What Has Become of You (11 page)

I am not sure I understand concepts of Ego. In my culture you think of the community. You think what is best for everyone not just what is best for myself. Thinking “What is Best for Myself” is Western thinking. I think of my family, my parents, my brothers and sisters and how I can make them proud. I do not think Ego needs to exist. I think Ego only leads to bad and evil things like things you speak of in class.

“Miss Lundy?”

Vera looked up from her reading and saw a student from her later afternoon class standing there, looking sheepish. It was Kaitlyn Fiore, a girl who always had an anxious, scrunched face and had already started emailing Vera to ask her lots of unnecessary questions about the readings and the assignments. “Miss Lundy, I just wanted you to know I typed my journals, but I couldn’t print them out for today. My ink cartridge ran out. I hope I don’t get late points taken off for this because it really wasn’t my fault.”

Vera took a few moments to negotiate something that would ease the student’s distress. She had finally sent her on her way and was about to return to the journals when another face appeared in the classroom doorway—that of Sue MacMasters. She looked blonder than Vera remembered. Was Vera supposed to acknowledge this? Compliment it? She had no sense of etiquette when it came to such matters.

“Vera! How are you?”

“I’m doing well, Sue, thank you. Reading the first major writing assignments. The first ones they’ve written for
me
, I should say. That’s always an interesting experience.”

“A bunch of us from the English department are going to get a bite in the cafeteria at twelve thirty. Why don’t you meet us over in the teacher’s lounge, and we’ll all go over together? We’d love to have you sit with us.”

Just like high school,
Vera thought, though in high school no one would have professed to
love
to have her sit with them. She had, in reality, spent most of her high school lunch periods hiding in a bathroom stall. Sue’s tone and phrasing didn’t seem to suggest that Vera had a choice in the matter; the bathroom stall was not going to be an option this time around.

“I’ll come by,” Vera said weakly.

“It’ll be a good opportunity for you to get to know some of the other teachers in the department better,” Sue said, “and for them to get to know you. See you then.”

 • • • 

Lunch period found Vera seated with nine other English teachers and Sue MacMasters. The women had all greeted her politely, but after a full round of introductions, Vera found that she could not tell her dining companions apart. She recognized Karen Provencher, the eleventh-grade English teacher whom she saw in the hall sometimes, but the others, despite their wide range of ages, all had a similar manner—bright, alert, cool, privileged. The woman sitting next to her, a ninth-grade teacher who looked as though she had just graduated from college, was wearing an earring-and-necklace set that probably cost more than Vera had earned at Dorset Community College in the past year. Vera picked at her salad, willing some of it to disappear. She hated eating in front of people she didn’t know very well. She had grown so accustomed to having her meals at the little table in her studio, eating messy foods with barbaric abandon, licking her fingers while downloading TV programs on her laptop.

Sue’s insistence that the English department would
love
to have her at lunch had been an overstatement, by Vera’s estimation. Once the faculty had looked Vera up and down and asked what college she’d gone to and whom she’d studied with, they seemed utterly finished with her and even started asking Sue, “Have you heard anything about Melanie and the baby yet? Are they going to induce labor?” Melanie was Melanie Belisle, the pregnant teacher whom Vera had replaced.

“Do you have any children, Vera?” the woman sitting across from her said. Before she could curb the irrational response, she felt the same mild sense of affront that she always felt when asked that question. It wasn’t that she was sensitive about not having children; rather, she always felt insulted when she was mistaken for someone who
did
have them. “No,” she said, “I don’t.” And maybe some of her irritation had showed in her face because the woman turned to Sue MacMasters and changed the topic altogether.

As the conversation turned to summer vacation plans, the ninth-grade teacher sitting next to Vera said, “Melanie and I used to check in with each other sometimes. I always like to know how my ninth graders are doing as they move forward into tenth grade. You have a lot of my former students now. How do you like them?”

“Oh, I’m impressed with them. They’re outspoken and seem to pick up things quickly.”

“How is Cecily-Anne St. Aubrey doing? She was a favorite of mine. Melanie’s, too. She and Autumn Fullerton are both really exceptional—so wonderfully driven and sensitive. Oh, and of course there’s Jamie Friedman, too—she’s quite special also. I know Melanie felt bad about having to just up and leave them.”

