The Secretary of Groveland
First published in Cottonwood, Issue 73, Spring 2017.
SHORT STORY
Michelle McLellan had been a teacher, like her mother and aunt, waking before dawn nine months a year, staging energetic performances five periods a day, taking eighteen minutes for lunch, tutoring after school, grading papers in the evenings, attending staff meetings in the mornings, chaperoning dances on weekends, leading parent-teacher conferences twice a semester, proctoring exams, subbing for sick colleagues—in short, giving herself entirely, having no life of her own, and walking baggy-eyed among that class of noble servants whose health deteriorates and marriages fail but about whom, when its stalwart members are dead, divorced or disappeared, people shrug their shoulders and say, “What can you do? It’s a tough job.” Michelle did it eight years at a high school in the Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul, until exhaustion put her in the hospital. Then, on the advice of a friend, she resigned from teaching and found work as a secretary.
At Gruber & Sons, a medium-sized firm handling employment law cases, she managed the appointments of 14 counselors ably—also the office supplies, the front desk and phone, some typing, filing, and proofreading. It terms of difficulty, this was nothing compared to caring for the futures of 125 teenagers. For sitting in an ergonomic chair with soft pads under her wrists they paid her twice her teaching salary, plus 401-K matching. She was appreciated, respected, and enjoyed good health benefits. Her hours were capped. The guilt was only occasional.
The people of Groveland wondered how Ms. McLellan could just stop teaching when she was so good at it. They wondered if some scandal had precipitated it, though they couldn’t imagine it in her case. She was seen around town, at cafés and the grocery store, and was often told, in gushing tones awash in superlatives, how well her former students remembered her, the impression she had made, how often she and her lessons were referred to. But her life was her own now. Her ambition was to be not subsumed by her career—and this ambition was being fulfilled.
Though earning more, she continued to live thriftily, among cheap furniture, with no television, walking for her errands, and reading books on the porch overlooking the courtyard, where at sunset orange beams pierced through the poplars and cottonwoods. Time spread out before her like a sedated river. She heard things anew, like the excited twittering of birds at dusk. She smelled again—a sweet, yellow linden tree nearby. Even if someone from a company downtown, below the bluff and the cathedral at the end of her block, had come up and offered her a position with executive pay, she would have laughed the caller off her doorstep.
She kept friendships to a minimum. Most of her friends had moved out of the city, anyway, to start families—they wouldn’t have their offspring attending inner city public schools.
Living alone in a small apartment in Groveland was not a come-down. The house she had grown up in had been shabby, with winter ice on the windows and the shingles crumbling. Now Groveland was overrun with young professionals, the “housing stock” as they called it, all fixed up. She couldn’t have bought back that house on Goodrich Avenue if she’d wanted to. Luckily, she didn’t want to. Having always earned a teacher’s wage, having always lived alone (since college), having always committed only to her students, she was accustomed to small spaces. She never thought of housing as stock anyway. She put her stock in education. Children were a sound investment opportunity. With this outlook, she was becoming an anomaly in Groveland.
But a familial reputation lingered in the neighborhood that made up for any lack of standing. Both her mother and her aunt had taught at one of the private academies, where Michelle had attended on scholarship, and some remaining residents remembered the two women as educators, mentors and matrons. A great-uncle had made a name for himself in social justice causes; a street was named for him, and a park up by the fairgrounds that had been established under his civic reign bore a small monument recognizing him. This same name, McLellan, was recognized and asked after by certain old shopkeepers in Groveland whenever Michelle wrote a check.
She did, however, miss the children. Their plucky optimism, their infectious energy. Even the hope hiding in the brooding, scowling, belligerent ones. She was at Nina’s Café one afternoon, with a cappuccino and the newspaper, missing the great sense of value one has when young people turn to you for guidance, the satisfaction of witnessing comprehension bubble. Children that day appeared to her, even in daylight, like stars in a night sky. They were luminescent, brimming with preciousness. She watched two young girls order hot chocolate at the counter, one helping the other remove folded bills from a change purse. Outside the window, a cluster of middle-schoolers passed with thumbs under their backpack straps; at a glance she understood who was the most popular, who insecure, which the troublemaker. She decided to find a mentoring agency and to sign up.
