Nine Inches: Stories

  “I never said that.” Vicki’s voice was calm but insistent. “You know I didn’t.”

  “But you thought it.” Jessica was blushing fiercely. “I remember the way you were looking at me. Judging me. You don’t need that candy bar.”

  “No,” Vicki murmured, but the certainty had drained from her voice. “I wasn’t judging you.”

  Jessica took a long pull on her Frappuccino, squinting at Vicki the whole time.

  “I didn’t ask to be fat, you know.”

  “You’re a lovely girl,” Vicki told her. “You have a very pretty face.”

  “My mother tells me that five times a day.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I used to be really cute.” Jessica laughed, but all Vicki heard was pain. “People used to tell me I looked just like my big sister.”

  “How old’s your sister?”

  “She’s a senior. Jenny Grasso? Cheerleader? Like the hottest girl in the whole school?”

  “Oh.” Vicki knew Jenny Grasso. You couldn’t spend a day in Gifford High School and not be aware of her. It was like living in America and not knowing about Britney Spears. “I didn’t realize that the two of you — ”

  “Why would you? It’s not like we have the same last name or anything.”

  “It’s a big school,” Vicki replied lamely. “You could be cousins.”

  Jessica shook her head. She didn’t seem upset, just defeated. “Her clothes are so tiny. You can’t believe she fits in them.”

  Vicki had never taught Jessica’s sister, never even spoken to her, but she had an oddly vivid image in her mind of Jenny Grasso walking slowly past her classroom in tight jeans and a pink tank top, clutching a single red rose.

  “Do you get along?”

  “Sometimes. I mean, she’s pretty nice most of the time. But it kinda sucks living in the same house with her. Boys are always texting her and she’s always going to the mall with her friends and coming home with these really cute outfits. It’s just — her life’s so great and mine . . .” Jessica’s eyes pleaded with Vicki. “Sometimes I want to kill her.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “I don’t see why she gets to have all that and I don’t. It’s like I’m being punished and I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “There’s no justice.”

  Jessica nodded grimly, as if she’d figured that out a long time ago. “You want to see something?” She picked up her phone, took a couple of swipes at the screen, then handed it to Vicki. “I mean, look at this.”

  Even on the small screen, the photograph was heartbreaking. It had been taken on prom night, the two Grasso sisters — the fat one and the pretty one — standing side by side on the stoop of a pale blue house, the camera far enough away that their bodies were visible from the knees up: Jenny in a slinky, low-cut yellow dress, not smiling but looking deeply pleased with the world, Jessica in a tentlike hoodie, grinning till it hurt, her face at once large and indistinct, one beefy arm draped over her sister’s delicate shoulder.

  Poor thing, Vicki thought as she handed back the phone.

  “I know,” Jessica said, as if Vicki had spoken the words aloud. “Story of my life.”

  “Believe me,” Vicki told her, “I know just how you feel. I mean, I was never petite or anything, just normal-sized. But then I put on fifty pounds when I was pregnant with my son. Fifty pounds, can you believe that? And I couldn’t take it off. I did Weight Watchers, I fasted, I exercised, I tried every diet in the world, but I just got bigger and bigger. It was like my body was saying, Guess what, this is how it’s gonna be from now on. Better get used to it. My husband told me he didn’t care, said he loved me no matter what, but a few years later he left me for a Chinese woman, I don’t think she weighed a hundred pounds. They have three kids now.”

  “He sounds like a jerk.”

  “I loved him.” Vicki flicked her hand in front of her face as if it wasn’t worth talking about. “That was almost twenty years ago.”

  “You ever get married again?”

  “Nope.”

  “Any boyfriends?”

  “Nothing serious. I was a divorced working mother. Not young and not thin. My phone wasn’t ringing off the hook.” Vicki hesitated long enough to realize she was making a mistake, then kept going. “For a lot of that time, I had a crush on another teacher.”

  Jessica’s eyes widened. “At Gifford?”

