Tampa

chapter six

Monday morning the sky was pouring rain to opacity. Students arrived with wet hair and soaked textbooks that had served as impromptu umbrellas. By third period muddy footprints leading from the door to the desks and back had formed the circular pattern of a complex dance diagram.

“There should be a tunnel or something, from the school to the outdoor classrooms,” Marissa protested. Her shirt was soaked through, clinging to her breasts and the side rolls of her stomach. Jack came in a few moments later, a tracing of rain around his shoulders; he’d used a folder to shield his head and his hair had managed to stay nearly dry, but the calves of his legs had been showered. I watched each one of the drops snaking down his legs, some of them traveling all the way from above his knee in a manner that recalled urine. The innocence of that thought—a frightened Jack in the middle of the classroom, wetting himself; me undressing him from his soiled clothes, his damp tender skin cold to the touch—briefly clutched me in a fantasy of erotic mothering and made me long, oddly and briefly, for a more developed personal relationship with Jack. There was a turn-on to the suggestion that I might one day see him troubled, perhaps crying; that I might soothe and reassure him with a sympathy that could lead to a feeling of gratitude on his behalf. One that he would repay sexually, his eyes smiling up at me during cunnilingus. I gave the students a quick character-study quiz about Dimmesdale and his physical response to the guilt of his actions and then stared at the clock: I simply had to make it to the end of the class, mere minutes, and then my wait might possibly be over.

“So what can we learn about the poor, sad character of Arthur Dimmesdale?” I asked. Frank Pachenko raised his hand. Today he wore an actual raincoat, an oversized, red and shining version of the type a kindergartner might wear. It was a hideous color, like the erection of a dog.

“Secrets will fester inside you and make you sick,” Frank reported. At all times, he had the cheerful air of being completely pleased with both himself and the world around him. I pictured him standing in that jacket with that same grin amidst several hundred buckets of fish entrails at the back dock of a busy seafood market. The kid simply wasn’t one to let reality spoil a good time.

“Guilt will eat you alive!” Heath called from the back of the room with a dramatic flair, extending his upturned palms to the sky. I felt a pang of worry in my stomach at the effect the content of today’s class might have on Jack—would it taint his view of the proposal he was about to receive? When I looked over at him he was watching the rain outside the classroom window, the glass pane alive with a metropolitan energy of moving water.

“Do you think he’d feel as tortured if Hester hadn’t gotten pregnant and then been caught and punished?” I asked. “What if no one had ever found out—if they’d stayed two consenting individuals who simply got together outside the view of the uptight townspeople? Couldn’t it have been kind of fun for them—an invigorating secret instead of a poisonous one?”

“Like when you’re dating a girl on the down-low,” Danny said.

“Right… sometimes the whole crux of the excitement is actually based on the fact that it’s a secret,” I added enthusiastically, hoping some of the conversation was filtering through Jack’s daydream. “Unfortunately, pregnancy revealed Hester’s half of the secret. Now Dimmesdale is suffering with a sort of survivor’s guilt for not being taken down in the scandal as well.”

A discussion ensued (“This one time, I was dating this girl but I also kind of technically had a girlfriend…”), though I was careful to stay in the vicinity of Jack’s desk at the back of the room; I had to be next to him when the final bell rang. When it sounded, I stopped right next to the entry side of his desk so it wasn’t even possible for him to get up. “Jack,” I said, standing utterly still amidst the bustle of the students around us rallying to exit. “Stay behind for a moment so we can talk.”

He nodded, imperceptibly at first, but then he looked up and gave me a slightly worried smile.

“Thank you, Jack.” I took a seat in the desk directly behind him, staring at the blond trail of hair on the base of his neck that swirled discreetly to the right. When the room had emptied, part of me wondered if I should skip the pretense of words entirely—simply stand and disrobe, then ask him to follow suit.

I cleared my throat. “What I need to say to you is a little embarrassing, Jack. I think it’s best, at least at the beginning, if you keep looking forward and I talk directly to your back, just like we’re doing now. Is that all right with you?”

His head nodded. I eyed the waistband of his baggy shorts; my hand could easily slip down their back and touch the base of his tailbone. It was hard to continue talking. But I needed to establish for Jack that our actions wouldn’t be wrong; I also needed to see if Jack would put out any verbal warnings. I kept reminding myself that if he didn’t respond to my advance, if he told, I could simply deny it—I was only speaking words; they couldn’t be proven. “Good. I need to ask one favor from you before I even begin. No matter what I say, no matter what it makes you feel or think, I need you to promise me that you’ll stay in your seat.”

