|
|
Executive Times |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
2006 Book Reviews |
|||
|
|
The
English Teacher by Lily King |
|||
|
Rating: |
*** |
|||
|
|
(Recommended) |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Hardy Lily
King’s new novel, The
English Teacher, engages readers on many levels. Protagonist Vida Avery
is the best teacher at On
Monday Morning Vida woke up alone. Tom had left at five, off to some fabric
sale in The
loud nearly debilitating question that had pounded through her body like a
pulse since the wedding reception—what have you done what have you
done—subsided once he was gone, and she was able to fall back asleep until
seven. She stretched her limbs in the enormous bed, her left arm and leg
venturing across to Tom’s side, still slightly warm. She rolled over into his
impression, and put her head just beside where his had lain. She thought of
the grisly iron-gray hair at the end of “A Rose for Emily.” She would learn
how to do this properly. “I promise,” she said into Tom’s absent ear. The
odor of food slipped through the cracks in the door: toast, bacon, something
sweet but burned. Then voices, Fran’s and Caleb’s, not Peter’s, and the
clatter and ping of utensils. All these voices, all this commotion, after
years of waking to a silent house. Peter is fine, she told herself. In
the bathroom water hung in the air and smelled like Tom. She could see where
he had swiped at the mirror to shave. The basin was clean of stubble but on
the glass shelf above it a few tough bristles of his mustache were caught in
a scissors’ bill. If only she were the girl she had once been. He deserved
that. He deserved someone who would walk into this bathroom, breathe him in,
and cave to her knees with joy and thanks. But
the sorry truth was she was eager to get to school where her life would
resume its familiar course after this aberration of a weekend. Her body felt
strange, like she might be coming down with something. The what have you done hammering was back. A shower and her school
clothes would snap her out of it. But
her nakedness beneath the weak drizzle of water only reminded her of failure
with Tom, and she hurried to wash and cover up her body again. In his damp
towel she leapt across the bedroom to her boxes. Close to the top of one she
found her favorite gray cardigan and deeper down a soft shirt and denim
skirt. From another she managed to pull out a pair of tights and her
moccasins. She was not the flashiest dresser on the planet—no rival for
Cheryl Perry, who taught French in clingy pants and short furry sweaters that
swung above her perfect little bum. As she dashed across the room with her
armful of plain clothes she remembered the sky-blue velvet dress her grandmother
had sent her from She
moved swiftly down the corridor. They didn’t have much time—school was a good
fifteen-minute drive from here, not the forty-second walk it used to be. Her
wet hair thwacked at her back. And
today of all days she had to start Tess of the
d’Urbervilles with her tenth graders. And Peter, too, was starting it in
the other class with Lydia Rezo. She had always
dreaded his reading Tess. And here it was. In
the living room, Stuart was curled up sideways on the sofa in a little egg,
his eyes fixed on the morning news. “This
is some serious shit,” he said to the knees just below his chin. Weren’t
high school dropouts supposed to be sacked out until noon, instead of
following international crises at 7:22 in the morning? Still, there was
something self-pitying in his fascination with this aggression halfway around
the world. “How
about a little air in here?” It was always so stiflingly close in this room.
Only one of the four windows actually opened. What they need, she thought,
shoving it wide open, is to toughen up a bit. People
die—and die unexpectedly. Both her parents were dead. That was hardly the
worst thing that had ever happened to her. People disappoint and horrify you
in a thousand different ways, Stuart, that you
cannot possibly imagine. You move on. You move on, she told him with her eyes
as she picked up his cereal bowl and juice glass and bade him a good day,
whatever that consisted of. She
pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. Walt scrambled and
strained on the slippery linoleum to rise and greet her. “Here
you go. Here you go,” she cooed. She got behind him and hoisted his quivering
flanks level to his front shoulders. He bristled—he didn’t like her having to
help him—and headed for the back door as if he’d lived here all his life.
Before letting him out she squatted down by his
face. “You didn’t sleep in my room last night. Why not?” He put his head on
her shoulder and sighed. His nose was cold where it touched behind her ear.
She ran her hands from his skull down his neck and along his long rib cage:
His hair was coarse and camel brown except on his face, which was a silky,
distinguished white. No one knew what kind of mix he was, though people loved
to toss out suggestions. Shepherd, collie, retriever, boxer, Great Dane—she’d
heard it all. He probably did have some Rhodesian ridgeback, because of how
his hair tufted along his spine. She’d found him on the way out of Walt
sighed again, then lifted his head and pressed his face to the seam of the
door, to the tiny wind blowing through. She let him out and when he just
stood at the top of the back porch, she tapped at the window and said, “Go
on, baby.” He
took the steps slowly, nearly sideways, his hind legs flopping together, then separating once on flat ground. He looked back
briefly before trotting forward to sniff the snarled remains of a flower bed. She
had been aware, when she came into the kitchen, of others at the table, but
once beside Walt she’d forgotten them altogether. It was as if all their
noises had been suspended, and now, as she turned around, the memory of their
chatter came back in a delayed but clamorous rush. She
was startled to see Peter among them, dressed, combed, with a plate of
something in front of him. He usually emerged at the last possible minute.