The next day Michelle called, and shortly an interview was scheduled, and forms filled out, and a background check made. After several weeks she was cleared to participate in a program that paired needy youngsters from Frogtown and East St. Paul with mentors who could commit to seeing them once a week for a few hours. “We’re thrilled to have a woman such as yourself on board,” the agent said. Michelle was copiously thanked, even before she’d done a thing, which made her uncomfortable. Several candidates were presented to her, and, not wanting to be the selector in someone’s fate, she let the agency choose. They assigned her Donnelle, a 16-year-old who liked basketball and hip-hop. Michelle was excited but had doubts. What would she do, take the girl to a Timberwolves game? How could she endorse paying sportsmen millions, when the free pass given to student athletes at Groveland High had been so maddeningly counterproductive to her professional cause, and the battles with the coaches never-ending and always coming out in their favor? She couldn’t picture it. Neither could she imagine holding her tongue about the misogyny and violence endorsed by Donelle’s favored hip-hop music? She returned to the agency saying she’d better choose her own. Besides, she’d imagined mentoring someone younger. That’s how she found the listing for Nerese, an eight-year-old who loved to play checkers, swing on swings, bake cookies, and read! Nerese loved to read, her bio said.
They sent her a photograph and guidelines and tips for the first meeting. Gleeful and nervous, brimming with love, she put the child’s picture, in which Nerese held a book and looked shy and bright, on her refrigerator.
At Kowalski’s Market early the next week, while buying chocolate chips and a new baking sheet, she ran into Katy Sanford. Katy and Michelle had roomed together at college in Wisconsin, though they both came from St. Paul—different high schools, but their families known to one another. They had found solace in each other among the University’s masses, shared an apartment, then fallen out of touch when Katy moved in with a boyfriend. Now they had not seen each other for … nine years, they calculated. They gasped and exclaimed and clutched each other’s arms, awed at what they were seeing.
Katy looked different. She was thinner than ever. Her arms moved within her short sleeves like a bell’s clanger. Her face, once delicately pale, now looked orange and synthetic. She said she was not ailing and spoke with animation and energy. Yet there was something pinched and twitchy about her. A stiff formality gripped her, as if her natural movements were constrained.
And she smelled different. Standing in the baking aisle, a musky and expensive smelling perfume came off her. Katy used to complain, Michelle remembered, of women who bathed in perfume. Michelle was perplexed by this change. She could still see Katy, in a flower-print dress, her feet, dusty from shuffling around shoeless in their dingy Madison apartment, up on the table as she clipped her toenails, putting off doing a paper for Professor Namath. Namath was a smarmy, feather-haired prof who had invited his students to call him Trevor, spawning Katy’s phrase, Never, Trevor! Katy had been so assured then. Michelle had envied her confidence. Now everything she said came out reedy and phrased like a question, like when Michelle asked where Katy lived.
“I live in Plymouth?” Katy said.
“New Hampshire?” Michelle had never become fluent in the Twin Cities’ suburbs. She had no business in them.
“No, no. You take Interstate 94 to 394 to 181… No? Anyway, I’m in town visiting friends. Oh, God! And I’ve got two kids,” Katy said with a laugh, making light of having forgotten to mention it. “Matthew and Emily. Matthew’s six, Emily’s four. They’re starting school—that’s why we moved.”
“Oh?”
But Katy had to run. Her husband was waiting in the car. They exchanged phone numbers and promised to get together soon. “You’ll have to come see my house,” Katy said, turning back at the end of the aisle. She waved one last time and disappeared, leaving Michelle with no chance to reply.
