Cutting Teeth(71)
Lola had been brought in for questioning and she hears other students will be, too.
“Anyway.” She lightly steers the conversation. “Our hope is that the fact that this fishing expedition they went on was a complete dead end will encourage the police to keep casting a wider net. Look around. Think of the broader reach of the school and people around.”
“How are the parents feeling, though? What are people saying? What do people think happened?”
She tries to suppress the small surge of dread she’s felt at every mention of Miss Ollie’s murder, of which there have been many, unavoidable instances over the last couple of weeks. She feels the impact once again flood her nervous system like two hair dryers plugged into an old electrical outlet, threatening to break her circuit.
The memory swims through the filter of the incredible pain she was in that day. The mere mention is enough to conjure a phantom version of it. She can feel the outline, the physical shape of it, throbbing right there in her right eye socket, drilling through to her brain. She wanted to hurl. The entire morning, through the awful psychologist appointment, in her car, every instant, she fought down vomiting.
What she most wanted to do that day was crawl into her bed or sink into a hot bath or do both simultaneously somehow. She thought: Can we please get this day over with already?
That was her intent. She went to school for the meeting, but then decided it would be better to pick Noelle up early and reschedule for a time she felt more like herself. Like today! Today would have been an excellent day for the meeting with Miss Ollie. Today, she could have looked Darby right in the eye and said, I’m sorry, I adore you as a friend, but the girls don’t get along anymore because Lola has issues, something you might want to have looked into. And then Mary Beth could have pulled out a few websites and phone numbers as resources to help Darby process the information and Miss Ollie would have been there to back her up and together, they could have gotten through to Darby before it was too late. But it was not today. She made her decision to pick up Noelle early and now she thanks God she did, for who knows what would have happened otherwise.
“What do people think happened?” she reflects, at the same time clocking a faint throb of pain that has begun pressing against the nerve behind her right eye. Oh no. She wants to believe it’s a phantom pain again. From the memory. However, it’s the stupid, little, nothing pain—not the agony of a cracked bone or the spasming strain of childbirth—that starts to break her heart. And doesn’t the very fact that the ghostly pain returns at the memory of that day lend credence to the doctors’ infuriating suggestion of anxiety? “Someone in the congregation, a vagrant even, staff, a friend who knew where she worked.” Her voice cracks. “Not a lot of great answers.”
He studies her, trains the full intensity of those evergreen eyes on her. “Come on,” he nudges, coming to the edge of his seat. “You must have some inside beat. You’re the go-to, aren’t you? Room Mom? Pastors have to keep things confidential.” He’s teasing. She thinks he’s teasing. She laughs, but there’s nothing to fill it after, so maybe he really was expecting her to tell him something substantial.
She’s heard gossip, of course. The kinds of things one would expect. Someone saw a weird guy hanging around the school the week before and never reported it. Miss Ollie had a secret life. She killed herself and the family refuses to accept it. Some are more realistic than others, but Mary Beth makes sure to remind everyone: They’re just rumors.
Ben clears his throat. “You know,” he says, “I’ve been meaning to check in with you about your husband. You said you took on my Sexy Back Challenge?” He grins.
“Did. Yes. We fell off the wagon. There are more important things going on at the moment.” She doesn’t bother to hide her resignation. It doesn’t matter that it’s correct. There are far more important things going on than whether she and her husband of a decade can fornicate for fun every day, but, then, that’s kind of the point. There are always more important things going on because everything is more important than sex, really.
Half the time, Mary Beth doesn’t even know what she’s after. It’s not as though she’s a sixteen-year-old boy or a Yorkshire terrier, walking around with an uncontrollable urge to hump things. And she already feels connected in her marriage, so it’s not that. Sex to Mary Beth is a thing she wants to cut out of the world and drape herself in because it looks pretty on her.
And in exactly the way an expensive dress would be spliced from the family budget when times are tight, so too is romance when time is tight.
Pastor Ben looks as if he might have something to say about that. Might view himself the way, say, a doctor does, prescribing exercise as a preventative measure.
He rests his chin on his palm and looks up at her and, as he does, she experiences a very specific déjà vu in the way her teenage heart had felt staring at the back of Andrew Wohlensky’s head during algebra. And just like back then, a piece of her thinks, improbably, If only I could have him, just for a very short time, that would put my slightly broken heart back together again. She swallows as her head pings her, bopping her with the little pain signal. Remember me?
“I heard what you said,” Ben murmurs, like he knows she’d be embarrassed if someone else were to overhear. “I listened. About how you always feel like you’re the one, you know, pushing the agenda. Initiating sex. And I just want to say, Mary Beth, I think your husband is crazy.”