I sat through a lifetime of Sunday mornings, and in all that time I can remember only one of my father’s sermons. I don’t know if that is because it was so beautiful or because my father gave it to the congregation on the very day that changed my life. I was sitting in my usual seat in the front row, to Suky’s right. She sat bolt upright, her eyes pinned to my father, eyebrows up, her small, weathered hands clamped together, one foot jiggling as my sleepy brothers slumped, inert, on the other side of her.
The sermon was about the cross, and how it is made up of both a vertical and a horizontal beam. Christ, my father posited in his growling voice, was those two things: vertical – godly – and horizontal – of the earth, a living creature. Christianity existed where the two lines met. He said that was what was so special about our God. He had been one of us, yet he was endless and almighty. Because I was actually listening to him for once, I truly saw Des at that moment. He was not a tall man. The way he held his short arms out as he described the cross, palms up, as if feeling for drops of rain in a drought, made him seem futile and precious – a man praying for order in a life governed by chaos. I felt so sorry for him. And then I turned, and it happened. I laid eyes on Mr Brown.
He was sitting across the aisle from me and one row back, beside the Oakley boys, boarders from the local boys’ prep school, in their maroon blazers with light blue crests on the pockets and wrinkled navy slacks. The campus, with its white clapboard buildings and dark green shutters, was, in fact, only a stone’s throw away from my house, across the green. From the first moment, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Mr Brown. He was in his forties and seemed ancient to me at that time. But there was something about his face – a bony, veined face – that seemed deeply good to me. I loved his rust-colored mustache, his balding pate, his ruddy cheeks. Every Sunday after that, I situated myself in a place where I could see him; I even sat right next to him for one thrilling service. All my life till then, Suky had sat to my left at church. Once I started moving around, she was puzzled, but she didn’t stop me. She rarely disciplined me anymore; when she tried, I shrugged her off with a poisonous glare.
Mr Brown always looked straight ahead during the service, like a bird dog. His wife was an athletic-looking, serious woman. She seemed preoccupied all the time, never speaking to her husband, and acting as if he wasn’t beside her at all. He compulsively stroked her shoulder with his thumb, his arm around her, and occasionally he would whisper something in her ear, which she would listen to, an opaque expression on her face, and nod. I became convinced that she didn’t love him. I watched Mr Brown in church for ten months. He was my Unimpeachable Gentleman.
I got an after-school job at the Oakley Academy, working in the kitchen, just so I could be close to him. Every day at four o’clock, I would walk across the green to the enormous, steamy Oakley kitchen, reluctantly tuck my copper locks into the requisite paper bonnet, and start peeling carrots and potatoes, dicing celery, getting everything ready for the evening meal. Then it was showtime; I would serve the kids their grub. At first I was frustrated; all the contact I had with my beloved was saying hello as I spooned mashed potato and meat loaf onto his plate. But I shot him glances as I worked. He ate with his wife every night. Their conversations seemed strained yet civil. He always pulled her chair out for her. He talked more than she did; mostly she nodded, unsmiling, staring into her plate. Directly after she had finished her meal, she stood up, murmured a goodbye, and walked out. Mr Brown would then get himself a cup of coffee and circulate around the dining hall, chatting with the boys. He seemed to relax when his wife was out of the room. He loosened his tie and sat at the edges of the refectory tables, joking with the students. He was reassuring with one, ruffled another’s hair, spoke with stiff severity to another. I managed to catch his eye once or twice, but after several weeks I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to speak to him.
One night, as he was walking down the hallway after dinner, I threw myself down a short flight of stairs and landed at his feet. I actually sprained my ankle doing this stunt, and he had to hold me up as I limped to the school infirmary. He smelled like talcum powder. At one point, my lip brushed his ear as I hobbled along. He blushed from his neck all the way up to his temples. That’s when I knew I was getting somewhere. After that, he called me by my name and always asked how I was when I handed him his dinner. A couple of times I thought I noticed him lingering outside when I came out after my shift. But all he ever did was say ‘hello’ in a cordial, distanced way. Mr Brown was unimpeachable.
