There was a big fuss the other day at school. Apparently some students have been going behind the cabinet that blocks off the space under the cafeteria stairs. A cleaner found some scraps of paper that hadn’t been there last week and she’s certain couldn’t have been thrown down from the stairs. According to what she said, this isn’t the first time. The principal immediately took steps to block access. Two bags of cement have been slid under the cabinet. First, the students are not supposed to escape our vigilance and second, if by chance one of them got stuck, it could be dangerous. When I was shown the scene of the crime, the passage had been made impossible to get through. I thought that you’d have to be slim and agile to slide underneath, and have a real urge to hide.
This is the kind of event that shakes up our small world for a few days. Everyone has their own interpretation and theories. We all need diversion.
That day, Frédéric waited for me after school. He wanted a word. On Tuesdays we finish at the same time. He told me he thought I seemed really tense and tired. He didn’t know if it was all this business that was putting me in such a state or something else, something that my obsession had stirred up or that had caused it in the first place. He was the one who used the term “obsession.” And I know him well enough to realize that he chooses his words with care.
A few years ago, Frédéric took me in his arms. We’d had a trying staff meeting. The two of us had clashed several times with the other ninth-grade teachers. I was exhausted. Exhausted by seeing students steered toward academic paths that we knew full well would be dead ends for them just because spots were available, or were low cost, or because we knew there was no chance that their parents would show up at school to kick up a fuss. I had said my piece several times in the meeting. I’d voiced astonishment, indignation, rebellion. I’d stuck my neck out and Frédéric had backed me up. We’d been successful in the case of three students, and avoided their having subject choices imposed on them by default, or out of laziness or resignation. When we left, Frédéric asked me out for a drink. I accepted. I’d liked him for a long time, but I knew he was married. His wife has been seriously ill since the birth of their second child. That’s what people still say to this day, in hushed voices, when he’s not in the staffroom. And that he’s not the type to dump a sick woman.
We had a few drinks to celebrate our tiny victories and after we had replayed the discussions from the meeting, with the inevitable impersonations, we began talking about our lives.
Late in the evening, in the street that led to the metro station, Frédéric put his arms around me. We stayed like that for ages. I remember him caressing my hips, my buttocks, my hair. Through the flowing material of my floral dress, I felt his erection against my thigh. He didn’t kiss me.
It could have been the start of an affair. Too dangerous for both of us. That’s what he told me a few days later. That he didn’t want to fall in love.
When I told friends about this, they laughed. Male excuse. Typical married man’s cop-out. That would probably have been true if we’d slept together. But we hadn’t.
We have become solid, complicit colleagues. We share the same values, the same battles. Make a stand when that’s all you can do. That’s a start.
Frédéric knows me, it’s true, even if our saliva never mingled. But he’s wrong. I’m not the one people should be worried about.