The ambulance from San Francisco Emergency finally arrived, with two stewards and a medical resident, who gave Susan a shot to dull the pain. As they lifted her onto the gurney I took Susan's hand and faced Mr. Oaks. "I'm going with her, John. Will you arrange a pass or something for the rest of my classes?"
Standing a majestic six and a half feet, hair silver from thirty years of school problems, he looked at me intently. "I'll arrange it," he said. My eyes thanked him.
"I'll come to your office tomorrow and we'll talk."
"I think that would be a good idea," he said, signing a release paper for the ambulance steward.
I rode with Susan to San Francisco General, a broken-down pile of brick and plaster on Potrero Street. She was sleepy from the shot but wouldn't let go of my hand. Even when they rolled her in for X rays, a kind nurse had to gently pry her hand away from mine.
I sat on a hard, wooden corridor bench and waited, smelling that awful hospital odor and watching the parade of suffering and pain up and down the emergency-room hallway. Finally the resident came out and gave me the report. Susan had a broken leg, two sprained wrists, a sprained ankle, and 'assorted bumps and bruises, but no apparent internal injuries. Considering the length of her fall, she had been very lucky.
In a half hour they rolled her out in a wheelchair. Her right leg was sticking out in front on a holding rack, covered in new, white plaster, and both of her arms were in slings. She was smiling. "I'm a klutz,"
I touched her cheek and kissed her. "Yeah, you're a klutz. How do you feel?"
"Lousy." Her eyes were sparkling emerald again, and seeing them that way made me feel better.
"Did we blow it?" she asked.
"Man, did we ever."
She shrugged her shoulders in that peculiar way in which only Jews, even liberated Jews, can shrug. "I spent so much time worrying about it, and now that it's happened, all I feel is relieved."
"I know," I said. "So do I. I'm going to talk to Oaks in the morning and try to fix it all up."
"Was he there?"
"The whole time." I told her what she had said and done, and we both laughed. At one time she had been ready to give me up for fear of just such a situation. Now that it had developed, and our worst fears had come true, all we did was laugh.
At home, propped up in bed, Susan slept fitfully. Twice I had to let her have pain-killer pills that the doctor had given me. He said that she would be in a walking cast and back in class in just three or four weeks.
I ran to the medical-supply store and bought a bedpan, then to a drugstore for one of each magazine in the rack to keep Susan busy. I didn't sleep at all, thinking about what I would say to Mr. Oaks in the morning.
One look at his face and I knew that it was going to be tough. Mrs. Dante, his secretary, looked at me thoughtfully, sizing up the competition her boss would face.
The best defense is a good offense. "Good morning, John," I said confidently.
He sat silently behind his desk, his bulk pushing back his swivel chair. A minute passed. And then another. "Thirty years," he said finally. "Thirty years I've been in education and I've never seen a scandal like this."
"It's not a scandal," I said.
"Not a scandal?"
He pounded his hammy hand on the desk, making Ms pen-and-pencil set jump. "Christ! Everybody in the goddamn building is talking about it. What would you call it if not a scandal? A student in this school involved with a teacher in this school, and from what I saw, pretty damn involved!"
And then, remembering his manners, he inquired about Susan's health, and I told him that the doctor has assured me that she would be on a walking cast in a few weeks. And while I had the floor I told him the rest of the story, almost everything, from the beginning. I told him that I was not what could be considered the average student, and he knew it. I told him about Susan's disguise, about her fears of being dismissed simply because she was young, about what a hell of a good teacher she was, and that I was sure he knew that, too. I told him how lucky he was to have somebody so gifted on his facility instead of all the ticket punchers who were just killing time until they could retire. I told him that the following semester I would be in college, just another husband being supported by a working wife, -and that it wouldn't matter then how old I was or how old Susan was. I told him that when we celebrated our golden wedding anniversary nobody would even remember how old we were. I sold and sold, and when I finished, John Oaks was calm.
"So how do we handle it?" he asked. "How do we keep the board of education and the newspapers, God forbid, from picking it up?"
His question elated me. It meant that he had bought the idea of the two of us, that he had at least accepted it, whether he approved or disapproved. "It's almost the beginning of March," I said. "Graduation is the second week in June. It's only a matter of ninety days. And one thing for sure, John, we're through sneaking around, both of us."
"What are you trying to say?" Right now he was interested only in getting the problem solved, the true bureaucrat. He hadn't lasted all of these years in a political school system for nothing. He wanted to sweep the whole thing under the carpet even more than I did. He wanted to avoid the inquiries, the board meetings, the investigations, and the notoriety. A black mark against one of his faculty, or even one of his students, was a black mark against him. He who was least noticed survived best. So here was Mr. Oaks, the principal, actually asking me, the student, how to avoid a scandal that might escape the boundaries of the school and bring discredit upon himself.
