The Heights Part 3

"What about your teaching?"

"I'll take the year off. It'll be like a sabbatical."

"You'd be willing to do that?"

My mind began to race with this new possibility. I could finish my dissertation. And enough with teaching other people's children. What about our children? Even Sam had begun to complain about the size of our home. And hadn't Kate sometimes joked, "Something has to give."

So now here it was-life was giving.

"You'd really take care of the boys?"

"It's my turn to be the one at home."

Kate, later, in the dark: "Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said as we f.u.c.ked. Yes.

And so it was decided.

TIM.

SOME DAYS YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE IN A MOVIE. THE DAY I DECIDED TO BREAK THE news was one of those days.

All of April and much of May, I'd been in a teaching slump. Why? Was it the decision Kate and I had made? Or that it was still a secret?

When I woke up that particular Friday morning, I knew it was time. Bad news was best delivered on Fridays. Give the students a weekend to recover. It was only fair.

What I didn't expect was how different it would feel that day. As I climbed the stone steps to the academy, it was as if I'd been given a new set of eyes, as if my head had been wrapped in soft gauze. Each student, my fellow teachers, even Dr. Millicent Vandeventer appeared warm and fuzzy and backlit with an auburn glow. It was as if behind every move I made, every word I spoke, an orchestra played.

A faint, lone oboe caressed the air as I typed my resignation letter on my Underwood No. 5 manual. Enter flutes and a French horn as I was ushered into Dr. Vandeventer's oak-paneled office. A chorus of fifty German singers hummed as I requested a leave of absence for one year, during which I would "study and reflect" on my experience at Montague and "yes, absolutely, finish the dissertation." I expected Dr. Vandeventer to be upset by this request, particularly with it coming so late in the year. To my dismay, she seemed elated. She nearly shot out of her wheelchair to a standing position; she nearly danced on her desk.

Before her stroke, Dr. Vandeventer had been a bright, vital force but was, truth be told, a rather nasty person. After the stroke, apart from the wheelchair and a tendency to slur words, only one aspect of her changed: She got nastier. She had long suspected-and I didn't agree-that her history department suffered from a lack of diligence and rigor. Here was her chance to change all that, to find the next Sadie Brier, whose ghost probably kept appearing before Dr. Vandeventer, reminding her what could've been. Born Vera Milhinkowitz, Dr. Vandeventer had chosen her new name, it was believed, just days before she crossed the platform to receive her doctorate from SUNY Buffalo. An Ivy League wannabe, she loved nothing more than to crow about the high number of Montague graduates attending the Harvards, the Yales, the Prince-tons. The rumors, if true, told of the former Vera Milhinkowitz and her wild bohemian youth. Among her conquests: two amba.s.sadors, a recent president of Dartmouth, a n.o.bel laureate economist, sundry award-winning poets, and a female Supreme Court justice. Oh, the stories-men, women, men and women-here was someone, pre-stroke and post-stroke, who'd eagerly f.u.c.k a great mind. If you were s.e.xy and stupid, she had no interest. Or if your dissertation topic didn't appeal to her.

(During that first interview, as I described my work on the history of loss, her brow wrinkled up and her mouth pulled back in horror. "It seems rather unformed," she said. "It's early," I said. "Young man," she said, "it's never early." Then, as she stared at me with her cold, bloodless eyes, she said, "I have a feeling the students here are really going to like you." I thanked her. "It's not a compliment," she said. "To me, it'll just mean you're doing something wrong.") That morning, as she wheeled me to the door, she positively glowed. She extended her hand, and I held it. How cool and smooth and soft was her skin. She looked up, smiled slightly, and cooed, "Timothy, your going away will be good for all of us." I couldn't believe what I did next. I bent down to kiss her. Unfortunately, she saw me coming and had already started to wheel herself back to her desk. Finding only air, I made a smacking sound with my lips so we'd both know I'd tried.

Fifth period, World History. Bea Myerly was in the middle of her oral presentation on the obscure Gnostic rites of the Byzantine Empire. It was to be only a five-minute talk, but Bea was in minute twelve with an inch-high stack of index cards left to get through.

"Excuse me, Bea?"

She kept talking at her usual debater-like clip.

Others in the cla.s.s had to help shout her down. "Bea. Bea!"

"Can we finish this up Monday?"

"But-"

"Thank you, Bea."

