The Wood of Suicides Read online

  As much as I strained to, I really had no hope of seeing into his classroom from the playing field. His classroom faced east over the lake and willows and was separated from the athletic fields by a quarter mile of shrubbery, a parking lot, a mowed lawn, and the curves of the performing arts center. It was pure fancy to think that he could see me, barelegged, clad in red; to imagine that his breath, and not the humidity, was responsible for the hair tickling my nape. I sighed. I struck the head of my hockey stick against the ground and dug it into the turf.

  IT WAS a warm, clear Friday and no Trinity boys were in sight. He led us down to the lake for our lesson, last period of the day, carrying a crate of books and dressed in a tweed suit. As we were leaving the English department, he greeted fat Mrs. Poplar, who was in a hurry and fanning herself with a printout, and was greeted by twenty-six-year-old Miss Kelsen, who I hated on sight for her sweet blue gaze, dimples, and pert ass (but who, I later heard, was thankfully engaged to the rowing instructor at Trinity).

  We collapsed in the shade of the willows, legs splayed out, faces turned up to the sun. Without being told to, we had formed a loose circle: the twelve of us sitting, him standing at the head. He seemed taller and trimmer in his tweed suit, with the crisp white shirt underneath. His hair was boyishly floppy with two dark, hanging forelocks. He placed the crate of books at his feet, with the words, “Page ninety-six, Cambridge and the Alps.”

  I brushed my hair from my face, leaning forward to take a volume and briefly arresting his gaze, before settling back on my haunches. I was crouching almost directly across from him, a position ideal for watching his face as he recited—though I couldn’t help envying the girls who flanked him. He had seated himself casually with his legs apart, arm dangling from a raised knee, and bookmarked the Wordsworth with his index finger. Once we each had a copy open on our tartan laps, he flipped back to the page effortlessly and began to read aloud in his clearest, most sonorous voice.

  I knew already that he was a man of extraordinary eloquence, from our lessons earlier in the week. Still, to hear his flow of words unbroken, over the course of a leisurely hour, was something else. I was at leisure, not only to look and listen, but to love and be lulled by his smoothness, by the play of light and shadow of his features, and the solidity of his presence. I was lulled into a trance of adoration, which showed through the slackening of my posture, the sprawl of my limbs, the fingers tugging and caressing at the grass with unwarranted urgency. An observer may have said that his body, positioned across from mine with legs spread, was subtly addressing itself toward me. Although little eye contact took place, our loins were in alignment; the air buzzed between us. My fingers were sensitive to all stimulation, roaming across the grass to the hem of my skirt and through my hair.

  I wasn’t the only girl who showed signs of being affected by his articulacy. There wasn’t one among us who didn’t appear relaxed—though there was an ambiguity, in some cases, as to whether the drooping bodies and lobotomized expressions were the product of enchantment or utter boredom. Many seemed half-asleep, reclining on the grass or leaning on their friends for support. Marcelle, I saw, was biting her thumb, while Emma Smith had her head in Karen Harmsworth’s lap. The heat, combined with the dullness of the poetry, the soothing resonance of Steadman’s voice and the distraction of being outdoors, seemed to have produced in all of us a perverse dreaminess, which expressed itself as an enhanced physicality. Enchanted or not, there was no doubt in my mind that he had brought us there as his attendant nymphs. Until the hour was up, he would be our patron god.

  The hour had to be up at some point, though I was unprepared for it happening while the sun was still out and his lips still moving. I was admiring, yet again, the prominence of his cheekbones, the downward point of his Roman nose, and the shadow on his upper lip from where he had shaved. With his jacket on, I was prevented from appreciating the sinewy, golden-haired forearms; instead, taking in the breadth of his shoulders, the wide-open legs and, more importantly, the crotch. In the presence of such virility, it was impossible not to imagine that I knew how it all worked; that I was ready for it, virginity aside. I adjusted my limbs. The willows bristled. The lake was wide, receptive, taking on their green.

