Alice Bliss - Laura Harrington [74]
“Oh, yes. Yes, it does.”
There’s an awkward pause.
“Thank you for speaking about Peter, Jack. It’s a comfort to me to hear his name.”
“I know it is.”
John turns to Alice.
“Mrs. Minty was my dad’s high school English teacher.”
“She was not!”
“And she came to his games. Just like she comes to mine.”
“Mrs. Minty, I didn’t know you were a teacher,” Alice says.
“I gave it up for a while when Peter was young. But I went back to it after my husband died.”
“I heard you came back to teaching just so you could torture my dad,” John teases.
“I wouldn’t call it torture,” Mr. Kimball says.
“Were you hard on him?” John asks.
“I had high expectations for all my students.”
“Even the ones who didn’t give a . . . who didn’t care?”
“A climate of expectation fosters the possibility, even the near certainty, of achievement. If I believe in you, and I communicate that to you, you will find things in yourself you never knew were there.”
“Is this a theory, Mrs. Minty,” Alice asks, “or has it been proven?”
“Ask John’s father.”
“Mr. Kimball?”
“I wouldn’t have finished high school without Mrs. Minty. Well, Mrs. Minty and baseball.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a long story.”
Mrs. Minty gives him a look.
“Go ahead, Jack,” Mrs. Minty says.
He looks out across the baseball diamond as though he can see into the past and says:
“My father had a massive heart attack my sophomore year in high school.”
“He died?” bursts out of Alice’s mouth.
“At Gleason’s. On the factory floor. He was forty-five years old.”
Mrs. Minty is completely present; her attention is like a pair of strong hands resting on his shoulders.
“My mom was overwhelmed trying to take care of things and hold on to the house and find a job and feed four kids. I hardly went to school for the rest of sophomore year and barely passed my exams. That summer I worked on Gentle’s farm and played on the town baseball team. I was trying to help my mom, but I met older kids on the job and that wasn’t good for me.”
“Why not?” Alice can’t help asking.
“Older kids with licenses, and fake IDs, and money for beer, and nothing better to do.”
John and Alice look at each other, taking this in.
“It was a mistake they put me in Mrs. Minty’s class. She taught the honors section. I didn’t know any of the kids in that class—their parents were the doctors and the lawyers in town—and I was in way, way over my head.”
“I asked for you to be in my class,” Mrs. Minty says.
“Why would you—?”
“I knew your mother. I knew you were in trouble. And I thought I could reach you.”
“So you were my angel, Mrs. Minty,” Mr. Kimball smiles.
“Gloria’s your angel, Jack.”
John’s father nods and ducks his head blinking furiously for a moment, as he thinks about his wife.
There’s an uncomfortable pause.
“Lovely day to open the season, wouldn’t you say, Jack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I predict that Gelbart is going to have such a good season we’re going to lose him to the majors.”
“You could be right, Mrs. Minty.”
“I might even wager a small sum on that supposition, if you were inclined to take a gamble.”
“Five bucks suit you, Mrs. Minty?”
“Right down to the ground.”
John reaches over and takes Alice’s hand. She can’t stop herself: she turns to look at him in stunned disbelief, but he is not looking at her, he is watching Gelbart, on an 0 and 2 pitch, hit a line drive deep into left field.
She leaves her hand in his. His palm is calloused but his hands are warm, warmer than her hands. But what is he doing? He has a girlfriend. Does this mean he’s kind of a bum, seeing what he can get away with far from the prying eyes at school? And what about her? Two weeks ago she kissed Henry. Sort of. If that was really a kiss. Now this. What is this? She looks at him. He won’t look at her. She pulls her hand away.
Now John looks at her; he smiles at her, even more confusing, and takes her hand again. She glances over at Mrs. Minty who misses absolutely nothing. She doesn’t have the nerve to look at