I laughed again, trying to make it start lower in my throat. I wished I could think of something witty to say about calling him Bob. Instead, I was thinking about what a sucker I’ve always been for Bobbys, ever since my first boyfriend, Bobby Healey.
Bobby Healey was so bad that the nuns hated him with thoroughly unchristian zeal. He hated them back and was crazy about me. I memorized commandments and spit them back politely for the nuns, winning rosary beads and lace mantillas for my efforts. And I silently cheered Bobby, my hero, for having the guts not to bother.
On the day I loved him most he swore at Sister Mary Catherine, a mortal sin punished by guaranteed rotting in hell. Because Saint Stephen’s didn’t have a cafeteria, we ate lunch at our desks. The dark wooden desks were bolted securely to the darker wooden floor, and we jammed lukewarm cartons of milk into the inkwells. The nuns sold the milk and also penny candy. They said the money went to the poor, but the kids all knew it went to buy whiskey to drink with the priests on the weekends.
Sister Mary Catherine left the room during lunch for a minute one day. When she came back, a piece of red licorice was missing from her desk. Bobby had stolen it, taken a bite and given the rest to me. I was in love so I ate it.
Thou shalt not steal was a big one, so Sister lined up the entire class, forty-five or so fifth-graders. One by one she made us kneel before the crucifix that graced the wall at the front of the classroom and swear to God that we hadn’t taken the piece of licorice.
Forty-five kids knelt before Jesus and swore they hadn’t stolen a piece of penny candy. When it was my turn, I lied bravely, not wanting to implicate Bobby. Even if she believed my confession, Sister would know I had a coconspirator. I was too good a girl to sin alone. Temporarily defeated, Sister Mary Catherine took the wooden paddle off the wall, went down the line, whacked us one by one on our bottoms. Made us take another turn kneeling before God. I looked at Bobby. He shook his head no, so I didn’t confess. I pictured us in hell together one day, and his company made the eternal flames not matter so much.
When it was Bobby’s turn, he looked Sister in the eye and said, “You are damn stupid to keep doing this.” Nobody moved, nobody dared even breathe. The licorice was forgotten. As Sister Mary Catherine escorted Bobby to Mother Superior’s office, I wondered if I would see him again before hell. He emerged just before dismissal, and I worshiped him with my eyes as he strolled back to his seat. He ignored me, however, because he’d just fallen in love with Eileen Sullivan. Somehow I blamed his defection on the nuns, as if I’d been a subject of discussion in Mother Superior’s office.
Sarah Hurlihy
, the nuns might have said to Bobby,
surely you can do better than that, Mr. Healey
.
Austin’s father was saying something, but I’d missed it. Austin had gone to the other side of the room. He uncapped a dry erase marker and began drawing on the white board. It looked like a picture of Dolly’s trailer. Maybe it was his father’s trailer.
“Do you live in a trailer?” I asked the new Bobby. Bob.
“I prefer to think of it as temporary asylum.” His hair was curly like Austin’s, darker though, and streaked with occasional coarse strands of white. His chinos bagged at the knees and looked as if they might have been slept in, but he wore them with a fresh- from-the-cleaners shirt the color of raspberry sherbet. Unbuttoned at the neck, sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, curly hair peeking out from his chest, twirling around on his forearms.
I hoped I wasn’t checking him out too obviously, but I’d never really noticed just how good-looking he was. Nice, too. And potentially single. Eventually. I stood up a little straighter and pretended to rearrange a display of autumn leaves thumbtacked to a bulletin board.
“So what has Austin told you?” he asked. His eyes focused on mine as if I were about to say something interesting. I tried to rise to the occasion.
“About you? That you’re incorrigible. And taking a break from your marriage.”
“I think that particular phrasing came from his mother. You must hear a lot. I never thought about what kids tell their teachers.” He looked down and then back into my eyes.
“In one ear and out the other,” I assured him. I resisted the urge to take a step closer to see if he smelled like soap or cologne or just himself. It was so amazing the way the next part of your life might have been standing right in front of you all along.
“Yeah, right.” He smiled. “By the way, how do you know the infamous, man-eating Dolly?”