He nodded again, the muscles of his back tensing rigidly upright. Outside, the rain gave a long, windy gust. I wanted him to feel like he wasn’t simply keeping my secret—that I was keeping one of his as well.

“I was driving by your house on Saturday night,” I admitted. “When we first got our rosters, I recognized your address. A friend of mine lived on your street once. So when I was over by your neighborhood, I just decided to drive past your house and see if the subdivision had changed much. I didn’t actually expect to see you, but I did. I slowed down to look at the houses and I saw you in your room.” I took in a deep breath, hoping what I said next wouldn’t make him run. “You didn’t have your clothes on. You were touching yourself.”

His hands slid up to his face and over the back of his head. “God,” he said. His breathing broke into an unusual pattern; for a moment I thought he might cry. “You can see into my bedroom from the street? But it’s so far back on the side…” In a perfect world, I could’ve assured him that without binoculars one probably couldn’t see inside very well at all, but discretion warranted I keep this detail to myself. “Are you going to tell my dad?”

“Of course not, Jack. You weren’t doing anything wrong.” Now I leaned inward toward him, wishing I could fast-forward past my words to his reaction. “But since I saw you there, doing that without your clothes on, I haven’t been able to think about anything else.” I paused for emphasis but there was only silence; Jack was frozen. No part of his body moved. “All I can think about is touching you. I want to touch you so badly that I’ve decided to just ask you if you’ll let me touch you.” The tardy bell sounded, a sharp quick cut into the static of the rain. I let the shock of its noise dissolve, then continued. “What I’m saying is that you turned me on.”

It wasn’t possible to read an answer into his unchanged posture. “You can look at me now,” I finally said. He turned, expressionless, and I decided to play at a lack of confidence. My eyes drew toward the floor. “You probably think I’m old and gross.”

“N-no,” he finally stuttered. “I don’t at all. You’re beautiful, I mean.” He looked directly at me, studying my face as if to make a medical diagnosis. “You could be on television.”

I gave him a pleased smile. “You really think that?”

He nodded with an unfiltered, strictly adolescent sincerity. “Yeah. All the guys talk about you. Everyone was, like, blown away when you showed up on the first day.”

I reached one hand toward him and began moving a finger lightly across his arm. “I’m not interested in all the guys. I’m interested in you, Jack.” I’d said enough about me; it was time to shift the blame of desire back onto him. “Have you ever thought about me? The way you were thinking at your window Saturday night?” When he didn’t answer I paused so as to seem embarrassed and decided there wasn’t harm in leading him even further; he didn’t look frightened or outraged. “I’ve thought about you,” I said quietly. “Since Saturday I’ve thought about you a lot.”

“Yes,” he finally answered. His voice was shaking. “You’re really pretty.”

“Can I please kiss you, Jack?” I closed my eyes and found his silent mouth with my own. His lips were perfectly sized, almost exactly the length of mine, his mouth not so large, like Ford’s, as to make my own tongue seem insubstantial inside of it. I pushed my lips hard against his teeth, gripped a section of soft hair on the back of his head. Minutes later when I opened my eyes to pull away, I saw that his were already drawn wide—they’d been open and staring the entire time. I moved my hand up his leg and he squirmed a little, ashamed.

“I got kind of…,” he started.

“I know.” I smiled. “I want to feel it. I love that you’re hard.” He nodded and I traced my hand along the firm length in his cargo shorts. I noticed he was peeking down the dip in my blouse at my breasts. “Do you want to see them?” I whispered. I squeezed his erection; despite the dense canvas of his shorts, I could make out the circumcised shape of his tip beneath my fingers.

His wet lips fell slightly open as he nodded. “Let me go lock the door.” I walked to the desk and grabbed my purse; to avoid faculty accidentally getting locked out of their classroom, the knob could only be locked with a key. The sound of the clanking metal as the bolt shut into place felt like a small, perfect kick in the center of my loins—here we were, locked up and perfectly free.

