Читать книгу Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher - Monica Nolan - Страница 9

“You’re telling me to be a gym teacher? At a girls’ high school?” Astonishment had snapped Bobby out of her usual lethargy and she was sitting straight up in her blue cotton hospital robe, eyes wide and jaw hanging open.

It was June, three months before Bobby stepped off the train in Adena. June, when the as-yet-unheard-of Miss Fayne was exchanging vows with her fiancé. June, when Bobby was trapped in Bay City General Hospital, plodding her way hopelessly through the round of doctor’s appointments, massages, and physical therapy treatments. June, when the sunny weather, the gay cotton dresses the girls wore, the warm smell of mown grass all mocked Bobby as she contemplated the ruins of the dreams she’d dreamed and the plans she’d made. Her accidental fall had shattered them as surely as it had shattered her right humerus.

“You majored in physical education all through college,” Miss Watkins pointed out, in that reasonable, encouraging tone that drove Bobby batty.

The June heat made the hospital vocational counselor’s tiny office unbearably stuffy. A fly buzzed in the corner of the narrow window, blindly searching for a way out.

I’m that fly, Bobby thought, just as trapped. A wave of wretchedness washed over her and she slumped back down, wishing in her misery that a giant fly swatter would splat down on her and end her unhappy life. Miss Watkins was waiting for an answer.

“I don’t have any talent for teaching,” Bobby said. “I only majored in phys ed because, well, it’s what you do when you’re good at sports.”

Hadn’t well-meaning Miss Watkins reviewed her record and seen the mediocre parade of Cs that had trailed her through college? Bobby knew she wasn’t bright. But it hadn’t mattered, so long as she could play field hockey. She’d planned to go pro. The recruiter for the U.S. National Women’s Field Hockey Team had as much as promised her a place on the squad. But who wanted a wing with a compound fracture in the right arm?

Miss Watkins was flipping through Bobby’s academic records, a little furrow in her brow. “But just last semester you took a special graduate-level seminar—Coaching: Team versus Player.” She looked up at Bobby with a smile meant to be encouraging. “And you ‘aced’ it, as my students used to say.”

Even the usually crisp Miss Watkins looked wilted by the heat, Bobby noticed. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her brown curls clung damply to her temples. She had shed the lime green jacket that matched her sleeveless linen sheath. “Well, Bobby?” she asked, her voice sharp.

Bobby shrugged. “That was a fluke,” she said impatiently. Coaching wasn’t the same as teaching, didn’t this woman know anything? Bobby’s eyes wandered to the fly, which had stopped buzzing and was walking in fruitless circles in the upper corner of the glass pane.

Miss Watkins pushed her chair back. “Listen to me, Bobby, you’ve got to snap out of this fog of despair!” She stood up and lowered the top half of the window a few inches. Using a green punch card, she gently guided the forlorn fly to the edge of the frame. It hovered uncertainly an instant, and then zoomed off into the world beyond. “Believe me—you’re not out of the game yet!” She sat back down and pushed the green punch card toward Bobby. “Do you recognize this?”

“No,” said Bobby, tearing her eyes away from the fly’s flight to freedom to look at the punch card. “What is it?”

“It’s the Spindle-Janska Personality Penchant Assessment I administered last week. It’s one of the most respected diagnostic tools a career counselor has at her disposal. Do you want to hear the results?” Without waiting for an answer, the vocational counselor opened a folder and began reading. “Subject has discipline and focus in the highest degree. Reductive communication this subject’s strong suit. Charisma combined with a strong sense of command make this subject ideal for high-ranking military office, guru, or high school principal.”

“That can’t be me!” Bobby gasped in disbelief. “I’m just your typical athlete, all brawn, no brains. Are you sure you haven’t mixed my test results with someone else’s?”

“Bobby, Bobby,” chided Miss Watkins, “you’ve got to lose this insecurity complex you’ve built up about your brains. Who captained the Spitfires to victory the past two years? Who was voted ‘Most Inspirational’ by the Midwest Regional Women’s Field Hockey League? You earned those honors with more than muscles! Everything in your records shows that you’re exceptionally suited to help girls learn new skills!”

Bobby’s mind was whirling. “Help girls learn new skills”—that certainly described her love life, but she’d never made the connection between that impulse and the pedagogy courses she’d barely passed. “But my grades—my brains—” Bobby struggled to express herself. “A teacher has to be smart.” How she’d sweated over those lesson plan assignments in Pedagogy II, how lost she’d felt when the class discussed the pros and cons of module-based teaching!

“I won’t pretend your grades and test scores aren’t a hurdle you’ll have to overcome,” Miss Watkins admitted. “They’ll be the first thing your future employers see. But what we counselors are learning is that they’re not always a sound indication of future success in a given field. Quite frankly, I think the real problem is your lack of confidence.”

