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Chapter 8: Postproduction

The days after the end of the play, after that cast party, were a blur. Midterm papers, Christmas upon us moments after Thanksgiving. I spent the holiday in Boston at June and Sal's. Relatively balmy compared to St. Paul. Temperature even got as high as freezing some days. I'd brought a video of the last performance to show June, who was a set designer for a repertoire theater. We all watched it together once. This was something I always did, since I started directing plays at Sinclair. I'd tape the show each night, then offer copies for sale of the best night – it was a minor find-raiser for theatre productions. I always sent a copy to June, since she liked to see what I was doing.

I hadn't watched it, before then. It all came back to me, Grace's performance. "Wow, she's incredible, that Rosalind," June commented. I could just nod, agreeing, and resolved not to watch the tape again.

I got wrapped up in the Christmas preparations in a household with a 5-year-old girl and neighborhood parties and the challenges of roasting a goose and stuffing stockings. The time away from home, away from work, separated by thousands of miles, helped give me some perspective. I convinced myself that I had a momentary surge of feelings, an innocent crush on a promising student, leave it at that, crushes are passing things, it was part of turning 40, feeling my age, looking for youth, it was gone.

In over a decade of teaching, I never was attracted to a student. I need to say that, to emphasize that. I was not like Humbert, lusting after young girls, a serial worshipper of teenagers. It was only the one, and it was who she was and who I was at that time. At least I believed that, I prayed that. But I could never really be certain, could I? What if it was part of some midlife crisis, what if she wouldn't be the only one? How could I trust myself for sure, having crossed this uncrossable line? The answer is, I couldn't ever know for sure. I had to trust myself, but I also had to remove myself.

In January and February, with the limited daylit hours and wind-chilled temperatures dipping into the subzeros, I always feel like hibernating. Some renewed energy after being on vacation, but that was quickly replaced with cooped-up winter restlessness. Students have been attending school half the year now, bigger papers were due, more reading, but in class they alternated between being restless and inattentive and being half asleep and inattentive. Even in my advanced class, students were zoning out. Class discussions were like pulling teeth, and I found myself throwing out outrageous statements just to get some kind of reaction.

***

On Valentine's Day, Chris actually opted to call at a time when I was home. From weekly suppers to weekly phone messages, I had gotten used to our new routine, and didn't know quite what to say when I recognized her voice, live. For a moment I thought I could fake it and pretend to be the answering machine. Run and hide, denial.

"Gus? You there?"

"For a change, yes I am," I said, shortly. "What's up, Christine?"

"Gus! I miss you. Just because I'm engaged, doesn't mean we can't still be friends."

"Is that what we are?"

"Gus, we've known each other for 20 years. Yes."

She had a point. I enjoyed hanging out with Jerry and some of the other teachers, but Chris was the only one outside my family who had known me at all the stages of my adult life. The author and the teacher. Just as I knew her as both the artist and the gallery owner. "So what's with the lunchtime calls?" I said.

She paused now. "Okay. I guess I was trying to take credit for contact without really connecting. Except I want to. Look. Barry wants to meet you. I mean, like get a drink, hang out."

"You're sure about him now?" I asked. "You don't need to double check anything?" I added pointedly.

She laughed wryly. "No, I'm not going to jump you, August. How's Friday?"

***

Friday. Grace day. I looked forward to those lunch meetings more than I cared to admit. I needed to get out more. Short stories written, revised, rewritten, new ones. We didn't cover the short story as a form that much in class, and I began to suggest other authors, gave her a reading list. It was eclectic.

"Stephen King?" she asked, incredulously. "Roald Dahl, like the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?"

"You'd be surprised," I said. "Both are short story masters. Yes, King's genre is horror, but his short stories are tight and engaging. And Roald Dahl, long before he wrote children's books, wrote decidedly not children's stories, clever and with a twist."

"So I should write horror stories?"

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that it's a good idea to read a wide variety of short stories, if that's the format you're interested in writing. And yes, maybe even try writing horror, or about sports, or comedy – something entirely different from what you know."

"But I thought you're supposed to write what you know."

"If that were the case, think of all the stories that never would have been told. It's a place to start, but writing what you don't know is a place to explore."

In the coming weeks, she wrote stories on mutant squirrels, horse racing, a fantasy world called Shemesh, a parody on student proms. She also worked on revisions of "Voices and "What You Need to Know."

*****

Sundays had once been special days. Family days. Dad didn't work Sundays, so he always made breakfast a big production. Brunch, really. Pancakes, usually three different kinds. Plain for Bobby, since he didn't like stuff in his, blueberry for Mom and Dad, and chocolate chip for Charlotte. With hot buttered maple syrup and sliced fresh fruit.

Her mother had attempted, for the whole summer, had to give her credit for persistence, to make Sunday be the same. But it couldn't ever be. Aside from the fact that she couldn't cook nearly as well as Dad, the kitchen felt leaden and empty with Dad not there, reading "Dave Barry" from the Sunday magazine, dramatizing the comic pages, making them all laugh so hard Charlotte once splattered milk all over her pancakes, and her father, while pretending to admonish her to be more careful, got up and made her another batch.

