The English Teacher

EIGHT

IN HISTORY CLASS PETER LIKED TO SIT IN THE BACK BESIDE THE WINDOW. From that angle he could see their old cottage and the playing field behind it, a patch of land he still considered his own backyard. That field looked now as it always did in winter: abandoned, soggy, the lime lines ravaged, one goal having fallen in a storm. The cottage, with its tidy yellow clapboards and shimmering black shutters, sat on the knoll above. A light was on in Peter’s old room, a baby’s room now. Peter, too, had been a baby in that room. He had been every age in that room with the sloping ceiling and crooked windows and the closet with the old wallpaper he used to peel when he was angry. What had he been angry about then? He couldn’t remember anything more specific than a dull thudding wanting feeling. He thought her marriage to Tom would quell it and for a little while it had, but the sensation was back again. Only now he didn’t simply want another change; he wanted to step out of the very skin of his life and into another.

His mother hadn’t come home last night. Tom had driven him to school and they’d barely spoken. Peter guessed Fran had probably told her father and Stuart about the kissing. They wouldn’t want him around for much longer if his mother didn’t come back — or even if she did.

When Tom had pulled around the circle to the front door, he’d said, “If anyone asks,” and seemed unable to go on.

“I’ll just say she’s sick.”

“Good. Okay then. Have a good one.”

There had been something about shutting the door on his stepfather, leaving him to drive away alone, that seemed cruel. Peter had stood on the pavement dumb and inert for an awkwardly long time. He’d wanted to say something encouraging to bring color back into Tom’s gray skin. Peter didn’t know his mother this far out of her orbit. Anything could happen now. “You, too,” he offered, then let the door go, softly.

He’d forgotten, until he entered this classroom, that most of his grade had stopped speaking to him. They were working in small groups today, pretending to be landholders from 1749 working out their income and assets. Peter’s group was ignoring him. The truth was, even when he wasn’t being ignored, he didn’t contribute much to group work. Group work was just a way for teachers to get another free period. By this time of year Mr. Hathaway had given up the pretense of visiting each group, listening with fake interest, and moving on. Now he just worked at his desk, scratching out his illegible remarks at the bottom of each of their takehome tests from last week. When he looked up suddenly, Peter turned back to his group and nodded. Sarah, Kristina’s best friend, shot him a scowl and he had nowhere to put his eyes but back out the window.

Kristina had told her friends that he’d locked her in that bedroom in Scott Laraby’s house, that he’d tried to have sex with her. She even claimed to have cuts and bruises. Jason had not come to his defense.

He remembered how big that JV field used to seem to him, how when he was four or five he’d watch the games at dinnertime, kneeling backward on their couch, a plate of fish sticks balancing beside him. His mother hated the games out the window and always went to her room and shut the door. Those boys he had watched, so hard and tall and serious, with smoke rising off their skin into the cold fall air, were no older than he was now. He’d played on that field this fall, though only once, when a Fayer victory was certain, and even then only for a few minutes at a time. He’d never known what those boys he’d watched had known — the red steaming face, the burning chest, the ache to win, the ability, he saw now, to become with his others teammates one victorious organism. Looking at the field was making him feel worse than looking at his classmates ignoring him and just as he was about to turn back to them he noticed a mark at the far side of the field, a sort of gray-brown gash in the turf. Who would have dug a hole in the soggy grass? A dog? A fox? He thought of the military term “foxhole.” Was this what a foxhole really was?

“Mr. Avery, I’m sure your groupmates would appreciate those penetrating thoughts of yours,” Mr. Hathaway said, not even noticing how his group had shut him out of their conversation, which had quickly moved more than two centuries beyond the issues of 1749 landholding.

As soon as Mr. Hathaway’s attention fell away, Peter returned to the hole in the field. Now he couldn’t determine if it even was an indentation; at certain moments it seemed to be something on top of the grass. It was like that trompe l’oeil when the little girl’s shoulder becomes the witch’s hideous chin: first it was a hole, then it was a clump. It was part of the earth, part of the torn earth, he was certain, until it moved and then suddenly he no longer needed to see — he knew. The coat. The hair. It was his mother.

He was nearly to the door before Mr. Hathaway looked up.

“I’m going to throw up,” Peter said, capping his mouth.

“Gross!” a chorus of his enemies exclaimed before he shut the door on them all.

He took the absurdly curved and elaborate staircase three steps at a time.

“This is not the Indy Five Hundred,” a teacher called out above him, and he slowed obediently for a few seconds.

Now he was in the front hall. A portrait of his great-grandfather hung over the fireplace. A lot of good you can do me from up there, he thought, crossing over to the back staircase. The side door of the boiler room would be the quickest, most discreet route to the field.

