Be Mine

  Well, the roses all died.

  I had, I supposed, let the roses die.

  I replaced them with simple annuals—mostly marigolds, which spread like a cancer through the bed, where, occasionally, some leftover branch of a rosebush would bud inexplicably in the summer, although the buds always dropped off into the marigolds before they bloomed.

  "Oh, Garrett," I said. His eyes were so blue they seemed nearly colorless in all that spring light. He was smiling so widely I could see the place where the flesh pulled tightly across his cheekbones, revealing a beautiful skull beneath the flesh—the perfectly formed bone behind the face he'd inherited from his father.

  "Why, Garrett?" I asked.

  Garrett looked down at his knees, at his jeans, where the denim had turned pale as it began to wear away. He said, "Well, my recruiter says it's a great way to finish school for auto mechanics without having to take, say, a lot of English classes—no offense. And I have time to finish up this semester, and finish the work on my Mustang. I can rent out the house, get my stuff together. Chad and I can hang out for a while when he gets back from school for the summer."

  Chad.

  Chad?

  I suddenly wondered if it was possible that Chad was Garrett's only friend—Chad, who seemed to have so little interest in Garrett, and who, I felt sure, was not planning to spend his summer hanging around with him.

  "Have you heard from Chad?" I asked, and for just a moment, irrationally, I imagined that Chad had talked Garrett into this, into joining the Marines.

  "No," Garrett said.

  "Garrett," I said. "I'm happy for you. But, I'm also worried. There's a war, Garrett. You—"

  Only the night before there'd been a photograph in the newspaper of a marine from the town next to ours. He'd been killed in a car bombing, and the stiff portrait of him in the paper—staring straight ahead as if staring down the barrel of a gun—had been impossible not to stare back at. That dead marine had looked, in that photograph, nothing like Garrett, of course, sitting across from me in all that radiant spring sun, lathered up with boyish hope for the future. But that boy's mother hadn't seen death on her boy, either, had she?

  "I know, Mrs. Seymour," Garrett said. "I know that. That's why I want to go. The country needs me. I owe it."

  Garrett went on then as I listened, about the country and its need, and his own role in the greater scheme of threats and desires that made up the world—his little bit of history in it. He said, "I wouldn't mind traveling, either. I've never even been out of the state, except for Florida."

  And, as Garrett described it, the world he was going off into, I didn't imagine death in it, or even men. I thought, instead, of those trucks ramming up against the legs of the coffee table on my living room floor, little Garrett making truck noises, lost in fantasy, having fun. As he talked about it, the world grew smaller and smaller in my office, until I could have tucked it into my purse, or slipped it into a pocket, or swallowed it in pill form with my morning orange juice. I pictured tiny planes taking off and landing in a sandbox. LEGO tanks dismantled on the kitchen table. Snowballs. Dirt clods. Boyish conflicts.

  Still, when he stopped to take a breath, I asked, "Is it too late, Garrett? Did you already sign up, or can you think about this?"

  He'd signed. They'd given him a T-shirt. He undid the buttons of his white shirt and showed it to me:

  SEMPER FI.

  "Do you know what that means, Mrs. Seymour?"

  I did. I'd had three years of Latin in high school, two in college, but I shook my head.

  "Always faithful," Garrett said.

  There was a knock at my office door.

  I glanced at my watch.

  As soon as I saw how late it was, I knew it was Bram.

  "OKAY," Bram said. "So, I can't come to your office. What else can't I do? Can I do this?"

  He reached across the table in the cafeteria and stroked one finger down my neck.

  "Bram," I said, and moved away from his caress, almost spilling coffee out of my Styrofoam cup as I did—although every nerve in my body had come to life, suddenly, flowering in the direction of Bram's finger on my neck.

  "Sorry," Bram said. "I lost my mind."

  He was smiling that half smile. That insistent dimple on the right side of his face. He ran his hand through his own dark hair. He said, "I really can't get over your neck, Mrs. Seymour. I'm sure you've been told this a million times, but it's like a swan's."

