More Like Her
Authors: Liza Palmer
MORE LIKE
HER
Liza Palmer
For Don, Joe, Zoë and Bonnie
Contents
Operator #237:
Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?
Caller:
I’m a teacher at the Markham School, there’s a man here with a gun. He—[shots fired in the background]
Operator #237:
Ma’am? Ma’am?!
Caller
:
[unintelligible screaming] Oh my god. Oh my god . . . Is she dead? Oh my god . . . [unintelligible]
Operator #237:
Ma’am, please—
Caller:
You need to hurry . . . please. Please, god. Hurry! [unintelligible] Noooooo!!!! So much blood . . . there’s so much blood!
Operator #237:
Ma’am, I’ve sent them—the police. Now—tell me where you are in the school.
Caller:
[unintelligible] The teachers’ lounge. Upstairs. We’re on the balc—
Just stay down! Stay down!
Operator #237:
Ma’am, please, I need you to calm down. Is the shooter still in the teachers’ lounge with you?
Caller:
Calm down?
He’s . . . oh my god [unintelligible] Is he dead, too?
Operator #237:
Ma’am, I just want you to stay on the line with me until help gets there. How many people are in danger?
Caller:
What? All of us! All of us are in danger! He’s got a gun?! What do you think?
Stay down!
Oh my god! No!
Operator #237:
Ma’am, is there any way you can block the door?
Caller:
The doors are glass, there’s no point.
No! Stay down! Frannie!?
No . . . oh my god. Oh my god . . .
Did he get her? Did he get her, too?
[unintelligible sobbing]
Operator #237:
Ma’am, please. Please. Stay with me. Please. Ma’am?!
—-Dial tone—-
Total time of call: 1:23:08
Chapter 1
Lipstick and Palpable Fear
I
’m not the girl men choose.
I’m the girl who’s charming and funny and then drives home alone wondering what she did wrong. I’m the girl who meets someone halfway decent and then fills in the gaps in his character with my own imagination, only to be shocked when he’s not the man I thought he was.
I’m the girl who hides who she really is for fear I’ll fall short.
SO, WHEN EMMA DUNHAM
introduces herself to me as the new head of school, I automatically transform into the version of me who doesn’t make people uncomfortable with her “intensity,” who doesn’t need any new friends and who loves being newly single and carefree. In short, the version of me that’s as far away from the genuine article as is humanly possible.
“Headmistress Dunham,” she says, extending her hand. To my horror, Emma Dunham is cool, like take-me-back-to-the-fringes-of-my-seventh-grade-cafeteria cool.
“Frances Reid,” I say, extending my hand to hers. I won’t slip and introduce myself as Frances
Peed
, the moniker given to me as I lurked on the fringes of my seventh-grade cafeteria.
“You’re the speech therapist,” Emma says, her smile easy.
“Yes,” I say, allowing a small smile.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” Emma says. I let the silence extend past what is socially acceptable. I take a sip of coffee from my mug—now stained with pink lipstick and palpable fear.
“You two have met, I see?” Jill asks. Her face has
that look
, the one that threatens to reveal all my closely held secrets. All it takes is a simple well-placed smirk from a close friend who knows exactly what you’re feeling and thinks it hilarious when your carefully constructed disguise is threatened. I won’t look at her.
“Jill Fleming, this is Emma Dunham. Jill is the other speech therapist here at Markham. Emma’s the new head of school,” I say, averting my eyes from Jill’s omniscient gaze.
“Sure. Jill and I met earlier. We’re all certainly going to miss Mrs. Kim,” Emma says, her white teeth momentarily blinding me.
“Kali is doing just fine, I’m sure. She finally got her dream job at Choate,” I say, rebelling slightly by not formalizing an old friend’s name.
“Of course with Mrs. Kim gone there will be an opening as the head of the speech therapy department,” Emma says with a smile.
“Will there?” Jill asks transparently.
Headmistress Dunham merely sniffs and tightens her mouth into a prim line.
Jill continues. “Any thoughts you’d like to share with Ms. Reid and I on your hiring process for that position would certainly be welcomed.”
“In time, Mrs. Fleming. In time,” Emma says. I look past Emma’s alabaster skin and beautifully tailored suit as teachers and administrators of Pasadena, California’s Markham School for the Criminally Wealthy stream into the library for this year’s back-to-school orientation.
“Lovely meeting you, headmistress,” I say, excusing myself from Emma Dunham and her lipstick that never smudges. She gives me what can only be described as a royal nod and quickly falls in with a pack of eager upper school faculty.
“I’m not looking at you or speaking to you for the next ten minutes,” I say to Jill as we find a seat in the back of the library. I straighten up and tell myself that my enviable posture is on par with any of Emma’s myriad accomplishments.
“Why are you sitting like that? What’s wrong with you? Do you have to fart?” Jill asks, her voice dipping with the word
fart
.
I immediately slouch, plummeting back to reality. Even my mimicked perfection looks like I have gas.
“No . . . no, I don’t have to fart,” I say, clearing my throat.
Jill continues without missing a beat. “She’s thirty-four. Originally from Michigan, moved to San Francisco in college. Married to Jamie Dunham—she took his last name. He’s a professor at UCLA. I’m humiliated I don’t have a picture of him. A wedding picture would have been nice, but there just wasn’t any time . . .” Jill shakes her head in frustration. “No kids. This is her first time as headmistress.” I “ignore” Jill—meaning I inventory every piece of information relayed to me yet act like I couldn’t be bothered.
“Why does it not shock me that you’re far more concerned about Emma’s marital status than the head of department opening?” I ask.
“It really shouldn’t,” Jill says, taking a bite of her bagel.
