Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
The vibrator was cotton-candy pink, and it belonged to his eleventh-grade English teacher.
the satisfyher! was stamped in gold-foil letters at the base in a jaunty, proud-of-itself, all-caps font. Emilio stared. Was he shocked by what he was seeing? Or was he disturbed by the fact that his precise, quiet English teacher, the only person Emilio knew who understood when to use the word whom , would purchase a product labeled with such a corny and obvious pun?
In a situation such as this, he wondered, should he really be expected to have to choose a singular feeling?
He should not.
It sat there, the satisfyher!, nestled in the middle of Ms. Brennan’s neatly organized nightstand drawer, next to what he was really supposed to be looking for: a spare set of keys attached to a tired-looking, plastic blue key chain in the shape of the number 1. The key chain read number one aunt! in a sad little typeface that paled in comparison to the sassy letters on the satisfyher! If the key chain was the tepid voice of a tired toddler giving up the fight, the satisfyher! was head cheerleader at a pep rally.
the satisfyher!
“Emilio, did you find the keys?”
It was Ms. Brennan’s voice over the phone pressed to his ear, a voice measured and formal, very much the voice Ms. Brennan used in the classroom when she was lecturing on the meaning of Gatsby’s green light or how to formulate a clear thesis statement. At the sound of it, Emilio was suddenly transported back to the present, to the task he was supposed to be completing. After all, in this scenario he was functioning not as Ms. Brennan’s student but in another role: house sitter, cat sitter, and next-door neighbor.
“Yes, ma’am, I have the keys, Ms. Brennan,” answered Emilio, taking the number one aunt! keys into his hand, fully aware that as he did so, his right pinkie finger grazed the head of the vibrator, its silicone tip as soft as velvet.
“Terrific,” said Ms. Brennan, still cool and all business. “I’m so sorry for the confusion, but those should work for the gate, and the lawn guy should be able to get back there now. I can’t believe I forgot he would be showing up while I was gone.”
“It’s fine,” Emilio answered, already heading outside to meet up with the lawn crew, Ms. Brennan’s orange cat, Sylvia, trotting along at his heels. It was probably his imagination, but it almost seemed like his pinkie finger was pulsing in the spot that had made contact with the satisfyher!
“And, Emilio,” continued Ms. Brennan, “you can just leave the gate keys on the kitchen counter, in case you need them again. There’s no need to put them back in the nightstand drawer.”
There was subtext in this request, Emilio knew. Emilio knew this because Ms. Brennan had been the person to teach him what subtext meant.
“Okay,” he said. “No problem.”
Emilio made it to the front door and opened it. It was only Memorial Day weekend, the very start of summer, but already the humidity gripped him instantly. It was Texas, after all. With his left foot, he gently guided Sylvia the cat back toward the safety of the house as he shut the door behind himself. The mechanical drone of the yard crew’s idling equipment grew louder as he approached the guy waiting for access to the backyard so he could complete his work.
“Emilio?” Ms. Brennan’s voice bled through the buzz; she was now shouting to be heard. “Make sure you call or text with any other questions, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, tossing the keys in the direction of the lawn guy, who caught them with a nod. He unlocked the gate and quickly lobbed the keys back at Emilio.
In the middle of this exchange, Ms. Brennan ended the call, and Emilio slid his phone back into his jeans pocket before glancing toward the yellow-and-white Craftsman bungalow where his English teacher lived. Technically, his former English teacher. Ms. Brennan had taught him junior English up until two days ago, but that was over with the arrival of summer. Emilio was now a rising senior, his seventeenth birthday just a few days behind him.
Walking back toward the house to put the number one aunt! key chain on the kitchen counter as requested, Emilio could not stop thinking about the satisfyher! Honestly, how could he stop? How would he ever think of anything except his English teacher’s vibrator for the rest of his natural-born life?
For the sake of accuracy, it should be stated that this odd state of affairs had really started one year ago this month, when Ms. Brennan bought the house next door to his, just before starting her job at Baldwin High School. Before Ms. Brennan purchased it, the house had been owned by the Taylors, an older retired couple who had decided to move into an assisted-living facility; they had been Emilio’s neighbors all his life, giving out full-sized candy bars on Halloween and never minding the persistent barking of Grover, Emilio’s family’s mutt.