I unbuttoned my shirt as I walked back to him, removed it and placed it carefully on one of the desks. Standing for a moment in my bra and my skirt, I let him take a long look at me before I unhooked it and placed it on the desk as well. “Come touch me,” I said.

He stood and walked over very carefully, as though the offer was some spell he might break with loud footsteps. He stopped a few inches away from me and stood, paralyzed and transfixed, until I grabbed his neck and pulled his mouth back to mine. Soon I felt his tentative hands sliding up the sides of my stomach.

His tongue grew still inside my mouth as his hand cupped my breast and found my nipple. Rubbed arbitrarily by the uncertain strokes of his lost fingers, it hardened to the point of aching, and gripping his head in my hands I forced his lips from my mouth to my chest. He latched on and my eyes closed; for a moment the sound of the rain was so loud that it sounded like the roof had opened; I gave a short scream as a quick orgasm bit down through the center of me. It hardly lasted a second after I perceived it, ending with the abrupt halt of an unplugged current the second Jack’s lips fell away. “Are you okay?” he asked.

My appetite was roaring; the incomplete contractions had awakened every sensory cell in my body. In seconds I could’ve hoisted my skirt and slid my panties just a centimeter over, unzipped his pants and felt exactly what I needed, his anatomy’s tentative push delivering a wave of release that in that moment might’ve truly felt endless. Yet I knew our first time couldn’t be right there—I had to give him a little space, even if that meant only a few hours, for things to sink in and the next step to become his idea. I couldn’t smother him in unexpected sex, then send him off to chemistry having feelings so strong and confusing that he had to do something horrible like go and talk about them.

“I’m fine,” I answered. “It was a good scream.” I glanced up at the clock. “Look, I’ve gone and made you miss nearly all your lunch. I’m sorry.”

His face was the most earnest thing I’d ever seen; it held a near-alien amount of honesty. “I don’t mind,” he said.

I pushed my breasts against his chest, feeling the hardened tiny buds of his own nipples through his shirt. “I hope you realize how amazing you are,” I whispered, kissing his bottom lip. “We’re only able to do this because I know I can trust you not to tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell,” he said, his arms holding my waist with an amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he’d become and all the things he’d try with me for the very first time. I’d be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he’d have afterward would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naïveté would be subtracted from my expertise to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible.

“Of course you won’t. Not even to your very best friend. That would mean that all the fun would be over.” Topless, I walked to my desk and sat down to write him a note, giving him a new daydream image for the boring minutes of our class together. Now any time I sat at my desk he could vividly imagine me naked. I handed him the note, then began to put on my bra. “Don’t worry”—I winked—“you’ll see them again soon. If anyone asks where you were, remind them you were absent Friday and say you were getting notes. We can’t do this too much at school; we don’t want to push our luck. Is there a time after school you can meet me somewhere else?”

“Yeah,” he said. His brow knotted with a worrying thought; for a moment he tried to shake it but eventually asked, “Aren’t you married?”

“Adult relationships are complicated, Jack. All you need to know is that we can do anything we want if no one finds out about it.”

“My parents are divorced,” he offered, picking up his backpack.

“Then you have some insight about the great range of human behavior.” I gave him another kiss; I meant it to be quick but his cushioned lips pulled me in and soon I was rubbing my leg across his erection. The bell signaling the end of lunch sounded and I let out an audible groan. “Just go straight to your next class,” I said, heavy breaths slowing my words. “No one will know you missed lunch except your friends.”

“I have to get rid of this,” he said, looking down.

“Hold your backpack over it.” I placed my hand on his shoulder and began walking him to the door. “That will go away when you start walking. There’s nothing sexy about hurrying to class.”

Now I had to reveal a bit of planning on my part; I hoped it wouldn’t make things seem too contrived. I reached into my purse and handed him a prepaid cell phone. “Take this. My number is the only contact programmed in. Only use this phone to text me. No one else. Don’t call anyone else on it, don’t text anyone else on it.” The number was for a matching prepaid in my car that I’d bought with cash over the summer—an optimistic venture that helped me manage the long wait for classes to begin.

He looked at the phone in his hand like it was a living thing, a small animal he hoped might wake up soon.

“Put it away,” I urged. “Never bring it to school. Text me later if you can meet up.” With that, I gave him a kiss on the neck that ended with a small lick upon his pulse point, unlocked the door and watched him stumble out into the rain.

