Amy and Isabelle

  Amy helped herself to another marshmallow. She was distracted, only partly interested in Stacy’s dream. What was most in her mind of course was the excruciatingly embarrassing memory of the day before, when she had kissed Mr. Robertson on his cheek. What a stupid thing to do. And he was married, he wore that wedding ring—so he’d probably gone home and told his wife and they’d had a chuckle. “Normal for girls to have crushes on their teachers,” the wife might say. Amy’s stomach tightened against the pleasure of the marshmallow. She did not think what she was going through in her feeling for Mr. Robertson was anything like “normal.” She swallowed the rest of the marshmallow, thinking the only reason he had smiled at her this morning during class was because he was embarrassed for her acting like a jerk.

  A drop of water fell from a branch onto Amy’s head and dripped down her forehead. She wiped at it with the arm of her coat. “Where do you think you’ll go to college?” she asked Stacy. Mr. Robertson had talked to Amy about going to a good college when they sat in his car in her driveway.

  “Nowhere. I’m too dumb. I’m going to New York to be a singer.” Stacy peered at the marshmallows and chose one that seemed to have more chocolate. “The trouble with being adopted,” Stacy explained, holding her cigarette in one hand and the chocolate-covered marshmallow in the other, “is your parents might be smart, and they’re hoping you’re going to be smart, but then you turn out dumb. Of course this disappoints them. They can’t say that, so they keep implying you should be really grateful they took you at all. You should be really fucking grateful they didn’t leave you in some gutter.”

  “You weren’t going to be left in a gutter, were you?” This possibility was interesting to Amy.

  “Of course not.” Stacy nibbled at the chocolate with tiny bites. “That’s the whole point. I wasn’t anywhere except in some clean hospital getting born and then my parents come in and adopt me and take me home and I’m supposed to act like they saved my fucking life.”

  Amy smoked her cigarette and contemplated this. “Someone else would have taken you if they didn’t,” she finally remarked. “I bet a lot of people would have. I bet you were a really pretty baby.”

  Stacy tossed the half-eaten marshmallow into the woods and then dropped her cigarette on the ground and stared at it for a long time, like behind her open eyes she’d gone to sleep. “Roses are red,” she finally said, still staring, “violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic and so am I.” She looked over at Amy. “My father thinks that’s funny,” she said. “He thinks that’s just a fucking scream.”

  Chapter

  9

  SPRING CAME. FORSYTHIA bushes burst into yellow beside doorways and along stone walls; then daffodils opened, and hyacinths. Narcissus leaned on their stalks, tapping against the bottom shingles of houses as a light breeze moved by. Day after day the sky was blue; the sun fell across brick walls of buildings and baked them warm. By the banks of the river the birch trees stood tentative and skinny with the tender green of their new growth making them seem hesitant, like schoolgirls. The sun danced on the water and warm breezes blew along the banks and people ate their lunches on park benches, reaching out quickly for an empty potato-chip bag scuttling along in the wind.

  The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God. God was here on her back steps, in the final patch of sunlight on her tulip bed, in the steady husky chirping from the marsh, in the fragrant damp earth surrounding right now the delicate roots of hepaticas and starflowers. She went back inside, locking the screen door, and felt the certainty again, that her life, because of His love, was finally on the verge of something large and new.

  And Amy, thank God (truly, thank Him), was more talkative than she used to be, much more interested in school. She had joined the English Club and the Student Council and often stayed for a meeting in the afternoon. She was good about calling Isabelle at work when this was the case. Sometimes also, Amy explained, she stayed after school to help the other kids from Spanish class. Miss Lanier, the Spanish teacher, had asked her to do this. Stacy Burrows, for example (“She’s really nice, we’re kind of friends,” Amy said), who apparently did not catch on to the conjugation of verbs quickly, stayed after school some days to get help from Amy. Except they spent a lot of time gossiping about Miss Lanier and the principal, Puddy. “We think they have a crush on each other,” Amy said, dropping a piece of butter the size of a walnut into the center of her baked potato. “Puddy came in with a note the other day for Miss Lanier, and she blushed and then he blushed.”

