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  “I wonder if you could stop by my office. I’d like to have a chat.” A chat. God. Beware the Chat.

  “Sure. Like in…” I look at Clay. “Oh, ten minutes? Will that do?” He’s rubbing his forehead as if he’s got a migraine.

  “Sounds perfect. See you then.” Her voice rises on “then” with an almost shrill effervescence, and for a moment I wish to God she was a gruff, patriarchal man-boss, the sort who barked, “My office, Bloom. Now.”

  I hang up and stare at Clay, feeling sick and not bothering to hide it. “She’s going to fire me, isn’t she?”

  “It’s not that bad—really—she wouldn’t do that. All she’s got is Monica’s allegations, which were all gathered from your students—”

  “Students, or student?” I ask, hating Ralene Tippets with such passion I’m convinced I could commit homicide with a smile.

  “I don’t know for sure. Someone went to Monica and then she started snooping around, but she hasn’t got any hard evidence.”

  “I’m not sleeping with Ben Crow,” I whisper. “You know that, right?”

  He shrugs. “It’s none of my business—I just thought you should be armed with information.”

  “Oh, my God,” I say. “Of course I’m not sleeping with him—I’m not sleeping with anyone.” I bite my lip. Oops.

  He grins at me, maddeningly cool in the face of my panic. “Is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Smiley, and don’t look so smug about it, either. If it weren’t for you—” I glance toward the door and consciously lower my voice, leaning toward him to hiss, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess. So stop gloating.”

  “I’m not gloating. I’m trying to help.”

  “Yes. Okay. I see that. Sorry.” I start gnawing at a cuticle, terrified. “I told you I’m not cut out for this. I can’t believe Monica would turn my students against me.”

  “She doesn’t want you here. I’ve never seen her like this. She’s gotten ruthless since that—” He hesitates. “That morning.”

  A pulse of heat throbs through me at the thought of our limbs braided together, but then the reality of Monica’s revenge cools it. “Did she come right out and tell you she’s trying to get me fired?”

  “I know some people in the department—they tipped me off. When I confronted Monica she didn’t deny it, exactly, she just tried to spin it all professional and businesslike.”

  I can feel my face contorting with this fresh wave of information. “So other people think I’m—that Ben and I are—does the whole department assume…?”

  “Rumors, okay? That’s all it is right now—just hearsay. So explain your side to Ruth and stick to your guns.”

  The urge to hyperventilate assails me, but I take a deep breath and close my eyes. He’s right. I haven’t done anything wrong. Monica Parker and Ralene Tippets can go fuck themselves. I’m a good teacher—maybe a little raw, a lot to learn, but I’ve got an instinct for it, and I’m compassionate, which is more than I can say for Monica Stick-Up-Her-Ass Parker or Esther Too-Tall Small. What did Ben just say? He said I’m spontaneous—and he’s right. I’ve got that on my side. Half the geriatrics around here wouldn’t know a fresh idea if it French-kissed them. Now go defend yourself.

  “Okay,” I say softly, standing. “I better go. She’s waiting.”

  “Right. You’ll do great. But…Claudia?” He looks painfully uncomfortable, all of a sudden. “There’s one more thing I should mention, before you talk to her.” He stands and shoves his fingers into his Levi’s pockets, letting his thumbs hang out; he won’t meet my gaze.

  “What is it?”

  “I wanted to tell you this before, but I didn’t know how you’d take it.” There’s a long, elastic pause, as our eyes meet and a thousand impulses pinball between us—sparks leaping and spiraling off, like little meteors—urges without names, only salty flavors and tangy smells.

  “You know—Westby?” he says finally.

  I nod. Of course I know her—what is he…?

  “She’s my mother.”

  “Claudia, come in. Have a seat. We haven’t really talked since I did your evaluation.”