Coming up those stairs at an erect and steady clip was the photography teacher. No sophomore had a free period this early in the morning, but Mrs. Dilworth simply said “Hello, Peter” under her breath. Her viewing room, Peter remembered, had a large picture window that framed the field. Was she coming up to report his mother to Mr. Howells?

He took hold of the thin banister and leapt, his feet touching down lightly only once before the bottom. The boiler room was to the right. When he was younger and his mother had an after-school meeting, he’d come down here with Lloyd and play slapjack at a little table he used to have in the corner. It was down here that you really felt the age and the immensity of the old house. It took three oil furnaces to heat the place. And the noise they made, the shuddering and screeching and hissing that went on all day and night. It was creepy alone — he’d never come down here without Lloyd. Jason had told him junior and senior couples snuck down here to make out. He wondered as he cut through the dim enormous room if somewhere in the shadows hands and mouths were momentarily suspended. He pushed on the bar of the far door and was outside, running now, not directly toward her but down the back driveway to the dirt road to their old place; then, making a wide circle around the house, trying to blend in with the pines, he followed the tree line around to the far side of the field. She was still there, still facedown, unmoving. He thought for the first time today about the way Walt’s body had fallen into the grave, like something that had never been alive at all.

“Mom!” He hadn’t meant to cry out; his voice an ugly squawk.

His knees were cold and soaked the minute he hit the ground. He rolled her over, half expecting, half sickly excited by the expectation of a gray face and blue lips. But it was just her, a little grass on her cheek. Since she never wore makeup there was no shock in the morning, nothing like seeing Jason’s mother at breakfast. She was breathing evenly.

“Ma,” he whispered, calmer now.

She continued sleeping. He looked toward school and was surprised how close it was when from that second-floor classroom she had seemed so far away. The mansion, so dark and cavernous from the inside, appeared to be all windows. How many people had seen, were watching him right now? They would send an ambulance. Mr. Howells would follow in his car, and at the hospital the examiner would tell them that she was simply inebriated.

“Get up now. C’mon, Ma. Get up.” He gave her a shove. It should have hurt — he’d shoved harder than he’d meant to and his wrist began to ache — but she was out.

He had so little time. The bell would ring in five minutes or so. He had to get her off this field. He pulled her up to sitting, her arms through the coat so thin and free of muscle. When had she become so small? When was the last time he’d put his arms around her or been so close to her face which hung contentedly now against her shoulder?

“Ma, please, let’s get out of here.”

He heard a voice and looked up with dread, his mind spinning an excuse, but it was just Mr. Mayhew at the circle, his back to Peter, calling his retriever Buckeye, who always wandered.

Peter hoisted his mother over his left shoulder. He expected her to be lighter, or at least more manageable. But she was so long. Her feet seemed to be dangling somewhere down by his ankles. He felt one of her shoes, then a few steps later the other, knock against him and fall off, but he couldn’t stop. By the tenth step there was no part of his body that didn’t ache — and how many more sets of ten were there to go? Hundreds, maybe thousands. And first there was a hill. He’d never, not even when he was a little kid, considered this incline up past the cottage as a hill. Even when he was three, he’d taken his sled to the real hill close to the main road. But now, with his mother draped across him like something he’d just shot in the woods, this patch of grass was his own Kilimanjaro — without the snows. Everything hurt: his ankles, the backs of his calves, every single muscle in each thigh, lower, middle, and upper back. And his neck — the whole weight of her seemed to be pressed against his neck. Even his lips hurt from how his teeth had clamped them shut from the inside. It was such a myth, the weight of a woman, the way in the movies men were always tossing women over their shoulders and running here and there with them. And what about that short story they’d read last year, the one about the boy and his father who go out hunting and the father dies and the boy has to carry him out of the frigging woods. Imagine how heavy a father would be. And that boy was only nine or ten. It was a bunch of bullshit, everything he’d been taught.

He made it to the top, but there was no reward in that because he had to keep moving, even more quickly now as he’d heard, though he didn’t know exactly when, the first bell, which meant everyone in school would be changing places, glancing out windows. What would they look like, he and his mother, from one of those windows? Would they be identifiable, if not as particular, familiar individuals then even as humans? Wouldn’t they seem more like a lurching beast, shifting its shadow among the pines, barely upright, staggering so slowly to the dirt road which thankfully sloped (he’d never noticed that incline before either) down to the faculty parking lot. He just had to hope none of the teachers had scheduled midmorning dentist’s appointments or concocted some other strategy to liberate themselves.

He himself was not conscious of his mother, at this moment, as human. The pain of carrying her had changed from individual aches to a general burning so distracting that he was simply aware of her as a pressure, unlocalized, neither from within or without. Later he would wonder why he had not had to fight off thoughts of dropping her, of letting her roll off his shoulder onto the needled ground, as he did in subsequent dreams.

