? Try fucking her.”

Peter had never hit anyone before, not like that. It didn’t even feel like a decision—he just watched his right fist cross his chest and smash into Jason’s face. Jason pummeled him four or five blows so fast he couldn’t get another swipe at him. Carla was swearing at them in the rearview mirror and just when Peter was about to land another solid punch, he was shoved hard against the door handle. The roommate was sprawled above them like a hawk, one flat palm pressed against Peter’s chest, the other against Jason’s.

“Fucking cut it out.” They were the only words he ever heard her say.

She flexed her arms, shoving him and Jason simultaneously slightly farther apart, then withdrew and settled in even closer to Carla.

Why
hadn’t
he kissed Kristina? Why had just lying there talking to her been enough? Why hadn’t he jumped her with the same unconscious passion and urgency with which he had just punched Jason? That’s what it was like for other guys in love. In movies they leapt out of chairs, dashed across rooms, clutched and grabbed and pressed themselves against the women they loved. Why hadn’t he had any of those impulses? Why was he so self-conscious, so controlled? What was wrong with him? Was he gay?

It was a long ride home. Peter told himself he wasn’t going to say anything to any of them when he got out of the car, but a small “thanks” slipped out anyway.

The house had not been waiting for him, not the way his old house waited, the way it seemed glad when his feet touched the porch steps in the afternoon. When he lived there, he’d never really thought of it as home. Home was something in books and always had more than two people living in it. Home wasn’t a borrowed gardener’s cottage on a school campus, even if it had once belonged to his grandparents. But now he missed the smell of it, a blend of cheese popcorn and wet dog. They still bought the cheese popcorn, and Walt still smelled, but the Belou house had its own smell that he and his mother would never alter, no matter what they brought into it.

He could see that someone, probably Stuart, was still up watching TV. Normally the prospect of hanging out on the couch with Stuart would have cheered him, but tonight he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. He shut the door quietly and headed to his room. But he felt bad, felt rude, not even saying hi, and he glanced over to give at least a wave. It was Fran on the couch, her head turned away from him, one knee drawn up to her cheek. And she was shaking.

“Fran?”

She shook her head. “Just go to bed, Peter.”

He moved to obey, then heard a huge gasping sob, as if she’d been carefully holding it in since he’d come through the door.

“Are you okay?” He moved closer and sat at the far edge of the couch.

“She hates me. She hates me so much.” She raised her head, and her mouth, readying for another sentence, opened then kept opening, far wider than necessary, and the lips quivered as she struggled and failed to get control of it. A long moan careened out instead, ending in sharp, short cries. After a deep breath she said, “I was just talking about this stupid book I got out of the library and suddenly she’s screaming at me, wanting to know my ‘position,’ telling me to clarify and then going on about ‘girls like me’ and how our brains are jellyfish or something. God, Peter, no wonder you’re so—”

“What book?” He couldn’t bear to hear her adjective for him.

“
The Thorn Birds.
”

“Oh. She hates that kind of book.”

“Aren’t English teachers supposed to
like
books? My teacher last year used to cry when he read us poetry. All I did was tell her what it was about and before I knew it she was screaming at me.” She broke down again and hid her head.

“You can’t take it personally. It’s how she is about stuff like that.”

“I was trying so hard.” She wiped her nose, which was red and wet, and then wiped her palm on her shirt. It made a long filmy streak. In someone else he might have found that a little disgusting but Fran was exempt in his mind from those kinds of judgments. She did everything with such self-confidence he didn’t dare question her, even to himself. It was this composure that made her tears, her complete lack of control of her mouth, so disturbing to him. She usually operated with such coolness and detachment, like nothing could ever really bother her.

“Things began really well. After I put Caleb to bed, it was just the three of us and Dad seemed happy that I was there, hanging out.” He couldn’t help noticing that her shirt was tighter than most things she wore and he could see, against her thigh, the outline of her right breast. “Daddy told his story about breaking his collarbone on a date in high school and your mother was laughing. Then she told us about a straight-A student who always had to wear this white fur hat of his grandmother’s during tests. But then we started talking about books and she just snapped.” Fran’s face twisted up and her voice creaked but she was determined to get her next sentence out. “My mother never ever …” The rest of her words got lost in another long moan.

Peter touched her back. She was crying so hard he wasn’t sure she could even feel his hand. He gave her a few pats, then began stroking her slightly. Her spine was like a row of marbles down her
back, nothing like Kristina’s padded bones. The memory of touching Kristina made his stomach hollow. Why hadn’t he kissed her? What was wrong with him?

“I don’t think my father has the strength to deal with all her problems. He’s been through so much already. It doesn’t seem fair.” She began to cry so hard now that she made no sound at all except a little click click deep in her mouth. Peter let his fingers drift up to the ends of her hair and, on the next stroke, to her head. It was hot and moist at the roots. His heart was pounding so hard, harder than it had even with Kristina. With her head still down, Fran said, “I don’t understand her. She’s not like any other mother I’ve ever known. She’s lucky you’re such a … good kid. You could have turned out really badly. You could fly to the moon and back and she wouldn’t even know you’d gone. She doesn’t wash your clothes or tell you to pick up your room or even kiss you hello or good night or anything. She just reads her books, mixes her drinks, and smokes her cigarettes so she can get cancer one way or another and die, too.” Peter barely heard her through the racing of his blood, daring him, urging him. She was talking and he was touching and she hadn’t told him to stop. He watched his hand disappear into the hair in the back of her head. Then he felt it rising up and she looked at him for the first time that night. His hand was still tangled in her hair. “You’re bleeding,” she said. And he kissed her.

It was wet and salty with tears and blood and when she opened her mouth Peter did the same and their tongues met and it felt slimy, like kissing Walt. It felt like being a tadpole more than being human, a tadpole with a tiny brain and a big mouth and everything wet and silty all around. A rattle of breath from her nose poured out onto his cheek and he was so focused on his mouth he didn’t know what he was doing with his hands though they were moving the whole time. It was noisy, this kind of kissing, and the noise made him like it even more. And then, in an instant, that whole briny, underwater
world became memory. She hit him hard on the upper arm and stood up, wiping everything off her mouth. She was still crying as she told him he was gross and shouldn’t be kissing his stepsister. Then she disappeared down the hall to her room.

Peter waited a long time before he got up. In the bathroom, Mrs. Belou was stern.

I thought it might come to this.

I’m sorry.

She’s my little girl.

I know.

You don’t know. What do you or your mother know about anything?

Peter turned away from the picture to the mirror. No wonder you’re so—What had she been going to say? Wimpy? Boring? Dense? “Unfocused” and “distant” were words that appeared regularly on his report cards. Was his mother somehow responsible for that? He’d never thought of his mother in this way. She was like a building to him, tall, brick, permanently adjacent and absolutely necessary, whose shape he had never questioned, whose shadow he had never noticed until he stepped back and stood with the Belous at a safe distance. Now he could see the dilapidated frame, the broken windows, the rotting roof.

He sat on the toilet cover looking at the thin hand towels with the embroidered bluebells and the jar of dried petals on top of the wicker cabinet—decorations his mother would never have chosen. She would have left all those places bare and ugly.

He thought of how, not all that long ago and for as long into the past as he could remember, he used to fear her absence, and how the sound of the Dodge pulling up beneath his window could make him whimper with relief. He doubted he could ever feel that way about her again and for a moment, as the great building was razed swiftly to the ground, he felt guilty and ashamed. Then he turned back to the picture and saw a deepening smile.