Emilio’s parents and Emilio and his little sister, Maisy, had been sorry to see them go, but they were full of curiosity about who would move in next door. They didn’t have to wait long. Two weeks after the Taylors moved out, a moving van rolled up. Emilio’s nosy (she would say curious) mother insisted that the entire family troop over together so they could welcome their new neighbors.
A petite brunette answered the door dressed in khaki shorts and a faded forest-green T-shirt that read mount holyoke in white letters. Her hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, and her face was covered with a sheen of sweat. Behind her was a mess of open cardboard boxes. Like most adults, she could have been twenty-five or forty-five; Emilio wasn’t sure. She simply looked like a grown-up to him.
“We’re the Gonzalez family next door!” Emilio’s mother said cheerfully, as well as loudly, too, Emilio thought, cringing.
“I’m Lydia Brennan,” the brunette answered, wiping her hands on the seat of her shorts before reaching out to politely shake hands with all of them, even eight-year-old Maisy, who’d been eagerly chewing on her fingernails when Ms. Brennan opened the door.
Emilio stood there mutely as his mother and, to a lesser extent, his father made boring adult small talk with their new neighbor. Ms. Brennan seemed quiet but pleasant, polite enough to eagerly accept the fancy cookies his mother had purchased and repackaged to give the appearance of homemade, but distracted enough to give the impression that she wanted to get back to the task of unpacking.
“Is it just you who’s moved in, or…?” Emilio’s mother asked, letting the unfinished sentence linger as her eyes scanned the room behind Ms. Brennan.
“Just me,” Ms. Brennan answered, but she didn’t offer any more information.
“No kids?” Emilio’s mother persisted, her question followed by Emilio’s father’s gentle chiding.
“Just the ones at Baldwin High,” Ms. Brennan explained. “I’ll be teaching junior English there this fall.”
“Maybe you’ll have Emilio!” his mother said, pushing her oldest toward the front door as if Emilio were a specimen to be inspected. “English is his favorite subject!” At this Emilio smiled gamely, but inside he was cringing again.
“How funny that you might live next door to your teacher,” Ms. Brennan said. “I promise I won’t treat you any differently.” She gave him a friendly yet conspiratorial look and added, “I won’t even tell anyone we’re neighbors.”
Emilio just smiled stupidly, unsure how to respond. Just then an orange tabby wandered to the front door and Ms. Brennan scooped it up, introducing it as Sylvia. After some additional awkward banter about the cat, Emilio’s father suggested that Ms. Brennan probably wanted to get back to unpacking, and the four of them walked back to their house, Emilio’s mother prattling on about how old Ms. Brennan might be, whether she was single or divorced, and how she could afford that house on a teacher’s salary.
That had been a year ago, and Emilio had gotten Ms. Brennan for English, and Ms. Brennan had kept her word about not making a big thing about their being neighbors, even pretending that she didn’t know his name on the first day of school. She’d just smiled at him kindly, treating him like anyone else.
The truth was, Emilio didn’t mind others knowing he lived next door to Ms. Brennan, and he’d been known to mention the fact to a few of his friends, all bookish nerds like him who loved Tolkien and chess and had never kissed a soul. She quickly established herself as a well-liked teacher at Baldwin because she was engaging and fair and could explain things in a way that made you feel like you had always known them, that they should come naturally to you and they would, if only you trusted her methods. Organized and steadfast in her approach, she taught Emilio and his classmates how to structure essays using highlighters, which she demonstrated by marking thesis statements (lemon yellow), text evidence (lime green), and commentary (sky blue). Her written feedback always appeared in careful black cursive in the margins, critical but encouraging, and always using the pronoun we , as if the student and Ms. Brennan were a team striving toward a shared goal. ( We could have more robust commentary connecting this text evidence to the thesis. We could elaborate here. We could avoid this redundant language in the conclusion. )
She never raised her voice and didn’t need to; she commanded the classroom even though she was small in stature. She dressed professionally, in creams and grays, with a single gold chain around her neck at all times. Her hair was always pulled back off her face in a tight ponytail or twist. But her enthusiasm for literature and language was evident in every planned lecture, every pause that lingered over a certain phrase or clause that clearly brought her a feeling of satisfaction. Or perhaps validation. She was anything but robotic. In fact, Emilio would never forget the afternoon her voice cracked as she read aloud the last few lines of The Great Gatsby , and her eyes seemed to fill with tears that never quite fell.