  Calling me Mrs. Seymour—he was making fun of Garrett, who'd seemed surprised and nervous when Bram came to my office and found him there.

  "Okay, Mrs. Seymour," Garrett had said several times, standing up fast, heading down the hallway. "I'll see you, Mrs. Seymour. Thanks for listening, Mrs. Seymour."

  Bram had stared after him.

  "What's this all about?" he asked, nodding in the direction of Garrett's back.

  I told him that Garrett had joined the Marines.

  Bram's eyes continued to follow Garrett down the hallway.

  "Good," he'd said.

  "Your neck," Bram said, leaning toward me, "was the first thing I noticed when you brought your fucked-up car into the garage. I knew right away that I wanted to sink my teeth into it and make you squirm."

  My lips parted, but I could say nothing. I looked away, around the cafeteria. It was full of people I knew. Colleagues. Students. Secretaries. The film of perspiration, which may have been invisible but which had spread across my flesh, was evaporating now, cooling me. My flesh rippled with it—my chest, my arms. Could they see it? Could they guess what Bram Smith was saying to Sherry Seymour?

  I said, "Bram," and moved my chair back a little from the table. "Don't."

  He leaned back then, too, and crossed his arms. Over his shoulder I could see Amanda Stefanski talking to a student, a boy in baggy pants. She was laughing, clasping her hands over her stomach as if she were leading a prayer. I looked at my watch. I was supposed to have met her in my office ten minutes ago. Had she come to the cafeteria to look for me? Had Beth told her where I was?

  I inhaled, cleared my throat, and looked back at Bram, who was staring at me, unblinking, with that half smile.

  I tried to smile back, but also tried to lean away from him, tried to play the part of a woman having a casual conversation with a colleague in the cafeteria. Still, every time my heart beat, it nudged my body in his direction.

  We were, together, I knew, a secret sitting out in the open. Surely, anyone looking in our direction could have seen it on us. And, although a sober voice inside me said, You don't want to broadcast this business, Mrs. Seymour, it thrilled me nonetheless at every inch of my body to be the woman with the secret in the cafeteria, the one sitting across from Bram Smith, who was still looking appreciatively at her neck. I could feel the illicit thrill of it in the very cells of my body, and, despite myself, I leaned across the table toward him again, even closer, and he took it as the invitation it was and leaned toward me, too. We were close enough that I could hear the breath going in and out of his lungs. He reached over, again, and touched my neck with the tips of his fingers. This time, I let them linger a moment before I moved away. Then, I took a sip of my coffee, and swallowed, and looked around the cafeteria.

  No one had seen.

  No one was even looking in our direction.

  Amanda was still babbling with the boy. Beyond her, I could see Robert Z, with his back to us, standing with two cups of coffee at the unopened doors of the elevator. A few tables over, my student Habib was studying an enormous textbook laid out on the table in front of him, his face so deep into the book that it looked as if he were counting specks of dust on its pages. I thought I caught a glimpse of Sue rounding the corner near the vending machines. Beth was just slipping, with an armful of copies, into the Xerox room. All the people from my former life, I thought, were busy doing ordinary things, the things I also used to do.... I looked back at Bram and let my hand wander toward his on the table between us, and he put the ha
nd with which he'd stroked my neck on top of my hand—and, again, I let it stay there for a moment before I pulled it back to my lap. When I did, he leaned back in his chair, looking as if he'd just won a card game, or a game of wits, and his half smile was erotic, so intimate I had to look away. I looked down at the table between us—flat and dull, like a pond that had been drained of water centuries before, and my reflection on it was also flat and dull, like the body of a woman who would be found at the bottom of such a pond.

  Bram cleared his throat, and I looked up at him again.

  He asked, "What are you thinking about over there, beautiful?"

  I inhaled, and even the air entering my lungs felt sexual, felt like a caress. I couldn't look at him, but I had to ask it. I said, "I'm wondering what it was about me, in the first place, Bram. Why me, what made you decide to write those notes?"

  It was what I'd wanted to know all along, but hadn't dared to ask him until now:

  Why me?

