Heidi Polensky was ugly, and not ugly in any way she would ever outgrow. Her father had a few pictures from when she was a baby, a young girl, tacked to the refrigerator—holding the hand of the Jolly Green Giant at the county fair, a free portrait from the Sears Portrait Studio, where a few growing incisors gleamed white as headlights, obscuring the rest of her face. It had only gotten worse from there. Things that should have grown out grew in, and things that should have stayed in grew out. Her chin and nose, sharp and long, were influenced by a gravity from which others were impervious. Her face was flat except for her eyes, which bulged like grapes. She was convinced her parents were actually a troll and an elf. In class pictures, where her country classmates, round with health, skin the color of wheat, placid eyes and smiles, stood stacked like bowling pins, her dark, ferocious features could not be hidden in the back row, half-tucked between plump Shelley Partridge and the only Asian child, Yin Soo.
“It’s a shit world,” her father agreed at the stove when she complained during the fifth grade of being called a witch, a booger face, a troll, a shrimp, a goblin, a chinky (not even Yin Soo was called a chinky), a fart, smelly, a dog, a Martian, stupid, and ugly—the simplest and yet most hurtful. “It’s better to find it out sooner than later.”
But at least, it would not last much longer. Senior year at Mount Zion high had started, and like some scene from Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” the ritual had begun. In the first two months, Shauna Beck, head cheerleader and varsity field hockey star, with her gaggle of witches had already jimmied open Heidi’s gym locker during gym class and thrown her clothes in the showers, forcing her to wear her gym shorts and t-shirt the rest of the day. They slapped tags on her back with the word LESBIAN or sometimes CUNT. They had poured soda into the vents of her locker, ruining her papers and making the pages of her textbooks stick together. They tripped and sometimes punched her in the hallways. And when a teacher, any teacher, had pledged to get to the bottom of the bullying, Shauna and her friends were the first to raise their hands, smile sweetly at Heidi, and offer to help expose the culprits.
Things were different around Ms. Webster, the junior and senior English teacher. She was, as the boys all said, a “stone cold fox.” She graduated from Bennington College and chose to teach in their small-hick town instead of a private school in Georgetown because she had grown up on a farm in the Midwest, she had been known to tell her students, and she missed its wholesomeness. That didn’t stop her from wearing cashmere sweaters and richly printed scarves, tan leather boots, and snug corduroys, tastes that she had developed presumably at Georgetown and Bennington and not a Fashion Bug in Kansas. Boys wanted her, and girls wanted to be her. No one risked falling out of her good graces, not even Shauna Beck.
“I really liked your essay about Beowulf.” Ms. Webster grabbed Heidi’s arm as she walked down the hall after school. On the days she didn’t stay after for French club and the math league, her father always waited out front, 2:45 pm, like clockwork. She was the last person to leave her seventh-period classroom and then stood with her back to her locker, eyes on her backpack. When the halls were empty except for candy and gum wrappers and a lost looseleaf paper, she hurried toward the front doors of the school, expecting but not looking forward to her father’s complaints.
“Thanks,” Heidi answered, although she’d already been aware of Ms. Webster’s opinion. The papers were passed back thirty minutes before, and Heidi’s had bore an A-plus. It had been hard-earned. For the first two papers of the fall quarter, she’d gotten only As. She’d given herself an extra week to write this one, treated it as if it were her college entrance essay. “I’m glad you liked it. Have a good day, Ms. Webster.”
“Oh, am I keeping you from something?” Ms. Webster let go of her arm, and the absence of her fingers on Heidi’s skin made Heidi dizzy, as if she were a diver who’d ascended too quickly to the surface. She pressed her palm, flat, on the wall and concentrated on the coolness of the cinder blocks.