One night, as I left my job, my eyes dried up from exhaustion, my hands raw from chopping, I saw him walking up the stone steps to the dining hall, taking them two at a time with his long strides. He was about to pass me with a friendly greeting when I burst into tears. There was snot coming out of my nose, my knees went weak. I had to sit down. Mr Brown took out his handkerchief and sat down beside me. I wiped my nose and put my head between my knees. I was so embarrassed, but I was in heaven, too, because I could feel the palm of his hand on the small of my back.
‘What is it, Pippa?’ he asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think I’m just tired.’
‘You must be. It seems like a lot for a girl your age, a job after school. Are you sure it’s necessary?’
‘It’s necessary,’ I said.
‘Can’t you talk to your parents, maybe they can –’
‘It’s not the money,’ I said. ‘I mean, we don’t have much money, but I don’t have to have a job in the school year.’
‘Then quit,’ said Mr Brown. ‘It’s too much for you. Use the time to study, or be just a kid.’
‘I can’t quit.’
‘Why not?’ I shook my head then, looking around at the boys walking back to their dorms. One sped by us on his way down the stairs.
‘Come with me,’ said Mr Brown firmly. He led me by the arm to a building a hundred yards away. There were pillars on the front of it. He opened the door and guided me down a short hallway, reached into an open doorway, flicked on the fluorescent lights. It was a classroom with math equations written on the chalkboard. I followed him in and sat down. He sat on the desk in front of me.
‘All right now. No one can hear you. Tell me what’s wrong.’ He was being the teacher now; he had done this countless times, led the troubled kid out of the herd for a few minutes of special time. I felt stupid to have thought it was anything else.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, looking up at him. ‘I was just –’ He was listening to me, but he looked so weary. I was about to give up on him, I really was, but then the tears came to my rescue. I felt them, hot and thick, trickling down my cheeks.
He hopped off the desk, squatted beside me and put his arm around the back of my chair. ‘It’s just … what?’ he asked softly. I tried to think of a lie. I could tell him any horror now and he would believe me to be a victim of it. My mind was blank. I told the truth.
‘If I quit my job, I wouldn’t see you anymore.’ There was a moment of silence. I looked right at him now. Telling the truth had made me powerful. I had nothing to lose. It couldn’t get more embarrassing than this. He looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. And then his cheeks went all mottled. I loved the way his blood exposed him. That moment seemed to extend forever. I saw him hovering between falling toward me and retreat. I had to pull him in somehow. I had to take a risk. ‘I love you,’ I said. I knew immediately I had made a mistake.
His brows furrowed for a moment, then he sat back on his haunches. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.
‘Sixteen and a half.’
‘You can’t love someone you don’t know.’
‘But I do know you. I’ve known you for almost a year. I watch you in church. I see you in the dining room. I know you’re unhappy and lonely and blue, and that you don’t feel loved. You’ve gotten used to nobody understanding you, nobody being curious about you. You’re just Mr Brown, the guy who fixes things, just like you’re here to fix me.’ He looked up at me, pain and surprise on his face. ‘You don’t have to give me anything,’ I said. ‘I just … wanted you to know that there’s someone who … sees you.’ I felt his gaze churning into me. And I cannot describe how close to him I felt. Andrew Brown, dedicated teacher and resigned husband, was in a state of acute longing and desperation, and had become inured to that condition. But all it took was one little girl who really saw him and –
Mr Brown stood up, straightened his corduroys, and sniffed.
‘You’d better go home now.’ He smiled at me, a kind, sad, closed-lip smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘Don’t be, Pippa. Never be sorry for having feelings.’ I walked out ahead of him and ran all the way home.
The next night, as I slid three slippery slices of turkey onto his plate and poured extra gravy over his mashed potatoes, I felt his eyes on me. I looked up, and there he was, his amber irises flecked with gold; the kindness radiated out of him. His wife came next. She looked right through me. The loose skin on her cheeks, her defeated, frowning mouth, seemed like an affront against the angelic Mr Brown. A week later, as I walked across the green at dusk after serving dinner at Oakley, I heard his voice. ‘Pippa.’ I turned. He was standing a few feet away. His breath was labored, as though he had hurried to follow me.