"I mean," I said, "that there's never a scandal about people who behave normally and in good taste. So when Susan comes hobbling back in three weeks I'm going to take her whole Queen Victoria wardrobe and burn it. She's going to wear the same clothes as the girls her age wear. I'm going to be seen with her all over the place. We'll be at rallies and dances and sports affairs together and we'll eat in the teachers' lunch room together. But everything will be discreet. We'll act like an old married couple, no kissing or hand holding or anything like that, and I'll make you a bet that within a week we're part of the scenery around here. The gossips will get tired of it all and look for somebody else to pick on. What do you think?"
Oaks chuckled; he was back in good spirits. "I think it stinks, that's what I think. But, on the other hand, I can't come up with anything better, so we'll just do it as you suggested, hope for the best and pray for time to pass, so we can graduate you out of here."
We shook hands and on the way out I gave Mrs. Dante a big kiss on the forehead. She gave me a dirty look, but couldn't hold it and broke into a grin.
I had won.
Susan was so tremendously relieved when I told her about it that she cried. I realized how deeply concerned she had been, and now, certain that her position was safe, she took her recuperation in good spirits. She never complained about being left alone all day or on the many nights when I had gigs to play, or about having to keep a smelly bedpan on the chair by her bed, or about the lousy Sandwiches I made her for lunch and placed on the bed-stand before I left, or about my awful cooking and mediocre housecleaning or about the too-wet baths I gave her.
But the evenings were good. I would stay in bed with her, and we would talk for hours and plan our summer trip to Israel, using maps from an old atlas. Like two children, we argued whether we should work on a kibbutz or just hitchhike around the country and see everything we could, whether to stay in hotels or sleep in sacks on the ground.
If her closeness in bed got to me I rubbed unashamedly against her and came over her thigh. She would place my hand between her legs to show me how my rubbing had excited her, and with my hand on top of hers she would relieve herself, and then we would sleep, her head cradled in the hollow of my shoulder.
In school, Ken Johnson pulled me aside and asked me what the situation was with Susan. He said that everybody in the school was whispering about it, so I casually told him that Susan was my fiancйe and that we would be married during the summer. When I left him he was still gawking at me in disbelief. Dave and some of the other teachers also pumped me for information. I told them the same thing I had told Ken, and asked their cooperation in killing malicious gossip and to please not make a big deal out of it, which got Susan and I the support of the younger faculty. Then I had a long conversation about maturity and love with Mrs. Wiggins. When she hugged me and said, "God bless you both," I knew that she would support us with the older faculty members.
The only trouble came when one of the kids in my gym class asked me how it felt to fuck my teacher. I got him alone on. the back side of the track field, and it was all over before anybody was aware of what had happened. He was out of school for two weeks and never squealed. I'm glad he believed me when I told him what I'd do to him if he talked, because I meant it. I would have killed the little bastard.
Susan was nervous about going back, but the day of her return was long-overdue retribution for us both. She had a light walking cast from her toes to her knee and, because of it, was barelegged. She wore a white, print dress with a scoop neck and short, puffy sleeves. Her hair flowed long, and she tied it in back with a blue ribbon to match the design of her dress. I made her take a light cardigan sweater to guard against the chill in the classroom, and with her gazing proudly at a bright new engagement ring, we left for school. Gone forever were the funny shoes and clothes, the plain-glass spectacles and the old-fashioned hairdo. Susan was beautiful, radiant and scared. We went to the TLR for early morning coffee and donuts. When we walked in conversation stopped, abruptly.
"Good morning, everybody," Susan said brightly. She hobbled over to pour coffee and get do-nuts for us while I pulled out two chairs at the table.
Ken finally broke the silence. "Well, I'll be goddamned."
Woody did a little better. He said, "Good Lord!"
Dave and the others just stared, incredulous at what they were seeing as Susan Lawrence compared to what they remembered as Susan Lawrence. Susan brought over our tray and served me, making a show by putting in my cream and sugar and lighting a cigarette for me. And as we looked around the room at those beautiful, astonished expressions, our apprehensions turned to confidence.
We were home free. One look at her cute innocence and they all were charmed out of their skulls.
I raised my coffee cup like a champagne glass. "Gentlemen," I said loudly, "the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen."
There was a moment's silence, and then Ken, bless him, lifted his coffee mug and dutifully repeated, "Long live the Queen."
And we all laughed.