Writers & Lovers - Lily King Page 0,83
they knew it was over and it was just the three of us. It was awful and terrifying and heartbreaking, but it was exhilarating, too. I finally had their full attention.’ He reaches out for my hand. I give it to him, and he pulls me in. He slides inside my shirt and puts his finger in my belly button. ‘I like having people’s full attention.’ He kisses me. He circles my bare waist with his hands. ‘So, I had some free time in Provo and I went to the library and happened to read an excellent story in the Kenyon Review.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘I wrote that a long time ago.’ I wrote it when my mother was alive.
‘I had no idea you were so good.’ He shakes me.
‘Back in the eighties.’
Inside the house the boys have put the movie on again.
‘We watched Mrs. Doubtfire.’
‘PG-13 Mrs. Doubtfire?’
‘They may have some questions.’
When we stop kissing, he puts my helmet on my head and fastens it under my chin, threading his fingers between my skin and the plastic so it doesn’t pinch me.
‘Give them a hug for me.’
‘You already did.’
‘Give them another.’
He waits for me to explain, but I can’t. I’m not sure what I mean, either.
Muriel tells me she gave my number to her sister who has a friend who teaches at a school that has just fired their English teacher.
‘High schools give me the creeps.’
‘It’s a cool place. Something like eighty percent of the students receive financial aid. Not your typical private school. The whole summer off to write.’
I figure I won’t ever hear from them, but the next day I get a call from the head of the English department, Manolo Parker. He asks me to come in for an interview in three days, on the ninth of November, the day before my appointment with the oncologist.
Muriel lends me clothes, makeup, and her car for the interview. That morning I lie in bed feeling my lump. I can’t tell if it’s grown. The interview terrifies me nearly as much as the oncologist. I spend a half hour trying to fix my face, hide the deep gray-blue welts under my eyes with concealer, make my cheeks plump and rosy with blush, my eyes wider and more awake looking with an eye pencil. But my hands shake and the lines are crooked and there’s no disguising all the fear.
I allow time for rush hour, and I need it. Traffic crawls out of the city, light by light. Driving is a luxury I’ve forgotten. There’s heat, for one thing, and a radio. A guy is singing about taking his girlfriend to have an abortion. He calls her a brick that’s drowning him slowly. He says this over and over. I have a moment at a long light when I partially nod off, and when I jerk back awake I think for a few seconds I’m pregnant, and then I realize it’s not me, just the girl in the song, and it’s a relief. I get disproportionately sad for the girl whose asshole ex-boyfriend wrote this song calling her a brick and is making money on those words now. I pass through stone pillars and up a long, wooded drive and park in the faculty parking lot.
There’s a path from this lot up a steep hill to the school. Down below are fields marked out by white lines, goals at each end, and benches along the sides. It could be my high school. There’s a guy on a tractor mowing. It could be my father. I can’t work here. All the smells are the same.
The entrance is all glass, freshly renovated. Manolo meets me at the door.
His handshake is strong, not dialed back for a woman. He leads me down a glimmering hallway.
‘I thought you should see how we start the day,’ he says, holding open the auditorium door for a stream of students and their enormous backpacks. He greets them all by name. ‘Ciao, Stephen. You liking Sula any better today, Marika? Becca, Jep, top of the morning to you.’ They like him and his attentions. Becca points at me. ‘You interviewing today?’ I nod and she gives me a thumbs-up and keeps moving. Manolo leads me a few rows down, and we sit in plush fold-down seats with other teachers. He introduces me to the ones nearby, and a few others turn around and wave. They all seem to know why I’m here.
It’s loud. The whole school is here, seventh through twelfth Manolo tells