In the Dead of Summer (2 page)

Eventually he completed a meaningless spiel about how the staff as well as the students came from a mix of backgrounds (“a heterogeneous commingling of variegated prior experiential modes,” I believe he said)—and our need to work in harmony for the greater good (“…the potential for synthesizing-differentiated pedagogical philosophies and styles…”). I wondered if anyone else questioned the man’s right to guide instruction, given his inability to speak the Mother Tongue (“…producing a synergistic fusion of…”). It’s an odd world in which a Rodney King is a better communicator than the idiotic and incomprehensible Ph.D.’d headmaster of a private school. “Can we all get along?” is exquisite and to the point and would have been a waft and a half of fresh air in the stuffy auditorium.

It doesn’t look good for a teacher to fidget, or fall asleep, or throw paper airplanes or spitballs, so I tried to clear my brain, to find an un-Philadelphian wellspring of serenity deep inside me.

I searched, but failed to find it.

Havermeyer continued his multisyllabic mutilation of any possible meaning.

“What is
wrong
with that man?” a stern-faced woman three seats over muttered. She rolled brown eyes in disgust, then looked at me as if she expected an answer.

Why me? Was I stamped
PROPERTY OF PHILLY PREP?
“Far as I know, pretty much everything,” I whispered.

She shook her head and put her hands into a position of prayer.

Havermeyer concluded his gibberish. Now, when we’d all been stupefied, he had us introduce ourselves, one by one, and, he said, “explain what brings you to us this summer,” as if he were a cruise ship’s activities director.

I felt instead as if I were at a meeting of Educators Anonymous. “I’m Mandy P.,” I’d say. “And I have a problem with surviving. I’ve been sinking economically for a long while, but I hit bottom when my landlord threatened another rent increase. So, well, I realized I needed help, and so I’m here.” And everyone would applaud and be supportive.

The rest of the staff was either less resentful or less frivolous than I, and one by one they stood and duly said their names, their schools of origin, and what they would be teaching this summer. I tried to memorize them—employing all the build-a-better-memory games I’d read in magazines. But no sparkling personality called herself Diamond the way they always do in those articles, and Mrs. Hart, who should have taught biology or at least phys ed or health, if she’d wanted to be helpful, was instead an algebra teacher. Phyllis Something-Sibilant taught Biology I. I couldn’t figure out how to make that connect, or how to remember Walt Smith, whose looks were as nondescript as his last name.

He was one of several new men being scoped out by the female faculty. The pickings looked dismal. Of course we hadn’t had time to find out what really counts—personality, brains, sensitivity…but Walt Smith’s stubble and sweat-stained beer belly didn’t exactly catch the eye.

Nor did the next fellow, a twerpish sort named Lowell Diggs. I thought I might be able to remember that one. Low Diggs—Diggs Low. Something molelike about his features. Of course, I had the option of not remembering him at all. He was less than prepossessing. Scrawny and stoop-shouldered, he had a sharp nose and very little face below that, as if nature had made her point with the nose and then lost interest, so that his face dribbled back into his neck. He also had a piece of toilet paper clinging to a bloody spot on his cheek.

The eye-roller who’d wondered what was wrong with Havermeyer turned out to be a history teacher with the exotic name of Aldis Fellows. All Dese Fellas, I said to myself, superimposing an image of a lot of
history
—dead male kings and warriors—over her name. As long as I didn’t call her Genghis—she was really forbidding looking—she might justify the six thousand memory articles I’d read and forgotten.

There were familiar faces, too, permanent members of the home team, and as they introduced themselves, I focused on a lost, long-winged flying insect making the rounds of the auditorium and barely heard the rest of the string of names.

Except for one. First of all, and maybe second and third of all, he was the best-looking male in the room—not a great feat, perhaps, given the competition, but all the same, noticeable. The uncontested faculty centerfold. He cleared his throat. “I’m Bartholomew Dennison,” he said. “I’ve taught government and social studies out West for a long time, but as an American history buff, I defied Horace Greeley and went East. I’ve been subbing for a time, and I’ll be in King of Prussia starting in September.”