Sulking, she gathered up her note cards, her audiovisual aids, the poster board with the Byzantine time line printed out in five colors of ink. She clomped to her desk and sat down, part p.i.s.sed, part humiliated.

This did not faze me, as I knew who was in charge. I also knew that it was important to finesse the delivery of my disappointing news. My plan was to simply tell them the truth. Leave enough time for the impact to land. Then, when the bell rings, exit fast. Easy.

But after checking the clock, I saw that I'd left too much time. "Hey," I said, as if hit with a terrific idea. "Let's talk. What's on your mind?"

Nothing, it seemed. No one spoke up.

"We've got a few minutes left. What do you want to talk about?" The only sound was Bea slumping down farther in her chair. "Come on, now's your chance. Ask me anything. Max? Joni?"

A short, fleshy arm rose slowly, the plump hand and stubby fingers stretched high.

"Anybody?"

The lone arm in the air started to wave back and forth like a metronome picking up speed, making it even harder for me to ignore that front-row sitter, that extra-credit doer, that proverbial burr in my a.s.s.

"Yes, Bea?"

"What's the most important thing you ever learned?"

I have a weakness for the sincere question. And Bea Myerly seemed sincere.

"That's a pretty broad question, Bea. Could you be more specific?"

She smiled. "Yes, in fact, I'm glad for the opportunity. What's the most important thing you learned in high school?"

"That's easy. There's really only one useful thing I learned in high school. I use it all the time. And it may actually be the only thing I truly believe."

I had their attention now.

"Wow, Mr. Welch. Will you please tell us?"

"Sorry, can't."

"You can't?"

"Oh, no. If I told you, I'd lose my job."

"That's not fair!" Bea shrieked.

"And that was the second most important lesson-life is not fair."

Bea and the others were not pleased.

"Okay, look, after you graduate, I'll tell you."

More groans.

Bea: "But we don't graduate for another year!"

The others: "Tell us! You won't lose your job! We won't tell anyone!"

I checked the clock. Under a minute left. How to segue, oh boy. Then it came to me. Perfect, I thought. I'll drop it in a subordinate clause.

I couldn't have planned it better.

"How will I know you won't tell anyone? Next year, while I'm away on a leave of absence, I won't be able to keep tabs on-"

Before any of the others could register a reaction or ask who was taking my place, Bea let out a gasp. One loud gasp, like a cannonball in the gut.

I looked around at the others. They needed more time to process. That was when Bea let her head drop. It thudded on her textbook. Well, it was embarra.s.sing-she let out a cry so loud, so long, that none of the other students could express their own feelings.

The bell rang, and while the other students gathered their things and hurried off to their next cla.s.ses, Bea Myerly didn't move and cried well into the next period, which, of course, was my free period.

"Please, Bea," I said. "Be happy for me."

She looked up and, with tears streaming, said, "Mr. Welch, this will be your undoing." Then she gathered up her things and fled the room.1

TWO.

KATE.

WHEN SUMMER CAME, EVERYONE FLED-WELL, NOT EVERYONE, JUST THE ADAIRS, the Adamses, the Alexander-Lowells, the Baxters, the Boydens, the Brills, the Cahills, the Carpenters, the Ca.s.s-Wentworths, and the Davis-Hargroves, to list a few, to their country homes, their oceanfront beach houses, their rented rustic cabins on glacial lakes, with destinations as varied as the Vineyard, the Cape, Sag Harbor, the Hamptons, Bucks County, the Adirondacks, the Berks.h.i.+res, the islands Shelter, Fire, and Block. Mothers and weekend fathers and children loaded up their SUVs, strapped bicycles to the rack, drove away the minute school let out in early June, not returning until after Labor Day, not until they were tanned, with sun-drenched hair, pink-peeling noses, and bodies lean and limber from aerobics, tennis, and sailing. Others went farther-Ireland, Italy, Greece-others farther still, and where were Tim and I during all this extravagance? At home with the kids in our un-air-conditioned apartment, where, except for one unfortunate weekend, we had a terrific summer-the best ever.