  A moment later, it was over. I looked down at the pages of my book without comprehending what had happened, why he had stopped. He thanked us for our patience, told us that he looked forward to seeing us again the following week. We were instructed to pass the books back his way. I relinquished mine with difficulty. As we rose from the grass, brushing off our kilts and stretching languorously, the end-of-day bell sounded. He hoisted up the crate of books, scanning our faces with embarrassing eagerness. “Does anyone want to help me carry these upstairs? Anyone. . . ?”

  Our eyes met briefly over the others’ heads. My heart leapt at the opportunity. I looked away, swallowing my desire. I knew I regretted my decision a moment later, as I shouldered my satchel and followed my friends uphill. By the time that I cast a glance back in the direction of his beloved, tweed-clad form, I saw that he was already some distance away; that I’d given up my only chance of being alone with him again that week.

  MORNING BROUGHT with it a loathing for daylight, the stale smell of the pillowcase against my nose. I closed my eyes and occupied myself for a few minutes longer in the warm dimness beneath my lids. We were standing by the lake. He had singled me out to help him carry the books. I assented. I ascended with him, up two flights of stairs to the dusty storeroom. He took the load from my arms. He locked the door behind us. He pressed me into a corner and began to unbutton my blouse: slowly, expertly . . .

  There were giggles outside my dorm, a stifled knock. I had made a late-morning date with the others: takeaway coffee and a walk to the Trinity campus to scope out the boys. I wondered whether they would leave me alone if I ignored them for long enough; realizing, however, that my train of fantasy had been broken, and that I had nothing else to do that day, I decided to get up. I opened the door to find them standing in the frame, brassy blonde and white blonde, dressed almost identically in denim skirts and low-cut, flutter-sleeved blouses. “You’re still in your nightie?” Amanda sneered.

  “Sorry, I slept in.” I let them into my tiny room, hoping they couldn’t smell my fingertips. I went to my wardrobe, where I knew I had a white blouse—albeit, with a prim, lacy collar instead of a plunging V-neck. In the absence of denim, I chose a plain black skirt to go with it. “Just give me a minute in the bathroom to change.”

  “Change here. We don’t care,” Amanda said dismissively.

  “We promise we won’t perv!” Marcelle covered her eyes in demonstration, then uncovered them, catching sight of something she liked in my wardrobe. “Oh, look, Mandy! This is just like that dress I wanted to buy in San Rafael last year.”

  Amanda sidled closer. “You have some cute things.”

  I left them there, skulking across to the other side of my room to change. It dawned on me that I’d have to forgo fresh underwear, at least for the morning. When I was dressed, I began working on my hair, which sleep had tangled into a dense auburn thicket. My face in the mirror was as unmade as my bed, but not unpretty. “I’m ready,” I turned to them.

  “Finally,” Amanda heaved a sigh, more huffily than was necessary. “Come on. I’ll just die if I don’t get to see Seamus today.”

  OUTSIDE, THE Saint Cecilia’s grounds were bustling with girls out of uniform, heading to their Saturday-morning extracurriculars, escorting visitors around campus, or simply loafing about on sunny lawns and around the shopping precinct. Sipping from paper cups, the three of us crossed through the vacant foreign languages department and made toward the lake where we’d been less than a day before with Steadman. My heart leapt. I glanced back at the school building and tried to identify his classroom from the rows of arched windows on the upper floor.

  It was a half-hour walk from our side of the lake to the heart of Trinity Catholic College. Along the way, they pointed out an old
building to me, boasting the ballroom where Homecoming, Winterfest, and other such events typically took place. “Homecoming is in the first week of October,” Amanda informed me. “You can only go if you’ve got a date, but don’t worry—we’ll get you one.”

  Constructed a few decades before Saint Cecilia’s, the boys’ school was, according to Lee Walden, “Pure Collegiate Gothic.” Boys got about on bikes or loped along with gym bags, occasionally turning their heads at the group of us—though most of them, evidently, had somewhere else to be. When we reached the central plaza, however, with its low steps and decorative fountain, I was struck by the sheer number of boys in the area and how magnetically their eyes seemed to be drawn to our faces, chests, and legs. Suddenly, I felt exposed in my short, black skirt. “Of course, Siobhan and Hannah are right by the fountain,” Amanda said hypocritically, “They’re practically begging to get their T-shirts wet.”

