A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [39]
“Really?” Agnes asked, exhausted and slightly bewildered by her easy success.
“I want you to promise me that you’ll work yourself into a similar state when marshaling your thoughts in writing.”
Agnes wondered if this was a trick. “Okay,” she said.
“Good,” Mr. Mitchell said. “You’ll write the paper over, and you’ll get an A.” He stood and gave his belt a little hitch. He put his hands on his hips. Agnes looked at his hips, saw the way his shirt billowed a bit over the belt, noticed as well the four or five inches of bare skin on his wrists where the man had rolled his sleeves, and she experienced desire. Pure. Unfamiliar. Uncorrupted. Her eyes rose to his face, to the blue irises she had not noted before. Agnes had been in this man’s class twenty or thirty times, and she had never really looked at his face. Impossible.
Mr. Mitchell, clearly puzzled by Agnes’s demeanor, tilted his head. “Well,” he said.
Agnes could not move.
“So then,” he said, made uncomfortable now by Agnes’s odd behavior, “if I give you until next Wednesday, will that be enough time?”
Agnes nodded but made no move to pick up the paper she had set upon the desk with a snap in the middle of her argument.
“Anything else?” he asked.
Agnes tried to calculate his age. He was not old. Possibly thirty. She would find out. She could one day ask him where he’d gone to college—so much to learn about the man!—and what year he’d graduated.
“No,” she said. “I’m just . . .”
Mr. Mitchell waited for his student to finish her sentence.
“Just what?” he asked in a gentle voice, dipping his head.
(Later, Jim would tell Agnes that he thought the generosity of his gesture had unleashed in her a desire to unburden herself of teenage angst—that she might reveal a tortured home life, an altercation with a roommate, a love affair gone bad, none of which he felt equipped to deal with, none of which he wanted to hear.)
“I’ve got to run,” he said when Agnes didn’t answer him.
Agnes collected her paper from the desk. “Thank you,” she said. “Wednesday is fine.”
“Good,” he said, as though already congratulating himself for having successfully negotiated a tricky moment with a student.
But Agnes knew differently.
Leaning against a tree in the woods, remembering that day, Agnes realized she had to short-circuit the longing. If she didn’t, she would cry, and she was not a lovely crier. Her eyes would vein up, and her lids would turn the color of uncooked bacon. No amount of makeup would disguise the mess. She put her sweater back on and took several deep breaths. She thought about the papers she had not yet graded, about her bank balance, about the roll of fat over her jeans. She thought about the Halifax disaster, that comfortable place to which her mind lately traveled. She reached into her backpack for her notebook and pen.
At dinner, Innes was seated across from Louise, a smaller woman than her sister. Louise had remarkable hazel eyes (yes, there was no other word for their color; Innes was a connoisseur of eye color), a fact that caused a slight dissonance, the actual Hazel having brown eyes. Did the Frasers regret their firstborn’s name when Louise had come along? Or had they appreciated the little genetic joke?
“We are so happy to have you,” Louise said in a rush, her nervousness betrayed in a tightness about her mouth. “Though heaven knows there’s no shortage of men about with the war on. Droves of them, in fact. Coming and going. Simply droves.”
An odd remark, Innes thought, begging the question of why Louise had remained unattached. Or perhaps Innes had got it wrong and Louise, too, had a ring. He could not just now see her hands.
“Few with Mr. Finch’s qualifications to be sure.” This from Dr. Fraser, who was missing at drinks but prompt for dinner. He was a man with military bearing of his own, the high collar, dotted tie, and neatly brushed mustache a sort of uniform. Innes