Before he sat down, he held up one hand. “By the way, I’m actually Bartholomew Dennison the Fifth. A long family tradition, although not, perhaps, a wise one. Anyway, the other tradition, for which I am grateful, is that we’re called by our number. My father was Mr. Four and I’ve been Five—or sometimes even Mr. Five, if you want to be formal. I get confused if you use my impossible given name.” He sat down.

Five. Even I could remember that.

Every woman in the room smiled at him. He had that effect. Even on Moira DeLong, one of the regular Philly Prep staff, a French and Spanish teacher in her sixties who wore a lorgnette and had hitherto exhibited passion only for Romance languages and her white Persian cat. Moira stretched burgundy-painted lips into a smile for Mr. Five.

And Edie Friedman, who had been stocking a hope chest since third grade and was high on supplies but running out of hope, looked near fainting with renewed optimism. Or maybe it was just the heat.

My turn. I stood up and said, “I’m Amanda Pepper. I teach English, all grades, at Philly Prep regularly, and I’ll be teaching Communication Skills Workshops this summer.” I sat down. Mr. Five smiled at me in a way that suggested we had just met someplace much nicer and more intimate than here, the two of us and nobody else. I returned the smile. It was the least I could do.

If it were not for C.K. Mackenzie, with whom I was tiptoeing toward an understanding, Five’s smile might have made for a charged summer. I sighed and returned to glowering.

I WAS SORTING FILE FOLDERS, DECIDING WHICH WERE recyclable for the summer students and trying to forget Havermeyer’s pompous and patronizing talk, when the fellow with the pointy nose tapped on the frame of my open door. Damn—what was his name? It was the one I’d been sure I could remember. Something ground-level. Rodentlike. Mr. Weasel? Bottom? Hole? Pitt?

“I’m glad you’re alone,” he said. The patch of toilet paper with its red-brown bull’s-eye was still stuck to his cheek. “Didn’t mean to be rude, but it seemed awkward to go through the formalities down there with all the others.”

He whined even when presumably trying to be endearing, but his pleasantries struck me as decidedly weird. What others? And
what
was his name? Little? Could that be it? He wasn’t exactly a giant, about five-eight, my height. But insignificant. Mr. Down? Downs?

I must remember to never read another article on improving my memory.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but it’s been my experience that the older generation exaggerates when trying to make a match.”

Although the idea made the pit of my stomach contract, mention of the words
older generation
and
match
put me on red alert and gave the situation an imprint like guilty fingerprints at a crime scene.
Ma,
I mentally whined,
not again.
I refused to accept the idea.

“But this time,” he continued, “every word was true.” He was a head shaker, too, nodding agreement with himself. Nod, nod. “I hope you feel the same. Do you?”

“Excuse me,” I said, “but there seems to be some misunderstanding. Do I know you? Have we met before?”

“Not in person. I would never have forgotten.”

Was he implying we had met in a past life, or via astral projection?

“But your picture didn’t do you justice. Did mine?”

“Your what?”

“Photo. Did it do me justice?”

I didn’t know how to answer. First of all, what would be justice as far as his likeness was concerned? His features, what there were of them, crumpled into worried insecurity. Pathetic. We were going to work in the same building for the next two months. I tried to be gentle and discreet. “Before we get to that—I was just wondering exactly when was it you saw my photo. I mean, which photo was it again?”

She wouldn’t give a total stranger a picture of me, would she?

“You were wearing a big straw hat. It hid your hair, which is, I might say, a lovely hue. Chestnut, is that what they’d call it?”

I remembered the snapshot. It had been taken when I was in college, ten years ago, and the straw hat completely shadowed my face. The only thing clear in that picture was that I was either female or a guy with severe hormone problems. How desperate was this man? How desperate was she?