  This all seemed normal to Isabelle: two girls speculating about their teachers’ romantic inclinations. And she was grateful for it, because Isabelle had worried that Amy was lonely at school. So now it was pleasant to be able to sit on these lovely spring evenings and listen to the chatter of this growing, happy girl.

  “Is he nice? The principal?” Isabelle asked. “I don’t know that I’ve heard you say much about him.”

  “Oh, he’s really nice,” Amy said, mashing up the baked potato and butter with her fork. “He’s not at all strict. You can tell he hates to yell at anyone.” Amy shoved an alarming amount of potato into her mouth. “Except he did suspend Alan Stewart for three days for vandalizing the boys’ room.”

  “Good heavens, I should think so,” Isabelle responded. “And please don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  Amy held up a finger of apology and swallowed vigorously, the tendons of her throat springing out. “Stacy thinks,” she continued in a moment, “that Mr. Mandel—that’s Puddy—still lives with his mother and that he’s too shy to ask out Miss Lanier.”

  “Mandel,” Isabelle said. “Isn’t that a Jewish name? How old do you think he is?”

  Amy shrugged. “Forty, maybe. Fifty. How can you tell he’s Jewish?” Amy’s head was bent over her plate; her eyes looked up at her mother.

  “The name can clue you in. Does he have a big nose? For heavens sake, honey, sit up.”

  “Yeah, he does have kind of a big nose.”

  Isabelle nodded. “They’re apt to. Flat feet too, and maybe Stacy’s right about him living with his mother. Jewish mothers have trouble letting go. With their sons especially, I think.”

  Amy burped, widening her eyes with apology. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry,” she said, but Isabelle was enjoying her company and she let it go.

  “What does Miss Lanier look like?”

  “Kind of plain, but really nice.” Amy didn’t mention that she wore her skirts quite short, but she did tell her mother about the problem Miss Lanier had with static cling.

  “Oh, too bad,” Isabelle said, shaking some seasoning salt onto her chicken thigh. “She probably doesn’t have a full-length mirror, or she’d see it. Every woman should have a full-length mirror.”

  Both Isabelle and Amy nodded. A breeze coming through the window over the sink brought with it a moist earthy smell that mingled with the seasoned chicken. “But you see,” Isabelle said, aiming her fork at Amy and poking it delicately a few times through the air, “Lanier. I think that’s French. Which means she’s probably Catholic. Which means Mr. Mandel’s mother isn’t going to like that.”

  “Why not.”

  “Oh, honey.” Isabelle started eating again.

  “Would you care if I married someone who wasn’t a Protestant?” Amy asked. The question was an idle one, just friendly.

  “No, of course not,” Isabelle answered, but even as she said it she felt a tightening within her. “You can marry whomever you choose.”

  “Like if I married someone Jewish,” Amy said, spreading butter onto her potato skin.

  “Oh, that would be all right,” Isabelle said, relieved. “Jews are very smart. They think. They use their heads. They value education.”
>
  “What if I married a Catholic?”

  Isabelle cut a small piece of chicken in two. “It would be none of my business.”

  “I probably won’t marry a Catholic,” Amy said agreeably. “I think it’s dumb the way they kneel. I’d feel so queer kneeling in church.”

  “Well,” Isabelle said. “I happen to agree with you there. Although we should respect the differences of others.”

  And so there was that: the pleasant chitchat between mother and daughter. Isabelle felt redeemed. All the hard work of raising this girl on her own, and just look: they had landed on their feet.

  “Say,” she said, suddenly remembering, as she cleared away the dishes, that there was something she’d meant to ask Amy about, “that math teacher of yours that took Miss Dayble’s place this year. What’s his name?”

  “Robertson.” Amy bent down as though looking for something dropped on the floor. “What about him?” she asked, her head still down, taking her hair from behind her ear so that it fell in front of her face.

