"I want to go home."
On the way back to Phoenix, Fetterman stayed fifteen miles below the speed limit. His body ached as if he"d just run a marathon; he drove like an old man. He was an old man. A gun. Where on Earth had Derek gotten such a thing? He"d save the interrogation for the morning; tonight he was too exhausted, and he still had the three-hour drive ahead of him. His ambition was singular: Bring the child safely home. Still, the feel of the weapon"s heft lingered in his hand. One of Carla"s friends, an army medic, had recently shipped off to Iraq, and before she left, her commanding sergeant told her to take as many Tampax as she could fit in her suitcase. Apparently they were perfect for plugging bullet wounds in the field and stanching the flow of blood.
In the rearview mirror, he caught Derek surrept.i.tiously flipping through the camping book. He was probably reading about the poisonous mushrooms with names like angel destroyer and jack-o"-lantern, or how snakes have been known to inflict fatal bites by reflex action even after death. Fetterman and Carla agreed: Their son had a bizarre attraction to the medically macabre. When Derek was in the sixth grade, Fetterman had to have an appendectomy. His son came running after him before he left for the hospital; Fetterman thought it was to say good-bye. "Dad, did you know that you can wake up while they"re operating on you, and feel the pain of everything, but not be able to talk?" Fetterman did not know this; in fact, he hoped it wasn"t true. Derek went on about how redheads were more resistant to anesthesia than other people, and how the inventor of anesthesia had gotten the idea from Genesis, the part where it said that G.o.d put Adam into a deep sleep before removing his rib.
By that point, Fetterman and Carla already knew that their son was going to give them trouble. What they didn"t know, what they had no way of knowing, was that the rebellion and the acute pain of adolescence would pa.s.s, but that the fascination with medicine would endure; that their son would go on to become a doctor, who in the course of his lifetime would help bring thousands of people out of their suffering. On the way to the hospital, Fetterman had turned to his wife. "Is that true, about the anesthesia wearing off?" he said. "It"s extremely rare," Carla said.
As they drew close to home, on the narrow stretch of 117, at almost the exact spot where they"d pa.s.sed the deer before, they came upon a dead deer in the road. Fetterman pulled over and put on his hazards. He got out of the car and grabbed the animal by its legs, but he was weak, and the deer was heavier than he"d expected. "Help me," he said to Derek. Derek took the front legs and Fetterman took the rear, and together they began to drag the deer to the shoulder. Halfway there, Derek stopped.
"She"s still alive," he said.
"That doesn"t matter!" Fetterman snapped. It was dangerous to be standing in the middle of the road, in the dark, just ahead of a curve. "Help me get her across."
From the safety of the side of the road, Fetterman could see that his son was right: The limbs were supple and freighted with life; the eyes still had light in them. But the body was broken. In the distance, he could hear coyotes" yips and yowls. Derek was waiting for him to speak.
"Get the gun," Fetterman said, handing him the keys. Derek obeyed, and a moment later, Fetterman was holding the weapon. Derek knelt beside the wounded animal, staring into its face as if he recognized something. Then he stood back. Fetterman had never fired a gun before. He placed the muzzle between the doe"s brown eyes, braced himself, and pulled the trigger.
GOOD IN A CRISIS.
At night, for an hour before going to sleep, Ginny read the personal ads. Not because she was looking for a lover, but because she was mesmerized by the language people chose to describe themselves. She found herself underlining standout lines by women and men, old and young. Platinum frequent flier, phenomenal legs, does museums in two hours max wrote a thirty-six-year-old businesswoman. Generally a barrel of laughs when not contemplating thoughts of an untimely death quipped a fortysomething filmmaker. Ginny also enjoyed Capable of holding entire conversations with answering machines, and Rides badly, speaks three foreign languages badly, cooks badly, but does all with vigor & enthusiasm. She sometimes thought of pairing up two ads with each other: Zero maintenance having sushi with Non-needy seeks other non-needy. Her affection was stirred by the fellow who claimed to appreciate all manner of candor-he was seeking a mate with poise, wit, and joie de vivre. There is no such thing as too much information, another singleton declared. Ginny laughed; she loved that. Her friends found the personals to be categorically depressing, but Ginny had developed a near-obsessive fascination with them, and found in them a source of hope both mundane and profound. Still trying to chance upon a unified theory of everything, but in the meantime, searching for a soul who is wildly intelligent and in possession of some sadness. This from an eighty-year-old retired physics professor, who sounded like a winner to Ginny, in spite of the forty-five-year age difference. But by far her favorites were three of the simplest: Adventuresome, liberal, hair; Got dog?; and Good in a crisis.