Finally the Dodge was within view, and the second bell rang and the faculty lot, thank God, was empty of everything but the aging cars of teachers. Peter swung open the back door and bent himself and his mother inside her car, then slumped her off his right shoulder onto the seat. He watched the extra blood that had pooled in transport drain from her face. She made no movements of her own, save breathing. He had so rarely seen her sleeping. Her expression was entirely different in sleep. He’d always thought the severity of her jaw and brow was due to the shape of her bones, but now he saw it was from the way she bore down on them.

He’d anticipated, the whole time he was carrying her, stashing her in the car, then returning to school. But now he saw he couldn’t leave her here. He’d have to drive the car off campus, to the gas station on Sea Street, then walk back to school.

He found the keys in her coat pocket. His only driving experience had been at Jason’s house when his father let them loop around the campus driveway. He thought that at the sound of her car’s engine Vida would hurl herself upright to yell at him. She’d never allowed him to so much as fit the key into the ignition. But all was quiet behind him. He knew he had to back out without drawing attention to the car. He pulled down on the gearshift, matching the red line with the R just like in Jason’s father’s truck. But he’d never driven backward before. He couldn’t manage to get it to move in a straight line. Instead the car sashayed out of its spot, knocked over a garbage can, and shuddered to a stop. In the cafeteria, Olivia and Marjorie stood in the window, looking down. What could they see from up there? He restarted the engine, threw it into D, and pulled out of the faculty lot. Now he was on the main campus drag, a long smooth strip of new asphalt. How easy it was to drive, to leave in a car. How powerless those colossal maple trunks were to stop him. Even Mr. Mayhew, still calling and clapping for his dog, now peering into the car with a scowl, could not stop him, no matter how much he waved his arms in the rearview mirror. In a car you were invulnerable.

He sailed past the hockey rink, the girls’ fields, Mr. Howells’ little house on the hill. In the mirror Mr. Mayhew was running back to the mansion, which was just a big white house, like any other place you could just drive away from.

At the intersection with the main road, Route 26, he didn’t make the left toward the gas station, toward Norsett. He turned right instead, toward the northern causeway. He was sure that the sheer unnaturalness of this turn would rouse his mother, but there was nothing but silence behind him. He pressed down on the accelerator, felt it resist a moment, then give way. The car quickly picked up speed.

On either side of him, the land, once a forest he used to trample through, had been cleared, roads had been cut, and houses — whole neighborhoods — stood in various stages of construction. It had been a long time since he’d been out this way. Signs for the mainland and the highway directed him left. He drove over the water, careful not to look at it, keeping his eyes on the space between the white lines, and soon he found himself on an entrance ramp with a brown van on his tail and a steady stream of commuters ready to sideswipe him. He tried to slow down but the van honked and he thrust himself into the fray and waited for the crash. Somehow, however, he had been accommodated, accepted into this adult workday morning as if he, too, were racing toward the city. Except that he didn’t want to go into the city, and took the next exit to the turnpike and all points west.

Driving was perhaps the most exhilarating thing he’d ever done. And he was good at it. He was a natural. So often as a child he’d pretended to be the one driving, stamping down on a pretend brake when his mother stopped. He knew how to center the car between the lines, how to pass a Sunday driver safely. “You’re doing a good job,” he whispered. It was the first time he’d ever said such a thing to himself.

Behind the wheel the world was a different place. He was nearly sixteen, and things were going to change.

By noon he needed gas. In his mother’s wallet he found several hundred dollars, more money than he’d ever seen in her wallet before, and he wondered if she’d been planning this escape all along. It bothered him that he might be doing right now exactly what she wanted, that even lumped in the backseat she was somehow pulling his strings. He filled up the tank and with the change from the twenty bought five packs of gum. She hated gum. He stuffed several pieces in his mouth at once.

The woman at the drive-through across the street was the first person to look at him quizzically. He hadn’t pulled up close enough and had to get out and walk to the window for his food. Gum bulged out his cheek.

“How long you had your license — a couple hours?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, his voice full of the defensive sarcasm he used when he had no comeback — which was all the time.

“Whatcha got in the back there?”

“My mother,” he called before he shut himself safely in the car again. The woman’s mouth broke into a laugh she didn’t expect. Peter felt his throat tighten as if he might cry for the pleasure of making a lady in a drive-through window laugh. He forgot to release the key in the ignition and the engine made a long terrible racket. He didn’t look at the lady again.

