Learning Curve

The smart thing to do would be to get herself reassigned to another school—it might not be too late in the term. But there were mysteries to solve, and things she wanted to help Joe rediscover. And there were other things she still believed, deep down in her heart, only Joe could teach her.

“So there are some complications.” Marilee shrugged. “I don’t see anything here a little time won’t cure.”

The smoker slid off his stool and sauntered to an empty booth, casting lures in his wake. Marilee’s lips bowed in a smug curve. “Unless the complications on the personal level are complicating things on the job level,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“All that photocopying and note-taking you’re stuck doing while the rest of us are enjoying some one-on-one time with students.” She set her drink on the bar. “Are you letting the personal complications get in the way of the job?”

Maybe she was. Maybe she’d been distracted by Joe’s good looks and his mysterious past. Maybe she’d been a little too admiring, a little too curious—and a little too passive.

Maybe it was time to be more assertive, time to stop settling for copier crumbs and grab a bigger share of the classroom pie. Maybe the only way she’d ever find out if she could handle the challenges of a teaching career was to challenge Joe on his own turf.

While she was considering all the maybes, Marilee slid off her bar stool and slipped her purse strap over the shoulder of her bright red dress.

“You can’t just open up a can of worms like that and then leave me here,” Emily said.

Marilee waggled red-tipped fingers in farewell. “Fish or cut bait, Em.”

JOE CONFRONTED another restless Friday night. The end of another week of teaching, another week of trying to figure out if making an effort was worth the effort. One week closer to the end of the school year and the decision whether or not to sign another contract.

He stood at the living area window in his cramped apartment tucked above Dixon’s Hardware, staring down into the glowing puddles ringing the streetlights along Main Street, and poured the last half inch of a bottle of Merlot into a large goblet. He swirled it, watching the wine glide down the curved sides. Good legs.

Legs. Female legs. Long, satiny and tangled with his. The perfect distraction from thoughts of the job.

He could phone Dolores over in Orchard View. He’d buy her a few drinks, and she’d offer her warm bed and willing body in exchange. She always did. Dependable, divorced Dolores. Maybe tonight he’d take her up on it.

He frowned down into his glass, knowing the company of a forty-five-year-old shopping network addict wasn’t the cure for this particular case of restlessness.

Maybe he’d make a plan. Short-term, just for the next few hours; long-term, to get him through Saturday night, too. Maybe he’d open another bottle of wine and settle in at the piano, spin out whatever blowzy, bluesy tune the vintage suggested. Ambivalence in the key of Burgundy.

He turned from the window, set the goblet on a side table and stretched out along the oversize sofa squeezed into the undersize space. The secondhand-shop leather cushioned him like an old ball glove, and he focused on the comfort as he willed himself to relax.

The clock struck nine, and the room dimmed as the shop lights beading the street below winked out. Rain splashed over the gutter, and the furnace whumped and hissed. He tapped one foot against the other, adding to the sullen syncopation.

So, is this where you picture yourself in ten years?

He swung his feet to the floor with an oath and flicked the switch on the side table lamp. Light spilled over his empty goblet and beside it, his cell phone.

Conversation could be a cure for restlessness. He’d had a taste of conversation, of connection, in the quad with Emily, and the sample had left him hungry for more.

He lifted the phone, hit the first number on his automatic dial and waited through the electronic clicks and trills to hear the voice of his aunt in San Francisco. Anna Green, his one and only family member. An activist with a heart as deep as San Pablo Bay and enough political savvy to fill it ten times over.

“Anna,” he said when she picked up. “It’s me.”

“So it is.” His aunt’s gravelly voice sounded like his childhood—earthy, basic, and a little rough around the edges. “Where are you, kid? Anywhere close?”

“Here at home,” he said.

“Friday night, single fella, stuck at home. What’s wrong with this picture?”

“It was a rough week.”

“Aren’t they all?” she asked. Joe could hear papers rustling in the background and pictured her fidgeting with her work. Anna never did one thing at a time when she could do two.

