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“Are you doing anything after class?” He’s trying to be casual. He’s trying so hard to be casual.
“Not for a while.” Sally Jackson says.
They are the oldest people in the writing seminar by about eight years. When Paul had decided to audit the writing class at the undergraduate level, several people from his normal writing group had been surprised he’d done that instead of one of the graduate level classes, or even persuaded his MFA.
But Paul had been pretty certain of his choice. For one, he didn’t have the time or money to devote himself to an MFA full time. And for two, all his writer friends who had one seemed to have been drained of all the fun bits of writing.
But he’d also chosen this one because the instructor had written a short story collection he loved a few years ago, and this was the only class she was teaching this semester.
He had been so grateful when Sally had walked it and lowered the distance between him and the next youngest person in age from about 10 years to about a year.
They went and got coffee after their last three classes. And he’s been trying to gauge if it’s a date or just hanging out with grown-ups. Unlike Paul, Sally is actually in a BA program, so he’s not sure she’s not just using it as an excuse to talk to someone over twenty-five who isn’t a professor.
But now he wants to move that needle. Make maybe-dates into for-sure-dates.
Sally Jackson is beautiful. It’s not that she’s some kind of Hollywood bombshell, though it’s not like that’s something that Paul has any experience with. But she looks like the kind of picture you’d find in the portrait part of the Met. Stately and a little old fashioned, with most of the general imperfections painted away. Like she was a queen who inadvertently found herself placed in 21st century New York. The kind of woman people would go to war over, or write epic love poems about.
Poetry has never been Paul’s strong suit, but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that some of the inspiration for their poetry assignment two weeks ago, and his entry titled Oil on Canvas, hadn’t been inspired a little bit by her.
But it isn’t just that. She’s so smart. It had taken about two minutes into the first-class discussion to see Sally start to bring up insights into their first reading that Paul, who normally spends his days trying to teach reluctant teenagers how to do close readings, had not even considered. Her list of reference points is vast. And she’s made connections to everything from Greek mythology, to Marlowe, to Nirvana lyrics and 90s blockbusters when trying to work through ideas.
And everything she’s ever given the class to comment on has been incredible. Not perfect, first drafts are first drafts are first drafts. But you can always see the skeleton of amazing work in all of it. They’d done their first re-consideration of a revised text last week, and her short story, a re-telling of Theseus and the Minotaur, but from Aethra’s perspective. It had been as devastating as it was beautiful, and she’d told him, over coffee on Tuesday, that their instructor had given her the email of a friend who worked for a literary magazine. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, yet.
He is utterly enchanted by her, and so he really wants maybe coffee dates to become real dates, all over the city.
“Did you want to get coffee again?” She asks, swinging her backpack over her shoulder?
“Actually, there is this used record store uptown I like to hit up once a month, when they put out their new stoke. I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”
She smiles, but then her eyes flit to her watch and she frowns. She doesn’t have any other classes after this, and she doesn’t work on Thursdays. It’s still early, not even three. Paul had arranged his class schedule this semester so that his planning period was at the end of the day, allowing this class. Something he could only do because Goode is the kind of prestigious prep school that wants to say things about how the chemistry teacher has run professional labs, or the drama teacher has been on Broadway, or the English teacher is a published author.
“Yeah,” she says, after several careful minutes of thoughts. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
It’s just a short walk, a subway ride, and another walk to the store, a little hole in the wall on the second floor. A little bit dusty and dingy. Paul knows a lot of the employees, but he’s never gotten the story, if the lack of light was chosen to protect the merchandise from direct sun, or if it was just the cheapest option.
Sally smiles as they look around, and then they dive in.
It’s organized by genre and album, instead of artist, which they claim is to help you discover new music, but is probably so you have to spend more time searching, and hopefully find, and pay for, extra things.