* * *
Michelle and Nerese beamed at each other warmly as if they had both finally found the person they’d been looking for without knowing who it was. They were in the Groveland public library, where the first meeting was staged. Michelle sat on a tiny stool in the carpeted reading area, the agent at her side. Nerese was slight, with beautiful braided black hair, large brown eyes, and a broad smile. After some conversation, the agent said, “Well, you two seem like two peas in a pod,” and left them. They gathered books and walked out of the library, Nerese’s thin arms, with their curious little pink scars, piled high with hardcover storybooks, Charlotte’s Web, and A Child’s First Visual Dictionary.
“What’s your favorite?” Michele asked.
“All of them!” Nerese said.
They became fast friends.
Michelle’s showed Nerese around her apartment—the girl had never been in one like it before, on an upstairs floor. They set about making cookies. Nerese insisted on being the one to get the ingredients out, measure the flour, and turn the oven dial. Michelle made Nerese the topic of conversation—she was the one who needed love and attention. Nerese answered with enthusiasm, until a point when she became quiet and uneasy in some way—perhaps embarrassed about her family, or that she’d never used a computer, or by what toys she did and didn’t have. But following Michelle’s lead, she came back around, and after successfully cracking an egg and being commended, she said, “Michelle, I love you.”
Michelle’s heart sank into her stomach. The declaration was premature, obviously. She put her hand on Nerese’s shoulder but quickly moved on. She did not dwell. “We’re going to have a lot of fun getting to know each other. Oh, hey, I know.” Looking down at Nerese, she suddenly remembered a little wooden step stool she’d inherited from her grandfather—it had always been around, just sitting in a closet. She fetched it, and Nerese stood on it to reach the mixing bowls.
Nerese’s eyes grew wide. “I’m as big as you now!” she exclaimed.
The little stool suddenly seemed like an object of destiny. “That’s amazing!” Michelle said. “What a difference a few inches makes, huh?”
Nerese was not difficult, thankfully, though she should have been, with her father “out of the picture” as the agency euphemized, and being raised by her grandmother, a transplant from Alabama, and her mother, Tonya, having a two-year-old boy by another man, and her 15-year-old aunt, the grandmother’s second daughter, also living with them, all of them supported somehow by Tonya, who worked evenings in a bank call center. Surely Nerese didn’t comprehend all this for what it was, though—it was just her life. It was just the norm. She was well-mannered, well-spoken, and her mind seemed uncorrupted. She did slip sometimes, amid the “yes, pleases” and the “no, thank you’s” into slang, saying “ain’t” and “axed” and “nuh-uh.” But after doing this she grew timid and more polite. The two vocabularies seemed to express a profound duality in the girl, but Michelle didn’t say that one was more acceptable than the other. To both, she made a measured reaction of acceptance.
Every Saturday morning, Michelle picked up Nerese on her blighted block in East St. Paul, with its pools of broken glass in the road and bent signposts. They went to Michelle’s apartment and started a batch of cookies and read books on the porch while the cookies baked—Nerese reading to Michelle, Michelle reading to Nerese, then each reading on their own. Nerese’s attention span could be short, though. Sometimes they got out paper and colored pencils, or walked to the park and played on the swings. Other times, they went to the Children’s Museum, or the Mall of America, neither of which Nerese liked much: she didn’t seem to mind being seen holding hands with a white lady, but her whole demeanor sank amid crowds, especially crowds of wealthier kids.
A seven-year-old is much different than a high-schooler, but Michelle’s plan was a success. In giving, she felt connected again to a vital part of herself. However, all was not sunbeams and flowers, effort and payoff. Nerese’s breath stank—she had rotting teeth. Her dad was in jail, she announced once, though she didn’t know what for, or where or for how long. Nerese’s grandmother, when Michelle stepped into the rented house on Saturdays at noon, was usually holding a can of beer, and two-year-old Damone often was parked in front of the TV—rap music rattling the speaker, videos of rappers strutting around gyrating women in bikinis.