Ginny was in no way looking for a mate herself. She described herself as happily married to the single life, and didn"t want to be responsible for anyone else"s socks or chicken dinners. If she were a plant, her instructions would have read: "Needs ample sunlight; thrives in solitude." Some winter evenings she would turn off her phone, start a fire, open a book-and swear there was no home happier than hers. Her friends called her commitment-phobic to her face, but why label as fear what was simply a choice? When she told them she dreamed of being an old spinster one day, of course no one believed her. But she knew her recent restlessness had little to do with love.
Ginny had no illusions about marriage. To her it looked like boatloads of work and a lifetime of compromise. She realized she was in the minority in her disaffection for the inst.i.tution; the world was peopled with the betrothed. Still, occasionally her friends confided details that supported her aversion: Jessica"s husband, Ted, taped The X-Files over their wedding video; Katrina could never cook with her favorite spice, dill, because Leo didn"t care for it. And parenthood-parenthood looked like slavery. Ginny found herself newly in awe of her own parents now that her peers had begun to procreate, and she could see up close what was involved. To consider all they had given up-the time, the freedom. "Maybe I"m just too selfish to have children," she confessed to Jessica over the phone.
"Let"s not forget, a lot of people have children for selfish reasons," Jessica said. "In order to have someone to play with, or to take care of them when they"re old. Or because they"re bored and don"t have anything better to do." Jessica herself was pregnant with baby number four, and Ginny knew her motives were of the more magnanimous variety: She wanted to adore her children in a way she had never been adored.
Truth be told, Ginny already had children-five cla.s.ses full of them. Despite frustrations, her favorites were the seniors. Twenty seventeen-year-olds were hers for AP English every day, fifth period, right after lunch, when all the blood in their bodies that wasn"t already servicing endocrine glands was busy digesting pizza and Gatorade. Nonetheless, she made it her duty to try to love them. And she attempted to impart a few morsels of wisdom; she tried very hard, but more and more she felt that something was being lost on them. She did everything she"d always done: She took them on the field trip to Walden Pond; she read from writers" obituaries; she told them who were the alcoholics, who slept with whom, who were the geniuses and who were the hacks, which one subsisted on a diet of only white wine, oysters, and grapes for so long she had to be hospitalized for anemia. Still, they looked at her with what could only be called accusation. As if she were withholding something. As if there were something that she, Ginny, was supposed to be doing for them, or giving them, but she was simply too selfish or too lazy to do it.
She"d heard of the great teachers who said they learned more from their students than they taught them, so she examined her teenagers" faces with fresh scrutiny and pored over their essays with renewed vigor, wondering what she was supposed to glean. Her kids were so disaffected, so sophisticated, so urbane. A couple of times she could have sworn Marc Campbell had winked at her in the hallway. She had them read Suite Francaise, a World War II novel whose author had perished at Auschwitz while the ma.n.u.script was rescued by her daughters. Ginny asked if there were any questions.
"Do you think the sum of the good things mankind has done outweighs the sum of the horrible things?" It was Julia, her star student. Ginny panicked for a second, genuinely stumped, then made up an answer about how it"s not always useful to quantify things.
If they wanted difficult questions, she"d give them the difficult questions. "Love is an attempt to penetrate another being, but it can only be realized if the surrender is mutual," she said the following Wednesday. She was reading to them from The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz. "It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is-"
"And you, Miss Porter?" asked Jimmy Galway, interrupting. He was a confusing child: He had the att.i.tude of a tattooed rebel but the fresh-pressed shirts of a diplomat.
"And me what?"
"You one of the few?" It briefly flashed through Ginny"s head that she would never have dreamed of interrupting her teachers, never mind daring to ask if they had ever truly succeeded in falling in love. She leaned back against the front of her desk and wished the slit in her slim black skirt stopped an inch lower than it did. But she didn"t believe in lying, least of all to the young.
"I have often been in love," she said, matter-of-factly. "But never of the surrendering variety. Or rather, if I do surrender, it doesn"t seem to be sustainable for very long." Just then the bell rang, and brought relief. Within the relief, there was also a small pearl of pride, that pleasurable feeling that sometimes accompanies speaking the plain truth.
The pride didn"t last. The days dragged; her kids became less and less engaged. Some would unabashedly toy with their cell phones while she was teaching. They didn"t do their homework; they chewed gum in gla.s.s; Tim Harris sat with an unlit clove cigarette perched on his lips during the entire first act of Waiting for G.o.dot. It was as if they were challenging her, calling her out. But she didn"t know what was wrong, or how to reach them. Hadn"t there been things that had reached her once? Books, films, sc.r.a.ps of beauty that had moved her so deeply she had wept with grat.i.tude? How could she now not remember what they were? Even the well-worn volumes on her own syllabus seemed to have become mere words on a page.
