“Okay,” Cynthia said, coming back into the room. She had combed her hair and did not look quite as tired. He suggested a restaurant a few miles down the road from the school, and she said she’d follow him in her car. At lunch, he was going to have to think of something to say to her, to find some way to get her to pass Mary. He would certainly never think of anything to say to Mary to persuade her that she should try harder. If he were Nick, he could dazzle Cynthia with all the knots he could tie. He smiled. Nick had sworn to him that that really dazzled women. That they would do anything for a man who could tie fifteen different knots.
All right: That was the truth of it. He found her attractive. She had Nina’s direct gaze, and she obviously deserved better than to be in that school teaching those kids, the way Nina deserved better than Lord and Taylor’s, and when he felt sorry for women a feeling of longing often got mixed up with the pity.
He turned on the radio, kept moving the dial. “And this one, you can be sure, is one of the best,” the announcer’s voice said. “This is a recording of ‘Don’t Worry ’Bout Me’ which was used as the theme song for a movie I’ll bet a lot of you have forgotten called End of the Road. Billie Holiday recorded this one in 1957, with the Ray Ellis Orchestra, and the man you’ll hear on alto sax is Mr. Gene Quill.” The announcer had a surprisingly calm, quiet voice — a late-night announcer’s voice.
Billie Holiday was singing. She was singing, and the lyrics, of course, were not to be understood as meaning what they were saying. When she sang “I’ll get along” it was painful; the restraint in her voice, the way she absolutely did not mean it, but not self-pitying either. Nina could do that: She could say something about her ability to survive that would shock him with her lack of faith in herself, but she wouldn’t give in. She really pretended to be a survivor, to the extent that at times he feared for her life, actually thought she might be dead when the telephone rang in her apartment and she didn’t answer. Nina hated him to talk that way. She said that he had been a Boy Scout too long, that she did not care to be helped across the street. But once, early on, surprised at the intensity of her feeling for him, she had gotten drunk at dinner. He had held her arm crossing the street, and she had not objected. She wanted to marry him. Nina.
He pulled into the parking lot outside the restaurant. Cynthia passed his car and parked farther down, on the opposite side. His parking place was closer: He should have left it for her, but he didn’t think of it. Or maybe Nina was right about his being too much of a Boy Scout. If they had taught him to tie knots in the Boy Scouts, he didn’t remember it.
The restaurant was air conditioned, and the instant he felt cool he wanted a drink. He asked her if she wanted a drink, hoping that she did. When the waiter came, she ordered a glass of white wine, and he ordered a gin and tonic.
“I was thinking, driving here, that I don’t envy you,” he said.
She smiled. She seemed to know what he meant, and he was glad, because after he said it, he realized that it might have seemed a condescending thing to have said.
“I was wondering why you weren’t at work,” she said.
“I had to have a conference today with my daughter’s English teacher.”
“Well,” Cynthia said, “I’m glad you took the English teacher to lunch. She was hungry, and she doesn’t like sitting around that classroom.”
“You write on the blackboard,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Quite a few teachers, I think… ”
“I just meant that I forgot that information gets communicated that way. I’m used to memos. I guess you couldn’t very well send the students memos about Thackeray and have them initial them and send them back.”
“What?” She laughed. She picked up her glass of wine and had a drink the minute the waiter put it on the table.
“Footing the bill, too?” she said. “The English teacher is almost broke.”
“Sure,” he said. “Of course.”
“This is odd,” she said. “This isn’t what I thought I’d be doing today.”
“I was hungry,” he said. “I was embarrassed, thinking you could hear my stomach growl.”
“I didn’t.”
“You didn’t,” he repeated. He picked up the menu. He wanted six cheeseburgers. If he only had one drink, he would order a turkey sandwich. If he had two, he would order a cheeseburger.
“In answer to your question,” she said, “I know that your daughter can read the books and understand them, and that she can write about what she knows, if she wants to. I do not have that feeling about everyone in the class. I do have the feeling that she doesn’t care, that it isn’t cool to care, and that neither you nor I can probably make her care.”
“I like what you said about there not being one answer for things,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You said, when I asked why she was doing poorly, that there wasn’t any one answer.”
“I know,” she said. “I mean, what do you think the answers are?”
“I agree with you,” he said. “They’re fifteen years old now and it isn’t cool to care.”
“And what else?” she said.
“She thinks Thackeray is irrelevant. It’s summer—”
“I don’t know if it’s important whether it’s irrelevant or not. I mean, I don’t think it is irrelevant, but those aren’t even terms I think in.”
She took a drink. He took a drink. He was afraid that if he asked her what she did think, she might tell him, and it might surprise him. It was too early in the conversation to ask what she was thinking.
“When I feel like giving up — not showing up to teach — when I’m in a bad mood, I see it their way. I see the absurdity of thinking about any time but our own. I can see wanting books to hit me over the head and tell me what to do about my problems. I don’t want to know what the Odyssey has to do, indirectly, with my problems: I want Ann Landers.”
“But Ann Landers is predictable. You have to distrust those answers because of that.”
“Is she?” Cynthia said. “I don’t read Ann Landers.”
She had almost finished her wine. It was a small glass. He got the waiter’s attention and ordered another glass of wine, and before he was tempted, another drink and a turkey sandwich to be brought at the same time. She ordered a salad.
“Why fight it, I guess,” Cynthia said. “It was predictable that I’d order a salad and you wouldn’t.” She fiddled with her napkin. “You can get caught up in that — thinking that because you can make everything seem ironic, that things genuinely are. You can put an ironic front on anything. I felt sort of the way they must feel — the way I think they must feel — when I was younger than they are. In grade school, when we used to go down to the cafeteria and sit on the floor and put our hands over our heads — what we were supposed to do if the bomb dropped, if the bell went off for real and a bomb dropped. Then we’d file upstairs and hear about Washington crossing the Delaware. But everybody’s had that experience, or a comparable experience. Constantly. I’m not so sure that these times are as mind-blowing as those kids pretend. I’m not sure that they aren’t just lazy, and that it isn’t easy to be lazy.”