Michelle’s generalized worries had a specific outlet now, like a channel dug to standing water. She would buy Nerese a toothbrush to keep at the apartment. Maybe she could see about getting her to the dentist. Court records about her father could probably be found, if her mother wasn’t going to be forthcoming about him. She wondered if his crime had been explained to the child, some moral perspective given? And certainly Nerese should be in an advanced reading group; in skill, she really was about two grades ahead. Michelle could talk to the school about it. She would just have to be careful not to do like the agency training had warned and overstep her bounds.
* * *
Five weeks of noncommittal phone tag passed before Michelle and Katy found an agreeable date. “I’d love to have you out to the house,” Katy said on the phone.
“Sure,” Michelle said, though she had imagined them going to The Taverna or another of their old Groveland haunts. But a house holds primacy over an apartment, and Katy seemed very eager for Michelle to see hers.
She went on a Sunday, driving to Minneapolis and out the other side, west on the freeway for 15 miles. Off Hopkins Crossroad, she wound among pillared nouveau-Craftsmans, reading one after another 5-digit number on beige siding. The neighborhood—it felt to Michelle homogenous, like a compound—was new and barren. Elm saplings poked up in beds of cedar mulch, tied stable by ropes and stakes.
In the foyer, Katy looked just as radioactive, and her hair reflected a new tint of frost, but she seemed more at ease in her own house. “Come on in. Meet my kids,” she said cheerfully. Behind Katy, Michelle saw Matthew, the six-year-old, on the floor of a sunken living room, beside a Hot Wheels parking ramp. “Matthew, come meet Mommy’s friend,” Katy called. The boy continued to work with the big plastic play set. “Matthew, come here please,” Katy said. The boy made no change. “I’m sorry,” Katy said. “He’s really strong-willed, and he loves that toy.” When introduced, four-year-old Emily clung to her mother’s leg like a koala on a branch, suspicious eyes shielded under her brow. Michelle could not coax a smile from her.
The women went to the kitchen, each making apologies about the busy schedules that had kept them from seeing each other sooner. Only moments passed before a chilling feline growl sounded. “Oh!” Michelle gasped, turning about, looking for the source. The hair on her arms stood up.
“Emily!” Katy said, striding to the living room. She removed Emily from the proximity of a cat which stood on the couch arching its back. “Honey, don’t do that, please. You know better.” Katy brought the child to the kitchen and gave her a snack. “Sometimes I have to divert her,” she said. The women took Emily and glasses of iced teas to the patio.
Emily ate her crackers, then played with a watering can for a minute, but soon came around and bit her mother on the hand. Katy scolded her, then when Emily didn’t enjoy her scolding, she took the girl on her lap and said, “Oh, sweetie, don’t be sad. Mommy’s sad that you’re sad.” The girl quieted, allowing the women to converse, though Michelle continued to glance at the hatred that simmered in the child’s eyes. Shortly, Matthew appeared behind the glass door, his wide-open mouth smeared against it. His pink gums showed. Katy tilted her head disapprovingly and glowered at him. Matthew went on mashing his lips and tongue around, then laughed with delight, beholding the grand smudge he’d made.
“Boys,” Katy groaned. Michelle’s neck and ears grew warm. She shifted in her seat. She forced a smile at Katy, who continued with what she had been talking about. Michelle was distracted. She wondered what happened to her formerly assiduous and willful friend. She questioned her own motivation for reconnecting with this woman from her past. But she quickly righted her mind. It was her manner not to judge harshly or too soon. She could suffer a little distastefulness while awaiting encouraging signs. There was likely another side of the coin. In disputes among students, or between students and coaches, or between parents and students, there were always two sides of the story, and neither was the absolute truth. This equanimity had served Michelle well throughout her life.
