The English Teacher

FIFTEEN

January, 1981

SHE WAITED FOR HIM OUTSIDE. IT WAS POINTLESS TO TRY AND BE ANYWHERE else. At first she sat in the orchard, as Gena called it, which consisted of the four fruit trees they’d planted last spring: a lemon, a lime, and two avocados. For her birthday, Peter and Gena had given her a wrought iron table and chair and she’d placed it between the avocados. She’d written to Carol at that table finally — without notes or quotes, just her own small words. And all her letters to Tom.

From the kitchen window, Peter watched his mother wander in the grass beside the driveway. Occasionally she stopped without knowing it, her mind caught on some snag. He could tell she was nervous from the way she scratched the inside of her wrists.

“I can’t remember what he looks like,” she’d said last night. “All I can picture is the mustache.”

“Sometimes I can hear it against the receiver,” he’d said.

“Yes! Scritch scritch.” The guinea pig in her lap had leapt off at the sound. “I feel like I never really looked at him.”

“Tomorrow’s your chance,” Gena had said. She’d tried to sound cheerful about it, but she knew that change was afoot, and she liked things the way they were.

A silver rental car pulled in the driveway. Vida stood in the grass in her lucky dress, barefoot, her wrists scraped red.

Tom didn’t bother parking properly or shutting the door when he got out. He just went to her as if she were dying, the way Peter himself had gone to her that morning in the field, leaving his pencil and his history books on the desk. And when Tom reached her they sank into each other like neither could have taken another step without the other and even Peter felt weakened by watching, a bit like he’d felt two nights ago when they’d seen the fifty-two hostages come off a plane and fall into the arms of the people who’d waited for them. They’d been given parkas with enormous fur-trimmed hoods and they came down the set of metal stairs in groups of twos and threes, then separated as their families found them. A little girl in a red coat leapt into the arms of her big brother; a mother kept kissing her middle-aged son’s hand over and over as they walked away. “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” a reporter asked a man on the tarmac. “Take my wife in my arms.” They’d been sitting down on the new couch, but by the time all the hostages had disembarked, he, Gena, and his mother were all standing a few inches from the screen, clutching hands without knowing it.

He smelled, even in California, of maple syrup. Vida held him and let him hold her. She felt herself opening, her whole being spreading not just over Tom but over the yard, over the orchard behind her, over the palms clicking in the wind. Over the Dodge which had carried her so many places. Over her son, her very own son, watching at the window. She pressed her mouth to the warm stubble on the back of Tom’s neck. Desire rose easily. He’d waited, and had come when she asked. And yet she did not feel as Tess had felt when Angel finally came. Unlike Tess, her urge was not to die. This happiness was too much, Tess said. I have had enough. But Vida had not had near enough. Oh God, she thought, nearly unable to reckon with the vastness of the moment. This is it and I am right here. This is what there is.