Covering up, offering her papers when she came by to visit like that in front of Chris. What was that? That was like, it turned Grace into something to cover up, it turned her into something to hide. It turned me into someone dishonest, I wasn't being honest with myself. What kind of relationship is it where you have to hide, where you have to… to lie. Grace doesn't deserve something like that. But it's been so long since, since I felt a connection. Grace said she felt a connection. I felt a connection.
I shouldn't be feeling delighted that she loved my poems as if I had written them for her, as if I were her age, wondering does she like me, does she does she?
I enjoyed college so much more than high school, so instantly more than high school. And Grace hasn't had that yet. She has another year of high school left. I couldn't possibly be thinking about her on any level of reality. Because if I cared for her – and I cared for her – then I could not let this go anywhere.
****
"You think so?" I said. I picked up the platter of cheese and started to carry it into the living room. Couldn't meet Chris's eyes. Couldn't betray Grace that way. I, who so admired Grace's honesty, who insisted she say truth. I had once told her to say the thing she was most afraid to say to the person she was most afraid to say it to. But had I ever done that? She had once, then; then it had been the Musician. But now she had again, and my response was virtually to spit in her face. Cover-up? Because that's what it felt like I was doing, motions for the benefit of an observer, and Chris knew me too well for lies, for half-truths. She followed me into the living room carrying the bottle of wine.
"Seriously? She comes by your house? Obviously you weren't expecting her…"
"No, I wasn't." I looked over at the shelf, at the empty space that replaced my book. "Grace is… independent. Sensitive, but headstrong. Good skills for a writer."
"August?"
I looked up from my wine.
"August – you're not seriously harboring any feelings toward her, are you?"
I took too long to answer. She said, "August. This is not the way to have a mid-life crisis. You know that."
I knew it. I looked at her. And then the words just came, because I didn't want to discuss Grace with Chris, didn't want how I felt or should feel to be judged by anyone, I could contain it, control it, keep it in my heart and leave it there. I looked at her directly and said, "No Chris, I am not seriously harboring any feelings toward Grace. She's a great student – the kind any teacher would want. That's it."
"That's it?" She sounded dubious but ready to be convinced. The front doorbell rang.
"That's really it. And that better be them, because they are now actually 15 minutes late, and I'll have to call the restaurant and change our reservation." I stood.
*****
Three glasses of red and a glass of ice water for Jazmynne. "Oh, I only drink white wine, or water," she said when I'd offered the bottle. Barry and Chris sat closely on the sofa, Chris nestled against him, looking at home. He had dark, Mediterranean good looks, curly black hair, slightly long, befitting the image of an artist. By contrast, Jazmynne's hair was also curly, but streaked with carefully applied frosted bits of blond amidst her dark curls. She was trim and fit, and wore a tight-fitting fuchsia shirt with shiny black pants. She was striking, but the effect, to me, was too studied, harsh. I lifted my wine glass. "To Barry and Chris," I said. "To many years of continued happiness."
"Let's not rush things too much," Jazmynne said. "How about, to a smooth wedding."
"I'll take both," Barry said, looking quizzically at his sister.
We clinked glasses and drank. "Have some cheese," I offered. "They had a nice Chabichou and aged Gouda at Le Fromagerie that go well with wine – and ice water."
Jazmynne didn't smile. "I don't eat dairy," she said.
"Oh. I'm sorry – are you allergic, or whatsit – lactose --"
"Intolerant? No, no. I just get so bloated from eating dairy products, and if you knew how they milked cows, really, you wouldn't want to eat any dairy products either."
Actually, I did know how "they" milked cows. I also knew what certain political groups with agendas claimed about milking cows, but I had spent several summers working on a large dairy farm. Not wanting to start the evening too antagonistically, I said, simply, as I cut myself a slice of the Gouda and placed it on a cracker, "I probably don't want to know, then, because I like cheese too much. Does this mean you're vegan?"
"Vegan? You mean vegetarian?" Jazmynne laughed. "Oh, no. not at all. According to my chiropractor, you cannot be healthy on a vegetarian diet. Only twelfth-generation vegetarians can actually be healthy. It's essential to have some kind of animal protein at every meal – even breakfast."
I glanced at Chris, who shrugged slightly. Barry was a vegetarian. Was this some weird sibling thing?
"I don't know, Jaz," Barry interjected. "I mean, I used to like a nice steak for dinner as much as the next guy. But animal protein at breakfast? Since I went veggie five years ago, I actually feel healthier."
"Short-term solution," Jazmynne said dismissively. She looked around, taking in my walls of books. "Wow. You must like to read."
"Well, I am an English teacher," I said. "Gotta know my subject."
Jazmynne glanced at a stack of books I had left on a side table, various collections of short stories I was going over to recommend for inspiration to my creative writers. She picked up a collection, Twenty Under Thirty, contemporary stories by writers only a few years older than my students. "I never could get into short stories," she said. "Or fiction, really. What's the point if it's not true?"
"So what do you read?" Chris asked.
"She doesn't," Barry said.
"I do," Jazmynne retorted. "Factual stuff. Wall Street Journal, The Economist."
"Quoth the CPA," said her brother. "I'm obviously the artistic one in the family," he said to me.
"Well someone had to be practical." She returned the book to the table.
"What about poetry?" Chris asked, winking at me.
"Poetry?" Jazmynne gave a hollow laugh. "I just don't see the point. Poems are always obscure, hard to understand, and don't really do anything in terms of affecting humanity or anything."
I had to say, "Even Shakespeare?"
"Well especially Shakespeare. I mean, the guy died like, what, 500 years ago, his plays are impossible to understand, and not particularly original."
What was there to say, other than, "Shall we go to dinner, then?" I remembered I'd made reservations at a vegetarian restaurant. I could change it, I thought, but something about Jazmynne made me feel less than accommodating.
At least the restaurant had eggs, so Jazmynne acquiesced to stay. But the time there went no better than it had in my house. Over the course of the evening, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the accounting and financial planning businesses, and Jazmynne learned absolutely nothing about me, because she never asked me a single question about myself.
That night, I dreamt of Grace. I dreamt that I woke up and she was lying next to me in bed, but it wasn't the me now, it was the me then, it was a 17-year-old me. I was the same age as Grace. I wasn't in my bed now, I was in my bed in my parents' house in Minneapolis, and she looked at me and she smiled and said, "I wondered when you were going to get here."
And then I woke up alone, in my grown-up bed, a 40-year-old man, yearning for a not-quite-17-year-old girl. Not the way I wanted to go at all. Not what I needed in my life, not part of the plan. But there was a poem that came to me, just some fragments of words, and I jotted them down.
Dawn breaks
heart wakes
twenty stories reflecting silver slivers rose of sun.
Day has begun
again.