The last Sunday Charlotte had been there she knocked over the pitcher of syrup – her mother had to pour it into a special pitcher, she couldn't just use the bottle that had a cap on it like normal people. "Charlie! Can't you be more careful!" her mother snapped, rushing for paper towels, a sponge.

But now Charlotte avoided Sundays. She felt a pang about abandoning Bobby, but Bobby wasn't her problem right now. Let her mother deal with him. She just wanted out. She got up early and would go walking, weaving through the neighborhood streets for hours, stopping at a Starbuck's for coffee, sometimes heading to the lake, to Sondra's, to the library. Home by late afternoon, long after lunch.

*****

The days grew longer. No longer dark at 4:30. Jerry began production of the spring play, The Crucible. Grace was in that one, too, Elizabeth Proctor to Jessie's Abigail Williams. I found another extracurricular. The Gay-Straight Alliance. It was all June's fault. When I was visiting her, she asked me about it, if my school had one. I said, "I don't think so. I think they had one for a semester, it fizzled over the summer, and that was it."

"August, you have to start one up."

"I have to?

"My God, yes. Certainly would have saved me la lot of  misery when I was in high school."

"I always thought that was because you were the middle child."

"No, it was NOT because I was the middle child. It was because I was repressed. Anyway, I was fat."

"You weren't fat."

"Well, I thought I was. Anyway, you should do it, August. You'd be great. You know gay people up close and personal."

Coincidences. A few weeks after I got back, there was a notice in the teachers' lounge announcing a meeting about just that – renewing a Gay-Straight Alliance. Inadvertently I made an impassioned argument supporting the idea and ended up being nominated to be the faculty advisor. Nothing happened for another month, and then Mrs. Gonzales told me the funding was coming through, I should announce the first meeting the next week. Location to be determined.

*****

I gave Grace a ride in my car a total of four times. I remember each once distinctly, for different reasons. I had been doing well up until the Gay-Straight Alliance. Keeping my distance, secretly looking forward to seeing her each day, now I admit it to myself, then I did not. Would not.

That first car ride. Where she was struggling to appear older, to separate herself from her younger sister, from her peers. From Jessie. She really couldn't mention her stepsister without an undercurrent of pain poking through, and I got the sense there wasn't anyone she could talk to about it. When she said, "My mom just lets me drive her car to school once in a while, and of course, drive Jessie places," it immediately conjured up that odd conversation we'd had at tryouts. I think she remembered it as well, concluding with a  forced flip tone, "She's just the kind of person that people are always worried that she has a ride home, you know. And I guess I'm just the kind of person that people just assume…can walk." But it touched me. And even I can get a hint some times, so of course I offered her a ride. I mean, anyone would have.

We got in the car and our hands bumped as we each strapped in. I had to restrain myself from jumping back too blatantly. It's not that I hadn't been alone with Grace since that night I both wanted to forget and wanted to remember and run through my mind and had never referred to. Especially that whispered feel of a finger on fingers. I kept it very professional each week when we would meet to discuss her writing.

But in the car, this was different. Just as it was different in Grace's kitchen. A border blurred. No longer the safey of the classroom. Her kitchen – home turf. My car, my personal not professional space. And me wanting to imagine we were driving somewhere together, like to dinner maybe, or a movie. A date. She was 16. I was 40.

I concentrated on driving. Grace was quiet, and looked through the tapes I had piled in a box between the seats. "Hey!" she said. "You have Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce. Goo Goo Dolls."

I had forgotten I had that in the car. I'd been listening to it on the drive to school. "Yes, well," I began, my eyes glancing at her, then back at the road. "That CD you made me… kind of intrigued me. I liked that song "All Eyes on Me," so I bought the album."

"There's hope for you yet," Grace laughed. "Musically, I mean. Can we play it?"

I reached over to take the tape from her and put it in when, out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of orange in the street. I slammed on the brakes and the tape went flying out of Grace's hand and landed on the dashboard. An orange tabby sauntered across the road, reached the curb, turned, and sat on the grass, watching me.

"Sorry about that," I said. "There was a cat…" I pointed.

She looked. "Oh that cat. I see him every day on the way to school. I think he's homeless."

"I've seen him too. He's probably just hungry. Like most cats."

I released the brakes and drove carefully the remaining blocks to Grace's house. She thanked me for the ride, then turned and said,  "Oh, wait! What I was trying to say before… I just think that if you had the meeting somewhere…besides school, like say, at your house, I think it would be less embarrassing for some people…to join."

I think that was when things began to change, really, but I suppose there are many moments along the way that I can pinpoint and say, here, here, here's where things changed. She seemed gung ho about the GSA, and I wondered if there was something personal to her enthusiasm, but ruled it out quickly. After knowing June and Sal and all their friends, I knew lesbians. And Grace was no lesbian.

At my house? I thought. "At my house?" I said.

"Yeah, Teachers do stuff like that all the time. Well, not all the time. But Mr. Walsh had the film festival at his house last year."

I wasn't sure. But I liked the idea of Grace being in my house. But that was another inadmissible thought. But why not? I mean, she had a good point, it wasn't about me, it was about kids dealing with a difficult issue and making it easier for them. I put up flyers with my address the next day.