  “I was crazy about this guy. He was divorced, too. We ate lunch together every day, went to the movies with a group of other single teachers, even played on a coed softball team. It was a lot of fun.”

  “Was it Mr. Oberman?”

  “Mr. Oberman?” Vicki couldn’t help laughing. Dan Oberman was a slovenly history teacher, a sadsack who lived with his mother and had been wearing the same three sweater vests for the past ten years. “You think I’d have a crush on Mr. Oberman?”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “Anyway, I got really motivated about walking every day and watching what I ate, and I lost about twenty pounds. I could see he was looking at me in a different way, complimenting my outfits, and you know, just paying attention, and I finally decided to go for it. At the faculty Christmas party, I took him aside and told him how I felt. He said he had feelings for me, too. He drove me home that night and we . . .” A bit late, Vicki’s sense of decorum kicked in.

  “You hooked up?” Jessica pretended to be scandalized. “Was it Mr. McAdams?”

  “He’s a married man.”

  “Come on, just tell me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we had that one night together and I was so happy. I could see my whole life laid out in front of me.” Vicki laughed at herself, a short, scornful bark. “But he didn’t call the next day, or the day after that . . .”

  “Or the day after that,” Jessica continued. “Been there.”

  “Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I called him. He got all serious on me. You know that voice, like a doctor telling you you’re gonna die. You have to understand, Vicki, I like you a lot but what happened the other night was a mistake. I had too much to drink, blah, blah, blah . . .”

  “Let’s be friends,” Jessica added knowingly. “That totally sucks.”

  “I’ll tell you what sucks. Three months later he got engaged to a pretty, young gym teacher. And guess who got invited to their wedding? Good old Vicki.”

  “Mr. Turley?” Jessica gasped. “You hooked up with Mr. Turley?”

  “It was just that once.”

  “He’s cute for an old guy,” Jessica said. “Didn’t Ms. Leoni just have a baby?”

  “Yeah. Sweet little boy.”

  “Ouch.”

  Vicki nodded. Ouch was right. She didn’t tell Jessica about how drunk she’d gotten at the wedding, how the bride’s mother found her crying in the bathroom and listened to Vicki’s confession of her love for the groom with surprising compassion, telling Vicki that she understood how hard it must be, that she’d gone through something similar back when she was single. You have to forget him, she said. You have to move on with your life.

  Jessica slurped the last of her Frappuccino and studied Vicki with a look of anxious sympathy. “You think you’re ever gonna meet someone else?”

  Vicki wasn’t surprised by the question. It was something she’d asked herself frequently in recent years. If she’d been honest, she would’ve said that she’d come to the conclusion that Mr. Turley had been her last shot, and that she’d pretty much resigned herself to spending the remainder of her life alone. But it was clear from the way Jessica was looking at her — hungrily, with the kind of focus Vicki rarely inspired in the classroom — that she was asking an entirely different question.

  “Of course,” Vicki told her. “Of course I’ll meet someone. I just have to be patient.”

  THAT NIGHT she ate dinner alone, graded some homework assignments she should’ve handed back a week ago, and called her son, who was a junior at Rutgers. As usual,
Ben didn’t pick up, so she just left a brief message: Hey, honey, it’s your mom. Give me a call when you get a chance. Love you. Then she watched an episode of CSI: Miami and the first part of the news before finally working up the nerve to turn on her computer.

  She wasn’t sure why she was so nervous. She and Jessica had parted on good terms, joking in the Starbucks parking lot about heading across the street to Bruno’s for a large sausage-and-pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. It was early evening, and the light had seemed unusually soft and forgiving as they said goodbye. Left to her own devices, Vicki wasn’t much of a hugger — she saw how people hesitated sometimes, and it took a lot of the pleasure out of it — but Jessica didn’t share her qualms. Before Vicki understood what was happening, the girl was moving toward her with her arms out, their two bodies bumping together, the sensation so familiar it was almost as if she were embracing herself.

  “So,” Jessica said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” Vicki felt a sudden odd emptiness as the girl let go. She was surprised to realize that she was close to tears “You have a nice night.”