  Hearing that word, I have to wrestle with a powerful instinct to run screaming from the room. I barely made it through that without pissing my pants. There was Ruth Westby in her fashionable tortoiseshell glasses, her short hair gleaming silver in the back of my classroom, her perfectly unreadable face reminding me of my father’s—her eyes every bit as cryptic, her mouth a flat line of infinite variables, which no equation can yield.

  And after the classroom observation was over, I’d waited a week for the results. When summoned, I’d trudged to her office with quick-drying concrete in my belly, sure she was going to give me my walking papers (“You call this thing you’re doing instruction?”), I tried not to whimper profuse apologies and excuses. I just knew that the careful mask she’d worn as she watched me flailing and striving before my students would fall away as her office door clicked shut, and I would be face-to-face with her naked scorn.

  Instead, in her mild, expressionless way, she had given me her stamp of approval. At least I think she did. She suggested I use the board more. She liked how I “got everyone involved” (although no one could have missed Ralene’s moping reluctance to participate in nearly everything, except the critiques—Ralene loved to critique). In short, she signed my evaluation and effectively labeled me satisfactory until proved otherwise.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the eerie sense that Ruth Westby was the sort of woman who revealed exactly nothing, and therefore praise or criticism were all the same, falling from her lips. Everything she said was opaque; she used her words to hide rather than reveal, always with the same polite precision.

  I would have preferred a good whipping.

  “So. How are you getting along here? Do you like it all right?”

  I start to answer, but it comes out as a squeak, so I clear my throat and begin again. “I do. I love it here.”

  She leans back in her plush leather desk chair and folds her hands neatly in her lap. She’s wearing a pale blue suit—wool gabardine, I believe—tasteful lipstick (muted rust) and pearl earrings. I try to imagine her giving birth to Clay Parker: knees splayed wide, panting and moaning, glazed all over in sweat, his slippery head forcing its way into the doctor’s latex grip.

  “And your classes are almost over, of course—are you eager to start winter break?” She arranges her mouth into a small, conversational smile.

  “Well, it’s a good time to recharge, reorganize, I guess.” Translation: to lie around and stuff my face with See’s candy.

  There’s a pause as she gazes at me over her glasses, and then her right eye blinks furiously—as fast as a hummingbird’s wing—before resuming its previous, unblinking pose, making me think I’ve imagined it. But no—there it is again. It flutters with remarkable speed, while the rest of her face remains motionless and composed, apparently unaware of the rogue eye’s resistance to frozen order.

  Is she nervous? Somehow this thought injects me with a tentative dose of courage.

  “So,” I say, leaning forward a bit. I hold her gaze. The language of deference is intricate—I have to show her I’m not cowing, nor am I challenging. Every actor knows that our faces and bodies are perpetually negotiating the balance of power. Who’s on top now? Who’s on bottom? “What did you want to see me about?”

  Again, a long, icy pause. Her eye does its thing and I feel another surge of confidence.

  “Am I in trouble?” I ask, sounding more irreverent than contrite. Well, shit. Does she have to torture me like this?

  “Are you familiar with William Ball’s A Sense of Direction?”

  “Sure.” I thumbed through it when I found it on Jonathan’s dresser once. Promptly fell asleep.

  “Do you recall his emphasis on unity as the defining characteristic of art?”

  I just nod. I actually sort of do remember that. It was on the first page,
I think. Maybe Westby didn’t get very far in it, either. Why doesn’t she just come out and ask me: are you fucking Ben Crow?

  “Well, I look at my department in a similar light. I see everyone teaching here as the various components of an ongoing performance. And when Bill Ball talks about unity, he’s not just talking about the performers working together, he’s talking about the audience believing in what they see so that actors and audience alike are caught up in—” and here she slows down, hitting each syllable with great emphasis, like a drummer pounding out the final notes of a song “—the same, unified spell.”

  She takes off her glasses and squints at me. “In our case, the students form the audience—they must believe in us, because we believe in our performance. We are professionals. We are not pretending to be professionals. We actually are. At least we are when we step foot on this campus.” She has gradually inched her way forward throughout this speech, until she’s flattened herself against the edge of her desk in what appears to be a painful position. “Do you consider yourself a professional, Claudia?”

