In class Miss Lawrence treated me as any other student, but as we rode together day after day her eyes began to catch mine more frequently. Yet as quickly as our glance seemed to have meaning for us both, she broke it. Sometimes her cheeks would color slightly as she did so. She knew that I knew that there was something starting to go on between us.
I liked English literature and I liked the way Miss Lawrence taught the course. It wasn't hard to tell how much she loved teaching. She came alive, eyes bright, face expressive, gestures lively. I wondered if it was her whole life, she seemed so much to thrive on it. She always looked disappointed when the buzzer sounded, signaling the end of class. We loved her as a teacher, and she never tried to hide the fact that she loved us, as a class. It was a pleasure to watch her work, affecting us with her soft-toned enthusiasm.
As we talked on our drives to and from school I began bit by bit to find out more about this strange person who seemed to have only three suits and one dress, all cut so that my grandmother could have worn them and been stylish.
Miss Lawrence was from Los Angeles. She'd gone to Fairfax High School (mecca for Jewish kids in southern California, as Low ell was in northern California), U.C.L.A. as an education major, 'and U.C. Berkeley for her master's degree… She had done student teaching at various grammar schools in the east Bay Area and finally became a substitute teacher, taking jobs for a day or two here and there until she got the chance to really have a class of her own, when Mrs. Gilchrist became ill. She was vague about how long she had been a substitute, but, because of her age, I assumed that it had been for some time. She had a zest about her, a passionate love of things and of life that was infectious both in and out of class.
She didn't just like good music, she was crazy about it. Teaching wasn't her occupation, it was her life. Literature wasn't an avocation, but a major, moving force of her existence. She didn't perceive the dull colors of nature that most adults see but, like a child, caught them hi brilliant hues. It wasn't long before I found her company so pleasurable, her conversation so engaging, that I began to feel a certain sense of emptiness when I left her at her apartment. I found myself wishing that she would invite me up, and plotting ways to get invited or to have her come to my place.
Though I was still seeing Terry and having one-night stands with other girls, I found myself thinking about Miss Lawrence when I was making love. I began to think about her as I masturbated, wondering if she had ever had a man, or if she masturbated, and how much. Somehow, I couldn't picture her with a man. She was too much the old-fashioned schoolmarm-type in her prissy, formless suits and football shoes, nor could I imagine her slipping her hands between her legs; long, delicate fingers massaging her own body's erotic nerves to orgasm. I wondered if, at her age, she had ever climaxed. I fantasized myself making love to her, student fucking teacher (and oh, how much I could teach her) but I couldn't get a mental image of her body, and could barely get one of her face. My sperm would shoot out and I wasn't sure who or what my fancy had just screwed.
I looked forward to picking her up in the mornings, because no matter how fucked out I was from the night before, her early brightness always made me feel better.
But something was still wrong about her, something that bothered me and wouldn't let go.
One day after school I told her that I had read in the newspaper that there was an exhibit of Flemish art at the DeYoung Museum. "Oh, let's go!" she said, all excited. Then her brow furrowed. "You don't have to be anywhere else?, I mean, I shouldn't impose, "
"Don't worry," I said. "I don't have a thing to do until I play at nine tonight."
"Oh, good!" She was ecstatic, and even bounced once or twice on the car seat.
We saw the exhibit, which was only mediocre, since the museum couldn't afford any of the really good road art shows and keep its politicians in Cadillac's at the same time. We wandered around, looking at the mummy in the Egyptology section and some old tanks and field guns of World War I vintage that were kept in a separate section. I picked up an old Kaiser helmet, with its spiked top, and put it on. Miss Lawrence was delighted, looking around nervously to see if the museum guard was in the room and laughing at the same time. We went to the Japanese Tea Garden for jasmine tea and fortune cookies, and she let me pay. I was hoping that the cookies would say something prophetic, but they only predicted that we would be successful businessmen. We sat there under green oriental pines, drinking tea, smelling the sweet air and watching large, gold-striped carp swim aimlessly in the pond below our table. It was so quiet and beautiful, and, sexless as she seemed. I wanted to touch her, but didn't dare.
"What's your first name?" I asked after we had been silent awhile.
She hesitated, concentrating on the still waters of the pond. "Susan," she said finally. "Why?"
"Because I can't go on calling you Miss Lawrence forever. It's ridiculous."
"I don't know," she said, and started to say something else, but I cut her off.
"Look, Susan, do you really think I'd ever embarrass you in front of the class, or anybody else?"
She turned and looked at me with eyes that were greener than the pine-reflected waters of the pond, clear and shining through her glasses. "It isn't that, Richard", it was the first time she had ever used my first name, her first departure from her fake, self-imposed formality, "it's just that names become a habit, and you might forget at the wrong time. I, I wouldn't want that to happen."
Our hands on the table were so close, her delicate fingers crying to me for the protection of strong hands. I wanted to take her hand, to touch her, hold her, and I had the feeling that she might have liked me to, but we didn't.
"Even if I did forget, it wouldn't matter, because I'm kind of a special case. I call most of the men teachers by their first names, and even our beloved principal, Mr. Oaks, I call John. So even if I did slip, I don't think anybody would notice."
It seemed to reassure her. We walked over to the empty music concourse, where the municipal band gave Sunday concerts, passing under an orchard of elm trees to a large, central fountain, and watched the water bubble white for a long time.
It was almost seven when I dropped her at her apartment. I don't know what Susan did when she got upstairs, but when I got home I masturbated, severely bothered by her.