“Aunt Melba showed it to me three weeks ago, when I was visiting her. Melba Diggs.” He nodded and paused, waiting for my happy shout of recognition.

I had never heard of the woman, but Diggs was the name I had heard in the auditorium. Something Diggs. Shovel? “Is Aunt Melba still”—time to reveal the horrible truth—“enjoying Florida?” I asked.

He nodded extravigorously.

Damn. I knew only one woman in Florida, and she wasn’t Melba Diggs, but it didn’t matter, because the woman I knew knew everyone else. Particularly anyone in contact with single males.

“Well,” he said, “I mean, it wasn’t Aunt Melba’s photo, of course, it was your mother’s. It’s nice how close you are with her. She couldn’t stop talking about you and your interests and accomplishments and your desire to settle down and about what a coincidence it was that we were both teachers. And she was really, really excited when she found out we’d be at the same school this summer, too!” He flashed a smile that emphasized his lack of a chin. “And,” he added, lowering his high voice to a near-normal pitch and wrinkling his brows with solemnity, “hope this doesn’t seem out of line, but she mentioned that you also were recuperating from a disastrous…relationship. I know how it is, believe me. I share your pain.”

My mother would do anything, invent a soap-opera history for me if she thought her improvisations would land me a man—any man.

But this poor fellow’s romantic disaster had been real, as was his delusion that I expected, even wanted, to meet him. Mother Nature had been mean-spirited in allocating him features, Mother Pepper had lied to him, even if he didn’t know it, and a third female had broken his heart. I didn’t have to mend him, but I didn’t need to inflict further damage, either. “Well,” I said, “it’s good to meet you at last.”

He glowed with relief. I could almost see through his skull to his brain, which was flashing in neon letters that I had just agreed to be his reentry gal. “Me, too,” he said. “Mandy Pepper, Mandy Pepper. Nice name. I just wanted to touch base.”

He looked as if maybe he expected to touch more than base. “Glad you did,” I said.

“Me, too.” Still more nods. “And even gladder that we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other! A
lot
more,” he added with a wink, a pivot, and a slouched, but mildly jaunty, retreat.

I still didn’t know what name to call him, but I didn’t have that problem when I thought about my mother.

The second time someone tapped my door frame, I yelped, terrified by images of more suitors sent compliments of Bea Pepper.

“Have a minute?” a decidedly nonwhiny masculine voice asked. “Am I interrupting?”

Of course he was, but I waved him in and felt the corners of my mouth tilt up.

“My room’s down the hall,” he said. “Nice old building, this. I think my side of the hallway is a little shadier and cooler.”

“It’s the trade-off for having no view.” My sunny and therefore hot room overlooked the square, a green city oasis populated by an interesting parade of locals.

He stood at the window and considered the scene below. “There it is,” he said. “Penn’s Greene Countrie Towne.”

His history was good. William Penn was the first city planner in the new world, and a believer in open space. He designed a series of pocket parks way before there were streets to ring them. One of the five original squares lay across the street from the school.

“Where out West are you from?” I asked. Had he said? Had I forgotten? Was I being rude?

“Idaho. Ever been?”

I shook my head. Nobody I knew had ever been there, and I had no empirical evidence to believe Idaho existed. I stacked my file folders.

“People here think it’s nothing but potato fields, but it can be spectacularly beautiful. I miss it. However, it was time to find out what else there was. Expand my horizons. See where the history I’d studied happened. But you, of course, are a native Philadelphian.”

“How did you know?” Had I said
yo
even once? Asked
Wassup?
when he entered the room? Addressed him as
youse
? Was I eating a soft pretzel with mustard or practicing my mummer’s strut? What? “My accent?”

“Your name.”

“Amanda?”

“Very funny. Pepper!” When he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled in a wonderful, Idaho kind of way. “A prestigious Philadelphia name if ever there was one. By coincidence, I visited Pepper House this weekend. A handsome place, and such a good example of the Philadelphia style.”