“Forgive me,” she’d said, holding the book to her chest and briefly closing her eyes, taking a moment to exhale. “But is that not utterly exquisite?”
Emilio’s mother had been right. English was his favorite class, and Ms. Brennan made that true again during his junior year. It occurred to him in certain fleeting moments, like when she tucked a loose lock of dark hair behind her ear or tilted her head as she considered something a classmate said (it was always a classmate; Emilio was too shy to speak), that she was what some would consider an attractive woman. But even though he saw her in more human moments—rolling out her city garbage can dressed in that mount holyoke T-shirt, carefully stringing white Christmas lights along her azalea bushes during the holidays, watering the spider plant that hung on her porch—she still seemed otherworldly somehow. Like an abstract painting you admire from afar but don’t fully understand. It wasn’t at all like when the young French teacher Ms. Toussaint crouched down next to his desk to check his conjugations, her breathy, whispery voice sending shivers down his spine, the warmth of her body enveloped in the scent of vanilla, her delicious, ample bosom tempting Emilio to glance just once.
No, she wasn’t Ms. Toussaint.
Even when Ms. Brennan had approached him in the front yard the week before as he was doing the weeding, per his father’s orders, and asked if Emilio could check on her house while she was away that coming weekend (her usual house sitter was unavailable), she had carried herself with all the properness of a teacher assigning an essay.
“It’s just a getaway to celebrate the start of summer, and I’ll be back by Tuesday afternoon at the latest,” she’d explained. “It really only involves going over once a day to get the mail and to feed Sylvia.” Even though the job was easy, she’d jotted down instructions for him in the same careful black-inked script that Emilio recognized from his marked essays.
“Of course, Ms. Brennan, I’d be happy to help,” he’d said, honored to be asked. Emilio had wondered for a moment if she would have asked him if he were just any old student and not someone who had earned an A on his final analysis paper, his chosen text Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.” ( We have a lovely command of the language here, Emilio, and a well-crafted, insightful argument. I enjoyed reading this! )
So now here he was, back in the house, placing the number one aunt! keys on the kitchen counter, already knowing what his next steps would be. Without contemplating whether it was perverted or creepy—in fact, he could not contemplate because he felt compelled—Emilio walked down the short hallway to Ms. Brennan’s bedroom; like the rest of the house, it was clean and impeccably organized, decorated in muted tones, all precise lines and right angles. As in the living room, there were several bookcases lined with countless books, their well-creased spines evidence of a library well loved.
Did part of him hope it wasn’t there? That what he’d seen hadn’t been a vibrator at all but perhaps a handheld thermometer like the kind his mother used to use on him and Maisy when they were small?
Or was there a part of him that could not wait to see it again?
His heart racing in a way that was not at all unpleasant, he opened the drawer and found the satisfyher! peering up at him, stretched out in all its rose-gold luster like a woman sunbathing on the beach, longing to be admired.
He memorized its placement there in the lower-right corner of the drawer, next to the space where the keys had been and below a collection of electric chargers and several black pens. For a moment he wondered if he should take a picture of it, so he could be absolutely sure he’d place it back correctly. But then he would have a photograph of his English teacher’s vibrator on his phone, and that seemed wrong, somehow, even if he were to delete it later. That would be more of a violation than he felt comfortable with.
Unable to resist, his hand reached out and picked up the satisfyher! by the handle. It was heavier than he’d expected; it contained a sure-of-itself solidness. There was a round button on one side that Emilio assumed was the on switch; it sat underneath something that looked like a volume control, although even never-kissed-a-girl Emilio knew it was a different type of controller altogether.
He realized he was holding his breath and his cheeks were flushed.