"There"s more to life than grammar and spelling," she announced on a rainy Friday afternoon, but it only made them slouch deeper in their chairs, squeaking their sneakers against the linoleum. She felt like a hypocrite. Grammar and spelling, sadly, were her lifeblood. Against her better wishes, she"d become an enforcer of the picayune. Her students must have perceived her failure; with the wisdom of children, they sensed that she had chosen the easy path in life, and they resented her for it.
"I"m sure they don"t resent you," Jessica said cheerfully, placing her spoon on the edge of her saucer. All around them, the bright voice of Sam Cooke was greeting itself in the gleaming surfaces of the diner. "They"re teenagers. They probably don"t give you a second thought. They"re too busy thinking about each other, or how to get out of that h.e.l.lhole." Jessica had so seamlessly made the transition from pink-haired punk rocker to wife and mother that Ginny sometimes forgot about her undying empathy for the disenfranchised.
"That h.e.l.lhole is my life," Ginny said.
"I know, honey. I"m sorry. I feel for you. You know I do."
"I need to get out of there. It"s just-something"s got to change," Ginny said. She cupped her mug with both hands. "You know, when I was their age, I loved English cla.s.s. It was better than honors chemistry with Mr. Marks. Or writing the Presidents report for Mr. Tully. It was exciting. It was English, with Mr. Hennessey."
Jessica arched an eyebrow. "Mr. Hennessey, the one you were in love with?"
"I wasn"t in love with him, I was inspired by him. He was my inspiration."
"Uh-huh. I thought you said you had your first s.e.x dream about him."
Ginny was grateful she didn"t blush easily. "He was my mentor. I mean, all these years, he"s been my invisible mentor."
"Why not make him visible?" said Jessica.
"Huh?"
"Why not look him up?"
"Whatever for?" Ginny said, but Jessica only shook her head, slid belly-first out of the booth, and went to pay the check.
Ginny thought about doing a search on the Internet, but in the end, finding Mr. Hennessey was as easy as calling her old high school and speaking to the secretary from whom Ginny used to procure late slips on account of the bus-by G.o.d, the same woman still worked there. Arthur Hennessey lived in western Ma.s.sachusetts now, had stopped teaching ten years ago. His address was 49 Merriam Street, Pittsfield. She had a phone number on file but wasn"t sure it was current.
Arthur. It was strange to think of his first name. He"d been, what, maybe thirty-five when she was seventeen? Which would make him fifty-four now, give or take. She wondered what he"d be doing, why he"d left teaching; it seemed he"d been born to teach. Perhaps he owned a bookstore or had started some sort of nonprofit. Or she could picture him as a ski instructor; he"d always been the chaperone for the school-sponsored ski trips. Would he be married, with a family? He"d been a perennial bachelor back then: tall, dark hair, broad shoulders-practically the bachelor from Central Casting. It was occasionally rumored that he was engaged, or had a girlfriend, but he never seemed to actually get married. He sometimes had a little BO, she remembered, which Ginny"s adolescent self had found oddly s.e.xy. Mainly, though, he had the peculiar beauty of a person in love with what he does.
His cla.s.sroom had all the elegance and electricity hers lacked. He would pepper his lessons with quotes from John Cheever, Walt Whitman, Bob Dylan. He seemed to know something about everything, and he wielded his knowledge not as a weapon but with self-effacing humor and quirkiness. He promised his students two dollars for each time they brought in an example of bad grammar in a pop song-an arrangement that easily could have bankrupted him. Ginny was the first to produce one. "I have a quote from the song "Hungry Eyes," " she announced shyly one afternoon. She didn"t have to say what it was. "I feel the magic between you and I!" Mr. Hennessey blurted out, as if he were removing a painful splinter from his heel.
He didn"t draw the same boundaries her other teachers did. He told them what books he was reading, what movies he liked, what happened the week he was out on jury duty. "We were seated around a large table, and the lawyer questioning potential jurors said: "Each of you needs to choose which of these adjectives best describes you: leader or follower." "Leader," reported the first. "Leader," said the next." Then it was Mr. Hennessey"s turn. "Well, if these two are leaders, I"d better be a follower," he said. "But I should inform you, these words are nouns, not adjectives."
He had them memorize and recite their favorite poem. He said he would bring in his guitar and accompany them, if they wanted to sing it. The students laughed, but he was serious. "Each of you should make a point of having at least one great poem committed to memory," he said. "In case you ever have to spend some time in prison."