  “Look! Look! Tracey is talking to James Pemberton.” Marcelle waved gleefully across the plaza, “Trace-yyy! Hi-ii!”

  “Shut up, Marcy. You’re going to get us kicked out.”

  “Kicked out?” I ventured, timidly.

  “Well, technically, we’re not supposed to be here without a visitor’s pass,” Amanda explained. “Really, we’ll be fine, as long as Marcy stops screaming and we stand off to the side somewhere. What about those trees there?” Without waiting for our approval, the busty Queen Bee led us into the shade beneath some yellow-green maples to the side of the plaza.

  “Make sure you tell us if you see someone you like, Laurel.”

  At Amanda’s behest, I cast my eyes over the smorgasbord of young males in the vicinity, attempting to control my under-enthusiasm. Flat-bellied. Spotted. Smooth-cheeked or, worse still, sporting pathetic pubic down. Every one of them lacking in the sublime qualities that made a man. Though my expression was hardly encouraging, my indifferently wandering eye seemed to be enough to make one boy nudge another. After a moment of conspiring, the pair were swaggering toward us: both tall, lean, brown-haired, unremarkable. “That’s Roy Chalmers, and that’s—oh, hi, Larry.”

  “Mandy, Marcelle.” They grinned and nodded. Then, one of the boys—not the one whose eye I had caught, but the other—addressed me politely. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name.” “

  She’s our German friend!” Marcelle lied, laughing ecstatically.

  “Guten tag,” the eye-catcher said flirtatiously, with a solemn incline of his head. I glanced away, embarrassed for him. The other gave a Hitler salute, causing my friends to erupt into giggles.

  “She isn’t really. She’s from Sacred Heart,” Amanda elaborated, once their laughter had died down. Before they could ask anything else about me, she changed the subject. “Hey, have either of you seen Seamus Head?”

  “Who’s asking?” the saluter responded. He received a playful wallop.

  “If you want, we can tell him you were looking for him,” my admirer offered.

  “We’ll tell him you were desperate to find him . . .”

  “Yes, tell him!” Marcelle nodded fervently.

  “Shut up, Marcy,” Amanda scowled, “and Roy, don’t you dare. I just want to ask him if he’s signing up for Model Congress again this year.”

  Across the plaza, Hannah Williams let out a squeal as one of the boys by the fountain attacked her with a spray of water. A grim-faced Trinity worker, some kind of groundskeeper or guard, emerged from behind the fountain and, with dark looks, sent Hannah and Siobhan packing. He began stalking across the plaza, toward our maple grove. “Oh, merde,” said Amanda. “Sorry, guys. We have to go.”

  WE LEFT Trinity the same way that we’d come, avoiding trouble by taking the rapid downhill path to the athletic fields. The only adult we saw between there and the plaza was a small, worn woman, walking two boys who seemed far too young to be of Trinity age. “Good morning, Mrs. H.!” Marcelle greeted her, as we passed her by outside the basketball courts. Mistrustfully, the mother looked up, then went back to wiping a snotty nose.

  “Mr. Higginbottom’s wife,” Amanda explained. “It’s disgusting how many children they have.”

  Marcelle disagreed: “When I’m married, I want a hundred babies!”

  “Maybe you should ask Mr. H. if he wants a second wife,” Amanda said, provoking Marcelle into a fit of scandalized giggles.

  The lake came into sight: a smudge of dark blue-gray beyond the gym and rowing shed. As luck would have it, three young males with overdeveloped deltoids, dressed in sweat-pitted tank tops, were filing out of the gymnasium. They spied us. They conferred briefly among themselves and, in a matter of seconds, were upon us. One of them swept Marcelle up in his arms, swinging her around, before passing her onto a friend, who did the same thing. Meanwhile, another boy—Seamus, presumably—was advancing on Amanda, attempting to cover her face with his stinking armpit. Both girls squealed in protest.

  Suddenly as they had come, the young men were off. “Where are you going?” Amanda called after her beau. “Lunch,” he grinned over his shoulder. She stared after them, arms akimbo. Marcelle lay panting on the grass, where the boys had set her down, her denim skirt raised to her crotch.