“Is this seat taken?” Debbie asks, motioning to the empty seat just next to mine. Debbie Manners: school librarian and self-proclaimed welcome wagon.
“Yeah, sorry,” I say, forcing myself to look apologetic. Debbie walks away in search of another empty seat, preferably next to some unsuspecting fool to whom she’ll propose an innocent back-rub. A seemingly chaste request that’ll ensure you never let her sit next to you again.
“What are you going to do when the orientation starts and that seat remains empty?” Jill asks. Debbie sits down next to the new lacrosse coach. He instinctively leans away from her as she whispers in his ear that he looks tense.
“Be relieved,” I say.
“I want to thank you all for being here this morning. On time and ready to work, just the kind of orientation I can get used to,” Emma Dunham says. Her delivery is relaxed and sincere. I adjust my sweater for the umpteenth time. I can’t get comfortable.
Emma continues. “I am Headmistress Dunham and am your new head of school. I am originally from Michigan and no, I’m not as young as you think I am.” The crowd laughs and nudges each other. She’s funny! She’s beautiful! She’s humble! She makes me feel like shit about myself! Where’s the razor and warm bath?!
“Jeremy couldn’t stop talking about you,” Jill whispers.
I sigh. Jeremy Hannon. Another setup. Just what every Labor Day barbecue needs: a forced blind date over corn on the cob and onion dip.
Jill continues. “He kept mentioning that mix you made. Said he wanted a copy.”
“That was a classic rock CD I got at the grocery store for three ninety-nine.”
Jill lets out a dramatic, weary sigh.
I’m letting this golden opportunity slip through my ringless fingers! She’s powerless in the face of my indifference! Her unborn godchildren are trapped in limbo and I won’t burn a simple mix!
Several people give us looks of deep concern. We are not respecting the new head of school.
“I guess his cousin is also really into music. He says you remind him of her.” Jill’s face is alight with excitement.
“I remind him of his cousin?”
“Yeah, isn’t that great?”
“No,
Flowers in the Attic
. It is not.”
“That’s a brother and a sister, and besides—”
“Shh!” It’s Debbie Manners. The librarian. How predictable.
Jill continues. “You never know how something is going to start between two people.” I shake her off, reminding her that we’re in the middle of orientation. I don’t want to hear about some guy’s halfhearted feelings for me. Halfhearted feelings that depend on a mix of overplayed rock tunes of the 1970s. Not quite the modern-day
Romeo and Juliet
I imagined my love life would be.
Jill persists. “I made sure Martin knew that I wasn’t like other girls he was dating. He had to work.” I can’t listen to Jill’s “I made him work” story again. I focus back on Emma just as she smiles, a perfect dimple punctuating her delight. I tried to have a dimple once. It consisted of me sitting on the couch with my finger in my cheek whenever I watched television as a kid. No dimple, just an Everest-size zit where my finger had been.
Jill continues. “He tried to call on a Friday for a date th—”
“I know, but you said that you were reading a book and couldn’t go,” I say, interrupting. “I know. Except that you met up with him later at a bar, so . . .” My voice is getting louder.
“Shh!” Debbie again. This time I feel like I should thank her. I look away from Jill and try to focus back on Emma and her ongoing speech about expectations and proper behavior.
“I may have met up with him later, but . . . you know, I told him no first,” Jill says, almost to herself.
The truth is, I haven’t been seriously interested in any of the legion of men Jill’s tried to set me up with since Ryan dumped me. Of course, this doesn’t explain why I have entranced none of them. It’s much easier to rebuff willing gentlemen callers than to proclaim, “
I didn’t like you anyway!
” after they say you remind them of their cousin. Although rejecting Jeremy had less to do with that than it did with his proclivity for saying
exspecially
.
I’m sure my behavior will have dire consequences. Flash forward: I’m living in some seaside cottage in my old age—possibly made entirely out of seashells. I’m clad in a faded housedress, large sunhat and Wellingtons. I make a meager living selling my seashell sculptures at the local farmer’s market for tuppence a bag. The locals make up stories about me: I’m a witch, I’m crazy or talk to myself because I’m lonely or I murdered my lover when I was younger. Okay, fine. I made up that last one.
As Emma Dunham speaks, I scan the library hoping Jill will get the hint that our little conversation is over. I think she’s moved on. Apparently someone’s put on weight over the summer. I smile at a few familiar faces. Some stare a little too long. A knowing smile here. A rolled eye there. A nervously abbreviated glance from me to . . .
Ryan
. In the front of the library. His leg loosely crossed over his knee. Those white and red vintage Nike Dunks twitch as he struggles to focus. The worn zip-up hoodie and corduroy pants that are a bit too loose for the school’s liking yet tolerated (for now) due to an impressive educational résumé that reads like a who’s who of top American institutions. The early morning tangle of black hair and the coffee mug he bought in Dublin when we were there last year for his summer internship at Trinity College. I look away. Clear my throat. Sip my coffee. Try to regain my composure.
“You okay?” Jill asks, her voice soft. All evidence of the pep talk slash Spanish Inquisition is gone.
“Yeah.
Yeah
,” I say.
“He’s been looking at you, too.”
“I have no response to that.”
“Maybe things are rocky with Jessica.”
“Things are never rocky with girls like Jessica.”
“Frannie—”
“Don’t. Just don’t.”
Jill is quiet.
I continue. “Exspecially since it won’t do either of us any good.”
“God, that was driving me crazy. I kept trying to say it correctly and he just never picked up on it.”
“Of-
ten
-times.”
“It’s like nails on a chalkboard.”
“Shhh!” Debbie again.
Jill and I smile our apologies. Emma is still talking. I focus in just as I see Ryan glance back at us. I act like I don’t notice. He swipes his bangs out of his eyes.
Going to be a great year.