Beyond Astra Dell, Marlene and Car Forestal had this in common: Their families were small; their fathers were absent.
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"I didn't want him to take an interest in my leaving New York. Of course, I didn't, Mother."
Tim Weeks had said the River School would be lucky to have her. He said he would be sorry to see Anna go but that he understood.
But what exactly was it that he understood? Did he know how disappointed she was not to have persuaded him to regard her beyond the status of a colleague? Did he understand that part of the winter's experience? A seven-month winter, October to May.
CHF
The easiest way to get the figure you want is to be sick. That was a sick thought, but she had thought it more than once. She drank a cup of bitter coffee and decided not to call him. Too much French pastry, Carlotta: her father, in front of the slender Dutch hostess, who knew so many languages. French, chief among them—
APs. The tests, the tests were coming up, and was she ready?
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The middle-school girls were shushing about boys in whispers. When I liked him and he liked me; he she he she. Other words came through—knew and asked and kissed—in the conversation Anna Mazur overheard as study-hall proctor. The only other stand-out words, before she told them to be quiet, were french fries and breath. The school conspired against her: Last-period study hall every other Friday in spring was a cruel assignment, especially today. Today she was meeting Tim Weeks for a walk in the park — her request.
She wanted to give him something to remember her by, but she had to proceed furtively, out of school, or else — and this made no sense she knew but she thought it — her mother would find out and tell her it was another stupid move. Women don't give men presents.
Maybe not, but Anna Mazur had a present for Tim Weeks in her bag, and it made her happy to see him walking toward her down the hall when she had a surprise for him. But they were not yet out of school. Lower-school dismissal was begun, and they craned over the stairwell from just above to watch the little girls jangle down the stairs, little walking packages, projects strapped to their backs. Some looked stunned, some sealed, still others tickled to death. "What was school like for you?" She had asked him this question before, and he had answered in the same way then as now. School was messy and unfinished, full of guilt. He was shy — largely mute — but physically way ahead of everybody his age. "I was faster. The gap diminished as we got older, but in elementary school I could run circles around my classmates, and I was treated specially. I was picked first for teams. I didn't have to talk to make my way among kids." Most of school was a sunny tedium, but there were flashes when Tim Weeks felt himself reverse the flow of the game, intercept, drive the ball. "You can be the most closed person, yet if you are an athlete and in that world, junior high school, you are part of the social scene. I eventually worked for the school playgrounds, coaching baseball. I've been teaching kids since I was seventeen. Never had to live in the adult world."
He said, "But I have a tremendous sympathy for those who don't have the same ease with life."
Anna Mazur was one of these and uncomfortable in life, which might explain the pleasure she felt in Tim Weeks's company. How, walking with him now on the bridle path around the reservoir, she felt favorably observed by strangers, approved, envied, light on her feet. Anything she had to say seemed of interest to him; he listened; he laughed. Was she really funny? She hoped so!
"Here," she said, and she took out of her bag a silver-plated personalized bar to hold open books and, tasseled as it was, to serve as a bookmark. She had had his initials and the school year engraved on one side. (For a time she debated something else, his initials and her own initials, her first name?)
"Annie," he said. "How nice of you! But this wasn't necessary." He hugged her. He said, "I am going to miss you next year."
Really? she silently asked, and the voice she heard was Gillian Warring's saying, Do you miss us? Do you like the present sixes better than you liked us?
It was so easy to flatter a teacher. I hope I have you next year.
Anna Mazur and Tim Weeks stood downwind of a poignant scent — was it verbena? "I'm going to miss you," she said. "This year has been very eventful, what with Astra Dell and all, and you've made it a heck of a lot easier. You listened to me about my brother and my mother and the English department, Hodd and O'Brien — all of that." So Anna Mazur was professing love to a man who had yet to kiss her with any romantic intention. "I'm really grateful," she said. Her tongue stuck in her mouth.
"Oh" — his response—"I was glad to listen." He said he had learned a lot about Jane Eyre that he never knew. Mr. Rochester in disguise was far more dangerous than ever Tim Weeks suspected. Tim said, "We've had fun," and he turned his body in a way that was welcoming but in a forward direction, not toward her, but continuing along the path. "Walk with me," he said, when what she heard was This is why I can't. The story he went on to tell had to do with his home, and a hometown girl, and their being rumored into romance — one of the reasons he decided to strike out on his own in New York. "I don't want to be in a position of making anyone unhappy," he said.
Prizes
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"That's all he said, Mother."
Once Tim Weeks had thought to join the ministry, but he had majored in history instead. He was a sixth-grade history teacher at the Miss Siddons School. Some years he had taught eighth-grade history. Astra Dell had been his student. She reminded her mother of just who Astra Dell was, but her mother cut in.
"I know," her mother said. "The sick girl."
Anna Mazur hugged a cushion. "I'm depressed, Mother, is what it is." Beyond the cloudy window, the river insinuated itself, seeming scaly as a snake and the same dirty brown. This, whatever this was, whatever she had known with Tim Weeks while Astra Dell was sick, was a flirtation. Tim Weeks was as serious about Anna as he was about Gillian Warring. Tim Weeks was the school's bachelor. There were actually three of them that she knew of, but Tim Weeks was nearer her age and so very cute. She was a type, too, common as a robin, a Miss forever in a Miss Siddons School. In Miss Brigham's office was a portrait photograph of Margaret Witt Siddons, founder, 1921: a barefaced woman from an old-fashioned time. Everything, the picture seemed to say, is gone, everything but the desk and the modern version of Miss Siddons, a head of school who was not above wearing a pantsuit in cold weather.
Marlene