Relief rushed up, weakening her, relief and the awareness that her fear was
just as strong here as anywhere. Fran
and Caleb were studying her, not with the respectful scrutiny of students on
the first day of class but with cold, leery observation. The
smell in the kitchen was disarming. It was nothing like the slightly
chemical, overcooked smell in the Fayer cafeteria
in the morning. “Good
morning, early birds,” she said cheerfully, trying to establish that playful
authority she found so easily in the classroom. “How
old is that dog?” Fran said. “Sixteen.” “Same
as Peter,” Caleb said. “Peter’s
not sixteen yet.” Children could be so loose with their ages. Peter wouldn’t
be sixteen until August. “Who’s the chef?” “Fran
is. Want some French toast, Mom?” “Cup
of coffee’s fine for me.” “It’s
over there.” Fran pointed to a percolator in the corner. “I just made a
second pot.” Vida
hoped to find the mugs in the first cupboard she opened, but it took three
tries. She scanned the counters and shelves for sugar. “In
the canister,” Fran said finally. She was clearly enjoying herself. “You
ready?” Vida said to Peter, scooping her schoolbag (the freshman quizzes
uncorrected, Tess unopened, the junior author profiles
untouched) off the hook with her free hand. He
nodded, but took his time with the few bites left on his plate. Fran slapped
another piece of French toast on Caleb’s plate, then
doused iii with syrup. Vida
felt she should ask when their bus came and if they’d done their homework,
but they’d been carrying on without her inquiries all their lives. She asked
instead if they would let Walt in before they left. Peter
walked ahead of her to the car, his knapsack stuffed with books he hadn’t
opened all weekend. He wouldn’t get away with it; he couldn’t charm his
teachers with an elaborate tale and heartcrossed
promises. The
temperature had fallen further and though the ground still gave slightly
beneath her shoes, the hard dead smell of winter seemed to be rising up from
it. The trees in the yard jerked in the cold wind, trying to dislodge the few
remaining clusters of brown leaves. It was a dreadful time of year. She hated
teaching Tess, though for years she had been told
it was her signature book. The experience of reading Tess with Mrs. Avery sophomore year was reenacted in skits and
referred to in yearbooks. It lived on in countless mentions by reminiscing
alumni in the tn-annual bulletin. But for Vida, the
book was a torture. She had never cared about that overly naive,
peony-mouthed girl who is buffeted by a series of impossible coincidences from
one gloomy town to another and across four hundred and sixteen pages before
she gets her just deserts at the scaffold. She did have an appreciation for Hardy’s descriptions and his worries about the effects of
the Industrial Age on the land and its people. She used to believe it was her
discussions of this “ache of modernism” that made the book meaningful to her
students, but she had come to realize that it was her own lack of sympathy
for the girl that galvanized them. By the end their attachment to Tess herself was fierce, and their devastation at her
demise profound. They
got behind a garbage truck. Vida lit a cigarette as the two men in back leapt
from the runner, separated to opposite sides of the street, hurled bags three
at a time up and over the truck’s backside, and hopped back on just as the
truck jerked ahead. White steam streamed from their nostrils. They wore no
gloves and drank no coffee and yet they seemed warm and full of energy.
They’d probably been up since three, and soon they would be done. They’d go
to a diner for lunch—Reubens, french
fries, a few beers. Then they’d sleep—at a girlfriend’s, or their mother’s,
or in their own solitary bed in a one-room apartment on Water Street, their
muscles tired, their bellies full, their minds thoughtless as cows. The truck
stopped again, and the man on the left, having caught Vida’s covetous eye,
grinned at her. She glanced quickly away in what felt like fright. The truck
veered off then, but the acknowledgment made her uneasy for several more blocks,
as if a character in a book had addressed her by name. The
sun hung small and naked above the rooftops, unable to push itself fully
through the pale cloud bank. They passed a 7-Eleven and a launderette. In
both windows middle-aged women stared blankly out. She thought again of Tess and wondered whether she might like
it better if she assigned it in the spring. Ahead
of them the bridge to Fayer rose up in a high arc,
and its sides were a series of thin squat rails, allowing for a full view of
the harbor and its boatyards on the right and the open ocean on the left,
with a few fishing trawlers heading toward the horizon. There was often
heated talk, especially in the weeks following an accident, of building a
wall on either side of this bridge, but Vida was pleased the view had
remained, unimpeded by safety and common sense. It
ran nine-tenths of a mile and she took it slowly, like a tourist. Light
poured into the car from all sides, an opaque blue wavering light, as they
rose toward the height of the bridge. She loved the carnival-like ride of it,
the web of patina-green supports above and the false yet convincing sense of
sheer solidity beneath her tires. She remembered the few times last summer
when she had crossed the water back to Fayer after
an evening with Tom, and though she had felt at the time confused and
conflicted, the memory now was peaceful. She took a long sip of the coffee
she’d wedged between her knees. They were falling now, falling through the
early light over cold blue water. She felt happy and even slightly sexual
until she remembered the two nights since her wedding, and the feeling
recoiled. “Why
is your hair like that?” Damn.
Her hair. “Will you check in there for my barrette?” Peter
flipped open the glove compartment and plunged his hand into the mass of
candy wrappers and receipts. “Nope. Nothing.” Vida
pulled out the ashtray, stuck her fingers into other dark cubbyholes of the
Dodge’s dash, then slid her hand beneath the seat.
“Damn.” In nineteen years, she’d never taught a class without her hair firmly
yanked back. “They
have rubber bands in the office,” Peter said. It
was true. But she avoided the office, and Carol, now. King’s writing is taut in The English
Teacher, and those with deep knowledge of Hardy will be pleased with her
homage to him. Vida’s pain and the complexity of her life’s journey combine
to produce a memorable character, well-crafted by Lily King. Steve Hopkins,
December 22, 2005 |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
Go to Executive Times
Archives |
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
English Teacher.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