As curious as he was, he didn’t dare turn it on for fear he wouldn’t be able to turn it off. Outside, the drone of the lawn crew’s equipment seeped through the windows, covered in gauzy white curtains. Sylvia the cat sauntered in and leapt onto the bed, immediately arranging herself into a small orange fluffball on Ms. Brennan’s taupe bedspread; Emilio gave silent thanks that she could not rat him out.
Standing there in the middle of Ms. Brennan’s bedroom, his heart still thumping, he held the velvety silicone head of the satisfyher! close to his face, not so close as to touch it, but close enough that he breathed in deep, searching for what he did not know, but he thought he might be able to sense it when he smelled it at last.
—
“Jesus Christ,” said Lydia Brennan, tossing her phone onto the hotel bed and lifting her hands—no rings, fingernails clipped short and neat—to her face. “My student found my vibrator.”
Next to her in bed, Sean allowed his book (a dog-eared copy of Time Regained by Proust) to fall back against his naked chest. He leisurely readjusted the pillows behind him.
“Please explain,” he answered, a smile building on his lips. Lydia dropped her hands and gazed at him. She could see a gleam in his hazel eyes; he was eager for a good story, and Lydia had it. It was the sort of story that Sean would tell his friends—probably with some colorful flourishes for increased engagement—who would go on to tell their friends, and so on, a new urban legend passed on at happy hours and small gatherings, a sort of old-fashioned virality. The high school boy who discovered his teacher’s vibrator. It was irresistible, really.
“And after everything that’s happened at my school this year,” she said. “After we just got off the district’s radar and our principal was reinstated!”
“The courtyard incident?” asked Sean. That story had become his story, too.
“Yes,” answered Lydia glumly.
“Well, explain this vibrator tale and allow me to determine if it really is the undoing you think it is,” he coaxed.
“Let me get coffee first, at least,” said Lydia, sliding out of the bed fully nude. Sean took the time to admire her curves and nicely shaped ass as she fiddled with the hotel coffeemaker. She was rounder and softer than you’d think when you only saw her in clothes, dressed like some librarian from the 1950s.
Back in bed, she sipped her drink as she explained the events of the morning, pausing to answer Sean’s questions and requests for clarification, including why she would keep the keys to the back gate in her nightstand. (“Because I keep the keys to the file cabinet and the safe on the same key chain, and those things are in my bedroom!”) Lydia could sense Sean mentally taking notes, perhaps already embellishing certain details in his mind. He would command the room with this story at some point in the near future, she knew, eager to be the center of attention. The realization irritated her.
“Try to view this like an English teacher, like someone who loves a good narrative,” he said, perhaps sensing her prediction. “It’s a terrific little chestnut, if you think about it. And I don’t think it’s going to cause a scandal.”
Lydia sighed, then took a large, last swallow of her coffee before setting the paper cup on her nightstand. “I’m absolutely positive he’s never even kissed anyone. Maybe he didn’t know what it was.”
Sean arched an eyebrow. “Lydia,” he said, “the Internet exists, you know.”
Lydia groaned in embarrassment and slid under the covers, still processing the morning: the buzzing of her phone, startling her out of her half-sleep; Emilio’s explanation that the lawn crew needed access to her backyard; the awful moment when she—not yet fully awake—directed him toward her nightstand drawer; and the near-simultaneous horrific jolt of realization that she experienced as she remembered what he would see when he opened it.
Sean took the opportunity to set aside the Proust. He scooted under the sheets to join her.
“So, tell me more about this vibrator,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper, a grin spreading over his handsome face. Traces of the morning sun streamed in through the white sheets, warming up their toasty little tent. Lydia turned slowly to face him, already beginning to unwind. Sean pressed his mouth to her neck, under her right ear, which he knew she liked.
“Well,” said Lydia, her voice soft and coy, “if you must know, it does the trick in under two minutes flat.”
The scent and feel of her flooded his senses, and Sean pressed closer, reached for her breasts. “Is this some sort of demand,” he said, “for a competition?”
At this Lydia laughed and spread her legs wide open, already ready for him.
