“I know you’re anxious to go, but you can spare a minute, can’t you?”
“It’s all right. Sure.”
“I’m a bit puzzled, Lorraine.”
“You are?”
“By your note.”
“Oh, that.”
“Of course, they’re quite common. Crushes on teachers. Or can we call it that, Lorraine?”
All the wrong words. Lon had rehearsed the dialogue carefully, ready with impassioned responses to cue lines that failed in this moment to come. Shame and regret bore down from the ecru walls, weighing her with an uncomprehended guilt. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to upset you, but as we grow older, Lorraine, we outgrow these impulses. I’ve always thought of you as level-headed and mature for your years. You read a lot, don’t you?”
“Quite a bit.”
“What do you like to read?”
“Oh—poetry. Books about the islands. I read just about anything.”
“Do you spend most of your time this way? Alone? Reading?”
“Well, I have a part-time job. Saturdays. This summer I might get to work weekdays, too.”
“Baby-sitting, I suppose?”
A rankling accusation. “No. I work at the pet shop. Washing dogs.”
“Do you have a lot of friends? Close friends?”
“I get along with the kids all right.”
“Boys, too?”
“I get along with them, too.”
“But no special boy?”
“I used to play ball a lot with Bud Schaeffer. Baseball. I used to get along great with him.”
“But you don’t play baseball now?”
Stupid questions, getting more senseless by the minute! “Who with? That was a long time ago.”
“Yes, and I suppose he’s like other boys. Busy working on his car … dating girls …”
“He doesn’t know the first thing about cars. I wouldn’t let him change the oil in my Plymouth. I washed a lot of flea-taxis to pay for that car. Well, the down payment and my dad gave me the rest, I mean. It’s old, but I take good care of it.”
“I don’t know how to put this, Lorraine. I seem to be saying everything badly. But what I’m trying to tell you is that when a girl gets to be … What are you, sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Sixteen.”
“She’s usually thinking about clothes and dates. Working on a jalopy is … uh … writing a sentimental, almost unnatural note such as the one you left for me yesterday …”
“That was just a silly thing. I forgot all about it.”
“I hope you did forget it, Lorraine. A note such as yours might be misinterpreted.” From out of her grab-bag of meaningless phrases, Miss Chamberlin pulled another. “I’m a woman, Lorraine. I’m thirty-two years old and unmarried. People … If someone read what you wrote to me, they might misunderstand.” And in a tone that implied deep significance where Lon sensed only absurdity, “I live alone, you see.”
“I know.”
“You really do know. You actually know?”
“You live in one of Hardesty’s duplexes. The ones with the fenced yard on Orange Grove.”
“You went out of your way to find out personal details about my life?” There was dismay and disapproval in the question. Wasn’t it enough that she hadn’t said the things she was supposed to say? Did she have to make inane statements and then act shocked at the obvious answers? Lon lifted her eyes to the doorway, yearning.
“Lorraine, I appreciate your … I’m glad, that is, that you like me and that you’ve enjoyed this semester in my class. I’m hoping you’ll find outlets that are more—shall we say, normal? You’re a very attractive girl. Your hair’s naturally wavy, isn’t it?”
“That’s from cutting it a lot. I like it short.”
“I’d like to see you walk more gracefully. Why, a girl as slim and tall as you are could be a model. Surely you must have some fondness for pretty clothes?”
Lon tugged at her brown wool sweater-vest. Shut up! Just shut up and let me go! Oh, let me go!
“With dark brown hair, you can get away with wearing lovely colors. Coral pink, for instance. You don’t want to look drab, Lorraine. Boys might find you very attractive if you set out a program for yourself and …”
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?”
“I suppose so. And I think you understand me. Do you, Lorraine?”
“I guess so.”
“Then you don’t think I’m saying these things to be critical? We’re still friends?”
“I have to drive a couple of kids home,” Lon lied. “They’ll think I ditched them.”
“Yes. Well, you run along, Lorraine.” And, strangely confused, Lon thought, for one who had guided the whole conversation, “But you do understand about writing notes to … And about boys. You do understand what I mean?”
“Sure. I’ll be seeing you, Miss Chamberlin.”
And she hurried into the joy-filled corridor where someone yelped, “T.G.T.I.F.!” and a chorus responded, “You know it! Thank God this is Friday—the last Friday!” She hurried along the dark, warm hall, scalding moisture clouding her vison of the marbled walls until she was in the students’ parking lot where the hot salt zigzag tears burned on her face. It began then; the thin trickle of sound that was not a sound within her head. It was deeper inside her body, where so much was compressed that could not be revealed, where the buried questions begged to be released. Not why am I unlike the others, but why are the others unlike me? And I want, I want, but what is it I want?
Give a cheer, give a cheer,
For the boys who drink the beer,
In the cellars of Wellington High!
A raked Chevy screamed past her and the melody of the Caisson Song filled the dusty yard:
They are brave, they are bold,
And the liquor they can hold
Is the glory of Wellington High!
No one was waiting beside the beat-up Plymouth. No one waited for the gangling odd-ball with the hazel eyes, as no one had ever waited. Only the questions waited, as if in some seldom-dusted cobwebbed corner of her consciousness. And who would answer the questions? Who now? There were answers that some sphynx-like mother creature might know. Yet someone who, unmotherlike, would not advise, saying only, “This is why you ran to the bathroom and were sick when Bud Schaeffer touched your breast and kissed you; this is why you ache inside, running to the refuge of the Island, the secret you would have shared with the woman in English III; and this is why you trembled in tears and a violent gladness the afternoon her hand touched yours and she smiled—smiling, you were certain, for no one else.”
Lon pulled open the car door. Far down the street the bawling voices receded:
And it’s guzzle, guzzle, guzzle,
As it trickles down your muzzle,