The English Teacher Read online

  “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 Beer: 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.

  He sat, like a doctor, at her left side, one foot raised, one foot firmly on the ground.

  At the sudden depression in the mattress, she tilted her head. Then she said his name. Her parents were Russian, and though she had arrived in this country with no English, not a trace of an accent remained. Except if you listened very carefully to her saying your name. Then you would hear a faint long o where the first e should be. Poter. If there was one sound he could take with him into eternity, that would be it.

  “How’s it going, Kristina?”

  “I’m drunk.”

  “Yeah.” Already, this was the most they had spoken all year.

  “She wouldn’t let me spend the night at Sarah’s.”

  “So she’s coming to pick you up?”

  “My father,” she whimpered.

  “When?”

  “Eleven-thirty.”

  He looked at the alarm clock. Sixty-three minutes. He saw there was an adjoining bathroom. Water. He filled the two heavy crystal glasses by the sink and she drank obediently. “I’m going to get in so much trouble.”

  He went to the bathroom for more. When he returned, she was sleeping.

  “No!” He clapped his hands. “Wake up!”

  No response.

  He got on his knees beside her. “Kris.” He’d never called her that before. It was reserved for Sarah, her best friend, and Brian. “Kris,” he said again, and touched her arm. He meant to shake it, but once his fingers met the plushness of her flesh—how different a girl’s arm was; was there any muscle at all?—he couldn’t bear to disturb any part of her. Without letting go, he pulled his legs up under him and sat close to her.

  Of course he knew she was pretty, but he had long since stopped being able to see it. He had loved her so much and for so long that when he saw her at school her whole body seemed encased in an iridescent haze, a sort of body halo so bright he couldn’t see inside. But now with her eyes shut and her body so still, her light was diffuse and he saw everything. Her hair was blacker than he ever imagined, weakening only to dark blue where the lamplight fell on it. Between his fingers the strands were thick, horselike. He brushed her bangs sideways and found that, like her throat, her forehead was pale and unfreckled. She had a cluster of blackheads along the curve of her left nostril. The redness was gone from around her mouth and her heavy lips, pooled to one side, advanced and receded with the tide of her breath. He thought of that sonnet they’d spent so much time on last year, about the girlfriend’s breath not being like perfume, and her cheeks not like roses and her lips not as red as something else. And then the last two lines—he wished he could remember them—that confessed the speaker’s rare, unending love. At the time, he’d thought it was stupid like all the other poems and crap they had to read, but now it stepped out from the rest like a friend who had known all along about this night with Kristina, understood how beautiful she was here before him, more beautiful than she had ever been within her shining halo.

  What was stopping him from lifting her shirt, taking a look—most likely his only chance ever—at what lay beneath? He knew it was neither respect for her body nor fear of shame if she woke up. It was something more like pride. He wasn’t sure he’d ever used this word outside of English class before. But he knew it was the right one. He wanted the invitation. He would wait for that.

  The numbers on the digital clock changed all at once. Eleven o’clock. How had he wasted thirty-three minutes? Gazing, touching, remembering poetry of all things. Her father was going to come banging on the door and Peter would never be allowed near her again.

  “Wake up!” he shouted, shaking her with both arms.

  Her eyes flashed open. Her lips tightened. “Jesus Christ.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry but thank God you’re awake. Your father is coming in a half hour.” He thought this news would alarm her into action, or at least panicky tears, but she just shut her eyes again.

  “Kristina!”

  He pulled her by both arms up to sitting, then pushed her to the edge of the bed. Her eyes were back to those inscrutable slits. He spun her legs around so that they were dangling with his off the side. “C’mon. Up you go.” He slung her arm over his shoulder and fastened it with his hand like they did in movies. He put his other arm around her waist. “Let’s walk.”

  The room was large enough that they could make a loop of about twenty paces. After his neck got used to the pain, he let himself enjoy the fact that he had her—he had her!—in his arms. She was unbelievably soft, as if there were cushions beneath her skin. He had no idea girls felt like this. No one had told him! He and his mother had hugged so rarely, but his memory of it was all bones, his fingers falling between the ribs in her back, his ear bent by her collarbone. A general thrill at the squishiness of girls momentarily engulfed the specific thrill of Kristina finally beside him. He caught himself in a mirror. He had never seen his face with such a smile.

  He began counting their revolutions around the room. For the first twelve, she took very little responsibility for her own weight. Then, just when he began to give up hope, his load lightened.

  “Poter, what’re we doing?” Her head lifted from his shoulder; her legs, which had been dangling like a doll’s, buoyed her up. The cessation of pain from his right ear all the way through to his elbow was instant, though the relief was not worth the loss of her hair against his cheek.
r />   “We’re getting you sober.”

  “Oh.”

  He waited for her to pull away from him, but she didn’t.

  They kept walking. In the mirror their eyes met and she burst out laughing.

  “What?” he said.

  “Did you ever read Pride and Prejudice?”

  “No.” He figured it was some story about a beautiful woman and a pathetic man who had no chance with her.

  “Those people were always taking ‘turns’ around drawing rooms. They walked very straight and proper and they held each other like this. Look.” Her words were clear, but she had a hard time slipping her arm through his like she wanted.

  “What did they talk about?”

  Her drunkenness seemed to come in waves now. She made a strange noise, as if several words had piled on top of each other. She hung on tight to him and tried again. “Lotsastuff. Secrets. Gossip. Whas rich, poor, pregnant.”

  He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to push her down on the bed. Even though she was carrying her own weight now, her whole body knocked against his as they walked. He had an erection but she wasn’t going to notice and he was too overwhelmed by his good fortune to care.

