I clicked Mr. Graves’s link without his permission.
I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t know what happened, but it cost me. I’ll never forgive myself. The worst part was that I knew I was ruining everything as I leaned in, and yet I didn’t stop. He turned his head away at the last possible second and I kissed his cheek. His face reddened as he removed my hand from his neck, and then he whispered, “What are you doing?” When I tried to let him know I could keep the secret with a smile, he yelled at me, saying, “You can’t do that! Ever! Do you understand, Nanette? You’ve crossed a line.” His words felt like a slap across the mouth. I suddenly felt so stupid. When I started crying, I couldn’t stop. I sobbed and sobbed. He used the phone in his classroom to call for the nurse. I didn’t even know her name, but she came and led me to her office, and I got to lie in a bed surrounded by a white curtain and feel guilty for the rest of the day. I told her I had cramps, and she didn’t ask any further questions.
The next day, Mr. Graves’s door was locked during his lunch period and the lights were off. I peeked through the little rectangular window, and no one was in there. My attempted kiss had driven him to the dreaded teachers’ lounge, a place he had often told me he hated, saying, “Some teachers are even worse than the students when it comes to making their peers feel awful.” He never told anyone else what I did—or at least I was never called down to the principal’s office—and I never heard about it again.
He wouldn’t even look at me in class, and then one day I was suddenly transferred out. My adviser, Mr. Bryant, wouldn’t tell me why, but his stiff, awkward manner made me feel like I was Abigail Williams in The Crucible.
After some time had passed, I stopped by Mr. Graves’s room between periods and, standing in the doorway, asked him if we could speak. In a cold, distant voice, he said we could meet at the school counseling office if Mr. Bryant was present, and that was when I knew I’d never share another private lunch with my favorite teacher ever again, that whatever we’d had was dead and gone forever.
And I was right.
6
Living in a Regularly Updated Catalog
My parents never were bad people, at least according to modern American standards. They fed me. They took me shopping in the most expensive clothing stores so that I looked like everyone else at my school whose parents had money. They made sure we lived in one of the best school districts in the state and maybe even the country. They never abused me in any way and were always encouraging me to do what they thought I wanted to do, but that was the big problem. I didn’t want to do what I was initially doing as their daughter. Only I never told anyone.
My mother is an interior designer. She’s still attractive and is constantly updating her wardrobe, which means we shopped for new clothes at least twice a week. All through high school, we also used to go on these mother-daughter dates every Sunday morning, where we’d have brunch in the city and then go to the opera or maybe a movie or more shopping. I liked going. I really did. But then my mother began to use this time to make confessions to me, like we were sisters or friends rather than mother and daughter. I remember one time when we were seated at a window table on the top floor of the Bellevue, sipping mimosas—Mom tipped the waiters very well, so they never even blinked whenever she ordered two mimosas, regardless of the fact that I was obviously underage—and my mother said, “Does the way your father eat ever bother you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The way he munches and breathes through his mouth at the same time so everyone can see what’s inside. Like he’s a cow chewing its cud. He does that even in restaurants. I’ve tried to bring it up only to save him from his own embarrassment, but he flies into a rage now whenever I even mention the word chewing.”
I scanned my memory and couldn’t think of a single moment when my father’s chewing had annoyed me, nor could I remember my mother ever speaking about it directly to him, even though we ate dinner together as a family every night. And this was when I realized that my parents had a secret life independent of me—that they fought when I wasn’t looking or behind the bedroom door in whispers maybe and then put on a show when I was around. I understood this chewing conversation about my father was going to be a turning point for me. Maybe you think I’m stupid because it took me so long to figure out that my parents really didn’t love each other anymore, but I had always believed that my parents were exactly who they appeared to be. Why would I think any different?
I started to notice other things about Mom—like how she could be in the most miserable mood, complaining about every aspect of her life as we were shopping for groceries, and then she would run into one of her clients in the cereal aisle and her entire demeanor would immediately shift. “Hello, Mrs. So-and-So!” she’d practically sing as if she were suddenly in a musical. A smile would bloom on her face, and her eyes would open so wide they looked like they might fall out of the sockets. Mom always asked about the woman’s family loudly and then brought up some sort of personal tragedy in a co-conspirator’s whisper—such as bad medical news or a husband’s drinking problem or a neighbor the woman hated—before Mom would work in a decorating project that “really should be taken care of immediately if you want to maintain the resale value of your home because, after all, updating is the best investment in your most important investment.” Mom was always going on about how a family’s home is the most valuable thing they owned, and yet so many people didn’t invest with fashionable updates. “Ridiculous!” she’d yell when it was just her and me. “Asinine!”