“I missed them,” said Ms. Duffy, vaguely.
“Maybe you’ll want to wait until they’ve had a few minutes to cool off. You know how sweaty they can get playing basketball. And you won’t believe how big they are. Huge. Amy Weyland is wearing a bra now.”
From his cubicle, Mr. Meacham moaned, “Must we?”
And Mrs. Willoughby, peering into her coffee, said, “That girl’s going to have a great little figure.”
“Amy Weyland?” Ms. Duffy echoed.
“Yes! Can you believe it?” Ms. Olin, teacher of sixth-grade humanities, nearly shouted. She appeared slightly feverish; in fact, everyone did, everyone seemed eager and a little overheated. There was so much to tell: Jonathan Hamish got suspended; Travis Bent went on medication; Mr. Peele agreed to turn on the air-conditioning early, even though it was only the beginning of May. And oh—the computer lab was finally done! Ms. Duffy needed to be apprised, and ushered back into the world they all had in common. The merry, frantic din of school rose up around them, louder and louder, as Yemen, fascinating and dusty, drifted farther away.
Ms. Hempel still held the photograph that she wanted to know more about. She would have her chance, eventually; she and Ms. Duffy were friends, school friends, in the sense that they had belonged to the same group of youngish teachers who adjourned to a dark Irish bar as soon as the bell rang on Friday afternoons. Returning the picture to its pile, she gathered up her untouched books, wondered if her failure to reread act 2 of Romeo and Juliet would prevent her from sparking a spirited class discussion (maybe she’d just ask them to act out their favorite scenes instead; the boys could cheerfully spend an entire period bellowing, “Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”), and watched as Ms. Duffy was escorted out of the faculty lounge, in search of her former fifth graders.
“Look who’s here,” cried Ms. Olin, leading the way.
The whole display was affecting, but naive. Ms. Hempel imagined a procession moving in stately fashion down the middle school corridors, cheering administrators, a swaying litter, children tossing flower petals and pencil shavings in its path. Ms. Duffy was back! Once more there would be field trips to Chinatown for soup dumplings, and scavenger hunts in the botanic gardens, and sing-alongs to the Meat Puppets and other college-radio stars of the ’80s. Once more the Temple of Dendur would be erected in all its cardboard and tempura glory. The final bittersweet pages of Tuck Everlasting would again be read aloud in Ms. Duffy’s husky, choked-up voice. Fifth graders of the world, rejoice!
But Ms. Hempel knew better. Ms. Duffy was merely stopping by. She knew as soon as she saw her: Anna Duffy wasn’t ever coming back, even after her big hard belly resolved itself into a baby. Most likely necessity prompted this visit; she probably needed to empty her locker, or roll over her retirement plan. Didn’t the others see? She was no longer one of them; at some point during her year, she had turned away. Slipped into her civilian clothes and disappeared. And if she was back now, it was only to say good-bye or—if Ms. Hempel were writing the script—So long, suckers! A farewell so improbable, it made Ms. Hempel laugh.
THE IRISH BAR WAS ONLY a few blocks away from their school. Beautiful Ms. Cruz, who really did lead the fabled double life of the librarian, had discovered it one night while careening through town with a free jazz drummer nearly twice her age. Mooney’s had been their last stop. What must Ms. Cruz have been thinking when she stepped out onto the sparkling, empty avenue, her head resting against the drummer’s shoulder, dawn only an hour away, and saw that she was literally around the corner from her desk, her rubber stamps, her little stack of late notices? Maybe she was thinking, How perfect. To feel one’s real life rub up so closely, so careless, against one’s school life—there was no greater enchantment. Or so Ms. Hempel supposed, having never put enough distance between the two to experience it herself. She liked to hear Ms. Cruz talk, in her mild and self-effacing way, about all the old musicians she had fallen for. The hard-drinking drummer included. Ms. Cruz took him home with her that night, and then on Friday she took the teachers to Mooney’s.
The narrow space was illuminated by strings of colored Christmas lights and a glowing clock. A jukebox stood in the back, in between the cavelike entrances to two bathrooms whose affiliation with any particular sex was never rigidly observed. Black battered tables, high unsteady stools, linoleum floor. The floor was wonderful to dance on. It made Ms. Hempel feel very graceful and coordinated, even before she started drinking. All the teachers loved to dance on Friday afternoons. They did the Hustle. They did the Electric Slide. The sticky blinds on Mooney’s windows were always pulled shut, so it was easy to forget that it was only four o’clock and the sun was still shining outside and no one had come home from work yet. They danced as if it were the middle of the night. They did silly moves they remembered from high school and looked good doing them. When Mr. Radovich tried to dance like he was black, no one minded. They were too happy feeding quarters into the jukebox, shimmying to the bar and back. As she bumped hips with Ms. Cruz and sashayed toward the bathrooms, Ms. Hempel realized that she was actually meant to spend her whole life dancing, like those characters in the Ice Capades who go about their daily business on skates.
For someone who had an abundance of freckles and almost always wore clogs, Ms. Duffy could dance astonishingly well. She shook back her hair and half closed her eyes and lifted her chin ever so slightly, as if a handsome,