  Jessica had promised to delete the offensive post on grademyteacher.com, and Vicki was pretty sure she trusted her to keep her word. Still, she felt a vague sense of foreboding as she scrolled down the alphabetical list of Gifford teachers — there was Becky Leoni (6.7) and good old Sam Turley (7.2) — a queasy suspicion that something unpleasant was about to unfold.

  But it was okay. The post was gone, wiped away as if it had never even existed. Vicki felt a moment of pure satisfaction — justice had been done, a crooked thing made straight — as well as a rush of affection for the girl, who really was a lovely person despite the awful things she’d written. Her attack was just a projection, an attempt to displace negative feelings for herself onto someone else. Vicki understood all too well how that sort of thing worked.

  Her relief didn’t last for long, though. Without meaning to, she found herself reading the review that had taken the place of Jessica’s at the top of the Vicki Wiggins’s page on grademyteacher.com. It was several months old, written by a student who called himself “Mr. Amazing”:

  All in all Ms. Wiggins is a pretty good math teacher, except she’s pretty strict about stupid little things. Like she gave this one kid detention cause his cellphone rang in class. Ok he should have turned it off, but was it his fault that someone called him? But like I said she’s not that bad. I don’t care what anybody says there is no way she’s more boring than Mr. Ferrone.

  Vicki had read this post when it first appeared and had barely given it a second thought. It was actually pretty good as far as these things went — Mr. Amazing had given her a higher-than-average overall rating of 6.0 — but right now it just seemed heartbreaking. Was this what she would be remembered for when all was said and done? That she gave some kid detention for a minor offense? That maybe — just maybe — she wasn’t as mind-numbingly dull as Dennis Ferrone?

  I have so much to offer. And no one even notices.

  For a few seconds, she thought about approaching Jessica after class tomorrow, suggesting that she post a new, more generous review on the site just to set the record straight. But it was a lot to ask. And the thought of making such a request was embarrassing beyond words.

  She wasn’t sure why it mattered so much, but it did. It just did. Why wouldn’t it? She was a good person, she worked hard, and it seemed crazy — crazy and wrong — that these things went unacknowledged.

  It turned out to be easier than she expected to register on grademyteacher.com. You just typed in an e-mail address and checked a box that said I AM A STUDENT AT GIFFORD HIGH SCHOOL. She chose the username Frappuccinogrrrl and wrote the following in the comments box:

  My math teacher Vicki Wiggins is really nice. She’s pretty and really cares about us kids. Like if you were having a problem she’d meet you after school and try to make you feel better because she just wants everybody to be happy. And she knows a lot about math too.

  There was more to say — much more — but space was limited and she decided to stop there. She checked her work, pressed SEND, and turned off her computer. There would be time enough in the morning to wake up and drink a cup of coffee, then maybe google herself before heading off to work. It would be nice, she thought, clicking on her own name and, just for once, finding something that felt like the truth.

  THE SMILE ON

  HAPPY CHANG’S FACE

  THE SUPERIOR WALLCOVERINGS WILDCATS WERE playing in the Little League championship game, and I wanted them to lose. I wanted the Town Pizza Ravens and their star pitcher, Lori Chang, to humiliate them, to run up the score and taunt them mercilessly from the first-base dugout. I know this isn’t an admirable thing for a grown man to admit — especially a grown man who has agreed to serve as home-plate umpire — but there are feelings you can’t hide from yourself, even if you’d just as soon chop off your hand as admit them to anyone else.

  I had nothing against the Wildcat players. It was their coach I didn’t like, my next-door neighbor, Carl DiSalvo, the Kitchen Kabinet King of northern New Jersey. I stood behind the backstop, feeling huge and bloated in my cushiony chest protector, and watched him hit infield practice. A shamelessly vain man, Carl had ripped the sleeves off his sweatshirt, the better to display the rippling muscles he worked for like a dog down at Bally’s. I knew all about his rippling muscles. Our driveways were adjacent, and Carl always seemed to be returning from an exhilarating session at the gym just as I was trudging off to work in the morning, my head still foggy from another rotten night’s sleep.

