Usually I bought lunch at the school cafeteria and brought it up to the band-uniform room along with several of the other favored musicians with whom Ken Johnson, our music teacher, played jobs. It wasn't that we loved this small, hot room so much, but because we could smoke there in safety and soothe our nicotine fits. Of all the student pros, I was the only one Ken ever invited to the teachers' lunch room. I never asked him why, but I assumed it was because I locked older than the others.
When he had started taking me to lunch the year before. I began from the first to call the men teachers by their first names, and none seemed even to notice it. I enjoyed the lunch room because I could smoke as much as I wanted, drink coffee, which wasn't available for students, and the conversation with faculty was a good deal more interesting than that of fellow musicians, who spent all their time talking about fucking.
The day after Susan and I were at the tea garden I casually asked Ken what he was doing for lunch. "What else? Coin' to the TLR," he said, then added. "Want to come along?"
We sat with Hugh Barnes, a science teacher, and Dave Arcy, U.S. history. I looked around the room. "I don't see Miss Lawrence," I said.
Barnes grinned. "You mean Queen Victoria?"
They all laughed at me. I was puzzled. "Why do you call her that, Hugh?"
He leaned over confidently. "Christ! Have you seen her? If she doesn't look like the Grand Old Dame I don't know who does."
"You think she'll get tenure if Gilchrist doesn't come back?"
Dave Arcy started to chuckle. "Are you kidding? Any woman who's that virginal and old-fashioned is a cinch for tenure. Besides, I already got the word from Oaks. Even if Birdie Gilchrist does come bade, he's going to keep Lawrence on."
Hugh shook his head. "I hear she's one hell of a teacher."
"Good or bad?" asked Ken.
"Well," Hugh said, "she's had her class for a month now and Oaks says she's six weeks ahead of her lesson plan and the kids are so hot on the course they're writing two-thousand-word papers when she only asks for five hundred."
It was true, she inspired the class beyond anything I had ever seen a teacher do, but the jokes behind her back angered me. I felt compelled to go to her defense."
“I don't know about the Queen Victoria bit," I said. "If the old queen had run the empire the way Lawrence runs that class, not only could she have thrown out Disraeli, but she'd probably still be alive and kicking today."
"Hah!" said Barnes, blowing a thick cloud of smoke into my face.
I wouldn't quit. "Okay, she looks stuffy as hell, but she's really not. She's not at all stuffy in class, and I've driven her home a few times when I've had to go downtown, and she's really got a good head."
"Appearance to the contrary?" Ken asked.
"Yep," I said.
"Well, I dunno. She's sure quiet as hell around here," Hugh added.
"Speak of the devil… " Dave pointed to the door.
Susan had just come in, wearing the gray-striped tent and carrying her tray. She looked at us, her face registering surprise and a little concern when she-spotted me. She poured a cup of coffee, put it on her tray, and came over.
"Grab a seat, Miss Lawrence," Ken said, pulling out a chair for her. I noticed that he addressed her formally, rather than by her first name.
"Her name's Susan," I whispered to Ken.
"Would you call that Susan?" he whispered back.
She said hi to us all and sat down, sliding her tray onto the table. There was some awkward conversation. It was obvious that her presence had stilted talk among the men teachers. Why didn't she show them what a great conversationalist she was? How bright and witty and intelligent? But Hugh Barnes was right: she hardly said a word.
Susan ate her lunch, smoked a cigarette, and lifted her eyes to glance across the table at me from time to time. She never acknowledged that she knew me, except casually as one of her students.
"Say, Dick, what's this I hear about you and Mrs. Wiggins?" Hugh asked. "One of my students that's in the family-living class with you came in and told me this wild story. I laughed for an hour."
Family living was a course required for senior students. It was part of the "new" education, and concentrated on the birds and bees in general and simplistic terms for those dummies who* by some mischance had not yet learned. The emphasis was on successful marriage, money management, and interpersonal relationships between men and women, or "boys and girls" as they were called. Mrs. Wiggins was another venerable paragon of the faculty. She was almost at retirement age and carried about her the stiff demeanor of an old-school authoritarian, her back straight as a flagpole, her hair white and frizzy, and her complexion pale, with fine, blue veins prominent all over her face. I always had the feeling that if I even mentioned the word sex to her she would melt into a puddle on the floor out of embarrassment.
"Well," I said, "you all know Mrs. Wiggins, I mean, what a fine lady she is, and all that."
Everybody grinned but Susan.
