Chapter 6 Mute Swan #5
Ruth said, “Felicity told you why she changed her answer. If she said that is what happened, then that is what happened. Felicity
doesn’t lie. Did you talk to the two kids who copied the wrong answer from her paper?”
“Felicity was seen changing her answer. Ruth, you know that’s cheating,” said Sandy Albertson. “And all kids lie sometimes.”
By then, the first bell had gone off and kids were beginning to file into the room. Mrs. Albertson explained to Ruth that
they could talk more later, but we overheard her say that Felicity would receive an F so that it would be impressed on her
young mind just how serious a matter cheating was and how accepting just one wrong answer would have been so much better.
Ruth, seven or eight months pregnant at the time, with one of Felicity’s younger brothers, repeated the reason that Felicity
had changed her answer. Sandy Albertson gently shook her head.
“I can’t stop you, can I?” Ruth asked. “What you are teaching her is to lie.”
The second-grade teacher said, “Ruth, let’s talk about this another time.”
Ruth picked up her large, handsewn patchwork purse and turned to leave the room. Then she turned back and took Felicity’s
hand.
Clearly, but not angrily, she said, “Felicity doesn’t lie. If you think that she’s a liar, then you can’t have her anymore.
Ask the other two kids which answers they got wrong on their tests.”
Everything might have ended peacefully then, but Mrs. Albertson gave a gusty sigh and said, “Ruth, you’re making way too much
of this.” She had turned her back on Ruth and it must have been eerie for her to feel Ruth’s breath on the back of her neck.
“Sandy, I don’t wish to be unkind,” she said softly, and Sandy Albertson jumped, whirling around to face Ruth, who was so
close to the teacher that she could have rubbed noses with her. It was a graphic illustration of what in your face meant. “I love teaching. I’m a good teacher. The only thing I hate about teaching is that I’m lumped in with terrible teachers
like you.”
“I need to call the principal’s office.”
“Oh yes, by all means, call your husband,” Ruth said. “Call the big boss. Call security. Call the police. Restore order! No
one will have the courage to tell you that you are the epitome of everything that’s wrong with education in this country.
But I will tell you. You are lazy. You are bored. And you are always right.” Ruth’s voice was rising, as if she was trying
to be heard over the approach of a plane. “If you could listen, you might not be such a silly bitch, Sandy.”
The last of the children were entering the room now. They were paying attention, their eyes wide. Felicity started to cry,
as did I. We weren’t delicate little violets—well, relatively speaking, we actually were delicate little violets, compared
to what I’ve since learned about the way some kids grow up, even on the mean streets of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. But we weren’t
used to adults talking like that around kids. As Ruth turned to leave, for some reason, I grabbed her other hand and followed
her out the door and into the parking lot. She didn’t object; she seemed to expect that. She took us home and gave us some
worn-out men’s dress shirts to put on over our clothes and set out containers of brown sugar and oatmeal so we could make
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Even I was aware Ruth seemed to be listening very attentively to something far away. It was
over an hour before she called my parents and only then when I suggested it. “Oh, of course, Reenie, you’re right! But I’m
sure she knows that you’re just fine with me.”
The following Monday, both Felicity and I were in the mixed second-and-third-grade room. My parents, wisely, let the whole thing pass without much commentary, my dad murmuring only that even parents sometimes got overexcited.
So maybe Felicity was as protective of Ruth as Ruth had been of her. Maybe Felicity, like Ruth, was an apparently tranquil
bay with a strong, hidden undertow.
I said as much.
“The theory was that Ruth took off because she thought the police would be after her. But yeah, we gave up on that. It didn’t
seem like that was in her nature. And it was a little too neat. We thought maybe Cary killed Emil and then killed himself.”
Sam reached for my hand. “But none of those felt right. Those insurance policies were around for nearly a year. Felicity quit
at the strip club long before any of this. And one thing is for sure, those guys knew that she wasn’t in an exclusive relationship
with any of them.”
“They still might have been jealous.”
“I’m sure maybe they were. But why would it all come to a head right then? Right after Christmas and New Year’s, in the middle
of the break? It’s just too improbable.”
“Then who?”
“I think Felicity must have crossed somebody scary without realizing it. Either somebody scary or somebody crazy. There are
nutters out there who have whole fantasy relationships with women who don’t even know they exist—or who they talked to once
at a grocery store, or at a strip club. Maybe it was another client who stalked her and watched other men come and go and
then went off the rails.”
