Clair De Lune (16 page)

“Thirty years, in the grades and then the high school. So she's got her notions about it. Anyway, we've got our contracts. It's a relief to know I can pay the taxes on the place again next year.” A worried frown came over his face. “Mother wants me to resign.”

“Why?” she said.

“She wants me to get down to the farm as soon as school's out and stay there. She thinks we're going to get into the war, thinks if I'm putting in crops and milking cows, they won't draft me.”

“She's right, isn't she? Farmers will surely be exempt. My brother's a farmer and he has a family. They couldn't take him, could they?”

“Well, if things get worse, who knows? But I'm not a farmer. I'm an educator, and I'm not about to quit a good job and give up my chances for advancement. If they let Frawley go this year—”

“You don't really think they will?”

“You never can tell.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“Not yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if that's what held them up. They were debating over him. The old man just may get let out this time.”

“I'd hate to see that happen.”

Ansel grinned. “That's right, you were the holdout, weren't you?”

“I like Mr. Frawley.”

“Ah, I like him all right. But we need a younger man.”

She made no reply to that, and after a few more comments Ansel excused himself to take his mother to the grocery store.

“By the way,” he said, “I'll have the car out. Guess you wouldn't want to take a little spin this evening?”

It was not the first time he had asked her out. He had done so often here of late, flying in the face of faculty ethics. He had been so persistent that at last, two weeks ago (with a fleeting vision of Toby) she had told him she was “going steady.” She didn't say engaged, but Ansel took it to mean that and it cooled him a bit; he was very proper. But now and then he still tried.

“How about it?” he said. “A little breather after supper?”

“Thanks, I'm afraid not.”

“You sure? Just for a little while, go get a Coke or something?”

“I really can't.”

He shook his head. “Too bad you met that guy first.”

She was on the verge of saying what guy, but managed to say she hadn't meant it that way. “I've got work to do. Look at this stack of papers!”

“Yeah, okay. Well, don't work too hard.”

He went away and she sat for a moment staring out the window at the street. Then, turning her attention to the work, she began to read.

Except for an occasional voice in the hall, the building was quiet. She heard Lordy and Pickering passing a comment, and the occasional slam of the outside door as someone left. Presently from upstairs came the sound of singing. Maxine, rehearsing the chorus again, George at the piano, Toby among the baritones.

The stack of term papers went down slowly. Taking up another, she smoothed it open. “The Seasons as Depicted in Oliver Goldsmith.” She made her way through the handwritten sentences, underlining here and there in red, with notations in the margin. The next paper attempted an analysis of Andrew Marvel. She laid it aside and rifled through the others, reading titles. “Love in the Writings of My Faverite Poets.” A swayback purple hand, circles over the i's, under the title a broad flourish, and under that an extravagant purple flower. That was one thing Lindsey Homeier could do: he could draw.

Lindsey's “faverite” poets consisted solely of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She read the first three pages and stopped to count the rest. Lord have mercy, seventeen. But of course, Lindsey's handwriting was large. “Miss Browning”—she circled the “Miss,” wrote “Mrs.” in the margin—“uses many large words and you can't always understand her but if you read between the lines you can understand her.... When she says Thee and Thou she does not mean God as we do in Church. She means the person who was going to be her husband…”

From the second floor there came a roar of laughter. She looked up, listening. It went on for fully a minute, followed by abrupt silence and, after another minute or two, more singing.

“She used to lay awake nights” (another red circle and “Gr” in the margin) “and dream about him. That was not because she was a sick woman. She was sick but some might say she was lovesick too.”

Bravo, Lindsey.

“Miss Browning's poems are famous for their universilty. Everyone knows what they mean because everyone feels the same way about somebody. When you love somebody you want to write poems.”

Skipping through the pages she learned that “Miss Browning's” sweetheart had “adducted her to Italy where they were warm and got married.” Then a paragraph about marriage. Lindsey was in favor of it. “Miss Browning had long brown hair but short brown hair is nice too especially when its curly like some peoples that I know.” (Oh dear.) “When Miss Browning counts the ways she loves there are a lot of them. I can think of lots more.”

She had stopped making corrections. Swept up in Lindsey's purple prose, she read on through the slaunchways declaration with an amused frown on her face. She looked up only as someone went past the door singing “The Hut Sut Song.”

George and Toby. George backtracked a couple of steps and looked in. “What are
you
doing here?”

“I work here,” she said. “Come in.”

“Hey, you didn't find a stray library book, by any chance?”

“In here? No. Have you lost one?”

“I laid it down somewhere.”

“Not in here, you haven't been here.”

“Thought somebody else might have picked it up.”

“Maybe they turned it in.”

“I checked. It's not in the library. I better go look in the gym.”

“What book was it?” she said, trying to keep them there. Toby had followed George in but was hanging back by the door. He hadn't said a word, hadn't even so much as looked at her.

“A history book—American politics nineteen hundred to nineteen something. I had to do a paper on it.”

“You guys been pretty busy?”

“Up to the bustle-bone,” George said.

“Maxine's sort of working you overtime.”

George looked over at Toby and grinned.

“I heard you up there this afternoon. How'd it go?”

Both George and Toby's grins grew broader. “Oh, it went just fine,” George said.