"Well, this morning we were talking about premarital intercourse, or 'the evils of experience prior to marriage,' as Mrs. Wiggins put it, and she and I were having a running argument. I said that virginity wasn't the issue anymore, that when a relationship started between two people it was new, from scratch, and that what either of them had done in the past wasn't important, it was only their present, their 'now' that mattered. She said that a girl had to be a virgin or she simply couldn't live with herself, and that her husband would never respect her if she had 'prior experience' or 'gave in' before the wedding ceremony. She asked me how I would feel on my wedding night if I found out my wife wasn't 'pure' as she called it.
"And then it happened. It wasn't what I meant to say; it just came out wrong, because I never would hurt the old girl's feelings, but what I said was, 'I don't think I'd feel bad if my wife told me she wasn't a virgin. How did your husband feel when you told him?' "
The teachers broke into a roar of laughter, except Susan, who choked on her coffee but managed to keep a straight face.
"I didn't even realize what I'd said till I saw her turn bright purple. She began to cry and stomped out of the room when the class started to laugh, and I had to run out into the hall after her and apologize. I told her I hadn't meant to say that, that what I'd really meant was, would her husband have loved her any less if she hadn't been a virgin? Anyway, I finally got her calmed down, but she wouldn't return to the room for the rest of the period. There I was, standing out in the hall, patting her back and telling her what a nice lady she was, and of course I knew she was pure when she got married, and all the rest of it, and I kept thinking, what the hell am I doing here? This is absurd."
Ken put his arm around my shoulder. "Well, I hope she forgave you good, because once you get on her list you'll have a hell of a time getting off."
They all were still laughing but Susan, who kept dabbing at her lips with a napkin, though she had finished her lunch some time before and was only drinking coffee.
Driving home that afternoon, Susan said, "I didn't expect to see you in the TLR."
"I told you I'm a privileged character."
She laughed. "I believe you. That was some story about Mrs. Wiggins."
I glanced over at her. "It was all you could do to keep from breaking up. You even choked on your coffee when I got to the punch line, but you didn't laugh."
She remained silent.
"Why are you so different around the other teachers?" I asked. "If I told you that story now, you'd laugh your ass, I mean you'd laugh yourself silly."
"I have my reasons," was all she said, then added, "and they're none of your business."
"I thought I was your friend."
"Nobody is my friend. You're just a kid in one of my classes who drives me to and from school," she said quietly, turning her head away.
I pulled over to the side of the street and parked. Susan was staring stiffly straight ahead. I put my finger under her chin and turned her head to face me. Her skin was so soft there that I almost leaned over and kissed her. I had the feeling that I could have, but I didn't. I just looked through those stupid glasses of hers and into her eyes. She looked sad, a lovely face looking sad and compassionate and her eyes were a little wet.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that."
"Didn't you?" I asked.
I threw the car into gear and drove her home in silence.
It wasn't so much what she had said; it was just the idea of Susan pulling rank, reminding me that she was the general and I was just one of the -troops who had become too presumptuous and familiar, stepping over that invisible line between professional acquaintance and friendship. Now, she had seen to it with one simple sentence that I was put back into my proper place, Leroy driving Our Miss Brooks to school.
The way we looked at each other, however briefly, the electricity that had grown to spring from each of us to the other, told me that she was full of shit. Susan, I thought, was scared, and still I knew that" there was something not right. Sometimes I felt so close to finding what it was, but it always seemed to slip past me, elusive and subtle.
It was warm and balmy, so I went home and changed to old Levi's with the legs cut off at mid-calf, grabbed a windbreaker, and headed for the beach. I parked by the windmill at the end of Golden Gate Park and walked across Great Highway past the seawall to the beach.
The surf slid in slowly, smoothly, caressing coarse, granular sand, wet from the previous surf. The water was a rare deep blue and the air so clear that I could see the small Coast Guard lightship parked at the three-mile limit, and the Farallone Islands a few miles beyond, inhabited only by birds. I walked in the wet sand for about a mile, feeling my toes squish in and make little puddles, the windbreaker slung over my shoulder.
When I returned there were four people leaning against the seawall, watching the sky and water: a couple, an old man, and a young girl listening to classical music on a portable radio. I walked slowly over to the seawall and stood a few feet from her, facing the surf while watching her from the corner of my eye. She was beautiful, long, black hair flowing free to the small of her back, tight Levi pants cut off like mine and showing slim, slightly muscular legs and a small, firm ass. She was wearing a loose, white T-shirt which revealed tanned arms, and breasts which were neither large nor small, but in perfect proportion to the rest of her body. Like me, she was barefoot, and seemed to be a few inches shorter although it was hard to tell because she was leaning over the top of the seawall, with her chin cupped in her hands, delicate fingers making a lovely spread pattern up the side of her face. Her radio played a Beethoven piano sonata, but I can't remember which one.