It’s always been a bug to Paul, as much as he likes the store, but now, with Sally, digging among the bits and pieces, he feels differently. It’s a slow, methodical search and excavation. He does a unit every
fall on Greek mythology. They always watch a video about an archeological site in Athens. Paul’s never really seen the appeal of digging all day in the hot sun. But right now, digging with Sally in the little shop, he thinks he gets it.
“See anything you want?” He asks after about thirty minutes of exploration. He’s already got two records sitting at the register with the bored co-ed. Sally has just spent fifteen of those thirty minutes talking about Led Zeppelin and their influences, both musical and literary.
“All of them,” Sally says, and her smile is beautiful. “Makes me want to buy a vinyl player.”
That actually surprises him. “I figured, with your classic rock takes you must have one.”
“We had one, when I was little,” she says, slightly wistfully. “I have no idea what happened to it. Presumably my uncle sold it with everything else.” She shrugs. She’d been orphaned young, he knows. She’d talked about it once, in response to a short story about a similar subject.
“They sell them here,” Paul offers.
She lets out a little laugh. “I feel like Percy might be a little annoyed if I spent the Christmas money on something that won’t even play the new Fall Out Boy he got for his birthday.”
Something shifts in Paul, like the world spun and he got left behind. It was his heart, he realizes, his heart breaking. Not a lot, of course. He’s known her for two months; this is the closest they’ve done to a date.
She’d mentioned an ex-husband in passing. But this is a revelation. She’s married. It makes sense, of course. How could a woman like Sally Jackson not have all the men in the world desperate for her?
But still.
Something must show on his face because something also shows on hers. She looks a little guilty.
That almost feels like a victory, at least. So they have been flirting, and she’s noticed.
“I guess I should tell you about Percy,” she says, and she looks very guilty now.
“Your husband?” He asks, trying so very hard for casual and blasé. They are just classmates, maybe on their way to friends. She can tell him about her husband, and he’ll nod along, maybe still get the occasional coffee, but never invite her to a little record store date again.
She frowns then. “My son.” She says, “I’m not married. I wouldn’t…I’m definitely single. I’m definitely single.”
The denial strikes him, and he is not going to blow this. “But you do have a son?” he tries to sound happy about it. He… isn’t not happy about it. He’s happy that Sally's single. He doesn’t really know any little kids, anyone under fourteen is kind of out of his wheelhouse, but he thinks he’d like one fine. Five-year-old’s can be fun, right?
“Yeah, Percy,” she says, smiling as she says it. It's an interesting name, old fashioned and old world. That isn’t really the first thing he thinks about when he thinks of Sally, she’s so present and now, but he finds, after a moment’s consideration, he can see it. Also, this probably explains the theme of motherhood that comes up in her writing.
Then he thinks of something else. “Do you need to get him from school? Or meet him from the bus or something? Get him dinner.” He glances at his watch. It's after four, there is no way he’s still in school. Does he go to an after-school program? That doesn’t make a lot of sense, if Sally doesn’t normally work Tuesdays.
She shakes her head, she doesn’t look at a clock when she says, “He’s already gotten himself home. And there are leftovers in the fridge, and he knows how the stove and microwave works if he decides he cannot stand them. He’ll be fine.”
That makes less sense. “How old is he?” Paul can’t help but ask. He can’t be older than 6 or 7. And that is way too young to be left to your own devices.
Sally swallows, frowning again. But there’s no guilt this time, like she’s worried Paul, a state mandated mandatory reporter, is going to rat her out to CPS. “He’s fourteen.”
“Oh.”
One of the first things he and Sally had done, when they’d noticed the gap between their ages and the rest of the classes, was confirm how old they actually were, compared to everyone else. And the answers had been thirty-two and thirty-three . Paul’s not a math teacher, but even he can subtract fourteen from thirty-three and register some things.
“Yeah,” Sally says, possibly reading his mind, or possibly having had this conversation before, “I’m sure you can do the math. I was eighteen, I was a teen mom.”
Paul isn’t really sure what to say about any of it.