  “I’m getting pretty buff,” he would tell me, proudly rubbing his pecs or biceps. “Wish I’d been built like this when I was younger.”

  Fuck you, I invariably thought, but I always said something polite like “Keep it up” or “I gotta start working out myself.”

  Carl and I had known each other forever. In high school we played football together — I was a starter, a second-team all-county linebacker, while Carl barely dirtied his uniform — and hung out in the same athletic crowd. When he and Marie bought the Detmeyers’ house nine years ago, it had seemed like a lucky break for both of us, a chance to renew a friendship that had died of natural causes when we graduated and went our separate ways — me to college and into the management sector, Carl into his father’s remodeling business. I helped him with the move, and when we finished, we sat on my patio with our wives, drinking beer and laughing as the summer light faded and our kids played tag on the grass. We called each other “neighbor” and imagined barbecues and block parties stretching far into the future.

  “Nice pickup, Trevor,” he called to his third baseman. “But let’s keep working on that throw, okay, pal?”

  Go fuck yourself, I thought. Okay, pal?

  •••

  “JACKIE BOY.” Tim Tolbert, the first-base umpire and president of the Little League, pummeled my chest protector as though it were a punching bag. “Championship game.” He looked happier than a grown man has a right to be. “Very exciting.”

  As usual, I wanted to grab him by the collar and ask what the hell he had to be so cheerful about. He was a baby-faced, prematurely bald man who sold satellite dishes all day, then came home to his wife, a scrawny exercise freak obsessed with her son’s peanut allergy. She’d made a big stink about it when the kid entered kindergarten, and now the school cafeteria wasn’t allowed to serve PB&J sandwiches anymore.

  “Very exciting,” I agreed. “Two best teams in the league.”

  “Not to mention the two best umps,” he said, giving me a brotherly squeeze on the shoulder.

  This much I owed to Tim — he was the guy who convinced me to volunteer as an umpire. He must have known how isolated I was feeling, alone in my house, my wife and kids living with my mother-in-law, nothing to do at night but stare at the TV and stuff my face with sandwich cream cookies. I resisted at first, not wanting to give people a new opportunity to whisper about me, but he k
ept at it until I finally gave in.

  And I loved it. Crouching behind the plate, peering through the bars of my mask, my whole being focused on the crucial, necessary difference between a ball and a strike, I felt clearheaded and almost serene, free of the bitterness and shame that were my constant companions during the rest of my life.

  “Two best umps?” I glanced around in mock confusion. “Me and who else?”

  An errant throw rolled against the backstop, and Carl jogged over to retrieve it. He grabbed the ball and straightened up, turning to Tim and me as if we’d asked for his opinion.

  “Kids are wound tight,” he said. “I keep telling them it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, but I don’t think they believe me.”

  Carl grinned, letting us know he didn’t believe it, either. Like me, he was in his midforties, but he was carrying it off with a little more panache than I was. He had thick gray hair that made for a striking contrast with his still-youthful body, and a gap between his front teeth that women supposedly found irresistible (at least that’s what Jeanie used to tell me). His thick gold necklace glinted in the sun, spelling his name to the world.

  “You’re modeling the proper attitude,” Tim told him. “That’s all you can do.”

  The previous fall, a guy named Joe Funkhauser, the father of one of our high school football players, got into an argument with an opposing player’s father in the parking lot after a bitterly contested game. Funkhauser beat the guy into a coma and was later charged with attempted murder. The Funkhauser Incident, as the papers called it, attracted a lot of unfavorable attention to our town and triggered a painful round of soul-searching among people concerned with youth sports. In response to the crisis, Tim had organized a workshop for Little League coaches and parents, trying to get them to focus on fun rather than competition, but it takes more than a two-hour seminar to change people’s attitudes about something as basic as the difference between winning and losing.