Filling the gap in their shared past, she believed, would surely round out the picture and bring a sense of harmony. At Katy’s prompting, Michelle described her life since college, the years which she regarded with such clear delineation, like blocks of time: a year in Madison, waitressing for money to live on, figuring things out; the murderous months living with her mother back in Groveland while settling into a career; the eight years teaching; the year since then as a secretary. It was all utterly clear cut.
“What have you been doing?” Michelle said, ignoring Emily’s still-flickering anger, which she felt was resentment for her presence. But Katy’s reply was nothing like she’d anticipated. It was scattered, imprecise, and lacking a thread of self-awareness. Or else it was greatly filtered. She seemed confused by recalling events and tying them together.
“Well, I didn’t stay in Madison, obviously. Josh and I split up. I came back here, and that was…like, nehhh.” Katy made a “so-so” sound. “It didn’t take long before I met Paul. Then we got married. That was seven years ago. God, can that be right? You know, he’s gone from marketing at General Mills to where he is now, Carlson Companies. He likes it there. It’s really great for him. And then Emily came and we had to figure out Matthew’s school situation, so we moved here.”
“You didn’t want to send him to Groveland Park?”
“Oh, Lord no! Get real.”
“Hmm.”
“God, college was so long ago, but not. It’s like it’s right there.
“Yeah.”
“It was such a crazy time!”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes! God!”
“No. We were tame. We went to one kegger. All we did was study.”
“Yes, but the way we lived. That little apartment. The squalor. We had no money…Say, I haven’t shown you around the house! You’re going to love it. Come on. Matthew, watch Emily!”
It was a house for giants. Michelle felt shrunken. The doorways were wider, the windows taller, the ceilings higher, the couches puffier, even the handrails thicker. Everywhere one was surrounded by quantities of empty space. Several rooms were furnished but looked unused. Under the frightening sterility, however, Michelle perceived the allure—an anonymity, an undemanding plainness, like a hotel. There was comfort in that. Standing on the thick carpet, she felt as if she was atop a bed, like she could throw herself to the ground and get up unharmed.
They went out the lower level in back, into a verdant yard. Matthew followed and mounted a miniature SUV with a whining motor. He drove around crashing into his other toys, for some reason narrating his exploits aloud like a play-by-play announcer—“The driver crashes with the dump truck! He cannot get away.” His sister followed after him, imploring, “Stop! Matthew, stop!” Stop driving, stop crashing, or stop narrating? Michelle didn’t understand.
The women stood and chatted, Katy pointing around to the neighboring houses. “Over there is Roger and Anne, they’re great. In the blue house is Linda and Gary, they’re great. And Brian and Stephanie, they’re great.”
Katy suggested a walk, but Michelle said she had to go. She drove home in silence, feeling like she’d visited another planet. She stepped into her apartment and dropped her keys in the dish with a sigh. At first her wood floors and antique fixtures looked old; the small rooms felt cramped. But it wore off. She went to the porch, sank into the wicker chair, and held her book in her lap a while before opening it. She watched a high bough swaying, and the cottonwood fluff, like snow, descending. In the distance, a rake scratched rhythmically. Someone burned leaves.
* * *
There were difficulties with Nerese that helped Michelle accept the changes in Katy that evidently came with parenthood. Michelle tried to get the family to take action on Nerese’s teeth. Tonya shrugged and said she hadn’t noticed anything. Michelle explained that there was a public assistance program to pay for dental care. “I’ll think about it,” Tonya said. The whole issue, in fact, drove a wedge. Tonya must have felt like she was being accused of being bad mother, because shortly after this, she retaliated. Michelle cancelled once, due to a family obligation—and then the following Saturday, Tonya “forgot” about Michelle coming. When Michelle arrived, Nerese was away at her grandmother’s for a sleepover. Tonya made no apology.