In that day’s remaining three classes, time seemed to stretch and bend. I found myself constantly looking to the clock, then back out to the students’ faces. By sixth period my extended suffering led me to audibly lament my predicament. “Do you ever feel like the school day will never be over?” The classroom became a landscape of nodding heads.

“You’re, like, the only adult who gets it, Mrs. Price,” Trevor said. My eyes found him in the back of the room and I smiled. He’d hooked up with a new girlfriend, a quirky thing named Darcy who hadn’t the faintest idea how to correctly use a comma. They sat together in the back, holding hands across the desks and playing footsie while passing a notebook of inside jokes back and forth. Now as I watched Trevor’s fingers rubbing Darcy’s palm with rhythmic small circles, I found that my jealousy at their ability to touch openly in the classroom was a nice torture, like running my finger through a lighter’s flame just a little too slowly; I liked the way it drove me crazy thinking about what could be in store with Jack tonight. Were Darcy and Trevor having sex yet? At least oral, I figured. Like two human leopards, their necks, as well as Darcy’s upper chest, were spotted with a series of hickeys ranging from maroon to a twilight purple.

When the bell did finally ring, all the students save the happy couple ran from the classroom. Trevor and Darcy were always the last to leave, each bogged down in the fog of consideration, imploring one another with offers of assistance and questions about after-school plans. Then they headed for my desk, where Trevor liked to make a comment that aimed to be impressive while Darcy stood by him silently like a conjoined twin. “Have you seen the movie version where Hester and Dimmesdale do it in a pile of wheat?” he asked.

I nodded. “It looks good but I don’t know if nudity and grain particles mix. It seems kind of like beach sex, right? There are some places where sand can be downright painful.” The shock on their faces was sweet to devour. They began to laugh as the door swung wide, an opened drain that sucked all the levity and oxygen from the room. Assistant Principal Rosen walked in. Oddly, my first thought wasn’t of Jack at all but the joke I’d just told—had he been listening at the door? But then it came to me in a single blow that felt as though I might have an accident in my chair; my stomach twisted hot and sharp and the sound of my pulse swelled inside my ears. I licked my lips, feeling my armpits begin to dampen. “Trevor, Darcy, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Rosen scowled at the pair, examining their necks with a look of repulsion. His wing-tip loafers moved back a few steps to allow them a wider berth by which to exit. He seemed to think their hickeys were the contagious sores of leprosy. “No holding hands,” he called after them. “All students signed an anti-PDA contract on the first day of classes, remember? Page two of the conduct handbook?” Their hands fell apart momentarily, then rejoined with the force of attaching magnets the moment they stepped outside the classroom. I gave a nervous laugh.

“Young love,” I joked. He began an assessing loop around the classroom, stopping to examine each lame poster the textbook companies sent that I’d half-assedly taped to the walls in an effort to blend in. There was a timeline of Shakespeare’s life, the text of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” printed in microscopic lettering to form the overall shape of a large black bird.

“Celeste,” he began, his tone sullen, “I’m afraid we have a problem.” Scanning my desk, my eyes fell on the metal body of the industrial stapler. It might be possible, if I hit him hard enough with it on the back of the head to knock him unconscious, for me to escape if the police weren’t yet there. I pictured them leading me away in handcuffs as Ford, having heard the location of the arrest on his CB, pulled up and ran toward me, suspecting there’d been a misunderstanding his connections might easily clear up. I stood and gingerly walked over to the window to peek through the blinds for cop cars.

“This is an awkward conversation for me,” he admitted. “I don’t enjoy this part of my job at all. No administrator wants situations like these to come up. But when they do, they fall on my plate.”

I didn’t see any vehicles on the east side of the building. Crossing the room, I looked out the blinds of a west-facing window. Perhaps the police hadn’t been called yet? Since it was one of the better school districts, I realized it was quite possible they didn’t want the arrest to take place on school grounds. Maybe things hadn’t reached the point of arrest—maybe they’d only heard hallway talk from a few of Jack’s friends, enough to summon Jack down to the office, but he’d denied it; nevertheless, such allegations had to be taken seriously and I’d be suspended pending an investigation. The fact that Jack had told others, and had told them immediately, was infinitely problematic. Could my instincts about him have been that wrong? Blinded by lust, I supposed, anything was possible. Perhaps what I was most guilty of was impatience.

