She stroked one of the gold tacks pressed into the leather of the chair she’d chosen while Brick warmed up.
“How have you been, Vida?”
“I’ve been fine, Brick.” She mocked his unnatural earnestness with her own. He didn’t like that, and took a moment to rethink his strategy.
“You and Tom have been married how long now? A month?”
A quick, quivering pain traveled through her at the sound of his name. Though she knew it wasn’t April, she couldn’t think which of the other months it was. “Something like that.”
He removed his fingertips from the yellow piece of paper and leaned back in his larger leather chair. “Marriage is a curious institution, isn’t it?”
She knew this was how he behaved with students in deep trouble; he took the time to indulge them, to pamper them, like drawing a warm bubble bath before tossing in the toaster. Vida had always thought this a cruel tactic until now, when to her surprise instead of barking at him to cut the crap, she egged him on. “It sure is,” she drawled.
“It is quite frankly the most challenging experience any of us will ever face. As you know my daughter Betsy got married last summer. A nice fellow. We’d waited for what seemed like decades for him to ask her, and then when he did, suddenly I felt she was too young and what was the rush. I’ll be honest with you. They’ve had a rough year. He never told poor Betsy about his allergy to cats.”
“Cats?”
Brick looked disappointed, as if Vida, having known Betsy since the girl was eight, should be able to fill in the blanks. He took a deep breath, not having wanted to stray this far from the point. “All her life, Betsy has loved cats. She begged for one every birthday and Christmas. But Charlotte was firm. She always told her, ‘When you marry and you have your own house, you can have as many cats as you like.’ So on the first morning of their honeymoon in Paris, Betsy went out and bought a kitten. Brought it back to the room. Within minutes, that husband of hers, his eyes puffed up and his windpipe shrank and, well, they’ve had a rough time of it.” He looked at Vida expectantly and again seemed disheartened. He shifted in his chair. The leather cracked. He took another breath. “Charlotte and I have certainly had our differences. I don’t play bridge. She doesn’t like cake. Twenty-three years and a cake has never been baked in my own house. But we’ve made our allowances, shifted our priorities, relaxed our ideals a bit.” He paused, pursed his thick lips, then said, “I’ve never betrayed her, not once.”
But not for lack of trying, Vida thought, remembering the lick on her neck and the many other equally inept passes he’d made at other teachers over the years. Who did he think he was talking to? But he needed soothing now; this confession had made him vulnerable.
“There aren’t many men who could say that, I imagine,” she said.
He puffed up instantly. “No, I can assure you, there are not.” He looked at her with a mix of love and confusion. Where was he headed? He remembered, and aimed perhaps a little too directly. “Is Tom treating you well, Vida?”
Had he orchestrated this? Had he arranged for her to be laughing privately at him and his self-deception when he zinged her here? It was the first time anyone had asked her such a specific question about her marriage. “Yes, of course,” she answered, too automatically. Even she heard the falseness of it, but she could think of nothing to add to change the effect.
Finally he spoke. “You are one of the very best teachers we’ve got here, Vida. And you haven’t seemed yourself lately. And since the only change I’ve known about is your marriage, I just assumed. But perhaps there’s something else.”
Let’s have it, Vida thought. “How haven’t I been myself?” Was anything more foreign than this self other people believed you could maintain?
“Frankly, I haven’t noticed all that much myself, but there have been reports.” Careful not to glance down, he folded his hands atop the yellow sheet. He was still willing to negotiate. If she would just confide in him; he’d much rather be daddy than boss. He prodded her with sleepy sympathetic eyes. It might feel nice to say a few things out loud. She could be careful not to reveal too much. What a relief it would be to utter a complaint or two to somebody, even if it was Brick. And it would make him laugh, the accusation that she, whom he had always teased for not being able to keep up, had a drinking problem. A warm bubble rose in her chest and she waited for it to settle before she spoke.
But Brick saw her fighting laughter and decided he was through waiting. He’d given her more than enough time. His hands separated and he read out the list in the stentorian voice he reserved for his worst offenders. “‘November sixth: allowed discussion of abortion to go unchecked in the classroom.’ We’ve got Catholics here, Vida, in case you’ve forgotten. ‘November eighth: gave ten demerits to Julie Devans in study hall for picking her nose.’ Ten. To the daughter of a trustee. ‘November thirteenth: referred to Mark Stratton’s computer lab as Jonestown and asked students if they had enough Dixie cups.’” Brick’s mouth curled slightly after this last one, but the next sobered him. “‘November sixteenth: told American lit students that,’ and I quote, ‘God is in my underpants.’”
“Apart from this last, I simply see a bad attitude. I can accept that. I understand your resistance to the computer and the weekly lab day, which Mark tells me you haven’t once shown up for. It’s nearly the end of the term. I’m sure a lot of us are giving out some negative vibes to our students. I’m sure each comment had its context. But Vida, I’ve thought long and hard about this and I cannot imagine any context for ‘God is in my underpants.’ A teacher, especially a female teacher, should never, not in any situation, be talking about her underpants.
“I should fire you. Anyone else with this sort of a list and they’d be out. But you’ve been here too long and I like you too much. So as of right now, you are on probation. One more report like this and I’ll have to inform the board.”
Vida gave Brick the solemn nods he required, and was released.
Climbing the two flights to her office, she had that brittle, eviscerated feeling she normally didn’t get till the end of the day. When she reached the top she smelled the must and mold that everyone always complained about. She opened the three windows in her classroom and a violent wind cut through the room. She erased her nearly illegible words from the board. God is in my underpants. She laughed out loud. Had she really said that? In American lit? She imagined her juniors in their seats, then she remembered. A discussion of transcendentalism had turned into an argument about the role God should play in one’s life. John Swiencicki said he liked Emerson’s idea of trying to achieve unity with the universe, and Gretchen O’Hara asked what was the point of believing in a God that isn’t separate from you, that isn’t in every part of your life, controlling everything. Vida had suggested then that there be God-free zones. “For example, I don’t want God in my underpants.” That’s what she’d said. Not that He was in her underpants, but that He wasn’t. Her first impulse was to go down and clarify it with Brick, but she knew it would only stir him up again.
In her office she looked down at a pile of junior quizzes. She fished out her best student, Henry Lathrom’s. He’d scrawled his name at the top of his paper, as they all did, though none of her students needed to label their work anymore; their handwriting was more familiar to her than their faces, and far more expressive. Henry’s letters were minuscule and virtually without curves, so that an essay looked like thousands of tiny sticks painstakingly laid out. She read a sentence three times, then shoved the quizzes away, threw on her coat, and drove down to the gym. This was Fayer Academy’s newest monstrosity, with two sets of locker rooms, nine offices, a tennis bubble, a swimming pool, a volleyball court, a weight room, and three turquoise basketball courts. Peter was practicing at the farthest of these. Vida took a padded seat in the bleachers.