I edged a little closer but, lost in thought, she didn't notice me.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" It was just a statement to get her attention, not a real question.
"What?"
She turned to face me and suddenly the green of her eyes seemed to bore into my soul and explode, shattering my consciousness to a thousand pieces and leaving me speechless with shock.
"Oh my God! What are you doing here?" Susan gasped, her expression filled with a mixture of fear and surprise which couldn't have been any less than mine.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, my mind reeling. I felt as if all my senses had failed me. It-was beauty and the beast, and all I had ever seen was the beast. How could I have been so stupid as to not see through it?
Suddenly, she gave a huge sigh and shrugged, actually smiled. And then she laughed, a different laugh from any I had ever heard from her. "I asked you first." Those beautiful eyes became bright, even mischievous.
And then I understood. It all came through at once, like a downpour of insight. Instantly the whole thing, the whole big mystery, the something that was always not quite right about her, the constant thorn that bothered me so, it all carne clear in a flash.
Now I smiled.
I reached down and took both of her hands in mine, reveling in their warmth, in the feeling they sent through my body as the slight squeeze I had longed for was finally returned.
I shouted at her in delight, shouted for all to hear. "Susan Lawrence, you're a fake!"
And she laughed still harder.
"And a phony, and probably the biggest fraud of all time, and you're glad I know and don't deny it!"
Susan stopped laughing and looked very seriously at me. This time, she sought my eyes and held them, not averting. Her face, smooth, delicate features, like a fine porcelain vase shaped so subtly into lines of grace and beauty, studied me. Her whole body, her whole bearing, was graceful and beautiful. Just her touch and the way she looked at me had given me a hard-on.
"Yes, Richard," she said softly, "I'm glad you know, relieved. I wanted so much to be myself with you, but I didn't dare."
I tightened my hands on hers. "You must have known you could trust me. I think you must guess, at least a little bit, how I feel about you."
She withdrew her hands from mine and turned back to the seawall. "Maybe. Maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't want you to know."
"What do you mean?"
She turned to me again. "I mean, now that you've ripped off my mask, I'm practically defenseless."
"Defenseless? Against whom? What?"
But she was too smart for me. "Oh, Richard, don't play dumb. You've always been honest while I lived a lie with you, so don't start to lie just as I'm becoming honest. I'm a very sensitive person, like you. I've felt the same things that you've felt, what's grown between us. And you know damned well I've felt it.
"I hadn't planned on this. I wanted you to know so badly, but I'm confused. I have all sorts of stop-and-go signals lighting up at the same time. I'm, I'm really very vulnerable now, so if you care about me please don't push, please.
"I humiliated you this afternoon because I'm frightened, because I have a feeling that you're going to screw up my life and I don't want it screwed up. I don't know, I don't know what to say."
As I had done earlier in the day, I put my hand under her chin and turned her face to me. The electricity generated by our closeness was frightening, even to me, and I had to fight taking her into my arms, knowing that if I did she would come willingly. "Susan," I whispered, cupping her cheeks in my hands, "did you have so little faith in me that you thought I would ever hurt you, ever? I'd rather die. It's nice to know that under all that camouflage you're really a beautiful young girl, a good ten years younger than I had thought, but it doesn't matter. Don't you understand? It doesn't matter to me. What I feel is for what you are, and that's something not even you can hide. It's not what you look like.
"I always knew, from the first time I saw you walk into that classroom, that something was wrong with the picture I got. It just didn't make sense, but I could never quite catch it, not till just a few minutes ago when I suddenly realized that those beautiful eyes of yours were always clear through your glasses, and that meant that they were just that, glass. There was nothing wrong with your eyes, or they would have been at least slightly distorted by the prescription. You wore them for effect, and the old-lady hairdo, and the combat-boot shoes, and those ridiculous clothes to hide your body.
"Everything was to make you look older, straighter, stricter, and with the faculty you're afraid that if you talk too much you'll give yourself away. That's why you got mad at me today, because I pushed the point.
"Don't you know that I'm the one person, the one man, who you could have, don't you know?"
Running out of words with which to express myself, I brought my lips those last few inches to hers, kissing her very lightly, with all the tenderness of my feelings for her. Susan raised her hands to my cheeks, and I could feel it all being returned to me. It wasn't more than a few seconds and it certainly wasn't passionate, but it was the best kiss I had ever known.
