The Ghosts of Lovely Women Page 7

  Who was in my apartment? I wondered as my voice sang. Was this a random robbery? Or — I dreaded the thought but made myself look at it — could Richard have been there? If so, why? What could he possibly have been looking for? I had made sure to give him back all of his possessions.

  Another thought occurred to me. Had I really lost my key? Or had someone taken it? And if they had, who would have done it? It would have to have been someone at St. James, because I hadn’t been around any other people since work. It could have been a student — I didn’t always lock my classroom. It could have been a colleague, but that seemed very far-fetched. It could have been a staff member, but why? Why?

  Nothing made sense. If it was a random person looking for money, how had they gotten in without breaking the lock? It hadn’t looked disturbed, and my neighbors would have heard the ruckus if it had been.

  No, this just wasn’t making any sense. I realized, looking down, that I had a sleeping boy against me. I didn’t want to risk waking him up, so I stayed where I was, enjoying the feeling of a baby’s embrace. He was warm, and he smelled nice, like powder and crackers.

  I rested my head against his and wondered if I would ever have children. I wondered what time Lucky and Matt would reach Vail. I wondered how Jessica had set up her website without help from some computer-type person. I wondered…

  When I woke up Derek was standing in front of me, smiling. “Good job,” he said. “He always goes to sleep better for girls.” He took the chubby boy from me and slung him over his shoulder. I feared that Charlie would wake up, but he was zonked out. Derek set him in the crib with practiced ease. I stood up and moved back into his living room.

  When he joined me I said, “I didn’t mean to barge into your room. I was looking for a quiet place.”

  “Understood.” His smile, I realized, always held a quality of reassurance. “The police are at your apartment and the intruder is gone. They need you over there — I asked my neighbor to sit with Charlie until we get back.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not letting you go there alone.”

  “Uh— okay. I really appreciate that.”

  We waited for Derek’s neighbor, a tall young woman with freckles and blonde hair, and then went downstairs, I with a sudden weariness. I longed for the silence of my apartment, but it wasn’t going to be silent; a part of me never wanted to go in it again. I wondered how I could possibly feel safe in there tonight. I clutched my dog’s leash and he stayed close at our heels, not ready for an instant to be left in a stranger’s place.

  On the way I thought out loud. “Derek, my key was missing. And although I have an ex-boyfriend who could be on a short list of suspects, I have changed the lock since he and I broke up. I feel like someone at St. James stole the key. I don’t — I’ve never locked my classroom door. I guess that’s stupid, but I’ve never had anyone steal anything. Maybe someone took the key and broke into my place. And the weird thing is—”

  “Yeah?”

  “I— Rosalyn Baxter was asking for Jessica’s journal today. And I was carrying it around. Anyone could have seen me with it — I know Jessica’s mother did. I’m just rambling, but I’m thinking, and that’s the only thing someone wanted from me. That journal.” I lifted my purse. “This journal.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “But that can’t be right, right? They wouldn’t ransack my apartment for a journal?”

  “One thing at a time. Let’s talk to the police.”

  An officer with a crew cut approached us in my lobby. “Ma’am,” he said, nodding at me.

  We went upstairs together, where another officer waited. It didn’t look as bad as I feared, but it looked bad enough: drawers left open with the contents dangling out; closet doors open and boxes, bags turned over; my clothing strewn around the room. It was a violation. I shivered. Derek put an arm around me. “I’ll help you clean it up,” he said.

  Nothing valuable was missing, as far as I could tell on my brief tour of the premises. I went through the whole thing with the police. Told them my name, my occupation, my little problem with my key. “I’ll have to check if it’s at work tomorrow, but there’s always the chance, I guess, that someone took it out of my purse. I keep my house key separate from my car key, but no one really knows that. Except—” I felt my skin heating as I came to an embarrassing realization.

  “Yes?”

  “It— uh— has a keychain attached to it. It’s in the shape of a little house. I guess that could be a kind of giveaway for anyone going through my purse. But it could be on my desk. If it is, then I don’t know how the person got into my apartment, or why they messed it up.”

  I had told Derek on the walk over that I didn’t want to mention the journal, because that could well just be my paranoia and entirely unrelated to the breakin.

  So the officers left with my information and a warning that I should get a new lock. They said they would keep me apprised of any leads. I thanked them, watched them leave, then turned to Derek, summoning up all of my courage. “Well, you should get back to Charlie. What if he wakes up?”

  Derek shook his head. “You’re coming, too. The last thing you need to do right now is stay in this mess while you’re shaken up. And before you do anything here, you need to read the journal. If it’s innocuous, you can remove it from your list of motives for the breakin. But you need to find out. Come read it at my place.” He took my hand and I let myself be led back outside. P.G. followed again; I’m sure he was getting sick of all the walking around and missed his nice, worn-in, creaky basket.

  But life sometimes intrudes; I had to know what was in that journal.

  Ten

  “But it’ll be different after this. Playtime’s over. Now for the schooling.”

  —Torvald, A Doll’s House, Act III

  Derek tossed some giant pillows on his floor and we lay side-by-side, reading Jessica Halliday’s words. “Quite a writer,” he said. “Do all your students write this well?”