“My father’s dating her.” I felt myself start to blush at the mention of dating. Of course, I wouldn’t be comfortable actually dating Bob Connor until his son was no longer in my class. But if we started a friendship now, it could develop at a leisurely pace and blossom into romance right around the end of the school year. Much better than risking the personal ads, where you never knew who you might meet.
“Oops. Uh, brave man.” He turned his head as June entered the classroom. She looked especially beautiful, dazed and sleepy-eyed. She must have found a new place to meditate. Smiling as she passed us, she walked over to Austin, knelt down beside him and picked up a marker. She began to draw little yellow flowers around the trailer. As soon as she finished each one, Austin colored the stem and leaves green.
Bob Connor and I watched them. We stood close together and our elbows were almost touching. Finally he turned to me and whispered, “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
I smiled and bobbed my head like one of those motion-sensitive animals people put on the dashboards of their cars. With each bounce, little bits of self-esteem drained down my body and out through the ends of my toes. Somehow I managed to say good-bye to the parents and students, even to June and her gorgeous-ness.
When the classroom was empty, I sat in one of the kiddie chairs. I automatically reached down to feel how much of my hips and thighs were spilling over the sides of the seat, a little test I always did to make sure I’d notice if they started to spread at an alarming rate. It hadn’t occurred to me to start checking for signs of invisibility. Maybe I was fading away, as my bones shrank and my eggs shriveled, and soon if not already men like Bob Connor, maybe all men, would only practice their eye contact on me as a warm-up for someone younger, prettier, perkier, gorgeouser.
*
The swing dance teacher had broken her foot. I didn’t ask how. Certainly K-3s were developmentally too young for swing dancing anyway, but the parents loved the idea, and she’d come highly recommended by someone who worked in my sister Christine’s office. As usual, Christine was feeling abandoned. “I can’t believe you left me in the trailer by myself for so long,” she’d said.
“You weren’t by yourself,” I tried. “Siobhan was there, and Dad, and the little kids. Carol just needed a moment alone with me to try to run my life.”
“That’s what I mean. Why does Carol always get to do everything? Why can’t I help you fix your life?”
I’d distracted her by asking about a dance teacher. And until the foot, she’d been a good referral, lining up half the class facing north and the other half facing south, no talk about gender at all, even though eighteen of the twenty children were female.
Slow, slow, quick, quick
, they’d all managed some version of the step, turning to face all four walls, “Just a Gigolo” blasting from a portable CD player.
I dragged myself down the hallway to Kate Stone’s office to ask for advice.
“Why, of course, you’ll call each of the parents and give them a choice: a credit for the next session after the instructor has recovered, or continued participation in a new dance class.”
“But I can’t find another swing dance teacher. I can’t even find any kind of dance teacher.” I tried to tone down the whine in my voice. “I’ve called everywhere.”
“This, Sarah, is where you apply your creative problem-solving training.” Kate Stone picked up a carved wooden box from her desk, lifted the cover. “Open up, Sarah. Step out of the box and see things in a fresh way. Then seek and ye shall find.” Kate Stone rolled her office chair over to the window, pulled gently on the string at the bottom of her wind chimes. We listened for a moment to the delicate tinkle of brass before she continued. “And, Sarah, if I wanted to manage the afterschool program myself, I wouldn’t have hired you to do it.”
The Brady kids were having so much trouble sharing the telephone that Mr. Brady was simply going to have to install a pay phone. I forgot I hadn’t finished my Cheerios yet, and took a sip of the wine I’d poured for after dinner. The wine made the milk taste a little off. I slid the cereal down to the far end of the coffee table. I took another sip of wine. One more and the milk residue was gone. This episode wasn’t quite as good as last night’s sharing-the-bathroom episode. Although who was I to criticize, since every single one of the Bradys had more of a life than I did.
I picked up the cassette tape and opened and closed the case a few times. Taking it out, I read “Personal Ad Responses” centered neatly in Carol’s handwriting. Most of the tape was still coiled at one end, the end we hadn’t listened to. Just one, I decided. I’ll listen to just one.
Seven thirty-eight p.m. October 18.