Bobby sat still, stunned by the vocational counselor’s uncanny perception. She might have fooled her teachers and her teammates with her breezy bravado, but Miss Watkins seemed to see straight through the facade, through to the Bobby who feared that people would discover the depths of her dumbness, that without a position in professional field hockey, she would end up another sports hero has-been, handing out towels at the YMCA, cooking beans over a hot plate in some residential hotel.

“As it happens,” Miss Watkins was continuing, as she riffled through the pile of folders on her desk, “I know a school in need of a physical education instructor, and I think my recommendation and your Elliott College degree will counterbalance those Cs you’re so concerned about. Here.” She pushed a brochure at Bobby. Bobby picked it up, reading the words “We Mold Character” over a picture of a green square of lawn surrounded by gothic gray stone buildings.

“It’s called the Metamora Academy,” Miss Watkins continued. “It’s a small school, rather exclusive. I think you’ll do well there.”

Bobby flipped through the brochure, skimming the descriptions of the “highly trained staff” and “unique educational aids.” She tried to picture herself leading a bevy of exclusive girls through a module on kinetics. Was she really capable of such a thing?

“Shall I give the Headmistress a call?” Without waiting for Bobby’s answer, Miss Watkins picked up the phone and dialed.

Now, three months later, as Bobby leaned on the windowsill of her new home, the picture from the brochure had come to life. Before her lay the quiet green quadrangle, surrounded by gothic gray stone buildings, crisscrossed with flagstone pathways. It was a tranquil scene. The only movement came from a tall, thin girl in a gray skirt and blazer with red piping—the Metamora uniform. She crossed the square of grass, paused a moment by a white column that poked up from a bed of purple flowers at the far end, before turning left and leaving Bobby’s view. Then the place was as quiet and still again as a monastery.

Or a nunnery would be more accurate, Bobby reflected, turning back to her bed, piled high with gym tunics and jerseys. She plucked her Spitfires pennant out from under her old Spitfires uniform and, crossing to the sitting room that completed her two-room suite, she carefully tacked it up above the mantelpiece.

Maybe Miss Watkins was right and she had a gift for teaching. Yet as Bobby unpacked, she couldn’t help wondering if this pedagogical opportunity had come too late. Ever since the accident, she felt changed, in some fundamental way. Before her fall, she could always count on her body if not her brains. But now…

It wasn’t just her nightmares, disturbing as they were. The dizziness and the irrational fear of falling had migrated from her dreams to her waking life. Lately, even a steep staircase could leave her gasping and nauseated. She’d managed to conceal her weakness so far, but what if the students saw her in one of her bad spells? How would she maintain her authority?

Closing her eyes she made herself remember the accident—the shadowy pool—the rippling reflections of the water on the wall—the shrieks of tipsy laughter. She felt again the wet grittiness of the diving board under her damp feet, and the slow-motion sensation of her feet slipping out from under her, her calf banging on the diving board’s edge as she fell—

Bobby opened her eyes with a gasp, swaying dizzily, and grabbed the mantel for balance. It was hopeless. She’d thought maybe she could harden herself against the fear, exercise her willpower the way she’d exercise a weak muscle. But she only made herself dizzy and sick. She’d just have to avoid heights until this queer feeling went away.

Bobby returned to her unpacking. Fortunately, her suite of rooms in Cornwall, the dormitory for the third form, was safely on the first floor, right by the entrance. This was so she could monitor the girls, Mona had explained. Her new duties included enforcing lights-out, censoring reading material, doling out prescribed medications, and confiscating unauthorized snacks. Mona had given her a handbook, with a daunting list of dormitory dos and donts.

Bobby was already having trouble remembering the odd names for each class. The students weren’t called freshman and sophomores, etc, like in most high schools. At Metamora they were third formers, fourth formers, etc. Mona had written it all down for Bobby:

Third Form = Freshmen

Fourth Form = Sophomores

Fifth Form = Juniors

Sixth Form = Seniors

A big part of the job, Mona had emphasized, was “helping the third formers acclimate themselves to boarding school life.” Would Bobby be able to buck up a homesick new student, or console a girl who’d gotten the Curse for the first time?

Even if she wasn’t the housemother type, she did know games, physiology, kinetics, even some of the more obscure branches of ethnic dance, Bobby reminded herself as she unwrapped her lucky stick and swung it experimentally. For a moment she pretended she was back on the field with the rest of the Spitfires, in the final quarter of the game against the Bayard Blackhawks. Block that pass! Send it to Chick! Run up to position! Swing for the goal!

The heavy clunk of her 1962 Nationals trophy falling on the floor pulled Bobby abruptly from her daydream. Swinging her stick at imaginary balls, she’d only succeeded in knocking the statuette off its perch on her desk.

Bobby started guiltily at a knock on the door. Was it Mona, come to check on her? Or maybe the Headmistress, that Miss Craybill who had interviewed her in Bay City?

But when Bobby opened the door, it was neither. A tall, willowy brunette leaned in the doorway, appraising the young phys ed teacher through half-closed eyes.