Close Encounter

            by H. Nathaniel Corrigan-Gibbs

 

            Why don’t they get it? Ms. Portman asked herself, looking at the hopeless group of high schoolers that was making such a terrible ruckus.  Most of the students were up out of their seats, or sitting on their desks, or doing each other’s hair.  Some study period, she thought.

October hadn’t even rolled around yet, and the class was already out of hand.  She shuddered.  The noise was so loud, she couldn’t even grade essay exams.  Even the classical music blasting from her stereo was not enough to cover the noise.  Ms. Portman folded her arms on her desk to make a sort of pillow, and put her head down in defeat.

On days like this – most days – Ms. Portman felt like there was no possible way she could make a difference in this school.  After 34 years of dedication to her students and her idealistic goals, endless budget cuts, disrespectful students, and fatigue, led her to adopt a more pragmatic approach to teaching. 

“David,” she yelled across the room, “Put that lighter away!”

It would be two long years before her pension would kick in, and Ann Portman would retire.  She dreamed of that distant day often.  The New York Times crossword in the morning, Pilates in the afternoon, and an evening martini.  Maybe even cooking classes, who knows?  It sounded almost perfect.

She sighed deeply and looked up at the clock.  Five minutes left.  She thought of what she’d watch on TV during dinner.

The bell rang, and the students gathered up their backpacks and iPods.  As they filed past her desk, she looked up, hoping that just one might wish her a good weekend.  She was disappointed, but not surprised, when none looked her way.  She sighed, closed the folder of ungraded exams, and gathered up the belongings her students had left behind.

Just then, a young man opened the door to her classroom.

“Hi, Ms. Portman,” he smiled widely.  “I left my binder in here.”

“You and everyone else,” she retorted dryly from across the room.

He laughed brightly.  “Sorry about that.”  He strode down the second row of desks and grabbed a binder.  She watched him walk back to the door.

“Have a great weekend, Ms. Portman,” he added.  The door closed slowly behind him.

Brad was in Ms. Portman’s first period US History class.  He always raised his hand, and didn’t leave half-full smoothies under his desk.  His long cargo shorts, tan arms, and shaggy hair reminded her of the surfers she had known back in Santa Cruz, where she grew up.  She sighed.

After locking up the darkened room, Ms. Portman walked quickly down the hallway.  She didn’t want to talk to anyone.  She just wanted to get home in peace.

 

After her unhappy divorce fifteen years ago, Ann Portman was forced to move into the only place she could afford, a duplex which lay just outside of the school’s township.  She had furnished it with an unlikely combination of her few family heirlooms and a lot of absurdly colorful Ikea products, which she used to hope would bring some youthful excitement into her otherwise dull single life.

After collecting the mail, she threw her purse and keys onto a bright orange shelf in her cramped kitchen and poured her first glass of white wine.  All she got in the mail were a few bills and a Us Weekly (she’d bought the subscription from the Girl Scouts some years back).  Since Ms. Portman didn’t have email, she hardly ever heard from her daughter anymore.

The one message on her answering machine was from Dick Goldstein, a neighbor who kept asking her out for a drink.  “Yick,” she said, deleting the message.  “Why doesn’t he find someone his own age?”  Dick was 66, and for Ann (who had just turned 63), dating a legally classifiable senior citizen would be an unwelcome acknowledgement of her own seniority.

Ms. Portman looked up at the clock on her kitchen wall.  Lost, one of her favorite prime time TV shows, would come on in a few minutes.  She opened the fridge and pulled out a few containers of left over Chinese take-out.  A pool of Szechwan sauce had dripped out of the Mu Shu pork onto the top of a pizza box below.  Shit, she thought.  I’ll clean it up later.  The take-out went into the microwave for a minute.  She grabbed a pair of chopsticks (she’d stopped using plates long ago) and her wineglass, and headed for the couch in front of the TV.  She couldn’t miss the opening sequence.

Halfway through both Lost and her bottle of white wine, Ann opened up her folder of essays and started to grade.  The subject was the Cold War (which Ms. Portman was convinced was more current events than history, seeing as it happened in her lifetime), and, as usual, it was evident from the first couple of papers that few students had paid attention in class.  She sighed.

Two glasses of wine later, Lost had given way to Desperate Housewives which had given way to Oprah reruns.  As she progressed through the stack of papers, her comments deteriorated from a neatly written “Please review Chapter 10” to a drunken scribble “See what happens when you sleep in my class?”  It was nearing midnight, and Ms. Portman had finally gotten to the last essay.