But he is sure that the mere fact of it, of teen pregnancy and a fourteen-year-old son at home, don’t bother him.
“Since you don’t need to get dinner on the table,” he offers, trying to be smooth, and probably failing, but not minding, “would you want to join me?”
She smiles at the invitation, and he gets the impression it wasn’t what she expected his reaction to be.
There’s a Thai place up the block that he has not been to before, but it looks quiet and calm and a good place to have a talk.
They take their booth, get settled, order drinks and then dinner, and then, the conversation really can’t be avoided anymore.
So Paul dives in. He offers a smile, and the truth, “When you first mentioned Percy, I figured he was younger,” he says, keeping his voice light. “And my first thought was ‘I’m sure he’s great, but I have no idea what to do with kids under fourteen.’ Is he a freshman?”
“Eighth grade,” she says. “At a Jewish day School near our house.”
“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”
“I’m not,” she says.
That awkwardness again, he doesn’t like awkwardness with Sally, that hasn’t happened before. “Is your ex-husband?”
Sally’s eyes go wide for just a moment and then she nods, “Oh, you mean Percy’s dad.” She lets out a chuckle. “He’s a very different person than my ex-husband, but he is very much not Jewish. It was just the best school in the area for our needs.”
That leads to more question, and he probably shouldn’t dig, but honestly, he can’t imagine two guys, one of whom managed to marry Sally, and one of whom had a child with her, would not want to spend the rest of their lives trying to make the little laugh lines on her cheeks appear. But he probably shouldn’t ask that.
“My ex-husband was a world class asshole and, this might surprise you to say, because I’ve had doubts about this before, but a much much bigger mistake than the whole having a baby when I was eighteen with no money and barely any job.”
Well, that answers part of the question.
“Was he a friend from college or…”
“I didn’t go to college then. I… I met him in ‘92. I was working out in the Hamptons. Like I said, I was eighteen, he was not.” An eighteen-year-old working in the Hamptons, finds herself pregnant by someone out there. It's not hard to make some logical leaps about what that man was, and was not.
“And after you got pregnant he didn’t…”
“He was married,” she says, and lets it hang there. It’s strange. His first thought might have been a vague reproach, but eighteen. Eighteen with a man who was married, a man who she talked about like he was in a very different place from her. “He was married before, during, and after our time together.”
“He told you he’d leave his wife for you?” Paul could guess that story easily. Eighteen, orphaned and alone. Some rich guy shows up and promises her the world.
“No, he didn’t do that. And even if I had said he would, I wouldn’t have believed him. Even at eighteen, I wasn’t that naive. I actually think that’s one of the things he liked about me.”.
“That he didn’t have to make you any promises?”
“Oh, he made me a lot of promises,” Sally says, with a laugh that isn’t exactly kind, “And I think he could have followed through on several of them. But not in ways that would have been worth it.” Well, he can’t say that the idea of Sally Jackson as a side piece isn’t horrible and insulting.
“So, he pays child support, and you co-parent?” What might that mean, long term? Split Holidays? Awkward birthdays and graduations? And is Paul really envisioning himself a part of this?
She snorts again. “He very much does neither.” She shakes her head. “I haven’t seen him in almost fifteen years.”
“When does he see Percy?”
“Percy’s met him once,” she says, and there is a shrug to it. “I… I wish it wasn’t that way, but I pretty much always knew it was going to be. So I got done being mad about it a long time ago.”
Their waitress arrives with their food at the perfect time.
“So, there you have it,” Sally says, after she’s picked up her spoon, but before she’s started on her coconut soup. “Almost all of my secrets.”
“Almost?” Paul asks.
“I don’t reveal everything on a first date, Paul. A woman’s got to keep some mystery.”
“This is a date?”
She smirks then, and there had been a slight wariness before as she told her little story, clearly a part of her past whose reception she’s worried would not be well received. But there is an almost cockiness to her confidence as she leans forward, just a little bit.
“Of course, it’s a date. Haven’t you been paying attention?”