Jim handed me the platter of pancakes. “How did you sleep?” he asked.
“Very well, thank you.”
“These bed frames are old, but the mattresses are very comfortable. I mean, at least mine is,” he corrected quickly. “I haven’t slept in any other.”
He must have been referring to any implication that he had slept with Naomi Addison. Of course, there might have been another woman there before she had come, I realized. The crowns of his cheeks turned a little crimson with the unintended allusion. Who could be shy
er than someone who was embarrassed not only by what he had said but by what he imagined someone else might think of him?
“Yes, my bed is very comfortable,” I said.
Mrs. McGruder brought me a glass of orange juice. “Would you like tea instead of coffee, dear?”
“No, this is fine. Thank you. Is Mrs. Winston still asleep?” I asked, doubting the possibility.
“Oh, no,” Mrs. McGruder replied, smiling. “She was up more than an hour ago and out to the fisherman’s market. She likes to be one of the first to get the freshest and the best.”
I poured some maple syrup over the pancakes I had taken. Jim moved quickly to pour me a cup of coffee.
“Thank you.”
“I wanted to offer to drive you to work this morning,” he said. “But we’d have had to get started a little earlier if we had planned on my doing that. I have a homeroom, so I have to be at school on time and—”
“Oh, don’t even think of it,” I said. “I’m really looking forward to the walk.”
“Yes, well, I know Mrs. Addison volunteered to take you shopping later, but if she’s not available for some reason, I’d be more than happy to drive you to the mall and any other shop you might want to try.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.”
He looked nervously at his watch. “I’m so sorry to have to desert you,” he said. “But the headmistress, Mrs. Damian, stands in that hallway with a stopwatch. I like to be a few minutes early so there’s no doubt.” He leaned over to lower his voice, even though there was no one else in the dining room. “I swear, I think she transferred from some position in a women’s penitentiary.”
“I know the type,” I said, smiling.
“Do you?”
He looked at me a little more intently. Was he wondering if I had been in some girls’ detention facility? His concern brought a smile to my face.
“I meant I’ve met women like that in the school I attended.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I really have to find the opportunity to get to know you. When you settle in, that is. I know you’re pretty occupied right now.”
“We’ll find the time,” I said.
He brightened with the promise and then folded his napkin perfectly and neatly before he rose. “Well, off to the chain gang,” he said, and he ran his right forefinger across his throat.
“Don’t you like your work?”
“I love my subject, but remember, I teach—or try to teach—adolescent females, that mysterious species who laugh for almost no reason and cry for definitely no reason. Sometimes I feel as if I’m teaching extraterrestrials on a different planet.”
I smiled, recalling some of the similar complaints my junior and senior high school teachers had about the girls in their classes. Because I was so different from my classmates when it came to those hormone-driven giggles and flirtations during lectures, my teachers favored me. It wasn’t that I didn’t begin to have crushes on certain good-looking boys. I did, but funnily enough, boys, and girls, too, assumed that I came from a fanatically religious family, a family of Puritans. They thought this was why I wore no makeup and no earrings or bracelets. In their minds, it explained why I didn’t participate in clubs and games or go to dances. Surely they thought that trying to be friends with me would be a total waste of time. I could see it in their faces. To them, my whole life was a waste of time.
Not long before I had met Buddy, however, I’d become very self-conscious about my maturing figure and my growing sexual interest in the boys I thought were good-looking. When I had admitted to Ava that this was happening to me, she had warned me about falling in love, even if it was only a teenage love.
“What’s wrong with falling in love?” I had asked her.
“Love is poison for us,” she’d told me, but she wouldn’t explain what that meant—not then, not until later, when my relationship with Buddy had developed.
“Well, have a great day,” Jim said, and he started out. He kept his eyes on me and bumped into the chair at the end of the table. Flashing an embarrassed look, he hurried along.