The English Teacher Read Free

though he was working as a volunteer, I knew Michael would never miss a day’s work,” the school principal told her, and described in exhaustive detail, which embarrassed her, how he telephoned her father again and again and then took a taxi at his own expense and knocked on the door, in vain, and called the police department, and they found him peacefully in bed, a young seventy-three-year-old and generally in good health. “I’d like to go the same way—a cerebral hemorrhage and passing on to a world that’s all good,” said the principal, and he forced a smile. The cleaning service that she called in and the neighbor from across the way had tidied the apartment, but the bed remained as it was, the depression in the pillow seeming to call out for a hand to plump it up.
    She opened the drawers only with her fingertips. She glanced at the matching socks and underwear that she knew she would never find the strength to put into bags, and inspected the few suits and the bright white shirts still hanging in the wardrobe. Nothing to indicate that he wouldn’t need them anymore. She opened the drawer of personal items and closed it right away, afraid she might find somethingthat would confuse her, that would change what she thought of her father. She told herself there would yet be time for this, that eventually she must sit down and confront the memories and sort them one by one. She moved to the bathroom, but didn’t open the medicine cabinet. On the sink, his toothbrush was in a cup with head uppermost. Like in her apartment, only one toothbrush.
    â€œGoodbye, Dad, I’m going,” she whispered as she closed the door of his room behind her, remembering that this was what she said then, when she was nineteen, after she packed her bag and was about to go. He told her she needed to stay and finish her studies, find a job, otherwise nothing would become of her, as it had been with her mother, of blessed memory. “So nothing became of me, Dad?” she asked now, louder, and her voice resonated around the house. “I’m not a teacher, just like you?” And as soon as the house was silent again and only the racket of a passing car rattled the windowpanes and reminded her there was life beyond the walls of the house, she thought of the questions she hadn’t asked him, of the simple sentence she didn’t say to him, and he didn’t say to her.
    Through the glass of the back door the little garden was visible, neglected since her mother died. Everything so calm, as if through the silence her father, buried just a few streets from where he was born, from the place where he lived, is trying to tell her: only here can she have a home and a garden and a little boy running around outside.
    Rachel stood in her father’s study, facing the mirror that he hung there to check that his tie was correct and his hair was parted right. A long face, as if not belonging to her, was reflected back to her. The tousled hair, cascading over an old nightgown that she found in one of the closets, reminded her of when she was twelve, dreaming the usual dreams of a girl that age: to be the most beautiful woman in the universe, with a prince on a white horse waiting for her to return.
    Through a skylight window, the early dawn was paling and giving way to morning. She stood, arms folded on her chest, and tried to believe that this was an embrace she had long deserved. Then she dug her nails into her bare arms, tried to make it hurt, tried to open new paths for the sorrow that she could not summon. This was the time to cry, and she couldn’t. This was the time to hold on to memories, and she didn’t want to. Every corner of the house reminded her of something; no corner of the house reminded her of anything that she wanted to take with her. Everything too late. Even forgiveness was impossible to seek. No one left from whom to seek it.
    A first ray of sunlight fell on the bookcase, and