Nerese’s family’s phone was shut off once, Michelle wasn’t able to reach them, and Nerese’s mother made no effort to keep in contact. The family had no problem reaching her, though, when needing money: in November, the grandmother called asking for help to pay the electricity. Foolishly, Michelle gave it, with a sinking feeling that she was crossing the boundary. Tonya never answered back about the dentist. What she talked about most now was her wish that Damone had a mentor too. This idea she always left hanging, as if Michelle should snatch it up and make it happen.
The money was not repaid, but that was okay. It was a pittance on Michelle’s salary. More important was the unfortunate fact that it changed the dynamic. Michelle made all the effort, and Nerese’s family made none. Sure, Tonya told Michelle, “Nerese is always talking about you. Michelle this, Michelle that. Saturday morning, she’s up at seven. I’m like, ‘Child, she ain’t gonna be here till noon!” But the family also teased Nerese about her special friend, made her feel embarrassed for needing love. When Michelle came in the doorway, dropping Nerese off, they said, “What books did ya’ll get?” eyeing Nerese’s new armful. They sneered as if it was a type of rat she’d brought in the house. All Michelle could do was tell herself that Nerese gained from the experience, but once again, it was her giving everything, swimming upstream, wading against the current, throwing her weight into it.
These ups and downs endured for a whole season. Dealings with the family were fraught with ambiguity and tensions, little power plays and passive maneuvers. Nerese’s sociability improved, and she ate carrots and could do handstands and cartwheels, and there was trust—but always some new problem arose stemming from the household. Most appalling was how Tonya saw no need for Nerese to join an advanced reading group, but had signed her up for dance lessons, for her to learn to “shake her booty.” Nevertheless, Michelle gamely persisted. She drove through the snow to pick up Nerese, looked up new cookie recipes for them to try, and paid the library fines when Nerese’s books were lost or Damone trashed them.
Now that she was a secretary, she had an abundance of energy for these hassles. It was a fraction of the hardship she had endured and the will she had summoned daily to corral the attentions of 25 students at any one time.
* * *
Michelle and Katy got together for coffee every other month. It was clear they were quite different now than they’d been back at UW, and it saddened Michelle they wouldn’t be—couldn’t be—as close again. But it wasn’t only that. Frankly seeing her was exhausting. Even when Katy drove in to the city and they walked to Nina’s, their visit was dominated by Katy’s attendance to Matthew and Emily, attempting to keep them fed, happy, clean and quiet. Conversation was like reporting from the streets of Bagdad or something—the machine-gun fire of Katy’s corrective asides interrupting every other sentence. Matthew, could you not stand on the chair, please? Emily, Mommy doesn’t want you to lick that.
But it wasn’t only unruliness. A curious sense of enclosure surrounded Katy and her brood. It was like the children didn’t see other adults—the café staffperson bringing the booster chair, or Michelle herself, towards whom they acted aloof. Michelle supposed that as a friend of their mother, once removed from the disrespected, she garnered no respect herself. Environments fared no better. The solemnity of Nina’s, full of studying students, writers, and readers, didn’t seem to register in their minds as something to conform to. Territories were an extension of a world that was theirs to discover, ravage, and disown. Katy resided within this bubble, too. Maybe it was a requirement for staying close to her beloved children, to keep them safe. Or maybe she’d created it.
One Saturday, sitting with Katy on the settee at Nina’s, Michelle tried to salvage a friendly chat, one that rewarded the distance Katy had come.
Katy, in her usual summative manner, said, “The kids are doing great. Matthew really likes school, and he’s getting good reports. He’s got a best buddy now, his friend Jonah. He’s sweet. They had their first sleepover. Emily is doing great at TutorTots. She got a prize on Friday for good behavior. And she loves Ms. Nelson—don’t you, honey?” Michelle couldn’t reconcile these tales of agreeable progress with what she saw before her: the two children squirming across the furniture, disinterested in the café’s children’s magazines, doing violence to each other, their moods flashing from rage to despair to abjection.
