After he left, my mother put the moo goo gai pan and the shrimp in garlic sauce in plastic tubs and said, “Another shiksa in your father’s life? I daresay she won’t have to convert.”
Mr. Stone still picked me up after school most days. I was pretty sure I’d stopped growing; I pressed my knees one way and my feet the other just to sit almost comfortably in the VW’s front seat. I rode with my hands tucked between my legs. I put on lip gloss in his visor mirror. Comic book remnants and paper cups and cigarette packs covered my sneakers. One Tuesday afternoon, at the second light, I said what I’d been wanting to say since February vacation.
“I think it’d be nice if you met Mrs. Hill. I think she’d like to meet you. She used to teach, I think.”
“Really.”
“She said she did. Here, don’t forget, it’s the next one on the left.”
Mr. Stone said, out the window, “You know, I grew up in a place a lot like this. Mostly white, though — my God, look at those.” He pointed to twin blue-shuttered houses with orderly twin gardens and bitty porches, each with two chairs and a small plastic table set with four tall pink glasses and matching pitchers. “You smell that? That’s the smell of the South, right there. Mint, dirt, and cornstarch.”
I led him in, describing our progress so Mrs. Hill wouldn’t be surprised and pissy.
“We’re here, Mrs. Hill. I brought Mr. Stone, my English teacher. He thought he’d stop by and say hi.”
Mr. Stone didn’t look like he appreciated being shanghaied into the middle of Mrs. Hill’s blue brocade living room set. Mrs. Hill looked right at him, which was like turning her back.
“Welcome, Mr. Stone. Elizabeth’s famous English teacher. Honey, why don’t you make us some tea?”
I just stood there until Mrs. Hill flapped her hands a couple of times like I was a loose chicken, and then I backed out, watching Mr. Stone. He smiled at Mrs. Hill and flapped a hand too. I listened on the other side of the kitchen door, which was so thin I could hear Mrs. Hill sighing and Mr. Stone sighing back.
“Could you come a little closer? My eyesight’s not so good.” Mrs. Hill’s sweet-little-old-lady voice.
I heard him drag the ottoman over, which meant he was sitting a good six inches below her, putting them face-to-face. Ear to face, since Mrs. Hill was probably trying to get him in her sights.
“You’re not even a young-looking man,” she said, and I heard Mr. Stone laugh.
“No, ma’am.” He sounded different, Southern, not his classroom voice, not his smoking-in-the-car voice.
“Come a little closer,” Mrs. Hill said. “South Carolina?”
“Yes, ma’am. Kershaw. And you?”
“Mars, Alabama.”
The tip of his nose had to be denting her puddingy cheek for them to be talking so quietly.
“All the way from Kershaw. My.” For a minute, I didn’t hear anything. “And what do you want with my girl? You like girls in particular? Children?”
Mr. Stone breathed in fast. I wanted to rush in and hit her, and as she lay on the floor we would drive off to someplace pastel and foreign in our dark-red convertible.
“No, ma’am. I’m not like that. I don’t prefer girls to women. I’ve got a wife at home. And three boys.”
“Well, then,” she said, and I thought, So there, and wondered how close they were now. I could just see a sliver of his shoe tips pointed toward the recliner.
“Well, then,” he echoed. “I know it doesn’t seem right. I could lie to you, that’s what a reasonable man would do. A reasonable man, oh Jesus. I beg your pardon, ma’am.”
I heard Mrs. Hill’s wheezing and Mr. Stone’s deep cough and the clock on the mantel.
“I don’t do anything I shouldn’t,” he said.
“Except what you’re thinking, and you won’t stop that, will you?”
“Can’t, not won’t. How can I? I’m not leaving town, if that’s what you mean. And that’s what it would take, about three thousand miles. Could we throw in an ocean?”
Very softly, Mrs. Hill said, “We could throw in two oceans for all the good it’ll do you, and you know we should, because there is no glory coming from this and this is not a conversation about forgiveness. I don’t care how you end, that’s your concern, or your poor wife’s. You put one hand on that child, who thinks you love her fine mind, one hand, even when she’s more grown, and I’ll see you turning in Hell, listen to you pray for death. And don’t think I won’t know. That child tells me everything. So maybe you can keep your hands to yourself, and I won’t have to think so badly of you. Mis-tuh Stone.”
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t want you to think badly of me, and I don’t want to think badly of myself. I have no intention of harming her. You must see that whatever it looks like, it is love. And I have to say it is, in part, for her fine mind. I give you my word. Well, I don’t have much else, under the circumstances. I would cut off my hand first.”
It didn’t sound like it was so hard for him to give me up and just admire my mind for the rest of his life. He didn’t sound so madly in love with me that it was scaring him and Mrs. Hill. He just sounded happy to be talking Southern, the two of them purring along, word endings gone to nothing, their voices loopier and wider and sweeter than when they talked to me.
I brought in the teacups, went back for the spoons, and had to go back a third time for milk; Mr. Stone poured. Mrs. Hill told a couple of funny stories about the kids in her Sunday school class, all of them now at least Mr. Stone’s age, and Mr. Stone slapped his leg and laughed.
I walked him to the door, and he said my name and straightened my shirt collar. I lifted my shoulders to meet his fingers, and he dropped the little bit of shirt he’d been holding. Mrs. Hill said of course he should come by again, and he said of course he would hope to come again, without imposing on her hospitality, it would be a pleasure.
I closed the door behind him. She was already sighing and sucking her teeth, getting warmed up for something.
“That’s your Mr. Stone.”
“Yeah. Do you want some dinner? Turkey tetrazzini? You’ve got that three-bean salad from the weekend.”
“All right. In a minute. Come in here, Elizabeth. Are you going to make me shout all night?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, sighing at least as loudly as she had.
The ottoman was still warm, even damp, from when Mr. Stone sat on it and told her he loved me.
“He sure does like you. And you like him.”
“He’s okay. He’s a good teacher. He’s interested in poetry.”
“Who is she that looketh forth as the morning / fair as the moon / clear as the sun / and terrible as an army with banners? Like that?” Mrs. Hill said.
I didn’t answer, just walked into the kitchen while she was reciting.
“You’re in the room, you’re out of the room, I know what I know. Were you eavesdropping?”
“I don’t care what you know and I don’t care what you said. I’m starting dinner.”
“Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
I gave her the water and cooked and washed up while she ate, which took forever. I wiped up the bean salad goop and the turkey shreds and wiped down the counters.
“I’m going.”
“Be good. Be careful. You are going to thank me someday.”
I slammed the door.
Mr. Stone stopped waiting for me in the parking lot. When I went to his office, there were always other kids in it, kids who could hardly read, kids waiting to show him their papers or ask for advice or just sit around with him. I ate lunch behind the field house until school ended, and watched the little kids at recess, and saw which girls sat by themselves near the monkey bars or the back steps. Mrs. Hill gave me the rosebud cup and saucer to cheer me up.