Читать книгу Pages For Her - Sylvia Brownrigg - Страница 23

Before the child’s arrival there was an eruption – not in itself significant, and certainly not as bad as others that followed, but it gave Flannery a preview of scenes that would one day mar her future, like ruptures in a canvas.

It was the day of Flannery’s last class. She bade farewell on a fog-shrouded morning to a group of mid-twenty-year-olds of varying talents, including the multiply pierced boy who had written a smutty but smart piece about a blond art teacher named Eudora, whom, Flannery realized only after she had graded and returned it, was probably based on herself. (Wise, yet foolish: there it was again.) Most of the young adults had shuffled out of class with muttered expressions of thanks, and Flannery was sitting at the formica desk gathering up her papers. She felt sick, as always, and fat, and brainless – she had been reading an early Iris Murdoch novel a colleague had pressed on her, which obscurely contributed to her sense of imprisonment. Had Flannery ever written, actually? Had there been any point to it, if she had?

A tall, freckled student with the awkward long neck of a giraffe approached her, his bulky gray backpack giving him an ominous stoop. Flannery looked up at him and felt a sentimental pang – her last student. Pregnancy made her sappy, all the time.

‘Hi, Ms. Jansen,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something? Before you go?’

Flannery hoped it was a simple question, answerable in a few minutes. She could stretch to so little at this point. She just wanted to lie down. ‘Sure,’ she encouraged him, faintly.

‘What’s it like to have a book on the bestseller list?’

‘What’s it like?’ The question disarmed her, though she knew that A Visit to Don Lennart was largely the reason people signed up for her class. She stared into the young man’s face. He had bright, eager eyes, a smattering of color on either cheek, rubbery lips slightly open with curiosity. He had written, she thought she recalled, an oddly affecting piece about a barber.

‘It’s . . .’ she started, her muddied mind searching for the right adjective, because she wanted neither to mislead nor condescend to her student. Surreal? (Too easy.) Fun? (Only somewhat true, and lazy.) Unexpected? (Accurate, but it didn’t tell you anything.) ‘It’s . . . um . . .’

A slap on the door. It swung wide open.

‘Flannery! There you are. Jesus. Come on, we’ve got to go.’

Flannery and the freckled student startled. ‘Sorry,’ Flannery said, her face flushing, but she stood up. Was this really happening in her classroom? Being ordered out like a dawdling child?

‘No problem,’ the boy shrugged. ‘I just –’

‘I need you to come now.’ Charles snatched Flannery’s jacket from the back of the chair, and made an impatient sweeping gesture to get his wife out of the room. ‘I’m not even legally parked. I don’t want those fuckers to give me a ticket.’

Charles glared at the young man, as if he represented the parking authority. Flannery apologized again to her student but allowed herself to be ushered out so that as little as possible of this would be witnessed by someone else.

‘It’s disorienting,’ Flannery threw over her shoulder hurriedly. ‘In a word!’ She tried to laugh, as if this were a joke, but she was too embarrassed to look the kid in the face, and see whether he had heard her.