  How had I attracted the attentions of a man like this? When had he first seen me, and what had made him think he wanted me, made him think to himself, Be mine?

  Bram took a sip of his own coffee.

  When he put the cup back down on the table between us, he was still smiling.

  "What notes?" he asked.

  "The valentine," I said.

  "The valentine?"

  "Be mine," I said.

  He shook his head. The smile had faded a little. He looked at his watch, a gold Rolex, or what appeared to be a gold Rolex, and then he checked the time there against the clock on the wall over his shoulder. He said to the clock, "Sorry, babe, I didn't write any valentines."

  I said, "The other ones? The yellow legal paper?"

  Bram's expression, when he looked back from the clock to me, was, I thought, a little sheepish, and also genuinely confused. He shrugged. He said, "I'm not really a Hallmark kind of guy, hon. It's a good idea, though. Wish I'd thought of it."

  I could only stare at him.

  He looked down at his watch again.

  That deep, brilliant gold.

  It had been a present, he'd said. His mother had given it to him before she died.

  I shook my head. I blinked. I said, "You didn't write the notes?"

  My voice sounded hoarse to me. I cleared my throat again, but there was something in it—dust, pollen, something that was invisible in the air, but had settled inside me.

  He shrugged again, and said, "So someone's been writing you love notes?" And something crossed his face. Annoyance? Jealousy?

  I touched my own neck then. I said, "I thought it was you. It's why I—"

  "Well," Bram said, leaning back in his chair. "I guess you've got the wrong guy, Mrs. Seymour. Maybe you better keep looking. I'm just a mechanic. I don't write poetry."

  "Sherry!"

  I turned.

  Amanda Stefanski was on her way over to the table. She was wearing an orange dress—too frilly, too sheer. It made her look like an enormous lampshade, I thought, but I saw Bram's eyes move from her waist, to her breasts, to her neck. That half smile again. I couldn't help but watch his expression, although I knew I should be looking up at Amanda. I said, "Bram. Do you know Amanda?"

  Bram stood up then, and offered his hand. He said, "No, but I've certainly seen you around. Nice to finally be introduced."

  The look on her face, I thought, was overeager. A puppy, trying to please. But she also looked a little confused, and she glanced from Bram back down to me. I stood up then, too, and said to Bram, "Amanda and I have a meeting now. It was nice talking to you, Bram."

  "Oh," Amanda said, "don't let me interrupt you guys. I'll just meet you over at your office, Sherry. Okay?" She backed away, then waved. "Nice to meet you!" she said to Bram.

  "Nice to meet you" he said.

  He watched her back as she scurried away, and I continued to watch him watch. Then, we stood facing each other. I held my coffee cup in my hand, but Bram's cup was empty on the table. He leaned over and said in my ear, "You better not go looking for that other guy, babe. Remember, you're mine " He winked. "See you at your place," he. said.

  WHILE I waited for Amanda in my office, I could hear my own heartbeat, so loud it sounded like hammering on the walls. I had so much to do—papers to grade, forms to fill out, calls to return, classes to plan—that I couldn't begin to do any of it. I didn't want to do it. Doing it seemed meaningless, each one a task for Sisyphus—so much rock-pushing, only to watch the rock roll back down the side of the mountain of such rocks. What I wanted was to be at the efficiency with Bram. Or even at home, with Jon. Or with Chad. At a movie. Or at the park, where we spent so many years and then never went back. I could still see Chad, swinging too high, defying gravity, terrifying me. I turned on my computer. I opened my e-mail and composed a message.

  Sweetheart, hope you're doing well. Daddy and I can't wait to see you. Two weeks? Have you made your plane reservations? Better start shipping the stuff you're not going to store. Grandpa's not feeling too well, so when you get home we'll go to visit? I know he'd be happy to see you. Did you know Garrett joined the Marines? I love you with all my heart. Mom

  AMANDA seemed subdued, a little shy, when she got to my office. Could she tell? Did she know there was something there, between me and Bram at the table? Had she overheard us talking before she said my name?

