As she sat in the radio station’s office, Ginny knew she could not have picked a better place to begin again. From midnight to six a.m., her main duty would be to slide disks into the beige CD player. Every fifteen minutes she would acknowledge requests, name artists and songs, and say pretty much anything to prove the music was not prerecorded.
“Research says almost ninety percent of people who listen from twelve to six are alone. It comforts them to know they’re not the only person awake. Of course, that’s what makes this job tough,” Barry, the station manager, warned her at the interview. “The person you would replace claimed being alone here all night made him feel like the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust. He was the third person I’ve hired in the last eighteen months. The solitude was harder on them than working nights.” During most of the interview, Barry had looked slightly above and to the left of Ginny, but now his eyes met hers.
“Coming from a school, you’re used to a classroom full of kids.”
“I’ve had plenty of experience with solitude,” Ginny said, turning her face so he could see the scar more clearly.
As she drove home from the interview, Ginny passed the middle school where she’d taught. She slowed and saw Andrew’s jeep in the parking lot, its back filled with poster boards and paints and brushes. Andrew was the county’s middle-school art teacher and, for a time, Ginny’s boyfriend. During her hospital stay, she’d thought things might have turned out different if Andrew had been at her school the afternoon of the accident. But she no longer believed that. She checked the dashboard clock, then looked up at the second-floor classroom that had been hers. The sixth graders would be back from lunch now, seated in their desks. They would be sleepy, harder to motivate, the adrenaline rush of morning recess long gone. This had been the slowest part of her school day.
Ginny had been more conscientious than most of her colleagues. While others merely glanced at assignments, she wrote detailed notes in the margins, adorned the pages with bright-colored stars and smiley faces. Every week she e-mailed parents about each child’s progress. Once a month, she spent a Saturday morning creating a new motif for the bulletin board. She’d had her failings as well. Dr. Jenkins, the principal, had noted on evaluations that some of her fellow teachers found her “aloof.” Discipline had also been a problem. Two students whispering or a squabble at recess—each time Ginny felt her whole body tighten. Ginny usually could quell the misbehavior, but several times Dr. Jenkins had to come to restore order. But what had troubled Ginny the most, however, was the emotional distance between her and the students. She could not meet their obvious needs, even the boy with the purple birthmark splashed across his neck. She seemed unable to find the soothing words, know when to give the reassuring hug. Often she felt like an inmate pressing palm to glass and yet feeling no warmth from a hand less than an inch away.
No such distance had existed for Andrew on the Monday mornings she’d brought her class to the art room. His connection was evident as he moved from table to table, easel to easel, sometimes making suggestions but always finding something to praise. It was natural, instinctive. When he’d shown the class reproductions of famous paintings, his comments made each work seem created solely for the students.
Barry called the next morning and told her she had the job.
“When do I start?” she asked.
“I’m doing that shift myself now, so the sooner the better as far as I’m concerned. You can even start tonight if you want.”
“What time should I be there?”
“Eleven. That’ll give us an hour to go over what few bells and whistles we have, plus a chance for you to look over the CD library, get familiar with our board.”
“Anything I need to do to prepare?”
“The best preparation is a lot of caffeine. Also, you’ll need a moniker. There are kooks out there listening, especially late at night. Most are harmless, but not all. The less personal info you give the better.”
“Anything else?” Ginny asked.
“The door will be locked when you get here. Knock loud so I can hear you.”
Ginny found a notepad and pen. She’d written ten possible names before remembering the Edward Hopper painting Andrew had shown her students. On her way to the radio station that night, Ginny slowed again as she passed the middle school. When she saw there was no fund-raiser or PTA meeting, she parked the car and stepped onto the school grounds for the first time since the accident. The moon was almost full, and its pale light revealed the clearance where the oak tree had been. She zipped her jacket but still shivered as she stood below the north wing, the oldest part of the building.
That day she’d heard the storm approach, thunder coming closer like artillery finding the range. The windows were at the back of the classroom, so she saw the oak limbs begin to sway. One night a week earlier a limb had broken a pane.
The branches would be cut back soon, but until then Ginny was supposed to close the thick, plastic-backed drapes whenever a storm approached. But she had waited. David, her weakest student, was beside her desk, giving a report on Bolivia. Sheets of notebook paper quivered in his hands as he read with excruciating slowness. A student snickered when he read the same sentence twice. Other students, bored, quit paying attention. A balled-up piece of paper sailed across an aisle.