Later, while Sean was in the shower, Lydia took stock of the situation and tried to convince herself it all wasn’t as awful as she feared. Surely this could not be as bad as the ashes incident. It wasn’t as if she kept her vibrator in a desk at school and Emilio had found it there, for God’s sake. After all, he was no longer even her student, and she wasn’t teaching seniors next year. She would never have to face him in the classroom again. He didn’t have a slew of little brothers with whom to share this story—surely he would not tell young Maisy about this—so she did not have to worry about future Gonzalez boys eyeing her on the first day of school with a knowing smirk.
He did have his band of nerdy friends, of course, but there was something about Emilio that led Lydia to believe that he might be the type to hold fast to some outdated gentleman’s code of honor. On his last essay for her, an analysis of “A Rose for Emily,” he’d exhibited such empathy for spinster Emily—a murderous necrophiliac, for God’s sake!—that she’d been touched.
True, he was her neighbor, but their paths didn’t cross all that often, and soon he would be off to college, hopefully a school at least a few hours away. Although he was quiet in class, his writing revealed that he was a bright boy—that was certain. Lydia reminded herself to make his requested letter of recommendation of the highest quality. Anything to ensure his admission to the out-of-state college of his dreams.
And honestly, even if somehow the story came out, what was wrong with a thirty-seven-year-old woman owning a vibrator? With all the male-centered pornography easily available, perhaps it was good that a teenage boy learn that there was nothing wrong with a woman keeping her sexual satisfaction a central focus in her life. Certainly Lydia always had.
At this thought her mind turned to Sean, who was still in the shower. She stretched out in the hotel bed, not minding one bit if they stayed in it all day. She and Sean had planned this beach getaway to Galveston Island for as soon as school was out—he taught senior English at an all-boys Catholic high school in town—so the summer stretched out ahead of them both, open and inviting.
He was the sixteenth man she’d slept with since her divorce five years ago, and certainly one of the best in bed by far. Moments ago, he had given the satisfyher! a real run for its money. She smiled to herself at the thought of it.
True, he was also an aspiring novelist—with an emphasis on “aspiring”—and he could be a little full of himself at times. But Lydia enjoyed his wry sense of humor and his intellect. He’d never been married and had no children; in the dating world of a woman in her late thirties, he was something of a unicorn.
Itching for more coffee, she forced herself out of bed to make another cup. The drumming of the shower bled through the closed bathroom door. Sean was singing in Italian, something from an opera. He had a loud and terrible voice. As she struggled to open the plastic packet of coffee, the buzz of a phone caught her attention. It was Sean’s, face up on the nearby dresser. Lydia could not help but let her eyes scan the incoming text, which came from a woman saved in Sean’s phone only as Hot Amy.
Had so much fun on Tuesday. Like So Much Fun. Let me know when you’re back in town.
Lydia was grateful she had the privacy to prepare her reaction. Otherwise, it would have turned into a scene from a bad film: Her, naked, holding the phone toward Sean, screen facing forward, her voice building into a shout as she demanded an explanation. Him, walking toward her, trying to put his arms around her, the “Baby, baby, baby, please” that might follow.
No, Lydia wanted none of that. Instead, she slipped on her cream-colored linen sundress and dug into her purse for her hairbrush and an elastic tie, slipping her dark hair into a neat and well-practiced twist. By the time Sean came out of the bathroom, hotel towel tied loosely around his trim waist, his dark blond hair still wet and dripping, Lydia was seated at the foot of the bed, legs crossed, arms crossed. Her heart was pounding, but no one would guess it by looking at her.
Sean stared at her, confused.
“So,” Lydia said, her voice cool and polished, the sort of buttery, practiced tone you might hear through the headphones of an audio tour at an art museum. “Is there someone in your phone saved as Ugly Amy?”
She relished the confusion on his face, the growing awareness that something was wrong, very wrong, and he was responsible for it. Then, the realization of what it was. Lydia uncrossed her arms, leaned back slightly on the bed. Took a deep breath and wished it hadn’t sounded so shaky. Her throat ached.
But Sean did not “Baby, baby, baby, please” her. Instead, he recalculated. Composed himself. Walked over to the phone and calmly read Hot Amy’s message as Lydia waited, her mouth dry, her cheeks flushed.