Feeling deceived, made a dupe, Michelle vowed to reciprocate the veiled selectiveness of truth.
“How are you?” Katy asked. “How are things with Nerese?”
“They’re great,” Michelle said, disappointed in this as a lie. Things were great. Though not great the way Katy meant great. There were challenges with Nerese, but challenges were to be expected. Between Nerese and herself tenderness and friendship prevailed. “Nerese told me she wants to be a teacher when she grows up.” This was true too, and Michelle was annoyed that she couldn’t dissemble in return.
“Really? That’s so sweet. Does she know you’re not a teacher anymore?”
“Yes.”
“How old is she again?”
“Eight now. She was seven when I started seeing her.”
“Hmm. I thought she was six.”
“Matthew is six, not Nerese.”
“It’s weird though, you know—eight, and you never had to do diapers, teething, potty training.”
“She’s not my child, Katy.” Michelle sensed, as she had at other times, that her friend felt cheated, like Michelle had jumped ahead in line, unfairly bypassing the motherly traumas.
“You know what I mean. So but it’s good? It’s going great?”
“Yeah, great. We have fun. She loves to bake. We’ve done every kind of cookie there is. It’s probably time to move up to bread or cakes. We hang out my place, we read, we do art projects.”
“Don’t you take her anywhere? She must get bored. Out by us, there’s this iMax theater. My kids love it. You lie down under the screen, it surrounds you, it’s 3-D.”
“Nerese actually doesn’t like movies. The television is always on at her house, and it bothers her. Anyway, we’ve gone to Como Zoo and the Science Center.” That was a lie, they hadn’t gone to either. They did go to the Raptor Center once, a rehab facility at the university, which Michelle knew of because it was near the fairgrounds and her great-Uncle’s park. But Nerese had been frightened of the falcons and eagles.
“This isn’t TV. She’d love it.”
“She’s a bit shy at new places.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. There’s other kids there. She could make friends.”
Michelle’s blood pressure rose. “It really isn’t her thing.”
“All the more reason. Kids have to be challenged.”
This was an audacious assertion coming from Katy. Michelle took a deep breath and drank her tea. She was exhausted with competition already, though glimpsing how it comes about was edifying. It appeared to her as a natural outcropping of duplicity. When you can say anything you want, claim any circumstance, the stakes easily get raised. But she felt unmoored, adrift in social pretension, and it made her nauseous.
Now an awkward silence bloomed between the women, shameful to Michelle, considering what they’d once been—educated women of integrity, feminists, aspiring careerists. Matthew and Emily, standing beside the coffee table, began to fuss. Matthew had a hold of Emily’s wrist, twisting it. Emily held something out of his reach. Michelle excused herself to use the restroom. When she came out, Katy and Matthew were squabbling over something to do with the boy’s windbreaker hood. This niggling and suffering seemed their routine interchange—a baseline connection of controlling care and miserable need. Michelle went to the café counter and stared into the case of scones and muffins. She pondered whether she would see Katy again. She admonished herself to pity her friend and not look down on her. But it was hard.
Then a voice behind her spoke: “Ms. McLellan!”
Michelle immediately recognized a former student from her first year of teaching, Natalie Mahoney. Not a great student, as Michelle remembered, but on the plus side of the divide. The girl had pushed herself, shown integrity, not rebelled or opted out. She had grown—the baby fat fallen away, taller.
“Oh my God, hi!” the young woman said with wide eyes.
“Natalie, hi! How are you?”
“You remember my name!”
“Of course.”
“You’re so amazing. You must know a thousand names and faces.”
“Oh, teachers don’t forget.” Michelle said, smiling now.
“Gosh, how are you? This is my friend Greta.” Natalie indicated the young woman beside her.
“Hi,” Greta said, from behind snaky bangs and bright orange eyeglasses.
“How are you? How’s G.H.?” Natalie continued. “I heard Mr. Dupree retired.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Michelle, with a hint of dispassion. She paused. “I left.”