“The first couple of weeks of school don’t usually hit this hard.” He didn’t usually have to deal with a fresh and lovely young woman probing into his intellectual and emotional nooks and crannies.

Joe slouched down and rubbed his free hand over his face. “What’s on the political agenda these days?”

“SUVs. Elitist weapons of death.” He listened for a few minutes while she read him an abbreviated version of her current riot act. The follow-up literature would probably hit his mailbox within a week. Anna didn’t write, she pamphleted.

But he’d always been able to derail her from her one-track speeches for the critical moments of his life. And she’d managed to keep him fed and clothed, disciplined and educated after his mother had abandoned him on her doorstep. He was grateful for the care she spared for her nephew in the midst of her greater quest to care for humanity.

He waited for her to wind down, waited for an opening. “Is it all worth it? What you do, I mean.”

“That’s one of the most ridiculous questions you’ve ever asked.” Her exasperation sputtered through the wires. “What’s wrong with you?”

“I don’t mean the causes. Or the effort,” he said.

“What do you mean, then?”

“I mean…” What did he mean? “Does it—does your work make you happy? Are you happy, Anna?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t I be?” No more sputtering now. “It’s what I choose to do, every day. It’s my life—it gives my life meaning and direction. There aren’t many people who can say that about what they’ve chosen to do.”

Anna’s words rippled through his dark and empty spaces. Something coherent struggled to take shape, but he was too weary to concentrate. Too much wine, too much rain.

“This is an interesting series of questions,” she said. “I’m wondering what inspired it.”

“A conversation I had this week. About altruism.”

“Hmm.” The paper rustling slowed. “I think that, to some degree, I need to feel good about myself. About what I do. What about the job you do? Some folks might call teaching an altruistic profession.”

“But I get paid to do it.”

“So do I. All my causes put food on my table. Just because they’re bigger than a classroom doesn’t mean they’re any more important.”

Joe rubbed tiredly at his face and silently cursed Emily Sullivan for making him feel like a project with a due date. Short-term, long-term, end-of-term—any way he looked at it, he was going to have to define himself as a teacher and a human being before he could help guide her through the process. And he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer to the big essay question waiting at the bottom of the page.

“So, what’s the real reason for the call?” Anna asked.

“Nothing special. I just wanted to talk.”

“About the justification for our existence? Most folks start out with something simple, like, ‘How’s the weather down there?’”

He thought of Emily’s simple, friendly chat. “Maybe I’m a little rattled. New school year, remember?”

“Yeah. Any changes? How about a new principal?”

“No, still stuck with Kyle.”

Joe smiled at Anna’s inventive curse. She’d met his boss once; survivors of the disaster scene still cringed at the memory. “Word is his wife left him.”

“Smart move.”

“There’s more.” He stalled for a moment, and then dived into the news he realized he’d wanted to share with her all along. “I’ve got a student teacher.”

“It’s about time, kid.” The paper rustling stopped. He had her complete attention now. “Here’s your chance to make a bigger impact. Mold another teacher to fight the good fight.”

Joe quickly blocked the image of his hands molding Emily’s curves. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. She comes from a military family. You know the type—solid, upstanding, old-fashioned. Big-time conservatives.”

There was another pause. A long one. And then Anna did something she didn’t do very often. She laughed. A rolling, raucous, riot of a laugh. The kind of laugh he hadn’t heard from her since that Love Boat actor decided to run for Congress on the GOP ticket. He could hear Anna’s partner, Carol, in the background, ask what was going on.

Anna finally managed to ask, “Is she pretty?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Is she?”

“What if she is?” said Joe. “She’s not my type.”

“What do you mean, she’s not your type? Is she mine?”

“No!” Joe stalked to the window and lowered the blinds. “I mean, I don’t think so. No.” God, no.

“So, what’s she like?”

“Think Shirley Temple on speed.”

There was that laugh again. And when Anna repeated his description for Carol, he got to hear it in stereo. “So glad I could provide this evening’s entertainment,” he said.

