Chapter Two #2
There was a pause. Miles wished neither to agree nor to disagree, being no fan of censorship.
But he was unused to hearing Use me as your spaniel from anyone, let alone a female half his age, in rose-embroidered stockings, one of which had a run that ascended straight up over her calf, over her knee, across her thigh, and into the velvet bloomers, bloomers bunched up very high up on the legs, now crossed, now uncrossed, now crossed again, on the not-very-far side of a couch, a couch that evoked, in its sunkenness and accumulated odors, couches of high school, of college parties…
“Okay, then, if you don’t believe me”—said Nausica? to Miles, who believed her—“what about Nick Bottom?” She pointed to the donkey’s head in his lap.
“What do you think Bottom and Titania are doing in the forest when she—quote—rounds…his hairy temples…with a coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers? Huh? And why would Shakespeare transform him into a donkey, of all creatures?”
“Not sure,” said Miles.
“Really? What do you think of when you think of a donkey?”
“Someone stubborn, I guess,” said Miles.
“That’s a mule,” said Nausica?, fingers resting on the frills that overflowed her doublet, which seemed to have opened a little on its own. “Think,” she said, “think of the horse, the breath of the horse, the heat of the horse. His power.
“You can say it,” she added. “I’m not going to accuse you of sexually harassing me.”
The donkey’s head stared up at him, its smile now lascivious.
“I think you have more or less said it yourself,” said Miles.
The bell rang, and the hall filled with the clamoring of children.
Nausica? leaned back with a little bounce. “Anyway, it’s exciting to think how we can make this work on many levels. It’s not like I think the kids will understand everything.”
“Nor should understand,” said Miles, at last asserting his role as the adult in the room.
“Nor should understand,” conceded Nausica?, as the players rushed in.
—
“Welcome, everybody!” Nausica? shouted once the children had gathered, Olive among them, smiling shyly at her father, trying to look grown-up and ignore him while waving with both hands.
Then Nausica? introduced herself and “Mr. K.” and asked them for their names and favorite animal sounds. (Olive: “Neigh,” like her friend Harper, though Miles knew for certain it was “Woof.”) When they had gone around, she asked if anyone could say what they were there for.
“On earth?” replied a little wise guy.
“Exactly!”
“Shakespeare?” asked a girl almost twice as tall as some of the others.
“Very good!” said Nausica?. She couldn’t have come up with better answers herself. They were here, on earth, for Shakespeare.
“Shall we begin?” she asked.
What happened next could only be described as an act of conjuring.
What had she begun with? They were sweaty and smelly, and the boys had drawn robotic joints over their hands and fingers, and had been playing a game where they slurped a string of spit up and down in their mouths, while the girls looked like they ranged from six to sixteen, the tall ones slouching to be shorter, and at any given time, half the class had a finger in their nose, something Miles had thought was more a vice of the younger set but here was epidemic.
Yet Nausica?, armed only with a gift-shop cowbell with the words Bring Me the Cheese!
emblazoned in the college colors, began the transformation.
The rules were very simple. Ding, went the bell, and they were prowling lions; ding, growling dogs; ding, butterflies.
That was it. But not even the skeptical among them could resist the spell—not the cool boys with baseball hats turned backward, not a pair of whispering girls, familiar to Miles from early playdates, but never seen since.
Nausica?’s parents had erred; they should have named her Circe, after the sorceress. The children were bewitched.
By butterflies, she had them all. Gone was Ally, gone was Augusta, gone was Anna.
Gone was Harper, gone was Sophie, gone was Carly.
Gone was Olive, and the questions she had begun to ask her parents—whether she was pretty, whether they were proud of her.
Gone were the fights and intrigues, the cruelties and cliques.
“I said everybody, Mr. K.,” said Nausica?, her smile scolding.
And gone was Miles.
Ding: I am a bear.
Ding: I am a shark.
Ding: I am an eagle.
I am a flea, I am a rock, I am the sun, I am a shadow.
Gone his dissertation. Gone even his knee.
