Chapter Text
It’s 1987 when Melissa Schemmenti walks into Abbott Elementary for the first time. The principal who’d done her interview – Mr. Gutzman, what a terrible name – had told Melissa as she signed the hiring paperwork that maybe she’d better wear something less revealing once classes started, and Melissa had blushed and refastened the top button.
She regrets it now that he’s gotten himself fired the week before school started for feeling up his secretary. She wishes she’d popped a second button and looked at him like he was one of the obnoxious barflies at the pub down the street from her college apartment. Challenged his misogyny, like her women’s studies professor would say. Melissa was very good at challenging misogyny in theory, but she was pretty bad at it in practice. Just this morning, Joe had been pissed that she said she couldn’t cook breakfast for him because it was her first day of work and she wanted to be early. She’d told him to eat a bagel, for Chrissakes, but he’d stomped around the apartment until she scrambled some eggs and left five minutes later than she wanted.
The day had gone fine, even if it had started later than she planned, and she had to admit that it felt nice to be in charge of her own classroom. After a semester of student teaching for the world’s most severe micromanager, it was good to call all the shots, like using the funny voices when she read aloud and letting the kids go to the bathroom when they asked.
“Ms. Schemmenti,” a voice says from behind her, and Melissa turns around. All of the adults had pretended that she was invisible all day, like there was a ghost leading the parade of second-graders down the freshly waxed hallway instead of a very real woman in khaki pants and a v-neck shirt (with a camisole, her single concession to the unwelcome advice she couldn’t get out of her head).
But this adult is smiling at her. She’s maybe four, five years older than she is, and she has beautiful mahogany skin with lips the color of raspberries. When she gets closer, she can smell her perfume. Something floral, light. Melissa would never wear it herself, but on this woman, it smells like sunshine.
“That’s me,” Melissa says. “You new here, too?”
“Oh, no,” the woman said, shaking her head. It makes her little silver earrings brush against her neck. Melissa glances down. She thinks the woman might be pregnant, but it’s too early to know for sure and Melissa’s not dumb enough to ask. “My fifth year.”
She says it almost proudly, and Melissa figures it is a point of pride: Abbott has one of the worst teacher-retention rates in Philly. It’s why she’d gotten a $2,000 signing bonus to work here.
“Good for you,” Melissa says. “Can I help you with something?”
She hates the way dumb Mr. Gutzman has made her view everybody here with suspicion. Maybe five-year-lady wants to judge her for having tits, too.
“Oh, no,” the woman says. “I wanted to see if you’d maybe like to have a bite to eat. There’s a restaurant down the street. I remember how hard it was to make friends here.”
Melissa smiles despite herself. The woman looks eager and embarrassed at the same time.
“Only if you tell me your name first,” Melissa relents.
“How silly of me,” the woman says, reaching out her hand. Her nails are manicured, and Melissa feels suddenly embarrassed about her lack of polish. “Barbara Howard.”
“Nice to meet you, Barbara,” Melissa says, taking her hand. Barbara’s hand is so soft and warm, but her grip is firm and she meets Melissa’s eye with a look that Melissa thinks she can trust.
*
The restaurant, as it turns out, is a dive bar, but the burgers are good, and so is the conversation. As it turns out, Barbara almost quit to teach at a school in the suburbs, but not because of the kids, she said, but because she was so lonely.
“The other teachers just want to do their jobs – if you can call it that,” Barbara scoffs, and Melissa likes her unflinching, almost-accidental honesty. “And they want to go home. I think maybe it would be easier to be at Abbott if you felt like you had a partner who wasn’t rushing out the door everyday. Someone to grade papers with, or –”
Barbara gestures at the table, at each of their burgers, at the basket of fried pickles between them that Melissa had ordered them for the table, trying to be generous.
“To do this with,” Melissa finishes.
“Yes,” Barbara says, and there’s that embarrassed look again.
“My husband works construction, and this year, they’ve got a jobsite well outside the city, so he’s often away at night. I’m pregnant, so it’s less than ideal timing anyway, but it makes work feel even harder.”
“My husband always works nights at the firehouse,” Melissa says. She doesn’t tell Barbara that she prefers it that way, that it feels peaceful to make dinners for one, to listen to classical records while she cleans the kitchen, to go to bed by herself. “So good on ya for putting a baby in the mix. I don’t think I could do it.”
Melissa wants a baby so badly sometimes that she can feel it in her teeth, but she doesn’t want Joe’s baby. It’s an ugly secret, an uncatholic secret, and she’s pretty sure it makes her a bad wife, too. Joe doesn’t want a baby because he says the crying’s annoying and he can think of better things to spend his money, so Melissa always agrees, and she holds her friends’ babies a little too long when they get passed to her.
“It wasn’t something we planned,” Barbara says, and her smile is tight for a moment. “But the baby’s coming, and I’m staying at Abbott so I won’t lose any of the leave I’ve accumulated.”
It sounds very practical, but Melissa itches to ask this woman what she really wants. Not a baby. Not staying at Abbott.
Melissa’s never been good about holding back, so she blurts it out anyway.
“What do you really want?”
Barbara looks at her, and even though she quirks her mouth and shrugs, her eyes are sharp. She doesn’t miss a trick, but she pretends because it suits her. Melissa knows the feeling. It’s like a hand over her mouth, like the pinch of a pair of too-tight shoes.
“A friend,” Barbara answers, and Melissa can tell she means it. “You must think I’m terribly desperate.”
We’re all desperate, Melissa thinks but does not say. Some women hide their desperation better: they’ve got husbands, kids, religion, little hobbies. But with her and Barbara, their loneliness is like a kicked dog sitting at their feet. Melissa decides she does not want to pretend the dog isn’t there, whining, with this woman, with the gold rings, who eats a hamburger with a fork.
“I want a friend, too,” Melissa says, and the conversation suddenly feels very first-grade: let’s be friends.
Barbara squeezes her shoulder, as if to say thank you, and her pinky fingernail grazes the pale skin at the juncture of Melissa’s neck and shoulder.
Melissa hopes she disguises her shiver with a cough. This won’t do. It’s been a long time since Melissa, who’s known she was bi since the fifth grade, was attracted to a woman, but here she is again, attracted to this pregnant woman who, by her own admission, just wants a friend to grade papers with.
Melissa glances up at Barbara, to see if she noticed, and Barbara meets her eyes. Her lips are slightly parted, and she doesn’t move her hand from Melissa’s shoulder quite fast enough to be prudent. Melissa thinks wildly for a moment about kissing her, about stroking her tongue across that full bottom lip, smearing her lipstick. Thinks about saying yes, I’ve always wanted a friend, into her mouth. Thinks about how cold the woman’s rings might feel against her skin. The place where her fingernail touched Melissa burns, and Melissa almost but does not reach up to trace the invisible line she left behind
There is an expression on Barbara’s face that Melissa cannot place, but she picks up her knife and fork again and the moment passes.
“Do you need any help finishing up your classroom decorations?” Barbara asks. Her voice is very, very steady, and Melissa hopes hers is too as she replies with some rehearsed-sounding line about needing help to hang a weather chart.