Slut Lullabies (24 page)

“So when you were in college, would you have dated a high school girl?” I said, handing him a stack of papers and touching his hand with determined purpose.

“No,” he said. “I guess not. I'd have figured my friends would laugh at me.”

“See, it's hopeless then,” I said. “Because I'd like to date a Dartmouth guy, or someone even older, but obviously I should just give up.”

He backed away a little, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “Sometimes,” he said, “tastes change in the most surprising ways when a boy becomes a man.”

The bell rang. I stared at the floor, then up at him, holding my eyes on his face despite his refusal to look at me.

“Does that mean you think some man would actually find me attractive?” I said.

“Jenna.” He laughed a little. “I don't think you should ask me that. I am your teacher after all.”

I swayed a little, and this time my pout was real. “I know. I mean, I'd never expect anything from a man like you. I just want to know what you think of me.”

“I think you are by far the brightest and most attractive girl in this school,” he said. “Now go to lunch. And don't ask me things like that anymore. It isn't right.”

“Thank you.” I squeezed his hand, and to my relief he didn't pull it away. “You always make me feel so good.” I turned and left the room, careful to sway with just the right amount of flair so that I would appear provocative, yet not at all tacky. Then I ran to the lunchroom to eat.

It was not until evening that I fully realized it was possible Mr. Logan
might
actually be interested in me. That night I lay awake imagining scenarios in which I told my friends that I had lost my virginity, that it had been to a handsome older man, and that it had transformed me into a woman. I imagined going to the Lebanon-Hanover football games and listening to the Hanover kids chanting, “We'll be your bosses,” waving their fists in the direction of the Lebanon stands, and how their words would no longer touch me, because I had a lover who was one of them—better than them because he was older, already an Ivy League alumni. As I drifted to sleep, my fantasies turned to actually being in bed with Mr. Logan, him holding me and telling me I was pretty and sweet and smart. When I imagined him naked, however, I woke with a start, my heart beating too fast. It took some time before I could fall asleep again.

Over the next few days, I lost my appetite, lost all interest in fighting with my father and in talking to Crystal. Instead, I stared only at her body, watching the swelling of her stomach with an excitement that was almost all-consuming. My nighttime fantasies, when they were not of Mr. Logan, were of my then-grown-up little brother, who would come to thank me for saving his life. If in reality the almost-robust and freckled child within Crystal's stomach had any idea of the trouble I was going to on his account, he certainly was not letting on.

When I was at home, I was careful to cover my tracks. Naturally my father, despite his obvious personality flaws, might have deemed it necessary to protect me from the slowly growing advances of a nearly-thirty-year-old English teacher, had he been aware of what was going on. Lest anything get back to him, I didn't tell my family when Mr. Logan started allowing me to stay on during fifth period as well and eat my lunch there in the office. My friends pretended to be disapproving, but the way they hung upon my every word when I told them about the way he complimented my legs or asked me if I'd found myself a “sophisticated boyfriend” yet revealed to me that they were more envious than anything else. In truth, however, I was no closer to having the money in hand. At times I considered abandoning my plan altogether and attempting to save money for Crystal on my own, but I would have to babysit once a week for a year to make enough money for her trip—and that was if I never spent a cent!

It was a Thursday in mid-March; a cold, snowy, typically New Hampshire kind of day. I was daydreaming on my stool during fourth period, thinking about Deirdre. How had she, a worldly senior with large breasts, managed to get this man to make a pass at her? I had been moving forward on my plan of attack for nearly a month, and though our conversations were growing increasingly familiar (I knew he had lived with a woman for five years after college but it hadn't worked out; he knew I was a virgin, though of course I added that I didn't really want to be), he had still never laid a finger on me. I was wondering if I should dye my hair blond like hers when Mr. Logan said, “So what are you thinking about? You look very pensive.”

By this point I was desperate. I was beginning to wonder whether his compliments were only efforts to be nice, whether he really did need “extra help” fifth period, whether the whole Deirdre incident was only a small-town myth. I looked up at him. He obviously did not need to resort to dating fifteen-year-olds. Suddenly, without even planning it, I began to cry.

“Jenna.” He rushed to my side like a television hero. “What is it? Why are you crying?”

I covered my face with my hands and would not look at him. He continued to press me for an answer, patting my arm. His touch made me grow suddenly tingly, drew me out of my fog enough so my brain began to work again. I leaned in against him and sniveled into his chest.

“Do you really not know?” I said.

“Know?” For a teacher, an allegedly savvy one at that, he could be very dense. “Know what?”

“Why I'm crying. Do you really not know it's because of you?”

He pulled away. “Because of me? But what have I done to upset you?”

There was a wet mark on his denim shirt from where I'd been weeping. My tears were drying up with my excitement, but I continued to sniff. “I think about you all the time. About what it would be like to kiss a man who knows about things, who reads books the way you do. All I do is fantasize about you. It's driving me insane!”

He opened his mouth to speak, and I leaned forward and kissed him. At the touch of his lips against mine, panic lights went off in my head: that he would push me right off my stool and scold me, that he would have me expelled, that he would tell my father who would beat me black and blue. He kissed me back, and my heart began to race so intensely that I nearly fell down and had to hold on to his shoulders to steady myself. And I didn't care then if I was kicked out of school, if my father took his belt to me until I never walked again. It had worked!

He said, “Christ, I'm not built to withstand temptation like this. Look, I've validated your ego, Jenna. Now you should just leave.”

I looked at him curiously. “How are you, um, validating me by telling me to go away?”

His arms, which had been on my shoulders, wrapped all the way around me. I buried my face in his neck. Unlike guys I'd kissed before, who smelled of cigarettes and food, he smelled of shaving cream and mint. I licked his skin to see if it would taste as wonderful as it smelled.