Vera wanted to laugh. She could understand, at least intellectually, why Jamie Friedman would be held up as a model student; her conduct and work ethic were always impeccable. But she found herself hard-pressed to say something equally glowing about the other two girls. “Cecily-Anne and Autumn are a striking pair, aren’t they?” she said diplomatically, spearing a sliver of carrot. She wondered if perhaps she had been unfair in her judgments of the two glamorous students, or perhaps Melanie Belisle had seen something she hadn’t seen. Thinking for a moment, she asked the teacher next to her, “What about Jensen Willard? Did you have her as a student?”

The teacher wrinkled her brow. “Willard? Oh, no, I don’t remember Melanie mentioning her specifically. I believe she transferred to Wallace just this year. On scholarship.”

The way the woman said
on scholarship
made Vera decide to push it no further. She kept quiet for the rest of the lunch period, keeping a faint, interested-looking smile on her lips and trying to follow what the other women said to one another. When the women gathered up their plates to return them to the cafeteria line, Sue MacMasters brushed past her, poked her in the arm, and said, “Look at that plate! No wonder she’s so skinny!” in a voice loud enough for all the other teachers to hear.

 • • • 

Vera’s studio apartment seemed quieter than usual that night. Taking out Jensen Willard’s latest journal entry, she glanced at the title—“You Don’t Do One Damn Thing the Way You’re Supposed To”—and at first thought it was meant as a direct hit, a pointed critique of her classroom methods. Then she remembered that Holden Caulfield’s roommate had said those exact words to him.
Interesting title choice,
Vera thought, trying to suspend judgment until she had read more.

You Don’t Do One Damn Thing the Way You’re Supposed To: Journal Entry #3, by Jensen Willard

Hello again.

I know I said I’d make more of an effort to include literary analysis of
The Catcher in the Rye
in these journal entries, but I’m having a really hard time focusing on that. Truthfully, I’m still kind of obsessing over the last phone conversation I had with Bret—I’ve got to make sense of all that first and foremost. But please, if it gets to be too much, just let me know, and I’m sure I won’t have a hard time coughing up something else to write about. I can write about anything once you get me started.

One other thing I’ve still been thinking a lot about lately is that girl who got murdered. Angela Galvez, the one they found in the Dumpster. She was strangled. Such an ugly word,
strangled
. It sounds almost exactly like what it is. Like onomatopoeia. I remember the first day of class, someone brought up Angela, and you looked like someone pooped in your shoe. I guess I can’t blame you for not wanting to talk about it. But I hope you can’t blame me for not being able to stop thinking about it—for not being able to stop wondering.

Specifically, I wonder what it’s like to be eleven years old and to know someone is killing you. I wonder what an eleven-year-old’s last thoughts are as she’s dying.

I overheard Chelsea Cutler talking about something her aunt had told her—that Angela had claw marks on her neck, marks from her own nails where she had tried to remove Ritchie Ouelette’s hands. And the nails were broken off. She tried to fight, but what chance did she have, being that small and young?

One of her purple shoelaces was missing when they found her. She’d had two laces, one on each shoe, when she left the house, her mother said. Purple laces, and the sneakers were silver. You have to wonder what happened to the other one or why anyone would think that was a good trophy to keep, out of all the trophies one could take.

Vera looked up from her reading. What was it about these lines that didn’t sit well with her? It was the word
trophies
, she decided, looking at Jensen’s last paragraph again. That was a police word—a word she didn’t think Jensen would know to use in this context. Then again, how well did she really know Jensen?
Just because I didn’t peg her as someone who watches
CSI
or reads crime novels doesn’t mean that such things aren’t known to her,
Vera told herself, and brought herself back to where she’d left off in the journal.

I knew Angela a little bit. That is, I babysat her and her little brother, Jared, once. Annabel used to do it on a regular basis, but one night she wanted to go to a roller-skating party and recommended me to the Galvezes instead. Big mistake. I’m an awful babysitter. It’s not that I mean any harm, but I always end up being way too lenient because I figure, how is a few hours of leniency going to hurt anyone? And Angela was really too big for a babysitter anyway, but her parents were overprotective. Fat lot of good that overprotectiveness did for Angela in the end.