“If that were true, she would just say that to you. She’s private but she’s forthright.”
“So like you said, the other possibility is a bad guy. She didn’t know he was a bad guy until he crossed the line, whatever the line was, and then threatened to kill her too if she ever told.
Or maybe after Ruth resigned, this guy abducted Ruth and killed her.
I don’t know for sure who she is afraid of, but she’s so afraid she’d rather go to prison than risk talking about it.
And that means giving up seven, eight, ten years of her life, before she can even apply for parole. ”
We lay down in the darkness.
Once again, I reminded myself it wouldn’t stay this way, if it stayed at all. Once again, I thought of the way my mom and
dad still danced to “Stardust” in the living room. Once at a party, I’d heard my mother say to my dad, “Let’s just go home,
it’s more fun at home.”
Neither of us really slept. Just before dawn, a storm exploded, dramatic and erotic, the kind you never see in winter, white
metallic lightning that strobed without even enough of a break for us to count, as Nell and I had when we were children: one, one thousand, two, one thousand, booming thunder that shook the windowpanes in their frames. Blizzards and other big storms seem to move your anxiety outside
the self, freeing a person to do and say things she might guard more closely in the ordinary world. Pregnancies happen during
blizzards and blackouts.
So do murders.
Why did it seem the right time to tell Sam? Did I need to test his devotion? Perhaps in that stormy darkness, I wanted to
trust my new beloved with my own darkness, as I had never trusted father, mother, or sister.
How do people get caught for murder? I asked, warming him up. Great detective work? Their own mistakes? Conscience? Some bragged,
Sam said. Some couldn’t bear the suspense and confessed. Sometimes, years later, police just got a tip.
“Why does anyone think I know much about this?” he wondered aloud. “Why do people think I defend the Boston Strangler?”
“Do you think anybody could kill? You think a normal person could snap?”
Sam said, “They say anyone could if you were pushed far enough. I don’t think I could.” He added, “My mom used to say that if everyone who ever considered murder or suicide turned purple, this would be the planet of the grapes.”
“That’s kind of funny,” I said. “You never asked me what the worst thing I ever did was.”
“Okay, you’re on.”
“I tried to kill somebody.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter who. No one knows. Well, one other person knows, besides me.” And now you, I thought.
“You mean, the person you threatened?”
“No, even she doesn’t know. But I didn’t just threaten her. I didn’t just fantasize it,” I said. “I tried to kill someone.
I would have done it.”
“Why?”
“She humiliated me.”
Sam said, “I don’t understand.”
“My grandmother McClatchey used to say nobody ever died from embarrassment. But they have. Girls killed themselves ashamed
of a rape or a pregnancy and boys ashamed of being gay or being weak.”
Adolescents were assaulted by each other and by culture, even by school. What makes girls line up together in an open shower,
when just a few metal panels would protect them from shame? My mother told me that, in her day, boys were required to take
swimming class naked. Why? How could desperately self-conscious boys learn anything, subjected to humiliation like you read
about in British boarding schools? How could teachers have forgotten that they were once fragile adolescents? Or were they
ever? On a seventh-grade field trip, the phys ed teacher who was a chaperone yelled, “This girl needs a tampon!” Why? Why
did she have to shout?
Sam remembered sixth-grade dancing class at Catholic school, budding adolescents shoved together in the guise of a social grace.
The foxtrot? The polka? What for? One wedding decades later?
Sister Genevieve, the last nun in America, a PE teacher, who looked like Jack Nicholson, demonstrated the twist in her red polyester pantsuit.
It was as though this class was designed to make children hate dancing and hate themselves.
Add wildfire social media and cell phones, “Instagram” becoming a verb, TikTok and chat in a snap, all spreading seeds of
shame, even as understanding of those consequences grew as well.
“You’ve thought a lot about this,” Sam said. “This is why you tried to kill somebody.”
“I was in high school.”
“Delinquent,” Sam said.
“It’s not funny.”
“The look on your face is scaring me. I said when we started that you could tell me anything, and you can. But you don’t have
to.”
But I did have to, even though the paint was not close to dry on this thing between us. I wouldn’t have told any other guy.
It was because of Felicity that I had to.