"Please," she said, tears welling in her eyes, "don't, not again."
"When the time comes, you let me know," I told her.
"Let's walk on the beach," she said.
We descended the steps leading through the seawall. I took her hand to help her through the deep, dry sand and when we got to the wet sand it seemed natural for us to walk holding hands. She made no motion to let go.
"If you're wondering," she said, "I'm twenty-four, and I'm not going to hide anything from you anymore. I got my master's degree a year ago and I knew right away that I was going to have problems.
"All of my life I've wanted to teach, to teach and to eventually be a good wife is all I've ever really dreamed about. But not just to teach any old place. I wanted to be the best high-school literature teacher in the world, the very best. It's all I lived for.
"And then, after all those years of school, of constant work and study, after student-teaching in grammar schools in classes I hated, I finally got the M.A. I needed to teach in a high school. So I filled out applications all over the state. I didn't even care where I lived if they'd just give me what I wanted. And what happened? Letters started coming back, 'Dear Miss Lawrence: Thank you so much for your application. We are sorry to inform you that at this time we are looking for teachers who are a bit older and more experienced than yourself. Perhaps in a few years, etc., etc., etc.' They all were worded differently, but they all said the same thing, thanks but no thanks.
"So I started substitute teaching, mostly in grammar schools and junior highs. I did have a few jobs in high schools, and I kept hoping that maybe somebody would see how good I was and keep me on after I had done my few days' work, or at least put in a request that I be assigned to their school in the future."
"Why didn't they?" I asked.
Susan stopped walking. "Why? Look at me, that's why. I look more like a student than a teacher. I taught in one school in Alameda where a little freshman girl stopped me in the hall and asked if I was going to a freshman briefing. Imagine, she thought I was sixteen.
"God! I can't even get a drink in a bar without a driver's license. And all of the school administrators thought it was a big joke. Who would hire a baby like me? Nobody ever took me seriously, and so I never got a chance to prove myself.
"Then I got a call to teach here, and the association said it looked like I would be working a long time. It was a good school and it was the one subject I really wanted to teach, so I decided that I would have to become older. I fixed my hair, paid thirty dollars for those stupid glasses, got some clothes that looked like they'd been turned down by the Savlation Army but covered me up well, and refused to let a shoe salesman talk me out of buying those clodhoppers I wear to class.
"And now I live in fear. One bad move, one slip, and I'm out, back teaching rhythm band in kindergarten. And I can't let that happen. I won't. No matter what price I may have to pay, I want to stay right where I am. I love it too much to let it go now. The day I get tenure and they can't get rid of me is the day I'll throw out all of that junk, but not until then."
We walked a bit further.
"Mr. Oaks told Hugh Barnes that your tenure is assured," I said.
"I'll believe it when I see it. Tenure is like a carrot that they dangle in front of you to keep you on your toes. The only way I could possibly get it this year is if Mrs. Gilchrist doesn't come back, which is a good possibility because of her age and bad health, but this whole business has made me a pessimist."
I smiled. "Did you know that the other teachers call you Queen Victoria?"
"I know they joke behind my back. Let them."
"You realize, of course, that the day you throw your costume in the garbage can and dress normally, half of the male faculty are going to have heart attacks when they see you."
Susan laughed. "It'll serve them right for calling me Queen Victoria."
Following an impulse, I pulled at her hand and we ran along the surf, splashing each other with handfuls of the cold Pacific and giggling. Finally, exhausted and coughing, our lungs full of clean, salt air and wood smoke from bonfires down the beach, we collapsed against an old log, sitting on the sand with our wet pants and using the log to support our backs.
Susan asked me to tell her about myself, not the vague comments and opinions she had heard from me over the past few months, nor the evasions to pointed questions, but to really tell her. She wanted to know why I was so different, and although she didn't say it she must have been wondering why she found herself so attracted to me.
I told her, and this time there was no bullshit. I didn't leave out a thing; I wanted her to know it all. I felt that it was important to both of us that she know. If any of it shocked her, she didn't let it show.
By the time I finished it was sunset. The entire western sky became a gorgeous panorama of every hue of orange and red imaginable. We tuned in a Corelli concerto on the radio and sat and listened and watched the sky in silence. Our silences had never been embarrassing. When we didn't feel the need for conversation we didn't speak, and it had never been awkward. Now, together, there was a feeling of contented wholeness between us.
As the colorful sky ebbed and turned dark we looked at each other.
"I know," Susan said.