The Galvez kids were brats the day I sat with them. I know you’re not supposed to say a dead little girl was a brat, but it’s true, and that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry about how she died. These kids wanted to play Truth or Dare out in the yard, and at one point Angela dared me to take off my bra and throw it up into the branches of this oak tree they have out back. So I did it. I didn’t let them see my bare chest or anything—I turned around and maneuvered the bra out from under my shirt and pitched it in the air. You could tell they weren’t expecting that I’d actually do it, which is why I did it. But then the bra was stuck hanging from a high tree branch, and the kids apparently told their parents about it later, because Mrs. Galvez called my mother that night and said, “Your daughter is the worst babysitter I’ve ever had, and I’m going to tell all my friends who have children.” Which was kind of a relief, because I’ve never had a good babysitting experience yet.

Even though I wasn’t sorry to lose a prospective babysitting job, I was sorry to lose the money. And I don’t need Mrs. Galvez running around talking about me to half the town. For a little while, I really hated that kid.

Still, I thought about sending the Galvezes a card when Angela died. Just because they don’t like me doesn’t mean I shouldn’t let them know I was sorry for what had happened to their daughter, but when I looked at the sympathy cards in the supermarket, they all seemed wrong. All these pictures of birds flying in clouds with gilded letters spelling out inspirational quotes about dying and the afterlife. Angela’s death didn’t seem to fit a card like that. Even my mother said, “Oh, we should send a card,” but I don’t think she ever sent one. Maybe she had the same problem I did picking one out.

This is making me sad. Sadder. Maybe it’s time for me to talk about Bret now. But first, a snack. I feel like peanut butter crackers. Don’t go anywhere.

Back again.

Here’s the thing: I don’t really have an outlet for talking about Bret outside of this journal. Sometimes I wish I still had Annabel to confide in, because she’s pretty experienced with boyfriends and would probably have an opinion about what’s going on. I’d talk to my mother, but she’s so protective of me that she’d just wind up getting angry at Bret even if he hadn’t really
done
anything.

So, journal it is. Journal and, by extension, you. I bet you feel really privileged.

I have one more Bret story, and after that I promise I’ll shut up. I’m curious to know what you’ll think about this one because it’s about a teacher, sort of, and since you’re one, too, it’s possible that you might have a particular read on this. Then again, maybe not. Maybe you’re not even reading this. I can’t say I’d blame you if you weren’t. I’m pretty sure the last English teacher I had, Mrs. Belisle, never read a damned word I wrote. One time I turned in a writing assignment that was nothing but word vomit and gibberish, and all she did was put one of her check marks on the top of it, like always.

I went to visit Bret at Columbia one time, this past October. I really liked it there. Here, I feel like people stare at me all the time. But there, on campus, no one would give me the time of day, and I kind of liked that anonymity.

It was a big deal to take a bus to New York all by myself, especially because I had to change buses in Boston—I’m surprised my parents even let me do it. I drank Bret’s supply of vodka and orange juice and got violently ill the night I arrived, and all the girls in Jay Hall (that’s his dorm) kept coming up and cooing about how cute it was that he had a girlfriend in high school. The next day, once I was sobered up, we went to go visit one of his professors at his apartment off campus, on Riverside Drive by the park. You might find it interesting to know—maybe you already
do
know—that J. D. Salinger’s family lived on Riverside Drive, too, just two buildings from where the professor lives now. I made it a point to walk past it and take a good look, but to tell you the truth, it just looks like any other building. That’s one of the strangest things about New York, in my opinion; nothing ever looks all that special or distinguished. Even the supposedly special things blend in with everything else.

This professor, whose name is Dr. Louis Rose, had taught a summer humanities program at Dartmouth two years before, the same one Bret had attended as part of a Gifted and Talented program; I guess Dr. Rose was part of the reason why Bret had wanted to go to Columbia. He’d kept in touch with him the whole time and wanted to follow him wherever he went. He’s taken classes with him two terms in a row now. Kind of a man-crush, if you ask me. I’m not exactly sure what Dr. Rose was getting out of it in return, other than adulation.