Stopping to close the drapes would only prolong the torment that was mercifully near its conclusion. But her concern was not just for David. If she stopped him now and went to the back of the room, she might lose complete control of the class. Spits of rain had begun to hit the glass. One of the oak tree’s branches tapped a pane, demanding her attention. As David lost his place again, a student yawned loudly. The oak branch tapped the glass, more insistent this time.
“I’m sorry, David,” Ginny said, standing up from her desk. “I must stop you so I can close the drapes.”
Amy Campbell, who sat on the row closest to the windows, stood as well.
“I’ll close them, Miss Atwell,” she said, and turned to the window.
“No, that’s my job,” Ginny said, just as a branch shattered the glass.
Amy had not fallen, had not even moved as glass shards flew around and into her. She had not made a sound. It was as if Amy had been asleep and it took the other children’s screams to wake her. She had turned slowly toward Ginny. A glass shard was imbedded an inch below her right eye like a spear point.
Amy had reached up and pulled the shard from her face. For a moment there was no blood. As Ginny came toward her, Amy held the glass shard out as she might gum or some other middle-school contraband. Ginny took the piece of glass and with her free hand pressed a handkerchief against the wound.
The teacher next door ran into the room, soon followed by Dr. Jenkins, who took one look at the saturated handkerchief and told the other teacher to call 911. He and Ginny laid Amy on the floor. The child’s eyes remained open but unfocused.
“She’s in shock,” Dr. Jenkins said.
He placed his jacket over Amy, then took the handkerchief’s last dry corner and delicately probed the wound.
“Why weren’t the drapes closed?” Dr. Jenkins asked. Ginny said nothing and Dr. Jenkins turned his attention back to Amy. Another teacher herded the students out of the classroom and shut the door. For a few moments, all Ginny had heard was a siren wailing through rain loud as a waterfall.
Dr. Jenkins would later claim that Ginny also had been in shock, because that was the only way to explain what Ginny had done next. As she kneeled beside Amy, Ginny opened the hand that held the glass shard.
“Be careful. That can cut you too,” Dr. Jenkins warned.
But the words were hardly out of his mouth before Ginny raised the glass and jabbed its sharpest edge into her cheekbone. She’d moved the shard down her cheek to her mouth as deliberately as a man shaving.
Ginny had been drugged when Andrew came to her hospital room, but even drugged she could see how hard it was for him to look at her.
“You’ll be all right,” Andrew had said, holding her hand. “Dr. Jenkins has placed you on medical leave for the rest of the year. As soon as I’m out, we’ll get away from here awhile, maybe Europe. Wherever you want to go, Ginny.”
When she hadn’t replied, Andrew had squeezed her hand.
“Rest,” he said. “We can talk more about this later. We have a future.”
But as she’d lain in the hospital bed that evening she thought not of the future but of the past. It had been in the sixth grade when Ginny quit raising her hand in class and began pressing her lips together during photographs. Her permanent teeth had come in at angles that inspired nicknames and jokes. Former friends no longer asked her to sit with them at lunch. Ginny’s father had been laid off at the mill, making braces unaffordable. One late night her father had awakened her, liquor on his breath as he told Ginny it was a shitty world when a man couldn’t prevent his own daughter from being ashamed to smile. Only her teachers had made life bearable, especially Mrs. Ellison, her eighth-grade English teacher. She was the one who’d convinced Ginny to be the student announcer on the middle school’s twice-weekly radio program. Once she was out of sight behind the principal’s microphone, Ginny spoke without mumbling or covering her mouth. Mrs. Ellison praised how she never stumbled over words or rushed her sentences. She said Ginny was a natural. Late that spring Mrs. Ellison had cajoled an orthodontist into working on Ginny’s teeth for free. By the end of ninth grade, she had no reason to turn her face from the world, but certain habits had become ingrained. All through high school, even into college, Ginny’s hand gravitated to her upper lip as she spoke.
The habit of being alone was even harder to break, because solitude had its comforts. Most weekends she stayed in her room, reading and listening to music, filling out scholarship and financial-aid forms. When Chapel Hill offered Ginny a full academic scholarship, none of her teachers were surprised. Several of them had, however, questioned her decision to major in elementary education. As Ginny lay in the hospital bed, she knew they had been right. When Dr. Jenkins visited the next morning, she told him that she would not return in the fall. Dr. Jenkins looked relieved. He wished Ginny well in whatever future path she undertook. Ending her relationship with Andrew had been more difficult. I need to be alone, she had told him. He had responded that she couldn’t let the accident change what they had together. He’d spoken of love and devotion, of her moving in with him, of marriage. When he’d pleaded to at least be allowed to see her occasionally, she’d told him no.