For Tim, however, it began with a b.u.mp. In previous years, within days of turning in final grades, he'd speak of his great ache to be back in the cla.s.sroom. That summer I thought he'd ache more than ever. Fortunately for us but sadly for him, any desire to teach disappeared the moment he opened the end-of-school edition of the Montague Missive . He'd mentioned in pa.s.sing that a feature interview/article would be appearing. One night while we were sharing a bath, he admitted his eagerness to read it, for even though the interview had been conducted by his least-favorite student ever, he had found the conversation surprising, far-ranging, thrilling, even. I thought it was cute how he confessed to waiting for the mail each day. (The last edition of the Missive is mailed each year after graduation to students, faculty, alumni, and the board of trustees.) I even overheard him phone Lucinda Watts, the school secretary, to ask if she knew when the Missive would be put in the mail. "Soon," she a.s.sured him.

Too soon, it turned out. On the day it arrived Tim had already left for the library. I opened the Missive to find that the entire interview/ article had been excised, leaving just a photograph-arguably the worst picture ever taken of my rather nonphotogenic husband. There was Tim, his face filling an entire page of the paper, Tim, looking up from his cluttered desk, Tim, his eyes half closed, his mouth half open, stupidly, as if midyawn. Below, in large emphatic block print, was this caption: HISTORY. And then under it, typeset in tiny script: Mr. Welch takes a leave of absence to finally finish his dissertation. Bon voyage!

Debbie Beebe had called to warn me it was coming, and Claudia Valentine, who was with me at the time, needed only a quick peek before she wondered out loud if we could sue. When Tim arrived home, I tried to pretend I hadn't seen the photo, but one glance at my pained face and he knew. He understood the awkward circ.u.mstance I was in, as there was no bright side to the photograph, no argument to be made that might give a welcome perspective. Tim returned to the photo, squinted for a long moment, then quickly balled up the paper and tossed it heroically into the trash. Done. Forgotten. It was agreed. We would never speak of the picture again. But it had to hurt. "No," he said after I asked him. "I'm not bothered a bit." Disbelieving, I studied his face as he looked away, and in a brief flash of something very real, I saw a sense of relief. To his credit, he didn't mope or pout. Rather, the insult of it all seemed to energize him. He worked a good portion of each day on his dissertation. But even better, when he was with the boys and me that summer, he was with us.

Fourth of July weekend, we rented a car and traveled to Gettysburg. Hearing my husband attempt an explanation of the Civil War to his two sons, the older four and a half, the younger nearly three, made me want to undress him. Not because he did it well (he didn't) and not because they understood all that he told them (they didn't) but mainly because he tried, grasping at phrasings, stuttering as he attempted to boil America's bloodiest battle down to its preschool essence. "You know how you and Sam sometimes fight?" Tim resorted to saying. Teddy, his mouth discolored from a red, white, and blue Popsicle, nodded between licks. "Imagine you and all your friends fighting. Can you do that?" Tim must have known Teddy had no interest. But this did not stop him. And I didn't want to stop him, because the minute he gave up his premature history lecture would be the minute we'd have to climb back in the rental car and drive to the Gettysburg mall parking lot and locate Booth 48, where my mother, Ariel, and her common-law husband, Hal, were displaying my mother's artwork for sale.

My mother is an artist. Part of me would like to leave it at that. Leave you with your own idea of what an artist is. But to say she is an artist, while kind, is to mislead you. Greater specificity is required. My mother-the ex-hippie, herbalist, cigarette-smoking vegan-is a driftwood artist. Meaning: Three months each year, she combs the beaches of both coasts (especially the log-strewn great Northwest) where various shapes of certain salt.w.a.ter-logged woods wash ash.o.r.e. The first time she explained her process, I listened closely. But after realizing that a chasm existed between her description of "the work" and the reality of said work, I chose to forget what she tried to explain. Simply, and it's all rather simple, this wood washes ash.o.r.e, she collects it, she dries it out (the larger pieces take a few weeks), and she "listens" to the wood. Not literally. She looks at the wood and waits until the shape suggests itself to her. For instance, the most common of shapes to suggest itself is a coiled snake. Or the half-coiled snake. Or the slithering snake. Listening to the wood is basically a process of determining where to place/ glue the two plastic eyes, for the amazing thing about driftwood, and I use amazing in the most limited sense, is that without the eyes placed just so, the wood stays any old wood. You see, Katie . . . (My mother calls me Katie whenever she's proud of herself and wants me to be proud of her, too.) You see, Katie, it's the eyes that make all the difference.

But that's already too much about her.

The truth was, after that unfortunate weekend in Gettysburg, our summer got increasingly more glorious. This was due, I believe, to the approaching first Tuesday in September when I would resume working full-time. We knew to appreciate those few hot months. Tim coined the perfect phrase for it: "Never-to-be-again time."