He held his breath and merged back onto the highway without a collision. He didn’t recognize the names of towns on the signs. He wasn’t sure what state he was in anymore, though it all looked the same — same food and gas logos, same plateglass office parks with their big half-empty lots. He tossed the gum out the window, peeled the foil from his hamburger, and ate quickly, ravenously. When the highway forked he alternated between west and south; he liked the sound of both. He drank from the Coke wedged between his knees. He began to shiver and realized he didn’t have a coat. He turned the heat on full blast. He drove and drove. He would never tire of driving.

A sign read Pennsylvania — The Keystone State. He whooped quietly. Pennsylvania. He looked at the clock on the dash. His entire grade would be in study hall right now, but he’d driven to Pennsylvania. Kristina would be in the back left corner of the library. He realized how hard he’d been trying not to think of her. All he’d wanted to do was help her. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do for her. When she came to Fayer in sixth grade in the wrong clothes with the wrong accent he’d felt sorry for her and chose her as his science partner. The braid down her back. The way she said Poter. Things like that hollowed out his insides, even in Pennsylvania, even after what she’d said he’d done.

At the Exxon station a kid Peter’s age filled up the tank and didn’t even notice a body in the back. But through the doorway of the mini-mart, eating a pink coconut cupcake, a cop was staring right at him. As imperceptibly as he could, Peter tried to lift up his rib cage and harden his expression. He did not catch the cop’s eye again, but looked straight ahead with preoccupation, as if while waiting for his tank to fill he had many adult thoughts to untangle.

Behind him, his mother was stirring. A long swish.

Not now Mom not now he was thinking but didn’t dare move his lips. Peter checked the digits on the pump; it wasn’t even half full. The cop pushed through the door. When he paused to hike up his trousers he left pink sugar fingertip marks on either side. Then he headed directly toward Peter. He put a hand on the roof and bent his head down at the window. Peter fumbled to unroll it.

“I suppose you’ve got your driver’s permit.” He said permit.

“Yes, sir.”

The cop leaned in farther and addressed the back. “I assume you’re over eighteen and in possession of a valid driver’s license, ma’am.”

In the mirror Peter found his mother upright, open-eyed and nodding.

The cop patted the roof of the car. “Hope you folks enjoy your visit here.”

The kid, who’d been waiting behind the cop, took his place at the window to collect his money. Peter could barely remove the bills from his mother’s purse, his hands were trembling so wildly. The police cruiser pulled out of the parking lot and headed away from the highway. The kid didn’t have enough ones in his pocket and said he’d be right back, but Peter got his hands around the key and took off.

He waited for his mother to speak, to holler at him, and when she didn’t he glanced and saw she’d shut her eyes again, her face clenched as if sleeping hurt.

It took a long time for the shaking to stop, but when it did he felt good. He felt great. He remembered the radio and turned it on. A sign read You Are Leaving Pennsylvania but there was no sign to tell him which state was next.

The sun, which had been flickering through the trees, disappeared. He was hungry again but didn’t want to risk a stop. He sang along to the music and tried not to think about food. All at once the earth seemed to open out and he could see in the dusk long swathes of land and a farmhouse miles and miles away, with a light on. It was like looking across an ocean. He could see the curve of the earth. In that one glimpse of distance he understood so much more about everything he’d ever studied in school: Western expansion, cyclones, O Pioneers! Instead of shutting you up in classrooms for twelve years, why didn’t schools just put you on a bus and show you the world? He’d never known how cramped and ugly New England was until now.

At the risk of waking his mother, Peter rolled down the window to let in this new air. It was much warmer than he’d expected and he stuck out his whole left arm and let his fingers rattle in the wind. There were no other cars on the road and even though it was paved and occasionally signposted, it was easy to pretend he was the first person to travel across it. The exhilaration of freedom coursed through him like a drug. He remembered similar moments, like the time Jason’s sister Carla, before she went to college, picked them up at the movie theater with a hitchhiker in the front seat. They’d driven the guy to an intersection a few miles up the road where he could catch a lift to Canada, he said. He had no bag and no shoes, and when he got out a wave of envy and wanderlust had passed through Peter. That his mother would eventually rouse herself fully and demand he turn around, that he had a geometry exam tomorrow and a history paper due on Friday was information this swell of freedom could not contain. This was his life now; he was a driver heading for parts unknown.

The road began to dim. Then he remembered headlights. He pulled the silver plug and the road ahead glittered. The dotted lines came fast on his left and he tried not to let them distract him. The sky, which had been a vast dome with deep purple clouds, was now close and black and indistinguishable from the land.

Within minutes the dark eroded his exuberance.

“Ma!” he said and got no response. He had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, that this was how death happened to everyone: a few hours of joy and then you’re snuffed out for good.

An eighteen-wheeler passed on his left, buffeting the Dodge with its wind. The car was flimsy, no longer the haven it had been all day. He felt himself growing younger. He needed to eat, to pee, to sleep. He needed to be taken care of now. But in the backseat his mother just rolled over.