Good Riddance(46)

Next question: “Was there ever gossip swirling around the school about Miss Winter and a student?”

Now I am going to sue her. She had no scruples, no journalistic ethics. And my big mouth was entirely to blame.

The know-nothing Roseanne said, “There’s always gossip about teachahs. It doesn’t mean where there’s smoke there’s fiah.”

“Let’s get back to these symbols. I’m noting that different years have different color pens. But why are some of the dots in pencil? In fact, very faint pencil. Possibly a code?”

“You’re only showing me a coupla pages. I haven’t looked through the whole thing. I nevah saw this before. I mean, I have my own copy, but I nevah saw Miss Wintah’s.”

“Do you know this young man?” Geneva asked next. “And please remember that we’re not naming names.”

Of course, she had to be pointing to Peter Armstrong. The woman said, “Sure. He was our valedictorian. Can I say that? Funny he didn’t write anything.”

“Funny why?”

“Because he was a big shot in the class. And I’m positive he came to the reunions.”

“How odd then. Don’t you find that odd?”

“The whole thing’s odd. Who writes all ovah a yearbook that’s not your own? I’m trying to remembah if she had the thing tucked under her ahm when she came to the reunions? If not, she went straight home and wrote this stuff down.”

“Look closer. Not next to his picture but above it. Tell me what you see.”

“A phone numbah. That was our exchange: ELwood, then five numbahs.”

Geneva let that marinate in case the presence of a phone number didn’t register as out-and-out adultery. “I can tell you this: No other graduate got a phone number above, below, next to his picture,” she continued. “What do you suppose it meant?”

“Why don’t you ask him,” said Roseanne.



Except for the occasional polite exchange of emails acknowledging receipt of my quarterly checks, I didn’t stay in any kind of daughterly touch with Armstrong. Besides my own confusion as to what we were to each other, I wanted to respect my father’s Armstrong aversion. But I thought I should warn the former class valedictorian by email that Geneva, who’d big-footed her way to his reunion, would surely be inviting him to appear on her podcast.

“She did say she was going to do something with our class, as I recall,” he wrote back.

That was too neutral, too calm. So, without sugarcoating what was surely ahead, I replied, “She’s portraying my mother as a floozy who preyed on her male students.”

Was that not attention-getting enough? When there was no answer, I wrote again two days later asking if he’d gotten my most recent email, the one containing the word “floozy.”

“Received and noted,” he answered. “I won’t go on the show or whatever it is. Take care, Peter”—a kiss-off I attributed to his busy job, law practice, and my clinically cold correspondence up to now.



Next was episode three, not featuring an unnamed valedictorian, nor classmates of his, nor members of my family, which had been another worry. But the innuendo continued with the introduction of a woman, an alleged substitute teacher at Pickering High School, who claimed to be a workplace bosom buddy of my mother’s.

Wait. What was I hearing? What did she just allege? I was scribbling furiously on a notepad, which was how I listened, ready for slander. The bosom buddy had the nerve to say that she and the young June Winter sneaked “off campus” for a sushi lunch—impossible because no one was eating raw fish in Pickering for another few decades. Nor did they chaperone field trips together to the Boston Museum of Science because Pickering High School field trips were always to Canobie Lake Park the last week of school.

And then this: “Every single boy had a crush on June. She was very attractive, and believe me, she used it.”

She used it? And every single boy had a crush on her? Talk about hyperbole. Wouldn’t I know this alleged bosom buddy?

“But harmless crushes, right?” Geneva asked her.

“How would she know?” I yelled at my phone.

“You’ll have to ask those boys,” said this anonymous bigmouth. “In those days, we didn’t have the rules that are in place now.”

“Rules?”

“Pretty basic: no sexual contact between students and teachers, ever.”

I texted Geneva furiously: WHO IS THE WOMAN WHO SAYS SHE WAS A SUB @ PHS?

I DON’T DIVULGE MY SOURCES, she wrote back.

Next, I called her, dumped into voice mail. Do I spell out how furious I am or save everything for a courtroom? “It’s Daphne; call me” was all I said.

After an irked sleep, I strode to her door in the morning, rapped first with the ineffectual knocker, then with what might be considered a pounding.

“Whahh the hell?” I heard from within.

“It’s Daphne. I need to talk to you.”

“About what?”

Seriously? “Your horrible podcast! Who’s that woman who says she was a sub at the high school?”

“Jesus Christ. I thought someone was going to say the building was on fire. It’s gonna have to wait. What time is it?”

It was a few minutes past eight. “It’s eight-thirty,” I yelled back. “I have a job interview at nine and I might be gone all day.”