For several months he had tried anyway, calling nightly until she changed her cell number.
“This is the Night Hawk,” Ginny said later that evening as the control booth clock ticked off the first seconds of the morning, “and I’ll be with you till six. If you have a request, I’ll do my best to play it for you. Just call 344-WMEK. Here’s a song to get us started tonight.”
Ginny hit the play button and the first notes of “After Midnight” filled the booth.
“Good choice,” Barry said.
The next few hours went well. Barry helped her cue the advertisements and national news. He answered the phone for the occasional request. When she spoke into the microphone, she did little more than acknowledge a request or give the names of artists and songs she was about to play.
“I’m going home to get a few hours’ sleep,” Barry said after the three o’clock news.
“Tom Freeman will be in around five thirty. He’s got a key.” Barry pointed to a note card taped to the booth’s one window.
“That’s my home number. I’m only five minutes away. Call if you have a problem. But I don’t think you’ll need me. Except for getting comfortable enough to talk more, you’ve got this job down pat.”
Ginny wasn’t so sure, but after a few nights she did begin to talk more, though rarely about music. She brought in atlases and magazines, books that ranged from fat hardback tomes on western art to tattered paperback almanacs. Ginny quizzed her listeners twice an hour, rewarding those who answered correctly with WMEK T-shirts and ballcaps. Each night she picked a word from The Highly Selective Thesaurus for the Highly Literate and gave its definition. She read from a book titled On This Day in History. Some listeners called the station during business hours to complain about the new format, wanting less talk and more music. Several male listeners wanted some sports questions in Ginny’s quizzes. But according to Barry, the calls and e-mails ran five to one in her favor, including several from immigrants who credited Ginny with teaching them about American history. Two months later the Arbitron ratings came out. WMEK’s twelve-to-six slot had a two-point market share increase.
“As long as you get that kind of response, I don’t care if you read the complete plays of William Shakespeare on air,” Barry told her.
It was a Thursday in early February when Andrew called. Twelve inches of snow had fallen that day, and Barry, who owned a truck, had to drive Ginny to work. After reading cancellations for everything from schools to day-care centers to shifts at local mills, she offered a free ball cap to a listener naming the poem that began “Whose woods these are I think I know.”
There were two wrong answers before Andrew’s voice said, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
“You win a WMEK ball cap,” Ginny said. “You can come by the station during business hours to pick up your prize.”
For several seconds neither spoke. Ginny cut the volume in the control booth and heard the Norah Jones song she was playing. She wondered if it was the radio in Andrew’s kitchen or the one in the back room where he painted.
“I knew you’d taken RTV classes, but I had no idea you were doing this,” Andrew said. “How long have you had the job?”
“Almost three months.”
“I just happened to have the radio on to find out about school cancellations.”
“Well, it’s a lucky night for you,” Ginny said. “You’ve won a ball cap and no school tomorrow.”
“The lucky thing is hearing your voice again,” Andrew said. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it until this last hour. Ten months haven’t changed that. Don’t you think it’s time to let me back into your life?”
“I’ve got to go,” Ginny said. “More cancellations to read.”
Ginny hung up the phone. Only then did she realize her left hand was raised, her index finger touching her upper lip.
It was four hours later when she heard a banging on the door. Ginny cued another song and left the booth. She assumed it was Barry, but when she entered the foyer Andrew’s face peered in through the glass. She kept the door latched.
“I’ve come to pick up my prize,” he said, his breath whitened by the cold.
“The station doesn’t open for business until eight thirty,” Ginny said.
“You’re here.”
“I’m doing a program, a program I need to get back to.”
“It’s cold, Ginny. Let me come in.”
She unlatched the door and he followed her to the control booth.
“You can sit over there,” she said, pointing to a plastic chair in the corner.
Andrew watched and listened the next hour as she read cancellations, gave away another ball cap, and played several requests. Tom Freeman came in at 5:40 and Barry a few minutes later.
“This is the Night Hawk,” Ginny said at 5:55, “and it’s time to leave the airways to those birds that fly under the sun. So here’s a song from those day-fliers The Eagles.”
She turned up the volume as the intro to “Already Gone” filled the room.
“OK,” she said to Andrew. “We can get your ball cap now.”
Andrew followed her down the hall and into the station’s reception room. Ginny opened a closet filled with ball caps and T-shirts.
“There,” she said, handing him a cap. “Now you have what you came for.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Andrew said, fitting the cap on his head. “But it is a nice cap.” He pulled the bill down slightly. “How does it look?”
