They were both breathing hard, Sean laughing a little as they put themselves together again. “Miss Robinson, I need to make an honest woman out of you. I could have thrown my back out just then, and I’ve got a tournament coming up.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She finished buttoning her blouse. “Don’t you have some sort of PR appearance today?” In conjunction with the tournament, Red’s publicity department had lined up a number of press interviews.
He nodded. “More than one. They’re sending a car around.”
Sending a car. It sounded surreal to Lily, almost as surreal as seeing him interviewed on ESPN.
He walked her to the door, caught her against him for another kiss. “Don’t think I’m going to forget what I said earlier, about making an honest woman of you,” he said.
I am an honest woman, she wanted to tell him. I honestly love you.
Still warm from Sean’s lovemaking and feeling oddly fragile, Lily stepped into Room 105 at Laurelhurst Country Day School and tried to proceed as if this was any other school year. She wanted to pretend she was plain old Miss Robinson again, with nothing more pressing in her life than getting her classroom ready for the first day of school. Yet as she stapled fresh butcher paper on the bulletin boards, as she labeled tote trays and sketched out a lesson plan for next Wednesday, she felt distracted and unsettled.
She wasn’t the same, not even close. And she sure as heck wasn’t comfortable in her new skin.
It wasn’t about being comfortable, her sister would say.
The rhythmic thump of a basketball sounded. She looked out the window to see a tall boy dribbling a basketball in the playground court. It was Russell Clark, one of her favorites from the previous year. How he’d grown over the summer, she thought. She hoped he was still the same irrepressible optimist. She hoped he’d never lose that.
Turning from the window, she made a place card for each child, writing each name in print and then in script: Loretta S., Deanna K., Pete M…. Third grade marked the transition from stick-figure printing to cursive writing.
The flip chart was ready for the first lesson. “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” was the topic, as always. Without thinking, she found herself writing a list in orange marker:
went camping in a Winnebago
stayed up all night
hit a golf ball two hundred yards
learned line dancing
ate Drake’s Devil Dogs
fell in love
“Well, well,” said Edna, who appeared in the doorway. She was her usual serene self in a batiked dress and beaded sandals. “You’ve been busy. Do they have Winnebagos and Devil Dogs in Italy?”
Lily’s face heated as she ripped the sheet off the flip chart and crumpled it with both hands. “I didn’t go.” She quickly explained that she’d spent the summer driving cross-country in a Winnebago with the Holloway children and their uncle. It sounded crazy, saying it aloud, crazy and wonderful.
“How are they?” asked Edna.
“Light-years ahead of where they were at the beginning of the summer. They still have a ways to go.” She offered a fleeting smile. “There are whole moments, sometimes hours or even days, when they’re just like any other kids. Then something happens—a piece of mail comes addressed to Crystal, or one of the kids finds an old scorecard of Derek’s—and I realize they’ll never really get over it.”
“It’s not about getting over it. It’s about healing and going on.” She flipped back her silvery hair. “So you’ve been in love with him all summer and you haven’t told him yet?”
So much for hoping Edna hadn’t noticed. “Well, not in words.”
“Words matter, Lily. You know that.”
She thought of her parents and the idea that words could wound. They could also heal; she knew that now. But she didn’t reply to Edna’s suggestion. She felt like a stranger here in her own classroom, the place that used to feel so safe and familiar to her. This had been her world, her garden, the children her flowers. Now she felt distracted by thoughts of Sean and the children, and the idea of home had a different meaning.
“I feel torn,” she confessed to Edna. “For the first time, I can finally understand what a working mother faces every day.”
“Most of us do just fine,” Edna assured her. “However, the Holloways are dealing with extraordinary circumstances. I’ve been thinking…perhaps you should take some time off to be a family.”