‘Hi,’ I said.
‘Would you like to take a little walk?’
We walked into the sparse wood that fringed the green. The moon had risen, and mist hovered between the young trees. I faltered, stepping on a rotten log; Mr Brown took my hand. We emerged at the Depot. He let go.
The place was deserted. Pharmacy, liquor store, ice cream parlor – they looked like strange buildings I had never seen before. I was forbidden to walk through my town after dark. We walked to the end of River Road, then along the bank of the river. The moon shed cold, blue light on the faint track worn away by fishermen and kids looking for a place to smoke after school. I had come here myself on occasion. We walked along for a few yards, then he sat down on a big rock covered, I happened to know, with obscene graffiti.
We sat side by side for a few minutes, listening to the high gurgling of the little river. Mr Brown slid his soft, warm hand over mine. I looked at him. His face was mostly in shadow, but I could see his eyes. He looked so sad. I put my palm up to his face and left it there. And then, swiftly, without warning, the unimpeachable Mr Brown kissed me. His mustache was soft. The secret tongue inside it felt so warm and new; it was like licking a little, wet animal.
*
We were busted eleven months later, in the narrow attic room that Andrew Brown used as a study and a place to meet his students. We were half-dressed (Mr Brown never allowed us to be completely naked), intertwined and sated on the couch, gazing at a spider as it glided through the air from the ceiling on its own glistening filament, when the door opened with a cursory knock, then swiftly shut. We couldn’t see who had come in, but Mr Brown immediately clamped his hands to his head, remembering his appointment with Mademoiselle Martel, a frowsy teacher visiting from Toulouse. And we hadn’t locked the door! I climbed down the fire escape, ran across the green to my house, and waited.
It turned out that, though French, Mlle Martel took a dim view of statutory rape. She blew the whistle, and my beloved Mr Brown was fired. I’m sure I was, too; I never went back to find out. My parents were called, however. Suky went hysterical. I mean really out of her mind. She wouldn’t stop shaking. Tears were flying out of her eyes. She kept saying, ‘How could you?’ I leaned back on the wall and looked at her with false calm; behind my ribs, my heart was going berserk. Chester held her arms while my father popped a couple of sleeping pills into her mouth. I tried to laugh, but my throat was closing up.
I knew what was upsetting the pastor’s wife. It wasn’t her morals being tormented. It was jealousy, straight up. She was crazy with it. In fact, she was plain old crazy. They all were, really, my slow-moving, slow-talking brothers, with their laconic language and leaden eyes – they had all built their personalities up like bulwarks against her mania and neglect. Depressives, every last one of them. And my father – well, he had learned how to take care of himself. I had been eavesdropping on his phone conversations with Mrs Herbert Orschler for a year. The two of them met every Friday afternoon, like clockwork. Poor old Suky would have no lover now. Because I was leaving. I knew it the minute she heard the news; her face crumpled like a child who’s lost her favorite teddy under the wheels of a bus. Gone forever, that little stuffed bear. I couldn’t stay after that performance. I mean, I didn’t need a degree in psychology to realize there was something wrong between me and my mother.
It came in handy that I was so pissed off. Not just by this one episode but by the pills, by her being so needy all the time – the whole thing. I had become like one of those men you see in the movies who wear aviator sunglasses and chew gum and never get ruffled. That’s what I was trying to be: Clint Eastwood if he was a seventeen-year-old girl. I packed some clothes in a duffel bag, took my savings from the job at Oakley, drove my mother’s car to the bus station, and left it there with the keys in it. I never got to say goodbye to Mr Brown. He left Oakley, without his wife. I never heard from him again, but years later I found out he was teaching at a school in Canada. I guess I sort of ruined his life. Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I just freed him from a miserable marriage and a pathetic, colorless existence. Maybe he’s happy. Maybe he’s got grandkids by now.