  “Lord, no.” We were munching almonds from a little dish he’d put between us, and I found myself, once again, feeling quite comfortable with him, which was especially odd considering the circumstances.

  “Jessica was an exception. But I always have a few really good writers and thinkers. Some with occasional bursts of insight. Others whose writing is just dreadful.”

  “Sounds about right.”

  “Thank you for helping me. I didn’t mean to interrupt you and Charlie. Does he live here?”

  Some of my hair had fallen over my left eye. He reached out to put it back behind my ear. His fingers were very gentle. “He sleeps over sometimes. My sister is a single mom, and she’s going to school at night, trying to get her degree. She’s almost there. I have to give her credit — she was going in what I feared was a bad direction, but Charlie came along and she got serious. She’ll graduate next year, and she’ll find a good job, and that will be good for her and the boy. Meanwhile, she needs me, which is why I took the job at St. James. I can be here for Charlie when necessary, and she won’t have to worry about leaving him with a stranger. She’s a good mom; she dotes on him and she worries.”

  “He’s very sweet.”

  “He is.”

  “So your sister — she has a place in the city?”

  “Yeah, and the DePaul campus is right near her apartment. So when she has a class that will go late, she gives Charlie to me and then goes straight home to do homework and crash. Then she picks him up bright and early, and I go to work.”

  “It’s good that she has you. And good that you have them.”

  “You have siblings?” he asked.

  “Yeah, two. Will and Lucky.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Lucretia. We don’t know what my parents were thinking.”

  He laughed, showing me his nice teeth. He grabbed another almond and handed me the last one. “Should I get some more of these? Brain food.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Should w
e read, then?”

  “In a minute,” I said, and I kissed him. I’d been wanting to kiss him since lunchtime, when he’d smiled at me in that sexy way. Apparently he’d been wanting it, too, because he leaned in and kissed me back, and the result was very, very nice — warm, sensual, slow. And almond-flavored.

  “Teddy, I like you,” he said against my mouth.

  “Good.”

  “Let’s read,” he finally said, pulling away and staring at the notebook. “You’re distracting me from my good guy intentions.”

  I laughed, and we read. We read about Jessica’s problems with The Tempest; how Prospero the magician was heroic in everything except his manipulation of his own daughter. “How dare he use his magic to put her to sleep?” Jessica wrote. “How dare he play with her that way, only waking her when she wasn’t going to be in his way? If we read one more book with an egotistical, overbearing man, I’m going to lose it! I meet enough of them in my own life, God knows.”

  “This is it,” I said. “You can see it happening here — her desire to rebel, her desire to assert her womanhood against some perceived patriarchy-imposed role.”

  “Perceived?”

  “Well, I mean things aren’t as bad now as they were in these books. And what she chose to do isn’t a solution to the problem that is bothering her.”

  “No,” he said.

  We read some more. How Jessica understood the notion of forgiveness at the end of The Tempest, but didn’t think it was realistic that Prospero forgave. “I think a woman would be more likely to forgive than he would. His ego is just as big as his criminal brother’s. I can’t imagine that he could just let it go.”

  A few weeks later we had started A Doll’s House, and Jessica had naturally filled the pages with her resentment of Nora’s domineering husband and domineering men in general. “I’d like to meet Ibsen, though,” she admitted in one paragraph. “He seems to get it. I’ll bet his wife was a feminist.” Later, she wrote, “That’s it. Torvald has pushed me over the edge. He tells Nora “How like a woman!” whenever he wants to diminish her. Her words, her thoughts, mean nothing to him. She’s just supposed to be pretty, a thing. Rosalyn and I have been talking a lot about this. We’re in Oklahoma! together and we talk at rehearsal, and I’ve told her all about this play. She and I have come up with a plan… and it’s a really good one. This play is making me realize how literature can affect real life. It’s changing me. It’s changing me in a profound way.”

  In the margin I had written “Good for you, Jessica!”

  I blushed as I felt Derek’s eyes on me. “What a stupid comment. If only I knew what she had been thinking. I should have asked her. I probably thought she just meant this in a general way. I mean, literature is supposed to change them. That’s why we make them read it.”

  “Why do you feel guilty? Look what a great teacher you are! Reading all these things meticulously, more than a hundred of them probably, and making little marks of encouragement in the margins. There are teachers in my very department who collect papers and never read them. They go through the motions.”

  His jaw tightened as he said it, and I sensed there were going to be some big changes in social science under his leadership. “But you — you make an impression without ever realizing it. This girl called you. She wanted you to visit her in college.”

  “That was just something to say,” I said. “I never would have gone to New York just to see Jessica. If I had been in New York for something else, though, then I might have tried to find her and say hello.”

  “Still,” he said. “Don’t be embarrassed for caring. For encouraging her.”

  I shrugged. “The website still doesn’t make sense. Look at this girl: she’s a full-blown feminist. She’s a young woman who is enraged by the notions of inequality, oppression, and abused power. So she decides to combat that by undressing for men?”