“No…well, I have a ride.” She leaned against the wall and stole a glance at Ms. Webster, her moss-colored cashmere cardigan from one of the stylish department stores that made her hair glow. Her features were fine and milky, albeit with a heavy smattering of freckles, like cinnamon on top of toast. Heidi wondered how someone so delicate had come from the heartland, where she imagined its inhabitants to be as fleshy and firm boned as her classmates.
“Wait here.” Ms. Webster disappeared into her classroom and returned with some catalogs. “You’ve already applied, I know, but if you’re still unsure, I really think you’d be a good fit for these schools.”
Heidi fanned the catalogs outward in her hands. Bennington. Bryn Mawr. Swarthmore. St. John’s College. All had tuitions beyond their means—she had looked up the costs of in the College Guide last winter. They were more than her father earned in a year with his pensions and odd jobs.
“Thanks—I’ll take a look.” Heidi slid off her backpack and fiddled with the zipper.
“Let me know if you need any help with anything, okay?” Ms. Webster locked her classroom door, and Heidi peeked in her Indian print purse. Marlboro Lights. A beaded wallet, an elongated calendar with a plastic cover.
“Thank you, Ms. Webster.” They walked down the hall to the front door. “I applied to some out-of-state schools, but I don’t know…if I can be that far from home.”
“Oh, nonsense. You remind me of me when I was your age. Shy, but dying for adventure, for something, someone to validate her. There’s no one here you feel validates you, is there, Heidi?”
And she couldn’t answer her because she was crying. In the vestibule, she saw her father’s truck through the front doors, its monstrous orange chassis shuddering, smoke pouring out of the damaged muffler like some ancient, grouchy dragon. She leaned against the wall, not sure what would upset her father more: getting into the truck cab now, in tears, or composing herself and wasting precious minutes, perhaps not getting in the cab until 2:55. She dropped her backpack on the ground.
“Heidi, what’s wrong?” Ms. Webster put her hand on her cheek, her hazel eyes blinking, her small lips frowning. “Was it something I said?”
Heidi shook her head, crying harder. She had worked so hard that fall quarter to immunize herself to the cruelty, to stare blankly through Shauna and her friends as they taunted her. She hadn’t thought it necessary to make herself immune to kindness. She felt Ms. Webster’s arms around her, and her shoulders relaxed, the weight and warmth of Ms. Webster’s body steadying her, the smell of her shampoo and perfume making her relaxed and sleepy.
“Oh, Heidi, I am so sorry.” Ms. Webster pressed her like she was a ragdoll, and her will drained from her, and her father could go to hell. “I know what they do to you.”
The front door opened, and her warm nothingness dissipated into the air, replaced by the emphysemic breaths and stale-tobacco smell of her father.
“What have you done to my daughter?” Stanley Polensky eyed Ms. Webster like she was a three-dollar bill. He stood pitched slightly forward, the grizzly wrinkles of his cheeks pushed up into his blue eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m Ms. Webster, one of Heidi’s teachers.” She extended her hand which, after a tortured few seconds of deliberation, he shook. “You’re Heidi’s father? What an honor—I always wanted to know who was responsible for molding such a fine student.”
It may not have been bullshit, in Ms. Webster’s mind, but her father’s expression, a cocked eyebrow, clenched jaw, made it clear he took it as such. He mumbled something in return that wasn’t quite words but wasn’t quite a growl, either. He clapped Heidi’s shoulder, the way one might herd cattle, and pushed her toward the door.
“I’ve been waiting,” he explained, although he offered no further clarification. “Nice to meet you, Miss Teacher.”
“Heidi, we’ll finish this later, okay?” Her eyes met Heidi’s, and Heidi nodded, although she was not sure if she wanted to. There was nothing to say, really. But there were other things she wanted to talk with Ms. Webster about; she wanted to pour out all her dreams, all her questions about life, how one shed one’s life, like an ill-fitting coat, and found another. And how much it cost.
“She’s going to help me with my college stuff,” Heidi explained vaguely, in the truck. She had already been accepted to the local university, Salisbury State, and figured she would be eligible for some Pell Grants, a few local scholarships. She hadn’t dared to dream much bigger.