  “His wife left him.” Isabelle had brought a sponge from the sink and was wiping the table thoroughly.

  “Really?” Amy stood up, careful to keep her back to her mother. “I thought a pea dropped on the floor but I guess not.” But her mother wasn’t looking, she was heading back to the sink. “How do you know his wife left him?”

  “Becky Tucker took a class with her at the college evidently. Honey, if you think there may be a pea rolling around under there I wish you’d look carefully. I don’t want any mice in this house.”

  “She took a class with Mrs. Robertson?”

  “According to Arlene. Here, stick this in the refrigerator if you can’t find the pea.” Isabelle held out the leftover chicken wrapped carefully in aluminum foil.

  Amy waited until she had opened the refrigerator door and then said, “How come she left?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Had her consciousness raised, I guess.”

  Amy poked among the jars of mayonnaise and pickles and ketchup, moved a carton of eggs. “What do you mean?”

  “Amy, close that door for heaven’s sake. Just stick the chicken in and close the door.” Isabelle was filling the sink with hot water, tying an apron around her waist.

  Amy closed the refrigerator door. “What do you mean, had her consciousness raised?”

  “I don’t really know if that’s what happened. But you know how all sorts of women are getting together these days in these groups.”

  “But what are they?” Amy sat down at the table and opened her biology book. She still had homework to do.

  “As far as I can tell,” Isabelle said, scrubbing a plate vigorously, “women sit around and complain about their husbands and encourage each other to get divorced.”

  “Mrs. Robertson was in one of those groups?”

  “Oh, Amy, I don’t really know. I just know that Arlene said she’d gone home to live with her parents.”

  “But how come?”

  “Good heavens, Amy. I really don’t know.” Isabelle rinsed the plates, then wiped at the faucets.

  Amy did not ask anything more.

  “Anyway.” Isabelle sighed and dried her hands on a towel. “Poor man. To have his wife run off.” (She would remember this later—that she had stood in the kitchen and said Poor man.)

  “Maybe he doesn’t care,” Amy said, flipping through her biology book. “Maybe he was sick of her.”

  “Who knows,” Isabelle said idly, “the way things are today. But it seems to me being sick of each other is not much of a reason to get divorced.” She went into the living room and got out her sewing basket to mend the hem on one of her skirts. It riled her a bit, really, to think of people being so careless with their marriages. “If people remain considerate and kind they don’t get sick of each other,” she said to no one in particular, measuring off an arm’s length of thread.

  Amy, sitting at the kitchen table, stared at her biology book. For a while now her homework had not been getting done. Just yesterday she received a poor grade on her biology quiz, and written across the top was a note from the teacher: Your mind is not on your work.

  ISABELLE HAD FOUND herself so absorbed in the world of Madame Bovary that she long ago stopped congratulating herself for reading the book. When the women in the office room began calling her Madame Ovary (“Here’s Madame Ovary,” someone might say as Isabelle walked into the lunchroom), she was distressed not so much by the teasing but because she no longer felt comfortable reading the book at work and had to delay the pleasure until she was home. But she kept the paperback with her in her pocketbook, and finding the weather to be once again clear and warm, she slipped quietly out one day at lunchtime and sat in her car in the parking lot, where she chewed her thumbnail till it bled while poor Emma Bovary finally died horribly on her bed.

  Isabelle wept. She looked through the cubbyhole for a napkin to dab at her eyes and thought what a mess Emma Bovary had made of her life. Isabelle even spoke it aloud. “What a mess,” she said, and blew her nose. She was glad it was Emma who had suffered all this and not herself. She was very glad of that. Isabelle took a deep breath and looked through the windshield at the parking lot, where bits of gravel glinted in the sun. It seemed both a relief and just a little bit boring to be in the parking lot of a shoe mill in Shirley Falls in the twentieth century when most of her mind still held the sponginess of the awful mess that had just taken place in a French village a century before: she pictured the small room, bees at the window, Emma’s last cries of poisonous pain.… Awful, awful, awful. She felt so sorry for Emma. Tears welled in Isabelle’s eyes again.