Hi, my name is John and obviously I heard your ad. It’s a very fetching message you left. Sorry, that was supposed to be kind of a joke about dogs. You know, fetching? Never mind. What I really want to say is that you have a terrific voice. Anyway, before I forget, let me give you my number. It’s, uh, 617-555-1412. That’s downtown Boston, Beacon Hill. So all right. Um …. you’re voluptuous, sensuous, alluring and fun. Well, I think that could work. And I’m a huge dog lover, too…. I mean, not just huge dogs but any size dog. Um, okay, I guess I should start with the obvious, banal stuff first. Um, I’m forty-three, and I’m completely divorced, so don’t worry about that. I’m a little over six feet tall. I get accused of looking, uh, like Harrison Ford sometimes. Kind of blondish hair, brownish eyes and, uh, I’ve been wearing wire-rimmed glasses lately instead of my contacts. Let’s see, what else? The best time to reach me is in the evening. I love Chinese Checkers. And pizza with everything but anchovies. I hope we can get together and talk soon and see what kinds of things besides dog-loving we might have in common.
I played John’s response four more times, and by the last time, I was able to mouth the words right along with him. I picked up the cordless phone, changed my mind and put it back down. I turned back to the television. The Bradys’ pay phone had just been delivered. It might not be the best episode, but at least with
The Brady Bunch
I could count on a happy ending.
*
“Do you remember what Johnny used to call his penis when we were kids?” I asked Carol.
“Mr. Murphy,” Carol answered. She really did know everything. “Mom was so worried, don’t you remember? She kept asking him if there was a real Mr. Murphy and if he had ever done anything to Johnny. And Johnny would say, ‘No, just
my
Mr. Murphy.’ And when we were all crammed into the car, taking a trip somewhere, Johnny would say, ‘Mr. Murphy has to go to the bathroom. Right now.’ And we’d all crack up and get in trouble for making him cry.”
“Was Johnny the one who sleepwalked into the kitchen one night and peed in the refrigerator?”
“No, no, no. That was Michael.” Carol looked at Michael for confirmation. Michael’s hazel eyes and crooked smile came from our mother’s side of the family.
“No way. That was Billy. I never would have peed in the refrigerator. Not my style at all.”
“Don’t you mean
Duckie
never would have peed in the refrigerator?” I asked, thrilled to have some good ammunition.
Michael leaned over to whisper in his puppy’s ear. “Don’t listen to her, Mother Teresa. She’s delusional. I have not a single childhood memory of a penis named Duckie.”
It was Sunday night and we were leaning against the kitchen cabinets in our family house. “You can’t keep calling her Mother Teresa, Michael. She needs a real name,” Carol said, leaning over to scratch behind the Saint Bernard’s ears. The six-month-old puppy collapsed on her back on the worn linoleum. Michael and Carol and I knelt beside her.
“Mother Teresa
is
a real name. And it’s loaded with good karma.” The puppy was taking up most of the kitchen floor now, her legs spread wide and the hind two twitching. Six hands scratched her belly. A thick stream of drool ran from one side of her mouth.
“She’s going to need all the karma she can get, after that stunt with Dolly’s feather boa,” I said. Carol got up, tore a square of paper towel off the roll, and came back to dab at the corner of Mother Teresa’s mouth. In an instant, the paper towel disappeared.
“Mother Teresa! Drop it. Drop it now.” As the puppy began to choke, Michael scooped his hands under her and, bending at the knees, tried to lift her to a standing position. Carol and I moved quickly to either side of Michael. “One, two, three,” urged Michael and we lifted the puppy to her feet.
She was still choking so I straddled her from behind and executed a flawless Heimlich maneuver. The angle was different but fortunately the process was pretty much the same as with preschoolers. A wad of gummy paper towel shot across the room and stuck to a lower cabinet. A quick shudder passed through the still-baggy skin of the puppy’s body, and then she flopped back down to the floor and spread her legs. Michael and I knelt down again and started to scratch. Carol cleaned the paper towel glob off the cabinet.
“Say thank you to Auntie Sarah, Mother Teresa.” Michael buried his head in the fur at the nape of the puppy’s neck. Her eyes glazed over with love. The black dots on the white fur around her nose looked like painted-on freckles.
“That’s two strikes for you, dog,” I scolded. “Wasn’t that unbelievable when she bit off the end of Dolly’s boa? All of a sudden I looked down and she had a mouthful of pink feathers. The amazing thing was that I don’t think Dolly would have even noticed if the kids hadn’t started laughing and pointing.”