“What? No! Ms. McLellan!”
“Yeah. I made a career change.”
“How could you? You were, like, the best teacher ever! Greta, tell her—I’m always talking about Ms. McLellan.”
“She is, for sure!” Greta said.
“Lean into the discomfort,” Natalie said.
“Lean into the discomfort. That’s right,” Michelle said, a convulsive breathy laugh passing through her. She had forgotten about this mantra she’d made up for Composition, to get kids over the hump of composing a thesis. She had forgotten about it, but had continued to live by it.
“Man, I can’t believe it. What are you doing now?”
“Now I work at a law firm.” Embarrassment crept up and surprised her—her neck felt splotchy.
“A law firm? Really?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Parsing this was too much to deal with today, being already in the thick of it with Katy and her kids. She dissembled. “It’s a managerial position.” This was a lie. It wasn’t a managerial position. “Downtown.” As if that added prestige.
I’m a secretary now, she heard in her head. Her mind worked that way, always coughing up the truth anyway.
“Wow,” Natalie said, with dimmed spirits. She looked like she’d just learned her dog had been hit by a car. “That’s a tragedy. You’re wasting your talent.”
“You’re sweet. But it was taking a toll.” Michelle became aware of Katy looking her direction, searching for her. Michelle looked over to the couch where Katy sat, twisted around to face the buying area. Their eyes met. A tight smile sprang to Katy’s face, like a cable being tensioned. She made a doddering kind of half-formed nod, and turned away robotically. Michelle could see Katy’s confliction, her recognition that Michelle was speaking to someone else, that she was known here, that Groveland was still her neighborhood. She was integrated, a fixture, and Katy was not. Michelle perceived this in an instant, as she had perceived the social dynamics of the passing middle-schoolers outside a window. Katy’s reluctant nod implied jealousy and regret and an impulse to listen in and feel a part vicariously. Decorum be damned, but she’d been busted. It wasn’t her place.
“I’m sorry,” Michelle said to Natalie, facing her again. She touched the girl’s forearm. “What about you?” Michelle always was a master at directing conversation.
“Gosh, everything’s happening right now. I just got engaged, like, what was it—” She turned to Greta. “Three days ago?”
“Two,” Greta said.
“Two, I guess. Everything’s kind of a whirl right now.”
“That’s great!” Michelle said. “Congratulations.”
“He just got hired — Tim just got hired— at General Mills.”
“Tim Sanderson?”
“No, no! Tim DeVorst. He didn’t go to Groveland. We met at college. Tim Sanderson!” Natalie scoffed.
“Sorry. It’s been a long time. Hey, do you live around here?” Michelle realized they might be neighbors.
“Actually, I close on a house next week. I’m taking Greta there now to see it. We’re just getting coffee — it’s a long drive. It’s out in Orono.”
“Orono…South?” Michelle hesitantly ventured.
“No, it’s like out past Maple Grove. You get on 94 and go west, and then, like…” She turned to Greta. “Then what do we do?” She laughed.
“I don’t know. It’s your house!” Greta said, laughing.
“I can’t think right now!” Natalie laughed and lurched forward from the neck like an ostrich, as if to describe the absurdity of not knowing one’s own home. Michelle recognized the girl’s mannerism from eight years ago. Strange how it persisted. “It’s, like, 94 west,” Natalie staggered on. “Then um…”
Michelle held her eyes patiently, like a good teacher. Natalie implored her friend to help.
“Don’t look at me!” Greta said, blushing, like young people do when their friends are on the spot and screw up.
A screech rang out in the room—Emily. Behind the young women, Michelle saw Katy stand, hoist a bag strap over her shoulder, and grab Emily’s hand. She made an exasperated face, and an apologetic gesture toward the door.
“I guess we just keep going,” Natalie said. “And going and going and going!”
Michelle faced Natalie with an open countenance, waiting to understand. ∯