Toby sputtered, trying not to laugh out loud. “What's so funny?” she said. “Have you two been up to no good again?”

“Aw, we didn't do anything. Much.”

At that, they exploded, unable to hold it any longer. She was laughing with them, though she didn't know why. “Well, tell me!”

Red in the face, Toby moved into the room now, leaned against the blackboard.

“Come on, you guys.”

“Well, it was this song,” George said and choked up again. “Ol' Tobe said something lewd in the baritone section.”

“How do you know?” said Toby. “You were up there at the piano.”

“Your lips were moving, and it wasn't in song.”

“You were
thinking
lewd things.”

“What did you say?” she said. “Tell me!”

“Well, this new song she wants us to sing”—George let out a whoop—“an iddle, a lay.” Pulling himself together he sang solemnly, “‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I.'”

“Oh Lord!” said Allen. The line never failed to throw a class into titters. “She doesn't expect you to sing that! In public?”

“She does. She kept tapping her baton and everybody would straighten up and try. And then Toby would look at Spike and Spike'd break up and the girls were all laughing, even if they didn't know why.”

“The altos knew,” Toby said. “Altos always know.”

“And Miss Maxie kept saying, ‘E
nun
ciate!' And then she said, ‘Clearly, boys and girls. Separate the suck-k-k from the I.'” George cocked his head and looked at Toby. “Then Toby said, ‘Miss Maxine, I'm sorry to say it, but this ode has intimations of immorality.' And Miss Maxie said, ‘Why, what do you mean? This is Shakespeare!' And ol' Tobe said, ‘Well, it sure ain't the Constitution!' And everybody fell on the floor. Whoo-ee!” said George, collapsing in the front row. “Poor ol' Miss Maxie, she thought she was going to have to call out the militia.”

“She should have,” said Allen, laughing, “You were terrible!”

“Ah, she took it pretty well.”

“Yeah,” said Toby. “Miss Maxie's okay.”

“Too bad about her,” George said.

“Sure is.
Orare
, Miss Maxie.”

“Why?” said Allen.

“Gettin' hitched to that jerk.”

“Max? He's a very nice man.”

“He's so nice you can't stand him,” George said.

“You don't even know him!”

“We see him around.”

“Well, I've met him, and he is not a jerk.”

Toby said, “You know how he got that commission, don't you?”

“How?”

“Politics. He knows a congressman.”

“I know. He's a friend of theirs. I've heard Maxine say so.”

“He sure was friendly to ol' Max.”

“How do you know?”

“Murd was talking about it. Max got a reserve commission as a captain in the finance section. That takes an act of Congress.”

“Is it against the law?” she said.

“Nah, it's legal, I guess.”

“I don't think Max would do anything illegal.”

“Not him,” George said, “he's too nice.”

“What have you kids got against Max?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said cheerfully. “Except that he's a jerk.”

“It's the breed,” said Toby. “
Homo rotarianus kiwanus
.”

“
Pompous erectus
. I bet Miss Maxie has to salute him every time he walks in. I can see her now, in a ruffled apron, standing at attention.”

“After a hard day at the bank, when he comes home to his vine-covered mansion,” said Toby

“At Three-point-nine Percent Lovers' Lane.”

“Is that anywhere close to Sappy Avenue?”

Suddenly Allen didn't feel so jolly. Toby had said to her after the dinner that he was tired of listening to sappy music and poetry. Did he now consider her sappy like Maxine? It had been five long days since the dinner. She tried to read something in his face, but he and George were already off on another tear, moving the Maxes up in the world, from Happiness Hollow, hard by Rapture Road, through Ecstasy Springs, and up to Gloria in Excelsis Heights. “Smothered in honeysuckle vines!”

“‘Where the bee suckles…'” George sang.

Now the boys sat in the front row, spraddle-1egged, loose and easy. Their skin shone, brown from the spring sun. They were bright-eyed and limber. They were her boys again, the way they'd been in the early spring. It was good to laugh with them.

“Whoo-ee,” George said again.

And she laughed softly in contentment.

Then suddenly the joke was over. It was gone, like that. Played out. They sat for a moment staring out the window at nothing. The silence grew uncomfortable. A minute ago they were all shuffled together by the laughter. Now they seemed to draw back from one another, as if, without the joke as protection, they were a little afraid.

She shot an anxious glance at Toby. Something else hung in the air, something unsaid, which ought to have been the most natural thing in the world for one of them to say: Let's go to the movies.... Let's go have a beer! Then everything would have been right again.

But nobody said it. And they were about to leave. Already, George was unwinding himself from the chair. “I guess I better go look for that book.”

Toby stood up.

“Wait,” she said, before she could stop herself. If he got away now, she might not see him again for another week, and then there would be only one more week and school would be over. “If you guys aren't too busy tonight, maybe we could—”

“Hello, Miss Liles.” Lindsey Homeier walked in.

Addled, innocent Lindsey, bearing a bunch of purple irises in a tall glass vase.

“I brought you some flowers,” he said.

“Why, how nice.”

“Hi, Lins,” said Toby.

The boy's gentle smile swung like a light across the boys and back to Allen. “I hope you like these.”

“They're lovely. Thank you very much.” She saw George and Toby making their way to the door. “You fellas leaving?”

“Gotta get home,” George said. “See y' around, Teach.”