Ah, Dear Readers, the moment we've all been waiting for. Do you know, this is where I thought I'd start Backstory, but somehow, Mr. Dimitri wanted to go further back in time and tell all. Poor, intellectual Mr. Dimitri, accused of being a dweeb because he can quote and identify Shakespeare. That should be the least of his worries, eh? He is an English teacher, after all. To thine own self be true, easier said than done. Read, empathize, and consider that someone once said, "I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad." (Extra points if you know who, where, and when.)
CHAPTER 24: Coeur-a-Coeur
With a start, Charlotte awoke, disoriented. The room she was in was dark; no light seeped in through window edges, or doors. Velvety, complete darkness. She sat up, stared around her. She could just make out black shapes against blacker shapes, and she remembered where she was. Sondra's room. Sondra, who declared she could never sleep if even the barest crack of light was visible, who insisted on room-darkening shades, a brocade curtain over her door, and a cloth mask shielding her eyes.
Slowly, images floated back into Charlotte's mind. A fight with her parents, no, between her parents, the raised voices behind closed doors as she slipped out of the house the day before. Always about money, and about her mother working. Then fragments of what must have been a dream, where the fight had led to a fissure – her father moving out, her mother demanding a divorce. Summer turned to fall, high school began, and her two best friends became cheerleaders, jumping high and shaking pompoms.
And then she felt a cold trickle of doubt. Had the divorce, the pompoms, had they been a dream? She felt a sudden, urgent need to see her parents, now, regardless of the time. She groped around in the dark for the flashlight she always brought to Sondra's, found her bag, and slipped out of the room.
Fortunately, it was morning. Early, not yet 7, but morning. She walked the three blocks home quickly, her head and heart pounding. She entered through the back door and heard the sounds of cooking. And there, to her relief, was her father, preparing Sunday breakfast. And her mother – which brought her up short. Her mother was never up this early.
"Are you guys getting divorced?" Charlotte said abruptly, causing both parents to turn, surprised. Her father strode across the room to the table where her mother was sitting and clasped her hand. They looked into each other's eyes and smiled, then looked at Charlotte.
"Divorced?" her mother said. "Why would we do that?"
"You don't divorce someone you're madly in love with," her father added. "Especially not when she's also your business partner."
"What?" Charlotte sat at the table with her parents. As they explained their new plans, where Mom would join Dad in the restaurant she knew so well, their words quietly washed away the painful images of Charlotte's dream, replacing them with calm, still challenging, but loving images of reality. No divorce, no cheerleading, just her family, as she had known them, with all their petals and thorns, but all there, whole in the daylight, a welcome contrast to the pain her fears had manifested as she slept.
Her father went back to the stove. "Now how about some pancakes?" he asked.
"I've been dreaming about these," Charlotte said, and held out her plate.
*****
I finished reading Grace's latest revision. Revisionism, rather. Annoyed that she would want me to read this, this wishful thinking of an ending that destroyed the subtlety of the story she had already written. She sat opposite me, a glass in her hands, a smile ready at her lips, looking at me expectantly. I straightened the pages together and said with no effort to keep disgust from my voice, "This isn't an ending."
"What?" she said, taken aback by the unexpected harshness in my voice. "Yes it is."
"What, it was all a dream? That's your ending?"
"Yeah, because, well, it makes you question, you know, reality," she attempted to explain.
"Well, at least be specific." I let my anger erupt, at her new ending, at her, at myself, at this whole situation; I poured it out against this little story. "Suddenly realizing that the most memorable moment of your life was, was only an illusion, that you made it all up, what does that feel like, specifically?" I stood. "But this is just, it's like you're backing away, disowning it; it's as though you just wrote anything to be rid of it; like, like none of it mattered. Just finishing something is not an ending."
I walked away from her. It was insulting, I thought, as if everything I had taught her that year about reading and writing had evaporated, and she was wasting my time with wishful thinking stories. But a thought niggled at the back of my mind. Was I really talking about Grace?
"Okay." Grace pushed her story into her backpack.
I continued, "Read your Chekhov, read those short stories I gave you." The ones you've never acknowledged receiving, I thought silently. I gave them to her for a reason, a classic volume, beautiful words, inspiring literature. "You'll see what I'm talking about." And then my anger dissipated, I deflated. I turned to face her again and asked, "Are you hungry? You want something to eat?"
But now she responded to my words. "Oh, you know, if you're angry at me just say it. Don't take it out on my story!" She walked to the fridge, always her refuge. Opened the door, peered inside, hiding, as she said, "At least I'm trying. I don't see you sending your poetry out to any magazines."
Bull's-eye. "I don't write poetry anymore," I muttered.
"My point exactly," Grace said, and looked at me appraisingly, then back inside the fridge.
It was a point I preferred to ignore. Because it was true. Writing had come so easily to me once, that when it became work, when it didn't flow organically and naturally, I gave it up. Like none of it mattered. I did not practice what I preached. I taught, but I didn't accept the challenge writing had become. I recognize that now, but would not admit it then. I changed the subject; food was easy, neutral. I said, "There's some of that cheese you like, if you want it."
Melodramatically, she pushed the door shut and jumped back, exclaiming, "I probably shouldn't even be opening your refrigerator since it's obviously this punishable crime!"
"Just take the cheese," I said, annoyance becoming a half laugh at the absurdity of our situation. My job was on the line, Grace had ventured into romantic territory with me, risking her emotional self, and here we were, on the eve of a day where nothing could be the same, arguing about French cheese with a silly name. I was rewarded with a small smile from Grace.