  “So what are your secrets?”

  He was not above taking verbal advantage of her.

  “Oh God. I have too many.” She let go of him then and fell onto a corner of the bed.

  “You’ve got to keep moving, Kristina.” He slipped his arm back through hers and tried to lift her up.

  “Cut it out!” She jerked her arm away, then brought the elbow back and sunk it into his ribs.

  He cried out. He hated this kind of unexpected pain. He knew it was what kept him from being a better athlete and he hated that, too. But the thought of her leaving the room checked his anger.

  “How about some more water?”

  He brought her a glass from the bedside table. The clock read 11:16. She drank, then had trouble setting it on the floor. It spilled, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Tell me one of your secrets,” he said.

  “Okay. But you’re hovering.”

  Peter sat down near her feet.

  “Okay,” she said again, “I’m going to give you a good one.”

  He nodded. He didn’t care now how much he was smiling. He was happy; he was with her.

  “Miss Whitmore tried to kiss me last year.”

  “Oh c’mon. It’s got to be real.”

  “That is one hundred percent true. I swear.”

  “After a game or something?”

  “No, in her office. She was taping up my stick after practice and showing me this little crack at the tip and when I leaned down she leaned up and I had to jerk away. It was incredibly awkward.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I am not lying.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “You’re the first.”

  “Now that’s a lie.”

  “You have serious problems trusting people.”

  “Why would you tell me of all people that story?’

  “What do you mean you of all people?” She lay back on her elbows. From his angle on the floor her breasts nearly blocked out her face. Even when they were horizontal they were huge.

  “We’re not exactly close friends.”

  “What do you mean? We grew tomatoes and leeks together.”

  “That was in sixth grade.”

  “We canoed down the Pawcatiqua River.”

  “Piscataqua. In seventh. With everyone else in our class.”

  “But we collected firewood together the first night.”

  “We did?” Was it possible there was a moment with her he’d forgotten?

  “And we got lost and had to sleep curled up next to each other all night for warmth.”

  “That definitely did not happen.’

  “No, but I wanted it to.”

  “Really?”

  “C’mere,” she said, patting a space beside her. C’mere, cutie was what she said to Brian.

  He lifted himself up onto the bed. His heart was cracking his ribs.

  “Lie down,” she said.

  He lay on his side and she rolled over to face him. Their knees touched. He was trembling all over—even his lips were trembling—but she didn’t seem to notice. The only way he knew she was still very drunk was that she would never be this close to him otherwise.

  Her eyes hooded over. She had very thick eyelids. And Belou earlobes. A smile came to her lips. “Are you thinking about sex?”

  Peter laughed. “No.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Earlobes.”

  He knew he could kiss her, should kiss her, but he wanted to wait till his nerves calmed down a bit. Otherwise he wouldn’t feel it. And he might bite her or something spastic like that.

  “Earlobes,” she said without curiosity. Then her eyes opened and she tilted her head up. “You know what I think about sex? I think we only know a fraction of all there is to know about it. It’s like in psychology, how Freud said our consciousness is only the tip of the iceberg. I think we only understand the tip of our sexual urges and how to fulfill them. What our parents’ generation knows about sex, what they do, depresses me so much. Is that all there is? Kissing, feeling up, feeling down, then sex. Peg in the hole. Guy on top or girl on top. It’s so completely limited. I think there’s another universe—many universes—waiting out there for us, and we have to find them.” She was breathing heavily now; all those words had taken a lot of effort.

  He saw at that moment that they hadn’t just taken different paths; she had traveled around the sun and the moon and was bored, while he hadn’t begun moving yet.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “I think, with the right person—”

  “Oh spare me. You sound like my mother.”

  “You talk to your mother about all this?”

  “Of course not, but if I did that’s just what she’d say. ‘Brian’s just not the right person for you. Wait for the right.’” She had slipped into her mother’s accent. “‘Then you know.’”

  Through the mockery Peter could sense some hope that her mother’s theory was true. He knew he should kiss her, that she was waiting, that she was ready to believe. But he also knew that he would fail. It would be like going to the Olympics with no training. Why hadn’t he taken the practice when it had been offered to him—Jill at last year’s class movie night, Amy at the fall dance? Even Jenny Mead on the love seat would have helped him practice for this moment. He hadn’t because he was waiting for the right person. There had only ever been one right person but he never realized that when she finally lay beside him he’d wish that he’d kissed all those wrong ones first.

  She was looking at him, though the alcohol made her eyes sink repeatedly down to his shoulder and it seemed to take a great deal of effort to raise them up again. Her breaths through her nose were short and loud. If he kissed her now, even managed to travel to another universe with her, she’d never remember it. He couldn’t think of a time in the past two years when she hadn’t been drunk at a party or a dance. It had started in eighth grade, at their very first dance. Billy Chesney had gotten his brother to buy a case of beer and leave it in the woods. He remembered Kristina coming into the gym that night. She looked so happy, like she’d just gotten really good news. He doubted he’d have had the the courage to ask her to dance, but he didn’t even get the chance. She just went out onto the floor and started dancing. All the other girls stood around the edges waiting to be asked but Kristina just danced with whoever came to her. He knew she was different that night, but he didn’t find out why until the next week when Lloyd discovered the empty carton in the woods. After that there was always drinking outside of school. He used to like watching her get happier, goofier. Sometimes he could even get her to smile at him across a room. But this year she seemed to skip the happy stage and go right to blotto. He doubted she’d even remember the swimmer or those guys at the din
ing room table tomorrow.

  “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.