Did you ever see a bee lying drunk on a rose? Lost in the petal, so close you can’t see its tiny burrowing. In this way, I hang as I can. As close as I can.
After practice we go as a team for a carb-loading premeet meal to an Italian restaurant that has an all-you-can-eat buffet, where we pay our six dollars apiece to the elderly cashier and head off to stuff ourselves in the glass-candle twilight of the room. We sit in three booths at the back of the restaurant, eating, talking loud; and Ms. Fields takes an uneasy seat next to me. Hey there, she says.
Hey, I say. Precious Cargo, I say, pointing to her stomach.
You doing okay? she says. She twirls at her spaghetti and drops a ball of it into her mouth.
I, uh, yeah? Yeah. Why?
Go ahead and convince me, she says, chewing. I was just talking but I guess there is something there.
Is it weird, having someone inside you like that, I ask.
She emits a laugh, choking a little as she swallows. Wow. Nice question. Um, well, it is bizarre, but it’s beautiful, she says.
Beautiful, I say. Ms. Fields still hasn’t told anyone who might tell who the father is. And then Mr. Zhe sits down next to me.
Get enough to eat there, he says. His large head here in the dark restaurant like a lamp inside the dark cave of me.
He starts talking about the chapel’s finishing ceremony, the inauguration of it. Easter there’ll be a service, he says. The headmaster likes the idea of having an Easter service, brief, of course, because of weather (It might snow, adds Ms. Fields), as Jesus rolled the stone away and this chapel is rolled stones.
Not hungry, Ms. Fields asks me.
I see that I’ve stopped eating, and so I pick up a fork. Resting, I say, and stab a shiny ziti among the rest in the sauce lake on my plate.
Mr. Zhe puts his hand on my forehead. You’re not warm, he says. Maybe a bit clammy. His hands are warm, dry, they have a faint smell of sweet cinnamon. Around us, the other swimmers din the air with their conversations, and suddenly all the sounds flatten. No one sound any louder than any other. A leveling takes place. I hit the floor on my side.
And so it is that the faint, caused by my thinking of the theft of the picture, is the first reason he takes me in his arms. I’ll remember it later. At the time, he lifts me to carry me outside, his arms hard like wood. As the air comes back to me, the light, as we go through the doors to the outside, breaks on us like rain. He lays me out on the grass, stays above me, searching my eyes, lifting one lid, then the other. Ms. Fields appears above me, the pillars of her legs looming suddenly, the blue sky above her, heaven’s sieve. Is he all right, she asks.
I think so, Mr. Zhe says. Are you all right, he asks.
I close my eyes. Yes, I say. I will be.
In my dorm’s phone booth, the door pulled shut, I talk through some fast options with a hot-line operator for “gay, bisexual and questioning youth” I find on a number from a newspaper ad. He’s down in Portland, he tells me his name’s Kevin, that he’s thirty-five, that he wants me to know that the conversation is confidential.
Do you know how he feels about you?
I don’t, I say. I mean, I have no reason to think he feels anything. I’m just his student.
You mentioned you know he’s gay; is he out at the school?
No, I say. I, uh, I went over to his house. Saw him with his boyfriend.
A little Harriet the Spy, are we, he says, chuckling. Sorry. I mean Encyclopedia Brown.
No, I say. It’s fine.
Do you fantasize about other men, he asks.
No, I say. I don’t. I don’t fantasize.
Hmm. Well, how about this. What do you imagine, happening, when you think of him.
And here, for some reason, I think of my father. Your pause, he says, is a little damning.
I, uh, was distracted for a moment. I don’t know. That’s why I called. I don’t know what this is, I say. I twirl the phone cord, and the phone numbers, written in ballpoint and pencil on the wall, start to look like a map to some country, topographic: here, the mountains. There, a river. A notice, above the phone, reads please limit calls TO 20 min . I look at my watch. I’ve got thirteen minutes.
How about this, the operator says, all business. How about, if you imagine him getting fired and you getting suspended or expelled. Because you are not yet eighteen and he is your teacher and no one, no one, thinks of this as the happy ending for the story you’re telling me. Not even you, right?
No, I say. I mean, right.
So, what’s worth that.
I love him, I say, surprising myself. When he’s around, it feels like he’s in charge of everything in me. I don’t know what to do with that. Do you kiss it? I don’t know.
Oh, boy. The operator’s quiet a moment, and then he says, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t fall in love with that.
I laugh.
I remain worried, he says. The school thing is large. I really think, with a year to go, that you should consider doing nothing until you have graduated. Your graduation is the most important thing right now, and the year will give you time to really know what you want to do about this.
He’ll be gone by then, I say.
See how smart I am? the operator says. Look, I know what this feels like but at your age, you’re going to feel like this every three days.
Feel like I’m going to die, I ask. Every few days?
You’re not dying, he says. I guarantee it. But if you do anything about this you could get into trouble so deep you might wish you were dead. And that’s, well, that’s not what this should be about. Love should be about making you want to live.
In the hall I see Alyssa’s brown-skinned back as she passes by, headed for my room. I don’t have a lot of time. I say, There are Mexican Indians who believe that gold is the earth’s blood.
Huh, he says. Beautiful. What’s that go to do with anything?
We cut the world to marry, I say.
Marriage, he says, is not a big topic for this hot line, despite what people might think.
I’d cut the world for him, I say.
Don’t even cut a class for him, the operator says. Do yourself a favor. Stay young. For another year, and try to find a nice boy your own age. Okay? And one other thing, he says.
Yes, I say.
Call me here at this number if you decide to try anything. Talk to me before you do. All right?
Alyssa, in the window of the booth, mouths, Who are you talking to? I raise a hand to her, signaling a moment, and I say, All right. We hang up. I imagine him logging the call. 6:15 P.M., April 30, 1997. A 17-year-old male, questioning. Talk time, 18 minutes. In love with teacher. Alyssa pulls the door open.
Hi, she says. Who’s your new girlfriend?
What, I say.
This phone booth has someone else written all over it. She pulls back.
There’s no other girl but you, I say.
She turns, her hair falls over her face, and then she pulls it back, and looks at me. Let’s go look at the comet, she says.
Outside the comet Hale-Bopp sits in the sky. Alyssa and I sit and watch it from the lawn. Comets are burning ice, gas frozen and made solid and then burned by the friction, so cold it’s fuel. So hot you can see it from planet Earth. I know exactly how you feel, I tell the comet.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, she says. A comet, and for a few weeks, we get to look at it every night as though it were the most ordinary star.