I brought her home to meet my parents several times. They were so happy that she was Jewish that they didn't object to the fact that she was older and that she was my teacher. Susan's parents drove up from Los Angeles for a weekend and we all got along well. Fortunately, we were able to spend most of the time driving them around the city to sightsee. We never discussed anything more important than the building boom in San Francisco, and if they had things they would have liked to say, they never took advantage of the several opportunities. I suppose they were embarrassed.
Time passed quickly. We wanted to relish the hours, to savor the day, but already it was the end of February.
I walked out of Susan's class on the third floor and headed down the hall to my next class. Susan had a meeting on the second floor and I hadn't planned on seeing her again until after school. I was about twenty feet down the hall from her room when I heard a loud commotion coining from the stairwell in back of me. Some kids ran by.
"What happened?" I asked.
"It's Miss Lawrence, she just fell down a whole flight of steps. We're going for help," they yelled.
My stomach got tight and I felt cold all over. I ran to the top of the stairwell but couldn't see her through the crowd of students gathered at the bottom. I went down the steps three at a time, and with panic building rapidly inside of me I pushed my way through to her.
Susan was on her back, parallel to the bottom step. Her long skirt lay at her waist, exposing a right leg that was torn and bleeding. A bump between her knee and her ankle protruded where her broken bone was trying to push through the skin. Her normally tan face was white and her expensive fake glasses lay smashed halfway up the steps. Her eyes were closed tightly, her face contorted by pain.
I pulled the rumpled skirt down over her legs, ripped off my jacket, and, folding it, placed it beneath her head. Then I sat beside her and stroked her hair. "It's all right," I said softly to her. "Your leg is broken but I think that's all. Don't worry, the ambulance will be here soon."
Actually, I didn't even know if one had been called yet.
Susan was so pale. She opened her eyes and saw me above her. "Hold me," she sobbed. "Oh, love, it hurts so much. I'm so scared."
And she reached up and pulled me down until I was almost laying next to her, trying to soothe and calm, frustrated because I wanted her not to hurt but was powerless to stop it.
Mr. Oaks and several of the teachers appeared on the scene pushing their way through the crowd and ordering everybody back to class.
Susan was in shock and I was too upset to realize what we were doing. I heard Dave's voice. "Dick, you'd better go back to class. We'll take over now."
Another voice, a woman's, said that the ambulance was on the way.
I started to pull away from Susan but her arms tightened suddenly around my neck. "Don't leave me," she cried. "Please, love, don't go away.
I looked around me at the crowd of teachers and the principal, all standing in stunned silence.
And I knew we had blown it.
Chapter 7
The ambulance from San Francisco Emergency finally arrived, with two stewards and a medical resident, who gave Susan a shot to dull the pain. As they lifted her onto the gurney I took Susan's hand and faced Mr. Oaks. "I'm going with her, John. Will you arrange a pass or something for the rest of my classes?"
Standing a majestic six and a half feet, hair silver from thirty years of school problems, he looked at me intently. "I'll arrange it," he said. My eyes thanked him.
"I'll come to your office tomorrow and we'll talk."
"I think that would be a good idea," he said, signing a release paper for the ambulance steward.
I rode with Susan to San Francisco General, a broken-down pile of brick and plaster on Potrero Street. She was sleepy from the shot but wouldn't let go of my hand. Even when they rolled her in for X rays, a kind nurse had to gently pry her hand away from mine.
I sat on a hard, wooden corridor bench and waited, smelling that awful hospital odor and watching the parade of suffering and pain up and down the emergency-room hallway. Finally the resident came out and gave me the report. Susan had a broken leg, two sprained wrists, a sprained ankle, and 'assorted bumps and bruises, but no apparent internal injuries. Considering the length of her fall, she had been very lucky.
In a half hour they rolled her out in a wheelchair. Her right leg was sticking out in front on a holding rack, covered in new, white plaster, and both of her arms were in slings. She was smiling. "I'm a klutz,"
I touched her cheek and kissed her. "Yeah, you're a klutz. How do you feel?"
"Lousy." Her eyes were sparkling emerald again, and seeing them that way made me feel better.
"Did we blow it?" she asked.
"Man, did we ever."
She shrugged her shoulders in that peculiar way in which only Jews, even liberated Jews, can shrug. "I spent so much time worrying about it, and now that it's happened, all I feel is relieved."
"I know," I said. "So do I. I'm going to talk to Oaks in the morning and try to fix it all up."
"Was he there?"
"The whole time." I told her what she had said and done, and we both laughed. At one time she had been ready to give me up for fear of just such a situation. Now that it had developed, and our worst fears had come true, all we did was laugh.
At home, propped up in bed, Susan slept fitfully. Twice I had to let her have pain-killer pills that the doctor had given me. He said that she would be in a walking cast and back in class in just three or four weeks.
I ran to the medical-supply store and bought a bedpan, then to a drugstore for one of each magazine in the rack to keep Susan busy. I didn't sleep at all, thinking about what I would say to Mr. Oaks in the morning.
One look at his face and I knew that it was going to be tough. Mrs. Dante, his secretary, looked at me thoughtfully, sizing up the competition her boss would face.
The best defense is a good offense. "Good morning, John," I said confidently.
He sat silently behind his desk, his bulk pushing back his swivel chair. A minute passed. And then another. "Thirty years," he said finally. "Thirty years I've been in education and I've never seen a scandal like this."
"It's not a scandal," I said.
"Not a scandal?"
He pounded his hammy hand on the desk, making Ms pen-and-pencil set jump. "Christ! Everybody in the goddamn building is talking about it. What would you call it if not a scandal? A student in this school involved with a teacher in this school, and from what I saw, pretty damn involved!"
And then, remembering his manners, he inquired about Susan's health, and I told him that the doctor has assured me that she would be on a walking cast in a few weeks. And while I had the floor I told him the rest of the story, almost everything, from the beginning. I told him that I was not what could be considered the average student, and he knew it. I told him about Susan's disguise, about her fears of being dismissed simply because she was young, about what a hell of a good teacher she was, and that I was sure he knew that, too. I told him how lucky he was to have somebody so gifted on his facility instead of all the ticket punchers who were just killing time until they could retire. I told him that the following semester I would be in college, just another husband being supported by a working wife, -and that it wouldn't matter then how old I was or how old Susan was. I told him that when we celebrated our golden wedding anniversary nobody would even remember how old we were. I sold and sold, and when I finished, John Oaks was calm.