Until, with applause, his laughing colleague gathered up the little thespians for the next exercise, for they had only just begun.
—
And then it was over. Miss Kayleigh appeared to collect her kids, caught a flying shoe in one hand, handed Kleenex to the needy, manacled a little fellow who was dirty-dancing on a table, and winked warmly to her fellow traveler of the underworld.
Nausica? headed off to Greensbury Middle & High, where she was directing that winter’s Marat/Sade.
And, Miles, exhausted as he had never been exhausted in his life, was left alone.
Still, part of him didn’t want to leave, not yet. Schoolteacher, the career survey had recommended to him, so many years before this. Ha! Had it asked about pain tolerance, physical exhaustion? Because scything and skiing had nothing on what had just happened.
On his phone were a pair of voice messages.
From Earl, and from the repair shop. The car would be ready at three.
It was one-thirty. He’d been hoping to get home to grab Giuseppe, though in truth it didn’t matter, the dog was probably so tired out from destroying something Miles hadn’t even registered as destructible that what were two more hours?
He spent the time in the front office stapling flyers, before he hobbled off to the repair shop, just on the other side of the river from the school, got the car, and returned to pick up Olive.
—
To give the dog credit, the damage surprised even Miles.
On reflection, a lifetime of cat-and-mouse cartoons should have taught him that the baseboard would be a natural target, and he shouldn’t have been surprised to find that the animal had turned his attention to it.
On the upside, the scene—the hole extending into the wall, the pink insulation scattered everywhere, the pulverized plaster bearding the sated animal—at least meant that Kate, when an unfamiliar car dropped her off an hour later, after she’d sneaked in a quick ski at the mountain with one of her hundred friends, was so shocked that Miles hadn’t needed to make up a story about Metropolis, nor the first day of rehearsal, the latter of which should have been entirely about Olive, but now was complicated somewhat by Olive’s drama teacher.
Which was silly, he told himself, because Kate would likely get a laugh out of the doublet and the stockings, though she might have raised an eyebrow upon learning that Miles had taken such close note of the roses and the run.
In any case, Kate was more interested in hearing Olive’s take on the day, and her thoughts on the drama teacher, who Olive reported was really nice, and really funny, and who had them play, in addition to “Metamorphosis,” games of “Freeze Frame” and “Pinocchio” and “Leapfrog.” And did Daddy play “Leapfrog”?
asked Kate, smiling. Daddy tried, but hurt his knee again, said Olive.
Mostly, he had stood there next to Miss Nausica?.
Actually, said Miles, Miss Nausica? stood next to Daddy, Miss Nausica? stood very close to Daddy, even after Daddy had told her all about his happy home life.
Now Kate did raise an eyebrow.
Miss Nausica?, Miles added, was wearing a wooden sword, and a Renaissance beret.
No need to mention that, in the final minutes after cleaning up, before she raced off to the middle-schoolers, she had taken him by the elbow, so close that he could smell her shampoo, a mix of cinnamon and vanilla, and pulled up on her phone images of historical Midsummer performances.
Where naked fairies danced, and addled noblewomen spilled out of their gowns into the arms of their enchanted consorts…
No need, thought Miles. If Nausica? seemed just a little addled herself, then certainly this was the fault of Shakespeare.
Miles was just an innocent bystander. There was no rule against noticing a pair of stockings, or how two more buttons of the doublet had come undone during the tumult of the role play.
Indeed, might not his wife even be grateful for the younger woman, who, along with last night’s dream of Candy’s Gabalor, had awakened in him a certain life-force which his monthlong funk had taken, paving the way—after the dishes were done and the children were put to bed and the dog locked up, and the damage to the house surveyed—to a return to form worthy of that great lover Norbert Rumphius?
Which Kate welcomed, first with surprise and then, her body turning to him, appreciation.
It was only later, after, as they lay in the dark, when she had whispered it was good to have him back, that he wondered if it might be a good time to explain, if not the secret meeting at the Mountain Catch, then his plan with Andrei, the following morning, to go spelunking.