  “Sure.” Gulp. Scary woman. Very Scary.

  “And are you comfortable with the responsibilities this entails?” There goes the eye again—a prolonged flutter this time, a spasmodic moth caught in a too-tight space.

  “Dr. Westby, if you’re referring to the incident involving Ralene Tip—“

  “I am referring, Claudia, to professionalism, unity and responsibility. Are you comfortable with each of these concepts?”

  “Er—sure. I guess so.”

  “Do you guess so, or do you know so?”

  I clear my throat and say, in the clearest, calmest voice I can manage, “I know I haven’t violated any tenets of professionalism, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Excellent.” She forms her features into a half smile, tight-lipped and void of joy. “So glad you could come by for this little chat, Claudia. Good luck with finals, and I hope you return refreshed from your break.”

  CHAPTER 17

  After we’ve turned in our final grades, Mare takes me out to celebrate Santa Cruz-style: we go to a yoga class that makes me feel like a defective human pretzel, then soak in her chlorine-free hot tub until our fingers prune up. Her house is nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about thirty minutes from mine. It’s one of those huge-windowed, redwood-deck-type places, and her walls are filled with black-and-white photos of feet.

  “You must like feet,” I say, studying a huge blowup of a big toe.

  “My son,” she says. “He did those.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know you had kids. How old is he?”

  She hands me a cup of tea. We’re in our towels, standing in her kitchen. There’s a leaning tower of dishes in the sink and the tile floor could use a good sweeping, but somehow the mess enhances the atmosphere rather than detracting from it. “He’s twenty-two. I had him pretty young.”

  “Any others?”

  She wraps her long brown fingers around her mug and her ancient eyes turn a shade darker. “My daughter, Kayla, died last year,” she says, her voice low.

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry, Mare.”

  Her eyes flit to me, then back to the floor. “She was, um, in Colorado. On a river-rafting trip. She drowned.” This last part is barely more than a whisper.

  I shake my head, unsure of what to say. Finally, I resort to a cliché provided by years of absorbing bad TV. “How awful for you.”

  We drink our tea and listen to the crickets starting up outside in the dusk.

  “Anyway,” she says, “enough about me. Come in here, sit down and let me grill you about all the juicy gossip I’ve been hearing.”

  “Oh, shit,” I laugh and follow her into the living room. She tosses me a thick, spa-style robe while she throws on her usual dancer-sexy threadbare T-shirt and sweats. We settle into the big suede couches.

  “First things first. Are you or are you not having a torrid affair with the fireman?”

  I scream, “Are you kidding?”

  “Of course I’m not kidding. And tell me the truth, because if you’re going to lie, I guarantee you I can get five or six much more interesting lies at the next faculty meeting.”

  “Mare! He’s a student. Of course not.”

  “Scout’s honor?”

  I sputter indignantly, “What do you take me for? A child molester?”

  “Okay,” she says. “I believe you. Now, question number two. Are you making it with Monica’s ex?”

  “No,” I say, but she looks at me so skeptically I feel compelled to elaborate. “Okay, here’s the deal. I met him before I knew anything about Monica, and we got a little bit involved, and then as soon as I found out he was married, I totally backed off.”

  “But you like him?”

  “Mmm. Yes and no.” I stare out her big windows at the redwoods backlit by flaming pink sky. “I like him, but not enough to alienate everyone around me.”

  “You sure about that?” She looks like she’s trying not to laugh.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I hate to say it, but from the way Monica’s been acting, the damage is already done.”

  “I know,” I say. “She hates me.”

  “Did you know they’re divorced now?”

  “No. Really?”