“Lydia,” he said, turning to face her, the phone still in his hand, his voice soft, as if he were talking to a lost child or a frightened puppy, “hey, sweetheart…we never said we were exclusive, did we? I mean…we’re both adults here, right? I thought you knew I was seeing other people.”
And then he came and sat down next to her on the bed, turned toward her, tilted his head in a way that indicated only pity. Pity for her! This was all wrong and not at all how Lydia had planned it. With one calm reaction, Sean had the upper hand. He was the rational, mature, straightforward man. She was the histrionic, idiotic, needy woman. They had been sleeping together for three months. She had been stupid to assume that a unicorn would have the desire or need to be exclusive.
“You have to leave,” Lydia said, rising and taking her purse and one of the plastic hotel key cards off the dresser. “The hotel is on my credit card, and I won’t bother you for your half. But I need you gone by the time I come back.” She slid her feet into her slip-on flats.
“We came in your car,” said Sean, still seated on the bed, apparently not motivated enough to even stand up. His voice was calm and steady. Perhaps he was already reworking this moment into a scene for one of his cocktail party stories.
“Figure it out,” said Lydia. And she left the hotel room.
—
Whatever scent Emilio thought he might find, it wasn’t there. Just a trace of something chemical and plastic. He didn’t know if he was disappointed or not, but he carefully placed the satisfyher! back in the drawer and stared at it for a moment, trying to align it with the mental picture he had in his mind. There was no way Ms. Brennan would know that he had touched it. He shut the drawer gently and stood up straight, looking around Ms. Brennan’s bedroom with fresh eyes. On the bed, Sylvia the cat stretched and rearranged herself.
Ms. Brennan was not the sort of teacher to share much personal information, but in class once she had told the students that her cat was named after Sylvia Plath, a poet. Although she had never taught them any of Plath’s work, nerdy, curious Emilio had looked some of it up on his own and been immediately drawn in by some of her punch-in-the-gut lines and her haunting, confessional tone. He never shared any of this new knowledge with Ms. Brennan, but he found it sad that she would name her cat after this depressed woman whose true love had abandoned her and whose own tortured soul had driven her to suicide.
Perhaps it was telling, too.
Poor Ms. Brennan, thought Emilio. It was clear to him now as he walked through the small two-bedroom bungalow, absorbing more proof that his English teacher was a tragic case. The home was neat, maybe too neat. Evidence of a compulsive person with too much time on her hands. The few pictures on the walls and refrigerator were of what Emilio had to assume were her nieces ( number one aunt! ), identical twin girls younger than Maisy with hair the color of butterscotch and matching missing front teeth. In the photos, Ms. Brennan smiled, but Emilio did not think the smile reached her eyes.
She had moved here all alone from Austin and had never mentioned a husband, a partner. His mind went to the satisfyher! sitting in the drawer, ready for use. Had she not referred to his paper on “A Rose for Emily” as insightful ? Insightful because, perhaps, she could relate to old and lonely Emily Grierson, shut up from the world, a spinster?
How had he missed all this? Ms. Brennan had taught them to analyze characters with such precision, but he had never correctly analyzed Ms. Brennan herself.
A new thought occurred to Emilio: Despite the attractive face, the poised and sophisticated outfits, the composed and polished air, could it be possible that Ms. Brennan—smart, together Ms. Brennan—was a virgin , just like him?
Emilio was suddenly convinced that this had to be true. The evidence was there in spades. She had never known a lover. Perhaps she had never even been kissed.
Why else would a woman need the satisfyher! ?
But unlike Emilio, who had every reason to hope that college would be where his love life would finally blossom (surely in college girls would be attracted to the shy and intellectual type), poor Ms. Brennan might not be so fortunate. The prime of her life might very well be behind her, Emilio thought. She might be destined to live out the rest of her days in this yellow-and-white bungalow comforted only by a machine.
The thought crushed sensitive, well-meaning Emilio. It didn’t seem fair or right. Ms. Brennan was smart and not unattractive. She was interesting, intelligent, and sometimes even funny in her wry, understated sort of way. She deserved something more than a vibrator in her bedroom drawer.