“Brad Livingston,” the name read neatly at the top.  Hah! Ms. Portman chuckled, This’ll be quick.  She flipped through the pages of his carefully planned essay response.  Unlike the others, Brad had cared to punctuate his sentences, and his paragraphs weren’t just attempts at skirting the question.  She turned back to the first page, and was about to mark a large “A” on his exam, when in a moment of lucidity, a better idea came to her.

“TALK TO ME AFTER SCHOOL!” she wrote in red on the top of the paper.

 

            On Monday, Ms. Portman arrived at school early with a large thermos of coffee to counteract her throbbing headache.  As she sipped her coffee slowly in the empty classroom, she thought through what she would say to her unsuspecting victim.

            “Brad, how do you feel about older women?”  That’s the wrong angle, she thought.

“Brad, why don’t we go out and celebrate your work on this paper?  Drinks are on me.”  No, that’s too strong, she thought again.

           

“Brad, your work on this paper was the best I’ve seen in my teaching career.  Why don’t we go back to my place and talk it over?”  He might not go for that.

            “Brad, how would you like to go have a cup of coffee and discuss your thesis?  I found it very compelling.”  That’s better, she thought.  The butterflies in her stomach brought her back to high school, and she couldn’t help but smile.

The bell rang, and the students of her first period class began to wander in.  Brad walked in with a friend and sat toward the back of the classroom.  Ms. Portman sat perched straight-backed behind her desk with an uncharacteristic grin on her face. 

As soon as all of the students had seated themselves, Ms. Portman stood and began to pass out the graded essays, lecturing as she walked up and down the rows of desks.  “Now, some of you will be surprised by your grades on this essay.  Judging from your work, some of you will also be surprised to hear that the ‘Iron Curtain’ isn’t the name of a rock band.”

She continued passing out the graded papers, as groans of discontent filled the room.  When she finally reached the last one in the pile, she walked back to Brad’s desk and handed it to him, winking.

He stared up at her blankly, with long blond hair partially obscuring his eyes.

The bell rang again, and the students shuffled out of the classroom.

 

            At the end of the school day, Ms. Portman sat again behind her desk, waiting for Brad to arrive.  Unlike most days, she wasn’t tired; in fact, she had never felt so full of energy.  Her hands were shaking with anxiety.  Just then, the door swung open, and Brad walked in, shaking his head in disbelief.

Approaching her desk essay in hand, he began, “Ms. Portman, I don’t really understand what’s wrong with this.”

Her heart sped up.  “Take a seat, Bradley.”  She motioned to a chair beside her. 

He moved to the chair, and sat uncomfortably.

 “I’ve read over your paper very carefully, and I think it’s outstanding,” she said, looking into his eyes.

“Oh, you liked it?” he asked.

“It was wonderful.”  She pulled her chair alongside his.  “I think with some help, Bradley, we could even publish this.”

She watched as his eyes lit up.  “Really?”

“I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, Bradley, but I think we could really do some great work together on this.”

“I might take it home and have my parents read it first, to see what they think,” he suggested.

“But your parents can’t give you the same feedback I can.  Don’t worry, we’d have a great time.  You’d learn more about history, I’d learn more about…oh, I don’t know, surfing?”

He looked up, “I’m not really a surfer.”

She leaned close to him and spoke in a whisper, “All I’m asking, Bradley, is for a little slice of your time.  Time we could spend together.”

She looked to him for understanding and found none.  In his distant and confused eyes Ann Portman saw the improbability of what she was trying to achieve.  He would never go out to coffee with her.  He would never befriend her.  He could never understand her.  It would never happen.

            Ms. Portman sat up in her chair and took a deep breath.  “Bradley, why don’t you just take this home to your parents and see what they think?  Now that I think about it, you might be better off with them.”

            He grabbed his backpack, unknowing of her change of plans, or even that there was a plan at all, and smiled.  “Thanks for your help, Ms. Portman.  I’ll let you know how they like it.”  He got up to leave, and she watched him walk out the door.

           

            When Ms. Portman got home that night, she found only a few bills and a Williams-Sonoma catalog in the mail.  She threw her purse and keys onto her orange Ikea kitchen shelf and looked up at her answering machine.  She played the one new message:

            “Hi Ann, this is Dick from next door.  I wanted to see if I could talk you into a cocktail tonight.  I’ll be going down to the Marina Club at eight.  My number is 847-5846 if you’re interested.”

            Ann paused, looked at the clock, then picked up the phone and began to dial.