“Would you consider helping me grade papers a few afternoons a week?” he had asked.
She was wearing her current boyfriend’s letter jacket and her hands were tightly balled into fists inside the deep pockets. Mr. Chapman had stopped her in the courtyard between the gym and the classroom building. His collar-length hair, a shade too long to meet the code, was whipping wildly around his head. Wearing only his sportcoat, he was hunched against the north wind.
“Of course if you’d rather not, just tell—”
“No, no,” she rushed to say and licked her lips, hoping they weren’t chapped and dry-looking. “Yes, I’d like to. If you think I can.”
“You’re my champion student. That was a super report you did on the judicial system.”
“Thank you.” She was flustered and wondered why her heart was pounding so. He was just a teacher. Well, not just a teacher.
“If you can grade the objective parts of the tests, I’ll read the essays. It’ll save me hours of time in the evenings.”
She had wondered then what he did in the evenings. Did he see a woman? That had been the topic of speculation at many a slumber party. She’d never seen him in town with anyone.
One night when her family had gone to the Wagon-wheel steak house to eat dinner he was there. Alone. When he’d spoken to her, she’d nearly died. She stumbled through introductions to her parents and he’d stood up to shake hands with her father. After they were seated her little brother had spilled his milk and she could have gladly strangled him. When she hazarded a glance toward Mr. Chapman’s table, he had left.
“Okay. What days?”
He squinted his eyes against the sunlight, which was bright in spite of the cold. She could never quite decide if his eyes were gray or green or somewhere in between, but she liked the way his dark lashes curled up when his eyes were narrowed that way. “You tell me.” He laughed.
“Well, I have cheerleading practice on Thursday because of the pep rallies on Fridays.” Stupid! He knows when the pep rallies are. “I take piano on Tuesday.” What does he care, Shelley? “I guess Monday and Wednesday would be best.”
“That’ll be fine,” he said. “Whew, it’s cold. Let’s get inside.”
She had nearly tripped over her own stumbling feet when he unexpectedly took her elbow and escorted her to the door of the building. By the time the metal door clanged shut behind them, she thought she might very well faint because he’d touched her. She never told any of her girl friends about that. At the time, it was too precious a secret to tell.
The afternoons spent quietly in his classroom became the pivot around which the rest of her life revolved. She agonized on the days she didn’t go, and she agonized on the days she did until the last bell of the day rang. She tried not to rush through the emptying halls to his classroom, but was often breathless when she arrived. Sometimes he wasn’t there, but had left her a stack of papers with instructions. She went about grading her classmates’ work with a diligence she’d never applied to anything else in her life. Often when he joined her, he’d bring her a soda.
One day as she sat checking the papers with the red pencil he’d given her, he stood up from his desk, where he was reading through an indecipherable composition. He peeled the V-necked sweater he wore over his head. “I think they’ve got the heat too high in here. This school isn’t doing its part to conserve energy.”
At the time, she couldn’t even admire his patriotic conscientiousness, for she was dazzled by him. He linked his fingers, turned his hands outward and stretched his arms high over his head, arching his back. She was spellbound by the play of muscles under his soft cotton shirt. He released his breath in a healthy sigh as he lowered his arms and rolled his shoulders in an effort to relax them.
Shelley dropped the red pencil, her fingers suddenly useless. Had her skin not been holding her together, she thought she would have melted over the desk. She became aware of a stifling heat that had nothing to do with the thermostat on the wall.
She left his classroom that day bewildered. Much as she wanted to be near him, she suddenly felt compelled to escape. But there was no escaping this assault on her emotions because the tumult was within herself. It was totally new and different and nothing in her dating experiences had prepared her for it. She couldn’t identify it then. Only later, when she was older, was she able to define what she had felt that afternoon: desire.
During those days of late fall, he never treated her with anything but open friendliness. When her boyfriend picked her up after football practice to drive her home in his reconditioned Cougar, Mr. Chapman called, “Have fun,” to them as they left.
“Before next session you might want to read the first three chapters of the textbook. It’s boring as hell, but it will give you good background information.”
Shelley was yanked out of her revery by his words. He had one hip hitched over the edge of the desk, a posture that blatantly declared his sex. Shelley doubted that any woman in the room was immune to his overwhelming sexuality. A woman would have to be blind or senile not to be affected, and glancing around, Shelley saw none that fit that description.
Rather, she saw that the female members of the class were all in their late teens or early twenties. High firm breasts jutted braless under T-shirts, and well-shaped, athletic thighs were encased in tight designer jeans. There were skeins of long carelessly styled hair in varying shades of brown, auburn, and gold. She felt old and dowdy by comparison.
As you are, Shelley, she reminded herself. She was wearing a sweater, cranberry in color, and she wore a bra beneath it. The sweater matched her textured hose and complemented the mid-calf-length gray wool skirt. At least she knew how to dress fashionably and wasn’t consigned to the polyester set—yet.
At twenty-six she was second oldest in the class. A serious gray-haired gentleman was seated in the front row. He had taken copious notes while the young man in the cowboy hat sitting next to Shelley had peacefully napped during the entire hour.
“Good-bye,” Mr. Chapman said when the bell rang. “Oh yes, would Mrs. Robins please stop by the desk?”
History was repeating itself.
Shelley all but dropped the armload of books she was gathering up when he made his request. Less interested than the classmates at Poshman Valley had been, the forty or so other students filed out of the classroom, most of them intent on lighting up their first cigarette in over an hour.
Head down, she concentrated on weaving her way through the maze of desks, less ordered than the neat rows in his classroom ten years ago. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the last student leave the room. Negligently he let the door close solidly behind him. She stifled the insane impulse to ask him to please leave it open.