Emilio felt consumed with sadness for his teacher. He glanced once more around the little cottage before leaving, making sure the front door was locked tightly behind him.
—
Lydia spent the remainder of her trip in only three places: sleeping in the luxurious hotel bed, stretched out on a towel and reading on the beach ( Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by Wallace), or drinking bourbon, neat, in the lobby bar. On her last evening at said bar, she engaged in flirtatious conversation with a decent-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair named Kenneth; he said he wasn’t married although he probably was, and after three and a half drinks she invited him back to her room, where they engaged in sex that was about as satisfactory as a Netflix binge of a show she’d already seen twice.
After she asked him to leave, she punished herself by browsing Tom’s social media, where he was frequently pictured with his new wife and new baby. At the park. In the mountains. On the baby’s first birthday. The child was truly adorable, with apple cheeks and red hair she’d obviously inherited from Tom’s second wife. In every picture, Tom looked so happy.
She couldn’t even be mad at Tom. He hadn’t been a terrible husband, and she hadn’t been a terrible wife. They had simply discovered too late that they were wrong for each other in all the tedious, typical ways so many people sometimes are. He’d been decent and generous in the divorce, giving her more financial stability than a public school teacher typically had. And now they were “friendly” with each other, connected on social media, co-owners of past mutual friends. It was all so modern and sophisticated, Lydia thought, not long before she crawled into the hotel bathroom to puke up the evening’s drinks.
—
Groggy and slightly hungover the next morning, Lydia paid extra for a late checkout, texting Emilio to let him know she would be later than planned. As she hit Send, she winced at the memory of the vibrator incident. Hopefully the young man had mostly forgotten about it. Of course, thinking of the vibrator also brought the image of Sean to the forefront of her mind, although in truth he had been thrumming in the background since the moment she’d kicked him out of the hotel room. She wondered how many people had already enjoyed his story at her expense. She hoped he’d had the decency to change the names.
By the time she pulled into the driveway of her home, the sun was setting. She was anxious to do laundry, unpack, put things where they belonged. Lydia enjoyed imposing order on inanimate objects during times when there was little order inside her head and heart.
She shifted the car into park and decided to check her phone before heading inside. A flash of panic seized her when she saw an email from Principal Kendricks with the subject line “Please read this.”
This struck her as strange. They usually didn’t get much email traffic in the summer. Lydia opened the message, cursing the time it took to load; after a little while, she realized it was blank. There was nothing. No words. No attachment. Upon closer examination, she wondered if the email had been sent to more than one person, perhaps using BCC? But she couldn’t tell for sure.
Oh God. Had her hidden vibrator sparked yet another crisis, as she’d feared? Had Emilio said something to his parents, and they’d complained? (Mrs. Gonzalez was something of a nosy neighbor, to be sure.) Was Principal Kendricks sending out some sort of email admonishing her? Would she become the laughingstock of Baldwin High?
Half frantic, she sent off a quick text to her colleague Andrew Williams, asking him if he’d received the strange communication and knew what it was about. Then she slipped the phone into her purse and, trying to quell the anxiety Principal Kendricks’s strange email had sparked, gathered her things from the car and headed inside. After a quick cuddle with Sylvia, she immediately set to emptying her luggage, doing her laundry, and making a shopping list for tomorrow’s grocery store run. While she was at it, she reorganized her medicine cabinet, rearranged her underwear drawer, and rifled through her refrigerator, making sure everything expired was tossed.
With no tasks left with which to distract herself, she turned on the television to some mindless true crime show. When her phone pinged, she startled. Upon picking it up, she saw a text from Andrew Williams.
Sorry for the delay. Was out with family. Monica and the kids demanded Italian tonight! Yeah, Kendricks tried to send an email and I guess he made a mistake. Anyway, he sent out a corrected version just now. You should read it, despite a few errors I’ve managed to spot. ;-)
As quickly as she could, Lydia opened her work email and read Mr. Kendricks’s latest message. As she took it in, she exhaled a sigh of relief. Her paranoia had been for naught. In fact, Principal Kendricks’s email put a smile on her face.