  “Well, practically. Monica got the papers like a month ago. She must have signed, unless she wants to take him to court.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know that.” I don’t want to dwell on this information right now; I’m already in dangerous waters. It hardly seems appropriate to clap my hands and cry, “Great. Now I can bed her ex!” though I do a feel a pang of something—relief, or excitement. But as much as I like Mare, and instinctively trust her earthy, wise, makeupless face, I’ve learned to keep a layer of secrecy around me when it comes to colleagues. Fat lot of good it does me; they fill in the blanks with their own pornographic fabrications.

  “Are you and Monica friends?”

  She shakes her head. “No. She got mad at me four years ago because I didn’t cast her nephew in the spring dance show. She’s still holding a grudge. I heard it from Esther.” She takes a sip of her tea. “Monica’s okay, but I don’t think she’s big on forgiveness. Not to be dramatic, or anything, but I would watch your back.”

  Later, after Mare has dropped me at home and I’m lying in the dark with Medea, listening to Rose and Rex snore a sweetly off-key duet, I think about Clay Parker.

  Divorced. He’s practically divorced.

  And he’s got the cutest butt in Levi’s I ever saw in real life.

  He did come to my office specifically to save my ass last week.

  And he did tell me the truth, voluntarily, about Ruth Westby being his mother.

  Sure, it took him three months, and naturally the information was supplied well after she had time to hate me for home wrecking, like everyone else on faculty, except with more intensity, since it was her son and daughter-in-law’s home I’d wrecked, her future grandchildren’s existence I’d trampled on and crushed like yesterday’s cigarette butts.

  I listen to the train and to young, girlish laughter on the street, someone calling out to someone else, “Hey, give my cigarettes back!”

  I think of Monica, and try to imagine how she felt when she saw those divorce papers waiting for her signature, a slash of ink to blot out years of her life, to undo the future she must have tasted when she stood in a puffy white dress and said, “I do.”

  How can anyone believe in marriage in the twenty-first century? Didn’t we all listen to our parents bicker while we turned up the volume on Hawaii Five-O? Didn’t we learn the fairy tale was dead when we found half our parental unit shoving their socks and underwear into a suitcase while the other half spit out vile insults?

  Cutest butt in Levi’s ever—swear to God.

  Very cute out of Levi’s, too.

  I mean, look at my parents. Years of misery together, followed by years of misery with others. And still they bravely marry—can y
ou imagine? As if they’ve no choice in the matter.

  My mother’s voice: “Claudia, I don’t marry because I want to, I marry because I find it impossible not to.”

  A tiny sound reaches me, bobbing up through the layers of canine and human snoring, through the hum of the refrigerator and the frantic techno throb of the club two blocks away, tugging me from my random collage of hypnagogic thoughts and fixing me on this: Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I sit up.

  The window. Someone’s tapping on the—

  There’s a flash of something bright in the streetlight—a darting glimmer—then the little tap again. Hail? But it’s been one of those days that make California so freaky, eighty-five degrees and dazzling in mid-December. No, not hail. Too sharp and distinct to be leaves. Miniature kamikaze bats? Even I have to admit this is unlikely.

  I sleep naked when Marco’s not over, but I do keep a pair of old boxers and a tank top near the bed. I glance quickly across the room to confirm it’s just Rose and Rex here tonight, his huge paws draped across her dark spill of hair on the pillow, then, slipping the boxers-and-tank ensemble on, I make my way to the window, crouching low.

  Just as I reach the glass, another tap. Looks like a—penny?

  I’m down on all fours as I peer over the windowsill. On the sidewalk below stands Clay Parker, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, the other poised to toss again. He does, just as I’m opening the window, and the penny hits me hard in the forehead.

  “Ouch,” I cry.

  “Claudia. Is that you?”

  “Almost put my eye out.”

  “Claudia,” he calls again, and I can tell from the wobbly joy in his voice that he’s drunk, though I have to confess a little storm of confetti erupts in my chest just the same, a no-one’s-ever-thrown-pennies-at-my-window giddiness.

  “Yes, Clay?” I say, trying to sound calm, anyway.

  “I’m divorced.”

  I stand there. What’s the proper response to this declaration? Excellent—come inside and let me do you?