  Under Dali's rose in her bright orange dress, she looked like something that had grown out of control in an old woman's garden. I thought of enormous tropical flowers that bloomed only once every fifty years. Too bright, too showy. She cleared her throat and told me that she had Doug Bly in her Composition II class this semester, and she needed some advice. She knew I'd had him for his first-year writing course. Had he been as disruptive in my class as he was in hers? She was, she said, at her wit's end. He badgered her, she said, all through class. He made snide comments about the other students. He mimicked her gestures. She'd turned around at the chalkboard one afternoon and was sure she caught him giving her the finger. She'd spoken to him, threatened to have him dropped from the class, but it had no effect. She was, she said, a little frightened. What should she do?

  I couldn't remember Doug Bly.

  "Are you sure he was in my class?" I asked.

  "That's what he told me," Amanda said. "I looked up his transcript. You gave him a B+."

  Doug Bly?

  If he was the one I thought I remembered from the year before, he was a perfectly polite young man. He would have gotten an A except that he turned in his last two papers late. He'd called me ma'am.

  I tried to tell Amanda that she needed to be stricter.

  I was sure she wasn't strict enough.

  She was, after all, only twenty-seven. Doug Bly probably saw her insecurity, that she was young, inexperienced, and he didn't like it. Maybe underneath his polite demeanor in my class, it had been there all along, a bit of shark, and with Amanda, he had finally smelled blood. I told her that the next time he interrupted, she was to walk over to the door of her classroom, and hold it open for him. If he refused to leave, she should call security. After that, she was to go to the dean of students and demand to have him withdrawn from the class. She should tell the dean that she was fearful for her personal safety—which always got the wheels turning, fast.

  Amanda seemed pathetically grateful for the advice. She sat up a little straighter, I thought. She squared her shoulders. She said, "It's so great to have an older teacher to talk to about this. A mentor. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

  That dress.

  I remembered a goldfish Chad had won one year at the Brighton fair, an award for tossing a rubber ring over the neck of a Coke bottle. At first, that fish had been no larger than Chad's thumb, but by the end of the year it had grown out of its bowl. We had to buy an aquarium for it. We all laughed about it, but something seemed wrong, too. It couldn't go on. Jon had told Chad, "You need to stop feeding that fish," but Chad was only six, and couldn't stop himself. Whenever he got
the fish-flake can in his hands, he gave the goldfish as much as it could eat—which was extraordinary. Finally, we came home one afternoon, and the fish was floating at the surface of the aquarium, its fins fluttering like scarves around its bloated body. Chad wept, and I comforted him with ice cream and a description of fish heaven (ceramic castles, seaweed), but I was secretly relieved. It couldn't have gone on, that growth, that fish.

  Amanda said, "I feel so young and inexperienced."

  Without thinking, I patted her arm. I said, "It'll be over soon." Neither of us really knew what I meant by that, but we laughed a little. We relaxed a bit after that. She asked about Chad. I asked about her dog Pretty, whom she'd adopted the year before at the pound. Amanda had said that although Pretty was perfectly happy around Amanda, she would bark and snarl, at anyone else. The neighbors had complained that they were afraid the dog would break her leash and bite their children. So, she'd taken Pretty to obedience school, but Pretty had been so threatening to the other dogs and their owners that she'd had to quit. The last time we'd talked, Amanda had been afraid she was going to have to take Pretty back to the pound.

  But Pretty was doing wonderfully now, Amanda said. Pretty had calmed down. Totally. She was like a different dog. A happy dog. "Pretty even likes Rob," Amanda said.

  Rob?

  The face that flashed through my mind at the mention of the name was my brother's. He was holding a handgun to his temple. I asked, "Who?" too loudly.

  "Rob," Amanda said. "Robert."

  "Robert Z?" I asked.

  Amanda giggled. "Yeah," she said. "Didn't you know? We're dating?"

  I swallowed.

  I felt my heart in my chest.

  It had, I thought, skipped a beat, hadn't it? Now, it was working hard to catch up, to reestablish its regular rhythm. I said, "No. I had no idea."