Setting her phone down, she thought she heard some shuffling or noise on the porch, followed by a light knock. With Sylvia at her heels, Lydia made it to the front door and opened it just wide enough to peer out. Although it was dark, she caught a glimpse of young Emilio making his way across the strip of grass that separated their houses.
At her doorstep was a small bouquet of yellow sunflowers, clearly bought from a grocery store, and tied with the sort of cheap red ribbon a person would use to wrap a child’s Christmas gift. Next to the flowers was a square white envelope with Ms. Brennan written on it in the chicken scratch of a teenage boy who had been born too late to have learned proper cursive.
Taking both items inside, she set the flowers on the kitchen counter before sinking onto the couch in the den, envelope in hand. Inside was a piece of loose-leaf paper folded in fourths. She opened it.
Ms. Brennan,
While I was house-sitting for you these past few days, it occurred to me that I do not think I ever took the time to properly tell you how much I enjoyed your class this year. I know I never spoke much in class (because I am shy), but your lectures and your lessons always held my attention and expanded my love of literature and the English language. You taught me to look past the obvious, surface-level interpretations and seek deeper understandings. What you taught me will stay with me for a lifetime.
If I may be so bold as to say that I sense perhaps the world has not been as kind to you as it should have been. That perhaps you are lonely. As I write this, I worry that I’ve offended you. Perhaps you might say my thinking is incorrect, not supported by text evidence. If so, I can only apologize.
No matter what, I just wanted to remind you that you are a special person.
Sincerely, your student,
Emilio Gonzalez
The ache in Lydia’s throat was so painful, the only solution was to cry immediately, which she did. Starting from her elementary school years, certain words had always had the power to make her weep.
Not fifty feet away from all this, in his bedroom, Emilio lay flat on his belly reading a paperback novel ( The Return of the Native by Hardy), but his mind was mostly elsewhere, floating through his bedroom window and hovering over Ms. Brennan’s bungalow, wondering if she had discovered the flowers and the card yet. Wondering what she might do when she did.
He was rereading a paragraph for the third time, almost about to give up trying to focus, when the phone on his nightstand buzzed. Reaching for it immediately, he smiled as he read the waiting text. It was formatted formally, as if it were a letter.
—
Emilio,
I am very touched by your card and flowers. Perhaps more than I can say. Thank you for being such a good student and neighbor.
Have a restful summer.
Your teacher,
Ms. Brennan
Emilio smiled with the pleasure that came with making another human being happy, and after a moment or two, he reached again for his book.
In her den, Lydia read and reread Emilio’s note. She placed it face up on the coffee table and stared at it. Just then, her phone rang, the name of the caller exploding on the screen like fireworks demanding to be admired.
Upon realizing who was calling, Lydia despised her initial reaction, which was delight. She couldn’t help but think about Sean’s dry wit. His abilities in bed. His impassioned defense of the criminally underrated Anne Bront?. As her phone continued to ring, she tried to ignore her memories of the crushing sensation she’d felt upon seeing the text from Hot Amy.
Next to her ringing phone sat Emilio’s note.
No matter what, I just wanted to remind you that you are a special person.
In one swift motion Lydia rejected the call, and without pausing, she blocked the caller and unfollowed him on every social media platform. Then she turned her phone off and went to the kitchen, thinking she might pour herself a glass of wine.
There, she realized Sylvia had discovered the sunflowers on the counter and was peacefully chewing on one, small fragments of velvety yellow dotting her sweet orange face.
“No, no, Sylvia,” Lydia said gently, tugging the flowers away and finding a vase to put them in. When she was done with that, she scooped the cat into her arms and nuzzled its neck. The cat purred appreciatively.
As she stood there in her kitchen, Lydia reflected on the day she’d had and on the wild school year that had preceded it. She’d made good friends at Baldwin, and together they had endured so much. She’d taught kind and curious students like Emilio, and next year she would surely teach many more. But right now it was summer. For Lydia Brennan, the flowers standing proud in their vase were a reminder of this season that unfurled before her, a time full of countless chances for her to discover who she was and who she might still want to be.