Chapter 20: A Modest Proposal
by Emmet
“Hey,” I responded, glancing at her, and then quickly turned to concentrate on the dishes. Grace looked different tonight. She wore a skirt, a short, black, shiny skirt. For the first time, I noticed her legs, usually hidden under pants. They were muscular, shapely in black tights. And her hair was waved, instead of straight. She looked... dressed up.
I liked how she usually looked, but the thought of her putting time and effort into her appearance before this time we’d have together gave me a small thrill. Those little signs. And I can have that still, that moment, that time with her in my kitchen, in spite of everything that happened after, I can remember that time and smile. Though still she had said nothing about the book, and I wondered if she had even opened it yet. Casually, I said, “Just want to finish these up.” And turned up the water, sure she could hear the loud beating of my heart, as I pictured her getting ready, changing her clothes, crimping her hair, putting on makeup.
“I’m actually early,” she said, removing her jacket. Underneath, she wore a sweater of a brighter shade of blue than she normally wore in school, a sweater that clung, revealing an attractive figure. She looked... great, actually. Not the Grace I was used to, but Grace about to embark on a date. Straining to keep my face in neutral, I turned back to the dishes and I heard her move toward the refrigerator, another habit she had fallen into over the past couple months. I enjoyed her familiarity with my house, that we had established a routine of sorts together here.
It occurred to me that it was dinner time, and she might not have eaten yet. “You hungry?” I said, hearing her open the fridge.
“Not really,” she said, and I thought I detected an odd note in her voice, as if she were about to say something. I waited, and then she added, “So, it turns out Lisa and Russell can’t come.”
My heart leapt. I froze for a beat, then turned to look at her, and she looked at me warily from behind the open door of the fridge. Poised, waiting to gauge my reaction to this information.
Her eyes went from the refrigerator to mine, an unreadable challenge there. Would I delve deeper into the reason for their absence? Would I accept it at face value? Well, I couldn’t exactly shout “Yippee!” although that’s how I felt inside. There was this need, all along, as we grew closer, and more comfortable with each other, to pretend it was all up front, that everything we – I – was doing was normal and within propriety.
The charade I must continue. This was a student class trip. Not every student could come. I would be mildly surprised, but accepting. I monitored my voice carefully and said, dispassionately, with maybe just a touch of forced surprise, “Oh. Okay.” And left it at that as I finished drying the bowl I was holding. I moved to put it away and jumped to safer ground, the role of teacher. “So,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about your story.”
That obstacle surmounted, Grace pulled something out of my refrigerator, exclaiming, “Oh my God, you should throw this out.”
“Feel free,” I said without turning around, finishing the last dish. “I’ve got a great idea for your ending,” I continued. I heard the fridge door shut, and turned as Grace discarded a bag of putrefying greens. She held her hands up, looking for something to wipe them on, and I stepped toward her, holding out the dishtowel. She wiped her hands as I continued to dry mine, another connection. We were standing barely a foot apart now. No other students would be coming tonight. Just Grace and me.
She looked up at me and said, “But I already sent it out to that place.”
Her story. I remembered my days of publishing, of still altering poems even after the book had come out – I had my own revised versions of half my published poems. “So what -- it doesn’t mean you have to stop working on it,” I said, a new concept to a budding writer.
She stepped back half a step, but still gazed up at me as she said, “Okay... but I thought…” she paused to organize that thought. “I mean, I like the ending. Everything ties together.”
Always the challenge for novice writers – wanting everything to be neat. It’s the messiness that makes for better, more powerful stories, I think. “Yeah,” I nodded at her words, but continued, “It all ties together maybe, maybe a little too much.”
She took this in, a challenge to something she had thought was finished. “Oh,” she said, processing. I watched her face, seeing the thoughts digesting, noticing the makeup she wore tonight, her lips shiny with gloss, her lashes thickened with mascara. I wondered again if she had opened the Chekhov book yet; I saw no clue from her eyes that she had. Without realizing it, I must have been searching her face too obviously, because she said, stepping back, “What’re you...?”
Embarrassed, I quickly said the first thing that came into my head, looking at her eyes, “Oh, your eye makeup’s smudged,” touching my eye. Not that it was, but I couldn’t really explain my staring.
“Oh shoot,” she said; I had succeeded in making her self-conscious, unnecessarily. Because it made me self-conscious, about us, as well. She turned away and walked toward the door that lead to the living room.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “Come on.”
Without turning, she said, “I have to find a mirror.”
My comment on her makeup now sounded inappropriately intimate to me, and I felt a sudden urgency to leave, to get to the movie, to restore the status quo of teacher-student nothing improper relationship. I looked for my coat and said, “Well, there’s a mirror in my car.”
Grace still hadn’t moved. “No, I…” she began, and then she turned to face me, a determined set to her jaw. She remained standing where she was.
“Come on,” I said, and found my coat under hers on a chair.
“I just realized something,” she said,
We had to leave. Now. A sense of foreboding, that something was about to happen, something I both wanted and wanted to avoid, something inevitable that I was trying to forestall. “We can’t miss the beginning,” I said firmly, putting on my coat. But then I added, “What did you realize?”
Her voice held steady, she said, “That I’ve never seen the rest of your house before.”
“Yeah, you have,” I replied quickly, not sure where she was going.
And then, “But I’ve never seen where you sleep.”