BACK IN TENTH grade, Mr. Howe had been my U.S. History teacher. That was the year we studied the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and probably a whole bunch of other wars I can’t be bothered to remember. I do know we ended the year learning about the start of the First World War, which, as far as my understanding of it went, had begun for pretty much no reason at all.
Mr. Howe had been easygoing with us then, funny, laid-back, and I liked him a lot, even though history was the one subject I’d never taken to. In my mind, the past was something we were destined to repeat whether we learned about it or not. But I’d always liked the way Mr. Howe could go from smiling and joking to intense and focused when he lectured. And if I didn’t care all that much for the things he was talking about, it was still kind of neat that he did.
Caring about his job, by the way, was a good thing, seeing as Mr. Howe had been teaching at Teyber Union for forever. He was also married, owned a nice house in the country, but as far as everyone knew, Mr. Howe’s true passion was mountain climbing. Built like a Saint Bernard, which was to say barrel-chested, red-cheeked, and with a massive beard, he always managed to return from each spring, summer, and winter break having reached some new height or achieved some personal accomplishment. It was a world I knew nothing about, but the walls of his classroom were covered in photographs of peaks he’d mastered: Mount Whitney, Mount Hood, Pikes Peak. Even Denali. Everest and Kilimanjaro were on his bucket list, and I was sure he’d conquer them in his lifetime. Or else die trying.
I guess what I want to say is that I always respected Mr. Howe’s ambition, even if I didn’t understand it. That was a big part of the reason I accepted his offer to help with the school’s orienteering club in the first place, although it wasn’t the only reason. There was also the money I knew he knew I needed. And the way I craved almost anything that would help me feel in control of my life.
Beyond that, though, there was something in the way Mr. Howe asked that made it seem as if I were being offered more than mere employment. He didn’t just call me up on the phone. Instead, sometime near the start of summer, he invited me over to his place for lunch. Obedient, as always, I’d ridden my bike across town to his sprawling farmhouse, not knowing what he wanted, only to be greeted at the door by his wife.
Her, I’d never met, but it turned out Mrs. Howe, who was elegant and bare-shouldered and had black hair that fell to her waist, was the sort of person who could look you in the eye and make you feel as if she’d give you everything she had, if that’s what was needed. I was smitten. Heart pounding, I followed her through the house to their giant kitchen, where she waved for me to sit at this fancy marble island that looked as if it could seat ten people. And that wasn’t even the dining room. That was somewhere else. “Kyle had to run to the store,” she told me. “He’ll be back in a minute.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I’m Lucia,” she said. “But you can call me Lucy.”
“I’m Ben.”
“Would you like some tea, Ben? It’s herbal.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, wiping my hands on my shorts. I didn’t care to be in strange homes, much less alone with my teacher’s pretty, bare-shouldered wife. All I knew about her was that she traveled a lot and that she wasn’t from Teyber originally.
Lucy set about making the tea. She was quiet while she worked, which I liked. So different from my mom and her constant, frenetic need to ask questions and demand answers. Moments later a glazed ceramic mug appeared in front of me. Steam wafted from it, smelling of ginger and honey.
“Thank you.”
She sat across from me with her own mug. “My pleasure.”
“So do you work in, like, sales or something?” I asked.
Lucy’s brows knitted. “Sales?”
“Is that why you travel?”
“Oh,” she said. “No. Thank God. I don’t think I’d be very good at that.”
“Then what do you do?”
“I’m a psychologist.”
At this, I perked up. “Oh, yeah? I read a lot about psychology.”
She smiled. “What do you like to read about?
“Lots of things. Theories about how our personalities are developed. Or why people say one thing and do another.”
“Where does this interest come from?”
“I don’t know. My mom, I guess. She’s not a very happy person.”
Lucy watched while I blew at my tea. “That’s sad.”
“It’s weak.” I felt guilty the minute the words left my mouth, so I added, “But I’m weak, too.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I can’t make people happy. I keep trying, but I’m always screwing up.”
“Does your mom tell you this?”
“My girlfriend mostly. She gets embarrassed for me a lot. I don’t blame her. I mean, I do a lot of dumb stuff.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I looked up at her. “Your clients must like you, huh? You listen really well.”
Lucy reached to pat my arm. “That’s nice of you. But I don’t have any clients. My work is in public policy and research around mental health. It’s why I’m away in DC so often. I’ve been gone for the past two weeks. Just got back yesterday, in fact.”
“How was it?”
“Well, I missed the cherry blossoms again, despite my best efforts. But there’s hope for the future, I suppose. Spring’ll come around next year.”
I melted a little. Her words pleased me, even if the sentiment was sort of ridiculous. And maybe it was something in the way she listened or the way she waited for me to speak, but Lucy was having the strangest effect on me. My mind raced, and I couldn’t stop talking. “So, uh, are you and Mr. Howe going to have kids someday?”
Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, we wanted to once. Very much. But it’s too late now. We’re old.”
“Really?” I didn’t actually know about these things, but I also didn’t know how old Mr. Howe and Lucy were. If I had to guess I would have put them in their early forties, but that seemed like there was still time. “How long have you been married?”
“Kyle and I met twenty-four years ago this month. We’ve been married for eighteen.”
“So what happened? Jesus, I’m sorry. I know I’m asking a lot of questions.”
“It’s fine.” Lucy tipped her head to one side, letting her long hair fall even farther down her back and exposing her neck. “Well, first we moved around a lot. When I was finally done with school, we decided to come back to Teyber—Kyle grew up here. That’s when we really started trying. I always knew I wanted a large family. I’m the youngest of seven. Kyle’s the oldest of five. We thought we’d thrive on chaos.”
“But . . .”
“But it never happened for us. The doctors ran all sorts of tests. But . . . nothing.”
I stared at her. “That’s it? I thought there were all sorts of ways to have a kid. In vitro or surrogacy or egg donors. Something.” I would have tried them all, I thought. Every last one, if that’s what the woman I’d married had her heart set on.
Lucy seemed to have a window into my head. “I didn’t want to triumph over nature. Neither of us did. It’s not that we didn’t want a family. But once you put yourself in a war with what’s meant to be . . . well, I can only speak for myself. It would change the way I looked at everything. I couldn’t give that up.”