last one standing, and then I had found somebody who was not perfect but was perfect enough, perfect for me. I was not to be punished, after all. I was to be rewarded, though it was hard to say for what.
It had been six weeks since we’d met.
WE HAD BACK-TO-SCHOOL faculty meetings that Wednesday and Thursday, before Labor Day weekend, and really, we teachers were no different than high school students, sniffing one another out after several months apart, comparing vacations, checking to see who’d gotten thin or tan. During the principal’s welcoming speech in the gym, I sat on the bleachers between Rita and Maggie Stenta, the first-grade teacher who’d had me to her house for sloppy joes and sangria the previous spring. As our principal, Lydia Bianchi, described the new schedule for after- school bus duty, Rita leaned over and whispered, “How’s your
Maggie turned. “Are you dating someone?”
I shook my head as if I didn’t follow or dared not turn my attention from Lydia. Truthfully, I didn’t know quite how to talk about Charlie; I did not want to gush or boast. After three days, we still hadn’t mentioned our engagement to anyone. We wanted to tell our families first, and because we’d be spending Labor Day weekend in Door County with the Blackwells and would return to Riley the following weekend, it seemed nicer to wait and share the news in person. What his family would make of simultaneously meeting me and finding out I was to be their newest in-law, I couldn’t imagine.
Every year, all the teachers were required to watch the same half-hour filmstrip on head lice—it was a source of much grumbling, and I personally was seeing it for the sixth time—and the film was shown that Thursday in the library after lunch. I was walking back from the cafeteria with Rita and was still in the hall when Steve Engel, a science teacher who was six-five, hit his head on the
After a bit of shifting, I’d found the right place for all the papiermache pieces: the Runaway Bunnies and Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne perched on the lower shelves where the youngest children’s books were kept; Ferdinand stood guard over the card catalog; the Giving Tree received a place of honor on my desk. A part of me couldn’t believe I’d finished all ten of them, especially with the happy distraction of Charlie. I had probably spent two hundred hours total on the project—admittedly, most of those hours had been before Charlie—and I did not doubt that some people would have judged that a colossal waste of time.
When the filmstrip was over, Deborah Kuehl, the ostentatiously organized school nurse who was in charge of showing the film, was explaining the institution of a new no-nits policy. “I can’t believe she does this right after lunch,” Rita muttered. Although Deborah had a brisk manner, she was generous with her medical expertise and didn’t seem to mind when teachers hit her up for advice—she’d peer into your throat and tell you if it looked like strep, or advise you on whether the black fingernail you’d banged in a door needed to be treated for infection.
When Deborah asked if there were any questions, Rita raised her hand. “I just wanted to say, doesn’t the library look fabulous? Alice made all the animals herself.”
I could feel the teachers in the rows ahead of and behind us look at me.
“While that’s very supportive of you, Rita, I was hoping for questions pertaining to the nit policy.” Deborah scanned her audience. No one else raised a hand, and she seemed only a little disappointed. Primly but not ungenerously, she said, “The sculptures are indeed a colorful addition to this space. Bravo, Alice, for your creativity.”
Rita started clapping, and I murmured, “Rita, please,” but it had already caught on. I knew I was blushing.
As it happened, when the children returned to school the following week, they seemed to get a kick out of the characters but also to see them for what they were, which was background decoration. The characters did not wear well that year: Even by the end of the first day, one of Ferdinand’s horns had come off, a casualty of a second- grader’s overexcitement, and after the sixth-graders’ library period, I found a mustache drawn above Eloise’s lips (I was pretty sure I knew which two boys had done it). At the conclusion of the school year, I ended up throwing them all out except for the Giving Tree, which I still have; each time I move, I pack it more carefully, as if it is a priceless vase. But I can honestly say I didn’t mind the other characters’ short lives. I enjoyed making them, and if it’s great reverence you’re looking for, or earnest expressions of gratitude—well, then you don’t work with kids.
What I couldn’t have imagined at the time was that the applause after the lice film was the moment of my greatest professional achievement. It was the most public recognition I ever received for being myself rather than an extension of someone else or, even worse, for being a symbol. Thirty-five teachers clapping in an elementary school library is, I realize, a humble triumph, but it touched me. In the years since, I have received great and vulgar quantities of attention, more attention than even the most vain or insecure individual could possibly wish for, and I have never enjoyed it a fraction as much.
THAT NIGHT, CHARLIE and I were eating dinner at his place, sitting on the living room couch with plates on our laps while the Brewers played the Detroit Tigers, and I said, “If we get married in the spring, what about doing it in the Arboretum? Would it upset your parents if we didn’t have the ceremony in a church?”
“I knew you were an atheist!” He pointed at me. “Nah, I don’t think they’d mind the outdoor thing, but it’s gotta be much sooner. I need to be settled in Houghton come January.”
“By yourself, do you mean, or with me?”
“That’s usually how it works, man and wife under the same roof.” Charlie’s expression was mischievous. He was barefoot, wearing white shorts and a white polo shirt because he hadn’t yet taken a shower after playing tennis with Cliff Hicken that afternoon. “Are you turned on by my virile man scent?” he’d asked when we were standing in the yard grilling hamburgers, and he’d pressed his body against mine and danced a little. Although I’d made a show of holding my nose—it seemed to be what he wanted—I found him cute when he was sweaty; he didn’t smell bad to me at all.
“But when would the wedding be?” I said. “January is only five months away, Charlie.”
“A wedding’s nothing but a party where the lady wears a white dress. Hell, we could have it tomorrow.”
“Your sense of romance is really sweeping me off my feet.”
“Let’s say October,” he said. “You free in October?”
I considered it. This was far sooner than I’d imagined, but it was doable. “I don’t see why not.”
“That’s the spirit. We don’t want some fancy-schmancy deal, anyway, do we? My brothers and their wives all did those country-club receptions with the receiving-line crap. Well, not John, he married Nan, who’s from back east, so they did it at her parents’ place in Bar Harbor. Hey, there’s an idea for you—what about Halcyon? Plenty of