“I know you’re new here,” he continued. “And I don’t want you to get the impression that this is a common occurrence. In fact this is one of the only situations of its kind we’ve ever had to deal with.” He walked up to my desk and rapped the knuckles of his balled fist against it a few times. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said, turning his back to me. “It pisses me off more than I can even say.”

The classroom door was close—mere feet away from where I was standing. I had the urge to run, though that would merely prolong the inevitable. It would also seem a positive admission of guilt. Perhaps things weren’t as bad as I feared; maybe Rosen didn’t believe the rumors at all. It could actually be the students he was pissed at, the randy boys who’d let their imaginations go wild over the attractive young teacher during her first semester on the job.

“Janet Feinlog has got to go,” he said flatly.

“Janet?” Relief flooded my chest with a mentholated cooling sensation; I found myself smiling uncontrollably and even let out a little laugh. He turned his stern face to me and wrinkled his brow. “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to recover, “excuse my reaction. It’s just that Janet is such a strange bird.”

He nodded. “Strange isn’t the half of it. She’s a horrible teacher. Her students’ section of the FCAT has been the lowest of the district for the past decade. Her classroom is unruly; we get more parent complaints about Janet than all the other teachers combined. She has no rapport with teenagers. Do you know what she told one of the parents at open house?”

“Oh no,” I said.

“Oh yes. She told a parent, a mother, that she has fantasies of working in a juvenile detention center where they make the kids wear shock collars.”

Objectively, I could see how Janet might excel in such a position.

“She can’t continue here. Now, this is pathetic seeing as you’ve been with us for all of two months, but I think you’re the best friend Janet has on staff. You’re the only one I’ve ever heard her say good things about. Apparently you pushed some volunteer help her way?”

“I just want Janet to be as effective of a teacher as possible.” I smiled. “For the kids.”

“Well I truly appreciate that. But I think our efforts are lost on this one. I need your input on breaking the news to her. We’ll have security escort her from the building, of course, but I’d still prefer to make as small a scene as possible. I just can’t read the woman. Do you think she’s capable of doing something violent? Returning to the campus with a weapon?”

I winced at how easily I could picture Janet holding an automatic rifle while wearing an oversized yellow smiley-face T-shirt. “Well…”

“Sorry,” he said. “My mind tends to go dark. On the brighter side, Janet’s departure will free up a classroom in the main building, and you’ll have seniority over whomever we hire to replace her. No more stepchild in the attic.” He smiled. “We can move you on up to the big house.”

Suddenly all the panic inside me that had recently drained gushed back in full force. The main building meant doors with glass viewing panels, other faculty constantly dropping in unannounced with their petty needs. Everything said in class would be audible from the hallway—no more sex talk veiled behind a thin veneer of literary studies. No more swearing. No more private flirtations with Jack after the bell rang.

“Mr. Rosen”—I smiled, running my fingers through my hair with a slow thoughtfulness—“I do absolutely agree with you that things have got to change. But I wonder if Janet might be able to turn things around with the further help of some mentoring. My student teaching days generated such… energy in me. And this Mrs. Pachenko who’s working with Janet… I’m really excited about that partnership. Mrs. Pachenko is completely by the book.”

He took a seat on my desk, his pants rising up to reveal trouser socks patterned with rows of tiny rainbow-trout icons. “Go on.”

“What if every few weeks I started observing Janet’s classroom during my grading period? I could give her feedback and submit reports to you of her progress, or her lack of progress. And maybe I could get her to come observe my class during her grading period. It might give her a new perspective. Like you said, she and I have a good working relationship. I think she’d be open to it, coming from me.”

He shrugged. “Well that’s very generous of you. I’m ready to throw in the towel and burn it. But she certainly can’t get any worse. If there’s a way to avoid the headache of having to fire a longtime union worker, I’m all for it.”

“Thank you.” I smiled. “I’m glad for the opportunity.”

He tilted his head and gave a pleased nod in my direction. “If even a quarter of the faculty had your spirit, we’d have the best school in North America.” Standing, he offered his hand, which I embraced between both of mine. “We’re very lucky to have you here.”

On his way out, he stopped and pointed his arm across the rows of empty chairs. “But luckiest of all are all these kids. You’re fantastic with them. I know.” He winked. “I’ve got my ear to the ground.”