In Patty’s office were many folders, and also a cluster of small-framed photographs of her nieces and nephews, and there were pamphlets from colleges, all in an array on top of her filing cabinet and on her desk. And there was her scheduling book on her desk too. Lila Lane had missed her appointment from the day before. There was a knock on the door—which was open—and a tall, pretty girl stood there. “Come in,” Patty said. “Lila?”
Unease came into the room with the girl. She slouched in her chair, and the glance she gave Patty made Patty frightened. The girl’s hair was long and blond, and as she reached to pull it up and across one shoulder, Patty saw the tattoos—like a small barbed wire fence—that went across the girl’s wrist. Patty said, “That’s a nice name, Lila Lane.” The girl said, “I was supposed to be named for my aunt, but at the last minute my mom said, Fuck her.”
Patty took the papers and bounced their edges against her desk.
The girl sat up straight, and spoke with suddenness. “She’s a bitch. She thinks she’s better than any of us. I never even met her.”
“You never met your aunt?”
“Nope. She came back here when her father died, my mother’s father, and then she went away and I’ve never met her. She lives in New York and she thinks her shit doesn’t stink.”
“Well, let’s look at your scores here. These are pretty good scores.” Patty never liked her students to speak roughly; she found it disrespectful. She looked over at the girl, then back at the papers. “Your grades are good, too,” Patty added.
“I skipped third grade.” The girl said this with a tone of belligerence, but Patty thought she heard the pride beneath it.
Patty said, “Good for you. Well, then, I guess you were always a good student. They don’t let you skip a grade for nothing.” She raised her eyebrows pleasantly at the girl, but Lila was looking around Patty’s office, studying the pamphlets, the photos of Patty’s nieces and nephews, and then finally she looked for a long moment at the poster on the wall that had a kitten swinging from a branch with the block letters HANG IN THERE below the kitten.
Lila looked back at Patty. “What?” she said.
“I said, they don’t let you skip a grade for nothing,” Patty repeated.
“Of course they don’t. Jeeze-lew-eeze.” The girl moved her long legs so that they went in the other direction, but she stayed slouching.
“Okay.” Patty nodded. “So what about your future? You have good grades, good scores—”
“Are these your kids?” The girl was squinting, and she pointed laconically at the photos.
“Those are my nieces and nephews,” Patty said.
“I know you don’t have kids,” the girl said with a smirk. “How come you don’t have kids?”
Patty felt the faintest blush come to her face. “It just never happened. Now let’s talk about your future.”
“？’Cause you never did it with your husband?” The girl laughed; her teeth were bad. “That’s what people say, you know. Fatty Patty never did it with her husband, Igor, never did it with anyone. People say you’re a virgin.”
Patty put the papers flat down on the desk. She could feel her face become flaming hot. For a moment her vision blurred; she heard the ticking of the clock on the wall. In her wildest dreams she could not have anticipated what was going to come out of her mouth. She looked hard at the girl and heard herself say the words “Get out of here right now, you piece of filth.”
The girl seemed stunned for just a moment, but then she said, “Hey, wow. They’re right. Oh my God!” And covering her mouth she made a sound of laughter that grew in length and depth so that Patty had a sense of it spilling from her mouth like bile from some creature in a horror film. “Sorry,” the girl said in a moment. “Sorry.”
From nowhere Patty suddenly knew who the girl was. “Your aunt is Lucy Barton,” Patty said. She added, “You look like her.”
The girl stood up and left the room.
—
Patty closed the door to her office and telephoned her sister Linda, who lived outside of Chicago. Perspiration made Patty’s face moist, and she felt her underarms sticky with it.
Her sister answered, saying, “Linda Peterson-Cornell.”
“It’s me,” Patty said.
“I figured. The phone said your school’s name.”
“Well, then how come— Listen, Linda.” And she told her sister what had just happened. Patty spoke in a rush, leaving out what she had said to the girl. “Can you believe it?” she finished. She heard her sister sigh. After a moment, Linda said she never understood how Patty could work with adolescents anyway. Patty told her she was missing the point.