Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(8)

Adam was the school’s only male assistant, a lanky, kind-faced young English-major type with a tangle of dark hair and a curly beard. Mrs. Darling seemed to feel she’d been exceptionally daring to have hired him, although most of the other preschools had several men on their staffs by that time. She had first assigned him to the Fives, known also as the Pre-Ks because the children there, mostly boys, were old enough for kindergarten but were thought to need a further year of socialization. A man would provide discipline and structure, Mrs. D. felt. However, Adam had turned out to be such a mild man, so gentle and solicitous, that halfway through his first year he and Georgina had been switched. Now he happily tended two-year-olds, wiping noses and soothing random cases of homesickness, and before Quiet Rest Time every day his mumbly, slightly furry voice could be heard singing lullabies above the soporific strumming of his guitar. Unlike most men, he stood noticeably taller than Kate, and yet somehow in his presence she always felt too big and too gangling. She longed all at once to be softer, daintier, more ladylike, and she was embarrassed by her own gracelessness.

She wished she had had a mother. Well, she had had a mother, but she wished she’d had one who had taught her how to get along in the world better.

“I saw you walk past during Quiet Rest Time,” Adam called to her as he worked the seesaw. “Were you in trouble with Mrs. Darling?”

“No…” she said. “You know. We were just discussing a child I was concerned about.”

Natalie made a snorting noise. Kate glared at her, and Natalie put on an exaggerated “Oh-excuse-me” expression. So transparent, Natalie was. Everybody knew she had a huge crush on Adam.

Last week, it was all over the school that Adam had given Sophia Watson one of his handmade dream catchers. “Oho!” everyone said. But Kate thought he might just have done that because Sophia was his co-assistant in Room 2.

—

Tact, restraint, diplomacy. What was the difference between tact and diplomacy? Maybe “tact” referred to saying things politely while “diplomacy” meant not saying things at all. Except, wouldn’t “restraint” cover that? Wouldn’t “restraint” cover all three?

People tended to be very spendthrift with their language, Kate had noticed. They used a lot more words than they needed to.

She was taking her time walking home because the weather was so nice. In the morning it had been downright cold, but since then the day had warmed up and she carried her jacket slung over one shoulder. A young couple was strolling at a leisurely pace in front of her, the girl telling some long tale about some other girl named Lindy, but Kate didn’t bother trying to pass them.

She wondered whether the pale blue, faceless pansies she saw in somebody’s garden urn would bloom in her backyard. She had way too much shade in her backyard.

Behind her, she heard her name called. She turned to see a light-haired man hurrying toward her with one arm raised, as if he were hailing a cab. For a moment she couldn’t imagine what he had to do with her, but then she recognized her father’s research assistant. The absence of his lab coat had confused her; he was wearing jeans and a plain gray jersey. “Hi!” he said as he arrived next to her. (“Khai,” it sounded like.)

“Peter,” she said.

“Pyotr.”

“How’re you doing,” she said.

“I fear I may be having cold,” he told her. “My nose waters and I sneeze a great deal. Has been taking place since last night.”

“Bummer,” she said.

She resumed walking, and he fell into step alongside her. “It was a good day at your school?” he asked.

“It was okay.”

They were right on the heels of the young couple now. Lindy ought to just dump the guy, the girl was saying, he was making her unhappy; and the boy said, “Oh, I don’t know, she seems all right to me.”

“Where are your eyes?” the girl asked him. “The whole time they’re together she keeps looking into his face and he keeps looking away. Everybody’s noticed it—Patsy and Paula and Jane Ann—and finally my sister came right out and said to Lindy; she said—”

Pyotr briefly clamped Kate’s upper arm to steer her around them. It startled her for a moment. He was barely taller than Kate, but she had trouble matching his stride, and then she wondered why she was trying and she slowed her pace. He slowed too. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she asked him.

“Yes! I am just going.”

Since the lab lay two blocks in the opposite direction, this didn’t make any sense, but that was no concern of hers. She glanced at her watch. She liked to get home before Bunny, who was not supposed to entertain boys when she was alone but sometimes did anyhow.

“In my country we have proverb,” Pyotr was saying.

Didn’t they always, Kate thought.

“We say, ‘Work when it is divided into segments is shorter total period of time than work when it is all together in one unit.’?”

“Catchy,” Kate said.

“How long you have been letting your hair grow?”

The change of subject took her aback. “What?” she said. “Oh. Since eighth grade, maybe. I don’t know. I just couldn’t take any more of that Chatty Cathy act.”

“Chatty Cathy?”

“In the beauty parlor. Talk, talk, talk; those places are crawling with talk. The women there start going before they even sit down—talk about boyfriends, husbands, mothers-in-law. Roommates, jealous girlfriends. Feuds and misunderstandings and romances and divorces. How can they find so much to say? I could never think of anything, myself. I kept disappointing my beautician. Finally I went, ‘Shoot. I’ll just quit getting my hair cut.’?”