  “It doesn’t fit,” he agreed.

  We read the rest of the journal. Jessica had plenty more to say about the books, about men, women, equality, friends, family, life. Nothing else stood out glaringly except her reference to Rosalyn and her “plan,” which they were going to initiate after the play ended.

  “Huh,” Derek said. “Which is why she gave you the card even before she went to school.”

  “Nora’s Revenge,” I said.

  Jessica’s journal also made a reference to Danny Washburn and the fact that he was a worthwhile boy because he was nothing like Torvald in A Doll’s House, but was willing to let a girl have ideas, and even to have her own power. “Danny lets me be the boss sometimes,” she said. “And sometimes I let him. It’s what every couple should do if they want to maintain their happiness. And Danny has recently proved his loyalty so well that I felt like it was an anti-Doll’s House moment.”

  “Proved his loyalty,” I said. My eyes felt heavy as I forced them to process line after line of Jessica’s curly handwriting.

  “You need some rest,” he said, standing up. I held up my hand so he could help me out of my prone position. “We’ve seen the journal. We know that you need to talk to Rosalyn and Danny — or maybe the police or the administration should talk to them.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “I don’t want you to go back to your place tonight. What if whoever was there decided to return?”

  I had been afraid of this myself. “I can lock my door.”

  “They might have your key.”

  I nodded, hating the thought.

  “I have a guest room. Charlie’s crib is in my room — he won’t bother you. The guest room is where Cindy — that’s my sister — stays when she crashes here. It’s got a nice comfortable bed. And I promise not to visit you in the night, appealing as that seems.”

  I didn’t know Derek that well; and yet in two days I felt I’d come to know him better than I had ever really known Richard. Some people are what they seem to be.

  “I would normally go to my sister. She happens to be out of town.”

  “This is more convenient. Let me do this for you.”

  I wanted to kiss him again, but it was a weird night and a weird time. The romantic stuff could wait. “I appreciate it. But morning comes so early, and my school bag is at my place—”

  “Call in tomorrow and say you’ll miss period one. That will give us time to go there, call a locksmith, clean up a few things. After school I’ll go back with you and help some more.”

  “Derek — I appreciate all of this very much, but you’re really sticking your neck out for me. You’re probably busy with a million things—”

  “Do me a favor,” he said, pulling me against him. “Don’t think that way. I’m helping you because you need help, but also for selfish reasons. Very selfish.”

  So I kissed him again despite my intentions, and it was even nicer this time, because I pushed my hands up into his abundant hair and enjoyed the cool spring breeze that breathed in from his half open window, contrasting nicely with the warm lips that were heating me up inside.

  Then I stepped back and smiled at him. “Got a spare toothbrush?” I asked.

  Eleven

  “This secret… my joy and pride… I don’t know much about laws, but I’m sure that somewhere in the books these things are allowed…”

  —Nora, A Doll’s House, Act I

  I fell asleep almost instantly in Derek’s guest room, but on Wednesday morning I felt the awkwardness of the situation, especially when he had to come in and wake me up because there was no alarm in the guest room. He saw, even before we officially had a first date, my morning hair, perhaps even got a whiff of my morning breath. I thanked him, pretending that I was fully awake even though I was still half asleep. I think he was laughing at me when he left the room and quietly shut the door.

  In his bathroom I saw a neat counter holding only a toothbrush holder (one of Derek’s, a tiny one for Charlie with Batman’s face on it, and a new one still in its case which he had taken out for me) and a soap dispenser. I hunted for
toothpaste; the drawers under the counter were much less neat, with lots of women’s things mixed with Derek’s manly razor blades and aftershave. Cindy’s things? Someone else’s? There were scarves and earrings and a vial of perfume. In the second drawer (the toothpaste wasn’t in the first) I saw a pair of nylons and some makeup, even a delicate woman’s watch. I located the toothpaste and pushed on the drawer, then pulled it again when I saw something in one corner; it was a book by Dr. Janice Foster. Janice Foster. She had written the book that Jessica had given me — the one Derek had criticized so harshly. I paused, then closed the drawer.

  I shed my clothes quickly and took a shower. As I stood naked in the spray I felt vulnerable, as though Derek might come bursting in at any moment, and yet I trusted that he would not, realizing that I could not have assumed the same of Richard.

  Derek had showed me a closet the evening before with some of Cindy’s spare clothes, and I’d selected a pair of cotton pants and a green T-shirt. A bit casual, but I doubted my students would see much difference from my style. I didn’t want to have to go through my own clothes, violated as I felt by the idea that a stranger’s hands had touched them, searched them, thrown them on the floor. I wanted to wash everything I owned in scalding hot water.

  Derek heard me leave the bathroom and called to me from his kitchen. “A quick breakfast before we go?” he asked.

  “Just coffee if you have it. I can feed us at my place maybe.”

  I went into his kitchen surrounded in paradox: I felt both at home and awkwardly out of place.

  “I thought you didn’t like Janice Foster,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The writer. The psychologist. You have a book of hers in your bathroom drawer. I was getting toothpaste and I saw it.”