“My God,” he said. “Stop. Please stop.” Then he kissed me again.

In the car, he said, “I think it would be best if you called me Rob, at least outside of school.”

Rob. Bob. Bobby. Robby. I giggled for a moment. “I like Robert better.”

“Nobody calls me Robert. It's so formal. But you can call me whatever you want to.”

We were driving through Enfield, on the way to his house. It was three thirty. I'd called Crystal to say that gymnastics practice was going to run late, then met him at the back of the school in the parking lot. He drove a Volvo, which was quite different from the men I knew who mostly drove trucks. I had never been in a Volvo before.

His house was bigger than any I'd ever been inside. The interior was made of a brilliant, pale wood. Wood walls, wood floors. I sat down on his couch and drank the Diet Coke he offered me. His nervousness was making my own terror all the more pronounced, and I had a sudden, aching desire to be past the event we were both waiting for. I stood up.

“So where is your bedroom?”

“You want to go in my bedroom?” he said, as though he thought perhaps I had come all the way to his house for an entirely different reason that had not yet occurred to him.

“I just said I did.”

He shook his head. “And Nabokov said nymphets could not be found in polar regions.”

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he said. “Come with me.”

His bedroom was messy. The bed was unmade, and there were clothes all over the floor. My father would have had a fit if he could have seen Mr. Logan's room! I laughed and flopped down on his bed. He came over to sit down next to me. He kissed me again. I felt my body tense up, though I tried to stop it. He slipped a hand under my shirt.

“Did you really have an affair with your aide from last year?”

“I don't want to talk about that,” he said, sitting up straight. “I would have thought you were above buying into those kinds of rumors. Isn't that part of what you think is wrong with small-town life? The fact that I'm still teaching should be enough to show that it was nothing more than idle gossip.”

“Wouldn't you ask if you were me?”

“She has nothing to do with this. If you don't want to be here, just say so. But don't bring her up again.”

A sudden chill ran down my back. “I want to be here,” I said. Sometimes I am not sure if I am telling the truth or not. “Very much.”

He put his hands on my waist and kissed me deeply. I moved closer to him, trying to feel some of the warmth and excitement I'd felt in the office. I closed my eyes.

“I've never been with a virgin before,” he said. “Even when I was one myself. I'm kind of nervous. I don't want to hurt you.”

I felt him as hard as a rock against my stomach. He was lying on top of me now. He was not a very large man, but he was much bigger than the boys I'd made out with in the past.

“It's OK,” I said. “I've been hurt before. I won't mind that much.”

“You say the saddest things sometimes.” His fingers were unbuttoning, unzipping, and his words seemed to mean nothing. I began to shake.

“You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen,” he said, but I knew he was lying. I knew he didn't see me now. I knew he didn't see at all.

I bled only a little. He got a towel from his bathroom, and I slid it under myself to catch the sticky, bright liquid, trying to act as though all of this was normal—that I should be here at my teacher's house with a towel between my legs, naked and dripping blood, with a patch of sticky semen on my stomach. He lay on his back, his penis tiny now, still breathing somewhat heavily.

“Are you OK?” he said. It was not the sort of thing men said after making love in movies or books. He was supposed to say,
That was wonderful
, or
It's never been like that with anyone else
, or (if this were a Silhouette Romance novel),
My little falcon, I will protect you until the end of the earth
. It made what I had to say next somehow easier.

“I'm fine. There's something I have to tell you, though. I hope you won't be mad.”

He looked concerned. “What is it?”

“I need three hundred dollars.” I sat up. “I need it today if at all possible, tomorrow at the latest, and I need you to give it to me.”

There was a silence long enough for me to grow warm and itchy under my arms. Then he said, almost yelling, “What the hell for?”

“For my stepmother. For something she needs to do.”

“Jenna, don't be crazy. I don't have three hundred dollars lying around the house to dole out to every girl I bring home. Where would you get it in your head to ask me for money?”

I looked away. “I'm afraid you don't really have a choice. If you don't give it to me, I'll go to the principal and file a report about what happened here today.”

His expression moved from shock to horror. He sat up and glared at me. “And what makes you think anyone would believe you?”

“I can describe this room, this house, in detail.” I paused. “And I'm sure I could describe everything else . . . about
you
. . . if I had to. I really think you should give me the money. It isn't that much. You can afford it.”

“You little bitch,” he said.

I thought about crying but couldn't. “I was hoping you wouldn't take it this way. If you think about it, it really isn't such a bad deal. I'll keep seeing you if you want, if you aren't too upset. Please don't be mad. There's no other way for me to get the money.”

He stormed into the bathroom, then out again. He was running his fingers through his hair with a kind of agitated dementia. Finally, he sat back down on the bed and took my chin in his hand. “I hope you know that if I give you money, I'd better get something in return.”

A numb kind of relief washed over me that he was not going to fight me; that he would not make me go tell this terribly embarrassing tale to the school officials. I tried to smile.

“You can have whatever you want.”

He pulled me to him, his grip on my arms so tight I flinched. “Fine,” he said. “If you want to be a whore then lie down and let me fuck you like a whore.”

I stood up. “Give me the money first. The minute I have it in my hand, I'll do whatever you say. I'm not lying about that. I . . . I really don't have anything better to do.”

“You're out of your mind,” he said. “Do you know that?”

I was shaking so badly I was afraid my teeth would begin to chatter.
What would Julia Roberts say
? “This isn't your classroom, Robert. No one asked your opinion.”

He closed his eyes. “You know, whatever is going on in your family is very unfortunate. If you weren't trying to use it against me, I would probably feel very badly for you, and for your stepmother. It's sad that whatever her problem is, she has to resort to depending on a kid for money. How the hell do people get themselves into those kinds of situations?”