Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom [14]
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Stone said.
I think he felt sorry for us all, even for my mother, who never inspired sympathy.
“Maybe things will get a little better now. Maybe you and your mother will fight less and you and your father will spend more time together.”
I didn’t think he really thought that.
“Maybe, maybe not.” I stared at the toes of my boots.
“Maybe not,” Mr. Stone said without smiling. Sometimes he would smile when I was looking away, but when we really looked at each other, I saw the pink rock of his face with grey mossy hair on top and wild, twiggy crescents of eyebrow above his small, slanty blue eyes.
I loved him for not lying to me, but I started crying again, drops falling on my notebook. I hoped he’d give me permission to skip class. I hoped my nose wasn’t running and that I wasn’t ruining Rachel’s mother’s silk shirt.
“Can you go to class? The bell’s ringing.”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“All right, forget it. Stay here. I’ll write you a pass and you can go later. Whose class are you missing?”
“Algebra. Mr. Provolone. I mean, Mr. Provatella’s.”
“Well, you can’t get much more behind than you are, I guess. You’re not going to be a mathematical genius, Miss Taube. You better cultivate your other talents.” He poured some coffee out of his thermos. “I have to go teach. I can give you a ride home if you want.” He walked off quickly, a kind of fast, barrelly cowboy’s walk.
I sighed and rummaged in his desk for the chocolates in the back of the bottom drawer. He loved me.
Mr. Stone drove me home that afternoon, and in the cocoon of his little Volkswagen I inhaled the smoky air and held my breath, smiling and trying to memorize each passing house, to make the trip from the junior high parking lot to my driveway seem longer.
“You’re growing up.”
“Yeah. It happens,” I said.
“Do you babysit, grown-up?”
I had, but I was still scared to stay by myself at night. “Yes. I mean, not much,” I said. “But I can.”
Mr. Stone frowned. “Okay, maybe you’ll babysit for us sometime.”
He pushed my hair behind my ear, squinting at me through the smoke, and I thought that he wouldn’t ask me to babysit, that we would never sit in the Volkswagen, driving past darkened houses in the moonlight, but he did, right before school ended.
I expected to be a good babysitter, even a great babysitter. I liked cats, I admired the toddlers at my father’s office Christmas party, I cleaned up after Mrs. Hill all the time. I could babysit for the Stones. Really stupid girls babysat for three kids, even three boys, all the time.
I waited in the foyer, watching for him through the colored glass panels. His car drove through the purple, the blue, and the yellow, and at the green I went out to keep him from honking the horn. The thought of my parents and Mr. Stone in the same room, standing in the foyer, sitting side by side in the leather chairs, chatting about me, was so horrible that at night I would imagine it to scare myself, the way I used to shut my eyes and see, on the deep red screen of my inner lids, blood-tipped green monster claws hanging over the edge of the clothes hamper.
Mr. Stone didn’t say much on the ride over. I wore my low-riding bell-bottoms and a Mexican blouse with lemons and oranges and red hearts swirling down the front of my breasts. I sat completely upright so my stomach wouldn’t come close to my belt. He said, “Pretty blouse.” He talked like a father, about his sons and what they were good at; he didn’t even look my way. He said that they were good kids and exceptionally bright, which even my parents said about me. He said Danny was shy, Marc was outgoing, and Benjie was nine going on thirty. I thought I would probably get along with Marc and maybe we could watch TV while the other two played chess or read