“You’ll get into a college,” he answered. “There’s no need to cry about that.” The voice, sweet, like a child’s but rich, honeyed, filled the car, and her father snapped off the radio. Heidi wondered whether her father waited to hear ‘Lil Cindy on the radio, only to be overwhelmed when he finally did. He had told her many years ago who her real mother was, and she had allowed it to be true, in small increments, like ipecac. That way, it had not hurt. It had not even mattered that she had come from the womb of that tiny dead singer, that the tiny dead singer who rejected her own child, her father, to be loved by strangers. At least, Heidi told herself that. In small doses, she had looked at articles about her mother on microfiche at the public library, mostly record reviews and concert listings. She had listened to her records with headphones in the media section, pouring over the pictures on the albums, trying to find something that she shared with the tiny dead singer. She felt she saw something in the eyes, the nose, not of Cindy, but Dwayne Johnson, the guitar player. It had occurred to her then, the summer of her fifteenth year, who her real father was.
“I wish I’d had the chance to go to college, but there was the war.” Her father coughed and spat phlegm out the window. “And I got a real education, then.”
She felt the burn of the salt in the corner of her eyes as her father began to talk about the war. He talked about it so much, she actually knew scant little; her worst grade in history, ever, was her score on the tenth-grade unit test for World War II. And yet, if he suddenly were to die, she would know nothing about him, the definitive experience of his being. She promised herself she would listen one day, although, she decided, this was not the one.
There were other things to worry about. Like the racing green Volkswagen that had been following them from school. Ms. Webster’s 1966 Squareback, the coolest car, according to the boys, at school. It wasn’t for its engine, which was loud and slow, or its chassis, which was essentially a VW Beetle, but because it was in almost factory condition, the result of Ms. Webster’s father storing it in the garage and presenting it to her as a college graduation present. She knew these things because she remembered everything Oliver Truitt, her crush since seventh grade and Shauna Beck’s boyfriend, had ever said, in reverse proportion to everything her father had ever said.
She wondered whether Ms. Webster wanted to find out where she lived, whether she would park the car at night up the road from their house and watch in the darkness, wondering whether Heidi was okay. Whether she would let herself be rescued by Ms. Webster. To what length Ms. Webster would go to show her concern, her devotion. Whether she would plead with Heidi’s father to surrender her to her care so that Heidi’s life would reach its correct trajectory, radiate correctly, and explode like a perfect snowball in a 4th of July sky.
Heidi’s stomach knotted as they lumbered in the gravel driveway, spinning stones that she hoped would miss the Squareback’s pristine paint job. She watched the Squareback park on the side of the road, away from the gravel, and Ms. Webster emerge.
“My backpack.” She said to her father as Ms. Webster held up the dark blue Jansport backpack. “I left it at school.”
She hurried stupidly over to Ms. Webster, hoping her eyes would not telegraph all of her fantasies.
“Thanks,” she said as Ms. Webster held it out to her. “This is…where I live.”
“What a beautiful old farmhouse.” Ms. Webster looked up and apparently did not see the broken shingles, the chipped paint and soggy wood window frames, the sagging of one side of the porch. The weeds, the junk her father had dragged for the past twenty years from the dump to the front yard. “It reminds me of my family’s old place.”
“Did you…want to come in? For tea?” Heidi was stunned that her lips moved and sound came out. A few packets of Lipton, probably moldly, awaited in the cupboard.
“Oh, I can’t today. I’ve got to run. But I’m taking a raincheck.” Ms. Webster backed toward the Volkswagen, her arms wrapped around herself, gave Heidi’s father a little wave with the flick upward of her right palm. “See you tomorrow, Heidi.”
“Bye, Ms. Webster.” She was not leaving forever—Heidi would see her the next day. And yet, as the Squareback spun around tightly on the road and zoomed away, that’s exactly what it felt like.