I sighed, and went for honesty. "I am somewhat angry at you." Deservedly or not. I walked toward her, toward the fridge. "I'm even angrier at myself." Because I should have known better. Or I did, but didn't act on what I knew. But, if the point of her visit was to discuss her story, regardless of what was happening between us, this new ending was abysmal. Too Wizard of Oz. I stopped in front of her and said, "That doesn't change the fact that your ending doesn't work." I could see, now, in her eyes, that she knew this too. I opened the refrigerator door, took out the Chabichou and carried it to the far counter.
Behind me, Grace said quietly, compassionately, "Are they going to take away your license?"
My heart constricted at the concern in her voice. I shrugged, despairingly. I pulled out a knife and cut a slice of cheese for Grace. Something to do. Offer her food, this thing we had shared, once.
"Maybe if you talked to Alexa and just explained to her what she saw." So it was common knowledge that Alexa was the student making the accusation. Virginia and Dan had been so careful to speak neutrally of "the student" and "the student's parent." No names, not even a gender-identifying pronoun. But I had suspected as much. Not that it mattered.
"I can't talk to Alexa." I said. "This has gone way past Alexa."
"But we have to tell people!"
"Tell them what?"
"You know, the truth!" Spoken defiantly, assertively.
The truth. What I had always demanded from Grace in her writing, what was missing from the new ending to her story. What had to be missing from the next day's meeting, for her sake as well as for mine. I turned, looked at her directly, and said, "Uh huh. And what's that?"
She returned my gaze and grimaced, her shoulders slumping in defeat as she considered the answer to this question. The truth of sexual tension between a mentor and his student, of affection, attraction, of unfulfilled desire, of a closeness that was all too real. I smiled at her ruefully and held out the slice of cheese. She grabbed it swiftly and turned, saying, "I hate them." I looked at her quizzically. "I do! I mean, what gives them the right?" She put the cheese down on the opposite counter and faced me again, her eyes betraying pain, fury, sadness. But not loneliness, not now.
Sardonically, I said, "Well, state law, for one thing."
She exclaimed, with a touch or urgency, "No, I'm serious! I hate it. I mean, that they, they think they can just control our lives like that!" She actually clenched her fists in frustration. "It's just so unfair!"
"Grace," I started to say, softly, trying to be the teacher. "It isn't that unfair. I'm expected —"
"No," Grace interrupted. "It's unfair to me." I stopped talking to listen, really listen to what she had to say. "Because everyone in that entire school thinks we did all this stuff, and we never even got to even do it because you never even let me!"
I had to smile. Oh, the irony. Irony is the form of paradox. Here I was being so noble, yet accused, practically, of statutory rape, and my alleged victim was chastising me for not doing the act.
"Don't laugh at me!" Grace insisted.
I looked at her, my beautiful, fiery Grace, Grace who had inspired me this year, who had filled my waking dreams of the past seven months, and I laughed, gently, as I said, "I can't help it." I was aware, then, of her proximity; somehow, during this exchange, we had moved toward one another and were now less than a foot apart.
A pair of tears that had been threatening to spill broke free and rolled down her cheek, reminding me of that time I'd failed at setting things straight in my car. She gave a half laugh too, and met my gaze. And then said words I forgot I'd been hoping to hear. "I read what you wrote," she said, at long last. "In that book you gave me." Then pouring an intensity of feeling that went to my core, she whispered two words, "Thank you."
Finally, acknowledgment. I couldn't speak, could only look at her, at those determined eyes, at those full lips, and those smooth cheeks. Those soft lips. Mesmerized. Then I felt her hand upon my shoulder, and then, suddenly, she leaned up and kissed me. It was a kiss... the sweetest, most passionate, most gentle, most loving kiss. Heartfelt. My heart felt, and I leaned forward toward her, just lips, softly searching lips, returning her kiss. I wanted to put my arms around her, I wanted to run my hands through her hair, I wanted to stroke her face, I wanted to kiss her eyes. But I kept my hands by my side. And she pulled away, like a swimmer suddenly needing air. Her hand rested against my shoulder, an intimate gesture that made me tremble. And I looked at her, I met her eyes, worried I had misread her somehow, that she might now feel violated. But her eyes were happy, secure, triumphant almost. I had never seen her more beautiful, glowing, another one of those hyperbolic words, except she really did, she shone.
She dropped her eyes then and said, "Oh my God," echoing my thoughts. I shifted my eyes away for the briefest blink, and back again to a locked gaze. A signal, inadvertent, my better judgment coming through in a flicker. I had no voice. A sound came from my throat, but it didn't form into words. I smiled at her, shyly, all masks gone. She knew me. She nodded as if in agreement and looked to the side and said, "I'm going home now." I couldn't move, and I couldn't turn and watch her leave me.
Because, oh my God, we could not spend the night together, because, you know, the truth, her kiss had left me aroused, kisses between adults lead to further passions that were not, now, appropriate, because we can't be friends, because this kiss in my kitchen would change both our lives forever, because it now was the most memorable moment, and I couldn't breath because specifically the moment was bigger than I could hold and I wasn't sure how or why or what could happen next or now, because this was our ending, I knew then, and realized she knew it as well.
I heard the door close. Grace was gone. I saw her piece of cheese, uneaten, on the counter, and picked it up. I needed air, opened the door to an empty street, inhaled the cool night, gulped it in until I was shivering. I shut the door, turning back to my kitchen, and saw the room with the eyes of someone leaving. Already I began mentally packing items away, assigning them to storage, my sister's, my parents', Good Will. I discarded the cheese in my hand, along with the vestiges of my uneaten supper.
The events of the day overwhelmed me, and I was ready to sleep. The stairs were too much, and I lay on my couch, legs suddenly aching from my earlier long bike ride. Tomorrow's meeting would be a formality. Grace would be there, I'd see her once more, surrounded by judgments, and I was grateful that she had come to me this evening, for this experience of simultaneous awakening and closure, for her courage, her tenacity, and yes, her grace.