Anna sighed a settling-down sigh. “God, I’d love to meet her.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you would.” He grinned at the thought of Emily deconstructing Anna’s underpinnings. “She’ll be at Caldwell until the end of the semester.”

“That’s only, what, months away?”

Joe shut his eyes. “God.”

“You know how time flies when you’re having fun,” said Anna.

“This isn’t fun.”

“Yin and yang, kid,” said Anna. “Find the right balance, achieve harmony.”

Joe grunted. When it came to Emily Sullivan, his take on yin and yang was probably something a lot more physical than what Anna had in mind.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “Thanks, Anna.”

He said goodbye and disconnected. The sudden silence magnified the emptiness of his dark apartment.

He snatched his empty goblet from the side table and carried it into the kitchen. No more wine tonight. And less wine in the nights to come. He needed to keep a clearer head.

Damn it, he hadn’t asked for a session of self-analysis. He’d been reasonably content with his life before Ms. Emily Sullivan barged into it and started asking all her questions about goals and happiness. Okay, maybe not content, exactly, but resigned. Resignation was a good thing, especially for his mental health. It meant he’d faced his mistakes and learned from them. That he was doing everything in his power to keep from making them again.

Which meant he never should have allowed Ms. Fresh and Lovely Sullivan to step one foot in his classroom door. But there she was. Probing.

Tempting.

He cursed and swung back into the living area, scrambling for control. He was the authority figure here, damn it. What he needed to do was to start acting like it. He’d probably be sore. He hadn’t used those particular muscles for a long, long time.

Better sore than sorry.

From here on out, the honeymoon period was over. Fini. Kaput. He wasn’t going to let her get to him again, to get the upper hand again. He’d take the lead in their conversations.

These first few weeks of her part-time internship were supposed to be an observation phase in her student teaching year—well, she could damn well observe. Nothing more. Let her sit out there with the other students, far away from his desk. Far away from him.

When it was time for the next phase, he’d set up separate discussion groups, separate projects. No need for teamwork. Keep her moving in baby steps, carefully placed. That was the plan. The end of the term would be here before she knew it.

Better still, there might be some way to get rid of her. He’d make a few phone calls, talk to a few people. He’d ease her out, before she realized what was happening. Before she could shake him up like this again.

Before she wormed all the way under his skin and drove him completely over the edge.

There you go, Emily, he thought with a smile. Plans. Short-term and long-term goals, neatly outlined and ready to be implemented.

He walked over to his piano and stared down at the keys. There it was again—the tune that had been teasing through the back of his mind all week. All it needed was a different tempo: lazy, with a touch of the blues.

He stretched one hand over the keys and began to pick out the first few notes of “Animal Crackers in My Soup.”

CHAPTER SIX

ON MONDAY MORNING, Joe watched Emily hunch over her observation post in the back corner of his second-period Current Events class. She was doing an admirable job of ignoring the bright blue Skittle wobbling on top of the radiator a few inches from her elbow.

Her neighbors were having a more difficult time ignoring the results of an incident involving a dangling backpack, an open box of candy and Emily’s swinging foot. Every once in a while someone shifted, and another Skittle scuttled across the room. A discussion on the European economic union couldn’t compete with the subtle soccer matches going on in the aisles.

When the bell rang, she stood with the other students and began her end-of-observation routine: double-checking her schedule in her organizer before closing it, arranging her pens in a predetermined order in the pen compartment of her briefcase, marking her place in her journal before slipping it into its special slot.

She adjusted the strap over her shoulder and turned to leave, but Matt stepped into the aisle, blocking the path from her desk to Joe’s. “Hey, Ms. Sullivan.”

Emily gave him one of her more businesslike smiles. “Hi, Matt.”

Joe turned to wipe his lecture notes off the board and give them both a little privacy. He suspected Matt had a bit of a crush on her. There was a lot of that going around. She’d have to learn to deal with it on her own.

“I heard you’re going to coach the JV girls’ basketball team,” Matt said.

The eraser scudded across the board and flopped on the floor in a little puff of chalk dust. Joe swiveled to scoop it up and caught Emily’s quick, guilty glance.

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