I KEPT MY phone on each night, as if a part of me were hoping he would call, that the ringtone associated with his number would start to play. “As Long as You Love Me” by the Backstreet Boys. Back in 1998, he was finishing his last year of high school, I was in tenth grade, we liked each other, we’d say hi to each other in the hallways and eye each other in the cafeteria while talking in our respective groups. He sent his friend Troy to tell my friend Suz that he liked me; I sent my friend Suz back to his friend Troy to say I was crazy about him. I went to see his tennis matches; he came to watch me play lacrosse; and one day, at a party at his friend Melvin’s house while his parents were away blowing their money at Foxwoods Resort Casino, we finally talked. After three hours and six beers for him and three for me, right when that song started to play, he finally dared to give me my first kiss while we danced, intoxicated in every sense of the word, and we were sentenced to adore that corny song for life.
The morning after the funeral, I woke up in Olivia’s tiny bed. I couldn’t remember when I’d gone in there.
“You were kicking me,” she said, more amused than irritated.
“It wasn’t me; it was the baby.”
Olivia laughed. So far it seemed like she was all right, no trauma or lingering damage.
An hour later, while I was cleaning up after breakfast, she came into the kitchen in her fluorescent pink down jacket.
“What are you doing with the feathers on? It’s really hot, Oli.”
“No, it’s really cold there.”
“Where’s there?”
“In the refrigerator . . . Can we go see Daddy in the refrigerator?”
OK, so maybe she wasn’t completely all right.
I was named Teacher of the Year at the Seekonk River School, where I taught art—the same elementary school I had attended as a girl. It was a family affair. The award was something I’d always hoped to achieve. It was an open process, democratic and clean. The children voted, and I have to confess that the month before the voting, we teachers were always a little more attentive and agreeable. We were struck with a healthy and barely concealed competitiveness, and that was welcome, because it was to the children’s benefit. But the rivalry wasn’t so much about winning as about not coming in last. Not that the final results of the voting were made public. No, they only announced the winner. But of course, the rest of the teachers all knew their places in the ranking. And naturally, who wanted to come in last? In my eight years there, I had always made it to the top three, but I’d never won, and that was the fault of the marvelous Mr. Buck, the science teacher, who was a cross between Indiana Jones and MacGyver. He organized elaborate scavenger hunts to help the kids learn while having fun investigating and discovering the small, unfathomable wonders of nature, facing great dangers all over the schoolyard, then turned all this into a documentary worthy of National Geographic. His motto was: Don’t look at life, try it! So receiving the honor should have made me feel pleased and proud. But no, I knew why they had given it to me. Even though the relevant voting had taken place, I was sure that no one realized that the teachers, with the reigning champion Mr. Buck at their head, had decided unanimously to award me the distinction.
And there it was, the longed-for honor, in my living room. A framed certificate shaped like a scroll with a red apple on top of a textbook, an unimpeachable symbol of the teacher’s art and an homage to Isaac Newton. Behind it, a blackboard with my photo with a big smile on my face. Mrs. Williams, Teacher of the Year. My own students had painted the frame with bright colors that emphasized my freckly nose, green eyes and long red hair. I didn’t hang it up, but my father did, on my mother’s express orders. I found it when I came back from the funeral reception at Chris’s parents’ house. I thought seriously about giving it back: going back to the school, entering the teachers’ lounge, and smashing it onto the table. Take your damned charity and shove it . . . But no, I didn’t.
The principal was startled to see me in the teachers’ lounge. Nick Preston liked to get there an hour before the rest of the staff to enjoy the peace and quiet of the school before the arrival of the hordes of adorable little devils—as he called them. And when I say adorable little devils, I don’t just mean the students, he would say, laughing.
“Hey, Alice. What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come,” he said with an affected tone of worry, as though he wished to make clear how upset he was for me and how much he regretted all that had happened. “You didn’t get my email?”
He had written me to offer his condolences once more—in addition to attending the funeral, of course, and sending one floral wreath to the funeral home on behalf of Seekonk River School and another to my home on behalf of the Preston family—and told me to forget about my obligations at the school, that what was important was my recovery and gathering strength for the next semester. In other words, I didn’t need to come back. There was a little more than a month of classes left.
“Yeah, I got it, and thank you, Nick, but . . . I came here to drop Olivia off, and . . . I’d rather get started again.”
“Alice, don’t worry. Mr. Wolf has taken over your classes. You’re seven months pregnant. By law you have a right to take time off.”
“We agreed that if I felt well, I would hold out till the semester was over.”
“Sure, Alice, of course . . . But do you feel well? Do you really feel well?”
I fell silent and promised myself I wouldn’t cry. He wasn’t worried about me, but of daily having to face a woman who had lost her husband. A very pregnant widow was too morose an image for the jovial atmosphere of the school. Having me there, they couldn’t have a good time openly—he and the teachers—laughing between classes over coffee in the teachers’ lounge or during lunch in the cafeteria while they chatted about the various home teams’ scores. No, everyone would have to be worried about poor Alice. She’s just so fragile. The principal must have said something like that to Mr. Wolf when he asked him to take over my classes. I wanted to vent all this to him, but I didn’t dare. Maybe because I really was fragile and confrontation was just too hard for me then. Or maybe just because my mind was playing a nasty trick on me and I was getting paranoid. Why did I doubt Nick Preston’s intentions? Why didn’t I believe he was genuinely concerned for my well-being, when he’d always been so kind to me before?
With all that’s going on, Alice, do you really want to be here? I asked myself. The principal was right. At that moment, the elementary school wasn’t where I needed to be. But I also didn’t want to be at home where the walls came crashing down on me, especially when Olivia wasn’t there. So where then? I tried to think of a place, somewhere that would make me feel better, an activity that would help me, a friend I could talk to, cry to, even laugh with, but nothing and no one came to mind.