In the spring he missed half a week of school, and the subst.i.tute teacher told them his mother had died. When he returned to cla.s.s on Thursday, he was quieter than usual, but beneath the surface, the old self blazed. He gave them an essay a.s.signment so he could sit at his desk, writing what looked like thank-you notes. "Write a three-page composition, either fiction or nonfiction, that ill.u.s.trates how fragile yet how durable we are." Ginny wrote something relatively unimaginative about her dog. That afternoon, when she got home from school, she went to her bedroom, locked the door, and cried.
"Never listen to the world," he announced one sunlit morning in the middle of June. It was the last day of school. "The world gives terrible advice. In fact, more often than not, do the exact opposite of what the world says." This was her final memory of the man, her favorite teacher. She couldn"t locate him in the crowd at graduation, couldn"t find him afterward to tell him about her college choice, thank him for his recommendation. But he had inhabited her consciousness all these years. Of course he had. And now she had his address.
At first it had seemed fitting and adventuresome to drive to his house on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, rather than calling ahead. The world gives terrible advice, she repeated to herself, speeding along the Ma.s.sPike. What kind of advice would Mr. Hennessey give? But now, sitting on the side of the road with the engine still running, she felt ridiculous. She was about a mile from the house, had driven by twice, seen a truck, seen the light on in the kitchen, and kept going. It was October, and both sides of the dirt road were lined with trees whose yellow leaves had already fallen. She knew her students were out at soccer matches and football games, and in the silence she heard their shouts and cheers. While here she sat on a country road, where not a single car had pa.s.sed her. One minute she was prepared to go back to the house; the next she was ready to drive the two-plus hours it would take to get home. This must be what a midlife crisis feels like, she said to herself. Then she remembered Good in a crisis, from the personal ads, and laughed. The next thing she knew, she had pulled into his driveway, turned off the engine, and was slamming the car door.
The house was modest and unremarkable. Greenish paint, beige shutters, a few shrubs along the front. An old-fashioned black mailbox hung beside the door. The truck in the driveway was rusted, and the word TOYOTA across its back was missing its final A, rendering it a palindrome. Ginny rang the bell and waited, feeling a bit queasy, preparing herself for a wife or child to answer, or a stranger-perhaps this was an old address-anything. She rang the bell again. A moment later, there he was. Mr. Hennessey.
"Yes?" he said through the screen door. She could tell he didn"t recognize her. She wore her blond hair long and curly now, and her face had settled in a way that gave her cheekbones she hadn"t had when she was seventeen. She was wearing jeans and a brown suede jacket, and carrying an oversize handbag that she thought of as her schoolmarm"s purse.
"Mr. Hennessey, h.e.l.lo. It"s Virginia Porter. I was a student of yours."
"Virginia Porter," Mr. Hennessey said, a smile widening his face. "Come on in. How the heck are you?"
"I"m all right. I"m a teacher myself now," she said, wishing she"d waited a little longer to say it.
"No kidding! Are you really?" He opened the hall closet. "Here, let me take your coat." If he was shocked to see her, he showed no sign of it. He spoke as though they did this every third Sat.u.r.day in October.
She pulled her arms out of her jacket, and he helped her. "I am," she said, trying not to grin. She was surprised at how good she felt. Mr. Hennessey"s face had surprised her-it had more lines, but it was the same face.
"Have a seat. Do you feel like coffee or anything? Tea?"
"Tea would be great."
The two of them sat on a worn leather sofa opposite a beautifully carved coffee table, holding their cups of tea. Ginny commented on the table, which featured a landscape of seraphs and Cyrillic letters under a sheet of gla.s.s.
"I made it," Mr. Hennessey said. "I meant to sell it to someone, but then I ended up keeping it. Funny how things work out sometimes."
"You"re a natural-it"s gorgeous. Is that what you do these days, woodwork?"
"I do a bunch of things; handyman stuff, mostly. I have some friends with farms who do a lot of canning, so there"s seasonal work. It suits me; I like being outdoors. It"s nice out here."
"What made you give up teaching?" Ginny said, not realizing until she asked it how the question had been pressing on her. "You were so great at it."
"You don"t know?" Mr. Hennessey said, adjusting his position. "It was quite the scandal back in the day. I thought everyone knew."
Ginny felt her face go hot, ashamed both that she didn"t know and that she might have brought up an indelicate topic. "I guess I"m behind the times. I never heard a thing."