BEA MYERLY.

Dear Mr. Welch, There are no words Dear Mr. Welch, It has taken me most of the summer for me to realize the error of my Dear Mr. Welch, Voltaire was right when he wrote, "Regret is Dear Mr. Welch, According to my soph.o.m.ore-year journal, you said the following while lecturing on reparation attempts made to j.a.panese Americans interred during World War II: "Sometimes saying sorry just isn't enough." I fear this may be one of those times. Still, I am very, very, very, very, very, very Dear Mr. Welch, I hoped that if I kept my distance, if I gave you s.p.a.ce, time would be our friend, and any ill feelings we have for each other might mend. Which is why I never bothered you all those summer afternoons you labored on your dissertation in the library. Or when you'd take your short breaks and sit on the park bench at the end of Pineapple Street, eating your sack lunch. I may have followed you, but I left you alone!

But it occurs to me all is not well between us.

Please accept this gift-wrapped box as a symbol of my sincere regret. But before you open the box, I better explain. Writing you this letter has been impossible. If you only knew! So therefore I am sending you every attempt I've made. As you can see by the numerous crumples of paper (over thirty in all), I have tried and tried and tried. Perhaps you'll get what I'm clearly not able to say. Well, there's no way around it . . .

Forgive me! I did a terrible thing! What was I thinking? Deleting your interview and not even telling you was one thing! But then to run that unbearable picture! What can I say? I will repay you. Someday, and I know this may be hard for you to imagine, you will need me. You will turn to me for a favor. And Mr. Welch, whatever-and I cannot emphasize this enough-whatever you want, whatever your wish is, I will do all in my power to grant it. I believe, as the Stoics believed (was it the Stoics?), that forgiveness freely given is meaningless. Forgiveness is earned through action.

Your forever student,

if you'll still have me.

BM.

TIM.

LATE THAT AUGUST, WE RECEIVED A HANDWRITTEN INVITATION FROM JANICE Wellfleet, one of those neighbors on Oak Lane we vaguely knew, inviting us to her annual Labor Day dinner party. Flattered and yet with no idea why we'd been invited, we decided to attend, because one should. We arrived to find the Wellfleets positively giddy over their good fortune. Their youngest daughter, Polly, had just finished her first week at Princeton. "And neither of us went there!" Janice Wellfleet crowed. Barton Wellfleet couldn't contain his pride about their oldest, Becky, who was traveling in some remote corner of the Galapagos Islands, using her new cell phone to call everyone she knew. Before disappearing into the kitchen, he said with awe, "And the reception was as clear as if she were calling from down the street!"

I called out with a false enthusiasm only Kate would catch, "Now, that's progress!" Across the table, Kate smiled. We'd been seated at opposite ends of an absurdly long, oval cherrywood table in the narrow dining room of the Wellfleets' 1860s Federal-style brownstone.

"Meat, anyone?" our host said, appearing with a large ceramic platter covered with generous slabs of prime rib.

"Beef, honey. Beef sounds better."

"Here's the rare, the medium-rare. Well-done is coming up."

I looked over at Kate and made a face as if to say, "Can we go now?" But she stared off blankly, and I knew where her thoughts were: with the boys, and how tomorrow was her first day of work, and how she hadn't wanted to leave them minutes earlier, how she'd bathed them and dressed them in their matching pajamas, their hair wet, smelling of strawberry shampoo, and how, more than anything, she wanted to be home with them, cuddling with them, forever home.

Meanwhile, our hostess was in midmonologue: "Just for the sake of argument, let's imagine a small chemical weapon is detonated in the center of the Heights, say at Starbucks, and only this neighborhood is wiped out. There goes most of the brains of Wall Street, much of publis.h.i.+ng; gone are some of the brightest lights of this brightly lit city. That cartoonist for The New Yorker, that food critic for the Times, the managing editor of The New York Sun . . ."

"Janice, what on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm saying there's no place quite like the Heights. Barton and I have lived everywhere. London. Sydney. Hong Kong. Berlin when it had the Wall. And honestly, there's no place I'd rather live."

Everyone sitting around the table seemed to agree.

Our hostess: "The history alone here . . ." Then, turning to me: "Who am I talking to? You are well aware of the history here, aren't you?"

I shrugged.

"Excuse me, why is he so well aware, as opposed to, say, you or I?"

"Because he's a history teacher-"

"Was. I mean, I'm not presently-"