“Perfect fit,” Ginny said.
“I thought we might have breakfast together,” Andrew said.
“Barry’s supposed to take me home.”
“I can take you home after we eat.”
“I don’t like to be around a bunch of strangers,” Ginny said. “I get tired of the stares.”
“We’ll go where there aren’t many people,” Andrew answered. “That ought to be easy today. Everyone’s hunkered down with their white bread and milk.” When she hesitated, Andrew placed his hand on her forearm.
“Please,” Andrew said, “just breakfast.”
“Let me tell Barry I’m going with you,” Ginny said.
Soon they were driving through the center of town in Andrew’s jeep. Few tire tracks marked the snow the jeep passed over.
“This should fit the bill nicely,” Andrew said, and turned into the Blue Ridge Diner’s parking lot.
The snow had stopped but gray clouds smothered the dawn. The parking lot lights were still on, casting a buttery sheen over the snow. Inside, the waitress and cook stood across the counter from a middle-aged couple who sat in plastic swivel chairs. They were talking about the weather, their voices soft as if also muffled by the snow.
“Let’s sit in a booth,” Ginny said. The waitress turned from the others at the counter.
“You all want coffee?”
Andrew looked at Ginny and she shook her head.
“Just me,” he said.
Andrew nodded toward the counter where the waitress continued to talk to the cook and the couple as she poured the coffee.
“A scene worthy of your moniker.”
“No, not really,” Ginny said. “Too much interaction.”
Andrew turned his gaze back to her.
“In the painting the man and woman are a couple.”
“I don’t see that,” Ginny said. “They aren’t even looking at each other.”
The waitress brought Andrew’s coffee but no menus.
When she saw Ginny’s face up close, her lips pursed to an O before she quickly turned to Andrew.
“There’s not much choice as far as food,” the waitress said. “Our deliveryman is running late, so it’s pretty much waffles or toast.”
“Waffles sound good,” Andrew said.
Ginny nodded.
“Same for me.”
Andrew stirred cream into his coffee. He held the cup but did not lift it to his lips. He leaned to blow across the coffee’s surface, then raised his eyes.
“You’re wrong about that couple in the painting.”
“What do you mean?” Ginny asked.
“They are connected, the man and woman. Their faces may not show it but their arms and hands do.”
“I don’t remember that,” Ginny said.
“Well, I’ll show you then,” Andrew said.
Coatless, he walked outside. Ginny watched through the window as he stepped into the lot, rummaged in the back of the jeep. The waitress brought their waffles as Andrew returned with a gray hardback the width and thickness of a family bible. He pushed his plate and cup to the side and laid the book open on the table.
“There,” he said when he found the painting. “Look at her left arm and hand.”
Ginny leaned over her plate and studied the picture.
“I’m not convinced. Because of the perspective it could go either way, like whether the Mona Lisa is smiling or not.”
“Maybe you just don’t want to admit you’re wrong,” Andrew said, and paused. “Maybe you’re wrong about several things, like not being able to teach again, like you and me.”
Andrew reached out and laid his palm against the scar on Ginny’s face. She jerked her head sideways as if slapped.
“OK,” he said, slowly lowering his hand. “I made a mistake tonight. It won’t happen again.”
They finished their waffles in silence, and did not speak until Andrew slowed in front of her apartment.
“Don’t pull into the drive,” Ginny said. “You might get stuck if you do.”
Andrew pulled up to the curb but did not cut the engine. Ginny got out and trudged across the yard, her black walking shoes disappearing in the white each time she took another step. She did not look back as she opened the front door. Inside, she took off her shoes and socks and brushed the snow off her pants. She looked out the window. Only one set of tracks crossed the yard. The jeep was gone.
Ginny slept as the sky cleared to a high, bright blue. By noon the temperature was in the forties. When her alarm clock went off at three, she lay in bed a few minutes listening to cars slosh through melting snow. She would not need a ride into work. She would drive herself across town, looking through safety glass as she passed the school where she had taught, then the hospital where her face had been stitched back together, the restaurant where she and Andrew had eaten breakfast.
At the radio station she would unlock the door, and soon enough Buddy Harper would end his broadcast and leave. She would say, This is the Night Hawk, and play “After Midnight.”
Ginny would speak to people in bedrooms, to clerks drenched in the fluorescent light of convenience stores, to millworkers driving back roads home after graveyard shifts. She would speak to the drunk and sober, the godly and the godless. All the while high above where she sat, the station’s red beacon would pulse like a heart, as if giving bearings to all those in the dark adrift and alone.