"Oh. Well. It was six or seven years after your cla.s.s. On a ski trip, one of the boys was arrested for smoking pot. Just one of those kid things. No harm done, really. He and his friends had taken a bag to the top of the mountain, presumably to get high and then ski down. But since the trip was in Canada and they"d carried it across the U.S. border, it became a big deal. The authorities pressed him about who sold it to him, and the kid said I had. Said I gave him the weed earlier that day. That everyone knew I would supply students with drugs-all they had to do was ask.
"It was entirely made up, of course, probably out of desperation. But the school board took it rather seriously, as you can imagine. They searched my house, depositioned me. In the end I was vindicated, but after that, it was as if the wind had gone out of my sails. A year later I left."
"I"m so sorry," Ginny said. "I didn"t know any of this. I didn"t know a thing."
"Don"t be sorry. It all turned out for the best. I like it here. I have plenty of time to read. And it"s quiet. Peaceful."
Ginny surveyed the room-the crowded bookshelves, the dusty white curtains, the guitar case in the corner next to an expensive-looking stereo. It did seem like the abode of a contented person. Simple but homey.
He lifted his teacup. "What about you?" he said. "How do you like your life?"
"My life is generally a barrel of laughs when I"m not contemplating thoughts of an untimely death," she said, which she"d hoped would make him laugh, but it didn"t. "I like my life all right," she said, and found herself wishing they were drinking beer rather than tea. She remembered the restaurant in Chinatown that was the only place in Boston where you could get alcohol after serving hours, by ordering a kettle of "cold tea." Cold tea, wink wink.
"Anything exciting going on?" he said. "Where do you teach?"
"Lexington High School," she said. "English. I even have the AP cla.s.s."
"Ah!" Mr. Hennessey said. "Our archrivals! How could you?"
"It"s just the way the numbers worked out. It"s nothing personal," she said, as if she were a professional ballplayer.
"And forgive me if I was hoping you"d say English rather than chemistry."
Ginny made a snort. "All I remember from chemistry is Avogadro"s number. And even that I don"t remember."
"Avogadro isn"t worth remembering. Unless you"re out on a date with a chemist you want to impress."
"I guess that explains why that one never called again," she said. She found her gaze shifting to Mr. Hennessey"s hands. There was no wedding band; there was no evidence of children"s things around the house.
"How about you?" she said. "Dating any chemists?"
"No."
"Did you ever marry?"
Mr. Hennessey put down his cup of tea. "No."
"Why not?"
He looked at her. He"d always encouraged his students to be candid and direct, and his expression implied he was pleased that someone had finally taken him up on it.
"Just not for me, I suppose."
"I know what you mean," Ginny said. "I feel that way about eggplant."
Mr. Hennessey clicked his tongue. "Now that"s a pity. That means you won"t be able to sample my beer-battered fried eggplant extraordinaire."
"I hope you"re kidding," Ginny said. "Wow, you"re serious? How about just a beer, minus the eggplant extraordinaire."
Mr. Hennessey rose to his feet. "All right, Virginia," he said. "But it"s your loss."
Two beers later, she was feeling much more relaxed. Mr. Hennessey had put on a Tom Waits CD, and Ginny thought he had the saddest yet most hopeful voice she"d ever heard.
"Mr. Hennessey, would you mind if I asked you a question?"
"On one condition: You have to stop calling me Mr. Hennessey. You make me feel as if it"s still 1987. We need to bring ourselves up to date."
Ginny offered her hand. "Deal," she said. She took a breath. "Arthur, do you think the good things human beings have done outweigh the hideous things?"
Mr. Hennessey nearly spilled his beer. "What the h.e.l.l kind of question is that?"
"The kind my kids ask. That"s from Julia, who"s an ace, but so shy. She writes these ingenious paragraphs about the overlooked dross of the world, but never makes a peep in cla.s.s. Then the other day she finally spoke up, and I let her down. I couldn"t help her," Ginny said. "It was awful."
"I"ll tell you what I think: It only takes one moment of perfection to atone for a lifetime of waste."
Ginny sat up as if he"d slapped her. "Perfection? I beg your pardon? Aren"t you the man whose blackboard perennially read: Strive for perfection, but learn to work with imperfection? You taught us perfection was a chimera. I thought it was a fiction."
"So did I," he said. "But I was wrong. Perfection isn"t outside us. Perfection is a way of seeing."
Ginny fell silent. You were less cryptic before you became enlightened, she wanted to say, but the lines on his face appeared freshly earnest, as if each were the receipt for some suffering, and she changed her mind. Mr. Hennessey split the caps off two fresh bottles and handed her one. She thought about declining, not certain what it would mean in terms of her drive home, but she accepted, and clinked her bottle to his.