  But still. Still and all. (Isabelle took one last look at Emma Bovary and put her in the cubbyhole.) She had brought it on herself. She really had, she just really, really had. Emma had a perfectly decent husband in Charles. If she had been loving to him she would have found that he was capable of growing into a strong and interesting man. Isabelle believed this. As a matter of fact, Isabelle had not been able to shake the feeling that she herself would have been very pleased with a husband like Charles, and so she had some difficulty, of course, seeing things from Emma’s point of view.

  But it was complicated. Because deep in Isabelle’s heart she understood the terrible longings Emma had. There was not a person in Shirley Falls who would have believed this of Isabelle, but she held within her the memories of a devastating physical love with a man, and these memories danced inside her at times like a living thing. It had been wrong, though—as wrong as a thing can be—and her heart bounced furiously now inside her chest; she felt she would suffocate in this car.

  She calmed herself by walking along the edge of the parking lot and gazing at two hawks gliding high in the blue sky, and then down at the river, the sudsy, roiling water spewing out from under the mill over the granite rocks. Emma Bovary had been selfish, Isabelle told herself, selfish and unloving, and proof of this was not merely in her indifference to her husband but in the dreadful neglect of her child. No, Emma Bovary was far more evil than Isabelle Goodrow ever had been or ever could be, and if in the end she died a loathsome death, well, she had no one to blame but herself.

  Isabelle pulled open the heavy back door of the mill, grateful for the familiar smell of leather and glue, the loud clanking from the machine room she passed, the whirring sound of the elevator as it brought her up and deposited her into the quiet hallway outside the office room. She stopped in the ladies’ room to freshen her lipstick and comb her hair, considering as she did these things that she might not read another book for a while, that life was difficult enough without bringing someone else’s sorrows to crash down about your head.

  “GOING TO STOP by and see me this afternoon?” Mr. Robertson would say quietly to Amy as she left his class, or if he met her during the day in the hallway, and then Amy would go to his classroom after school and they would stand by the windows talking, or they might sit on top of the desks. “Going to let me drive you home again?” he would a
sk, and so it became a pattern: their walk out to the teachers’ parking lot, their drive along Route 22, and then sitting in her driveway in his car.

  She had not intended to kiss him again, but the very next time he drove her home, as she prepared to get out of the car, he had said teasingly, “No kiss today?” and leaned toward her, offering his cheek. So that became part of the pattern as well, her lips lightly touching his bearded cheek.

  One day he turned his head and kissed her on the mouth. “Have a good evening,” he said afterward, with a brief nod of his head.

  That night she did not do any homework again. She did not do much of anything except move restlessly about the house, thinking of his deliberate kiss to her mouth. Isabelle felt her forehead to see if she was sick.

  “I’m fine,” Amy said. “Really.”

  But it was hard, this whole business of lying to her mother. She said now, sitting down on the edge of the couch and holding some hair up in front of her face, as though checking for split ends. “Tomorrow I’ll probably be staying a little bit after school again.”

  “English Club?”

  “Math,” Amy said. (There was no English Club. She had made that up on the spur of the moment one day.) “Math help. Well, not help. A few of us are really good in math and the teacher’s been giving us this trigonometry stuff. Practically college stuff. He said he’ll work extra with us sometimes after school.”

  “Oh, really,” said Isabelle, completely fooled. “Isn’t that nice. Interesting, too.”

  “Why interesting?” Amy kept squinting at the hair she held before her face; her eyes were almost crossed.

  “Because my father was very good with numbers. Maybe you inherited it from him.”

  Amy wasn’t so good in math. When she saw Mr. Robertson after school they never talked about math. “I like English better,” she said, dropping her hair, and thinking again about Mr. Robertson’s wife and why she had left him. He must have asked her to leave.