A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [50]
Maybe Howard was right, and therapy would help me. Maybe I could get some medication that would make me sing Tra-la-la from morning to evening. The board members were shuffling through their papers and whispering to one another as I took my seat in the cafeteria. There were other teachers in the next aisle, including Luther Tritz, the band director. Perhaps something had come up in his contract too; perhaps there were parents who wanted to conduct or teach the youngsters tonette fingering. Luke was a short, stocky, orange-haired man who looked as if he bathed compulsively in carrot juice. I had not gotten around to telling Theresa about my recent enthusiasm for old Luther Tritz. As far as I knew he was not capable of laughter. Once, at a staff appreciation dinner, I had seen a ripple appear on his orange forehead when the assistant principal made a tasteless joke. I used to walk slowly past the music room in the morning so that I could watch him taking the red music folders from his uncluttered metal cabinet, and then put two at each stand. I had not yet explained to Theresa that the fascination I had with Mr. Luther Tritz, all the way down to his pure Episcopalian heart, was nothing more than an intellectual exercise. It posed the problem of the upstanding community leader with a wife, five children, and a recreational vehicle feeling something only natural for the blond-haired grade-school nurse. There was something so fetching about him when he played the tuba in the marching band and conducted simultaneously. And a man who had a job that started at 8:30 in the morning and ended promptly at 3:15 couldn’t help but be irresistible.
Catherine Trumper, from the local newspaper, was sitting next to him. She had supposedly had an affair with the high-school football coach during a season when she filled in for the sportswriter. She had flowered in her extreme youth and then gotten fat, apparently without realizing. She had on black high heels and a tight blue and purple striped dress made from oil by-products. Her partially exposed freckled bosom, confined in its push-up bra, was barking and whining to get out. Surely he had sense enough not to be attracted to someone as blatantly lascivious as Catherine Trumper. There was so much of her she was lapping over into Luke himself. He looked straight ahead, as if she could press against him all day, all night, and he wouldn’t notice and wouldn’t care.
The august board members were discussing asbestos removal. The schools in the district were riddled with asbestos and the water had sulfur in it and smelled like rotten eggs. Luther Tritz was watching me; I could feel his washed-out blue eyes on my face. When I turned to meet him straight on, presto he swung around to look behind himself at absolutely nothing. He knew why they had summoned me—he was in on it, too! Catherine Trumper didn’t even have to lean over to talk into his orange ear; she was telling him that I had meant to drown Lizzy, that she had heard from a reliable source, a woman with heavy shoes and crusted pancake makeup, that I had locked Lizzy out of the house, that I had screamed at her to go to the pond, that I had tied a brick to her ankle and then pushed her in. I looked like I was doing artificial respiration at the side of the pond, but I was really untying the brick, trying to undo the knot in the string, trying to cover it up.
Luther Tritz was nodding his head. He guessed he knew right along that I was unbalanced because I used to stand in the doorway and gawk at the boys screwing their woodwinds together.
“Mr. Chairman,” Catherine Trumper called out, “can you dollarize that asbestos removal for me? I didn’t catch those figures you were quoting.”
“Well, Cathy,