  FOR ALL their antics, my friends were busy girls, with extracurriculars to occupy them in the hours between lunch and dinner. Amanda left with dull Graziella for clarinet practice; soon after, Marcelle went to her flute lesson, to be followed by an hour and a half of drama. Finally, divinely alone, I walked the red-azalea path to the library and borrowed a volume of Wordsworth, which I took along with me into the woods.

  My laurel trees were just as they had been on Monday, listing toward one another, a shady and aromatic arbor. They grew among live oak, big-leaf maples, Pacific madrone, on the outer limits of the forest. In this part of the woods, there was still sunlight to be seen, falling in narrow, dusty beams through the canopy. I nestled into place between the two trunks and turned to the first page of The Prelude.

  Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze

  A visitant that while it fans my cheek

  Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings . . .

  At what point I set my book down, and abandoned myself fully to the heady scent of the leaves, the heady thoughts I had gone there to entertain, I don’t know. Suffice it to say, I remembered little of what I read that day.

  DOUBLE MATH on Monday mornings was a painful way to begin a week, if there ever was one. I had no friends in Mr. Slawinski’s math class, so was alone when I emerged back into the hallway at morning break, fuzzy-headed from too much algebra. On a whim, I decided to visit the English department.

  I crossed to the humanities wing just in time to see Mr. Steadman’s blue-shirted back disappearing into the faculty lounge. The effect this had on me was entirely disproportionate, as I found myself beaming into the distance, long after he’d gone inside. A whack in the side from somebody’s satchel was what brought me out of my daydream. I moved along, only to spy an empty locker one classroom down from his.

  I can’t overstate the important role that locker played for me over the following weeks. It was because of that locker that I was free to visit his department as often as I wished, even on Mondays, when my timetable was sadly Steadman-free. That day alone, I must have passed by his classroom four or five times. The movement aroused little suspicion, though Marcelle did furrow her brow when she came with me to dispatch some books before art class that afternoon. “I don’t remember your locker being up here.”

  It was because of the locker that I came to know his timetable: to witness the ninth-graders lining up outside his room, as I collected my textbook for history on the floor below with Mr. Henderson; to slam the door and press my Trésors du Temps to my chest, arming myself for when I’d see him pass by, carrying a crate of books to his juniors. When I had math, gym, and biology, however, his room was always empty: the door open and the ceiling lights illuminating his absence.

  I was purposefully forgetful, prancing off to French class with Ama
nda and Marcelle, then cursing myself (“merde!”) and telling them I’d once again forgotten my homework, my dictionary. It didn’t matter that I was earning myself a reputation for absentmindedness—the extra glimpse of him was worth it. Sometimes, passing each other in the hall, I would get more than a glimpse. Our eyes would meet and, for that brief moment, I knew that he saw me, that I was in his thoughts, whether he admitted it or not. Once or twice, a greeting was attempted, but this never worked out well. His mouth formed the words and my head jerked away, in what was meant to be a nod but looked more like a gesture of avoidance.

  When walking with my friends, I ignored him entirely. I hoped to convey an aura of mystery and inaccessibility, as well as conforming to the accepted etiquette between teachers and students outside of class hours. No matter how well liked he was in the classroom, in the hallways he became invisible, as every other adult was, among the throngs of uniformed girls. There were some exceptions to these rules, but I didn’t understand them; didn’t understand how some could skip up to their favorite teachers and start conversing, right there in the open. I was distressed one day to witness from afar beautiful Kaitlin Pritchard, with her hair loose, talking to Mr. Steadman outside the English department. She was holding a box and shifting her weight from foot to foot; he was leaning close and, even from that distance, I could tell that he was laughing, enjoying her shiny presence. Did she know him, I wondered, or did she simply know, with the confidence of a girl much prettier than myself, how to charm him? I turned over both possibilities in my mind, unsure of which depressed me more.

  I HAD questioned my friends about Steadman with little success, receiving only the vaguest replies when I asked them what they thought of the tall, dark, forty-something-year-old charmer who taught us Romantic poetry. “He’s okay, maybe a bit weird,” Amanda and Marcelle answered in more or less the same terms. “Why weird?” I tried not to look offended. “Oh, you know, the way that he goes on about things,” Amanda said. “Like he’s trying to show off how much he knows,” Marcelle added.