Be Mine by Laura Kasischke Page A

commute is too long," Amanda Stefanski said. "Have you thought about moving into the city?"
    Amanda is the newest teacher in the department—a short, plain woman in her twenties. She has a warm heart, is always ready with solutions to problems, considered advice. Every Christmas she puts in our mailboxes homemade cards signed with x's and o's, telling us to love Jesus, to celebrate His birthday. Once, Sue suggested we try to fix her up with Robert Z "if we can find out he's not gay." No, I said, she was too homely. She wouldn't be Robert Z's type, even if he wasn't gay. Amanda's hair was dishwater blond, the bangs trimmed raggedly and too short across her forehead. Her jaw was large, strong as a man's, although her eyes were large and blue and her shoulders were delicate.
    Sue had narrowed her eyes at me when I said she was too homely, and I said, "I mean, she's lovely, truly lovely, but—"
    "Okay," Sue said. "Not lovely enough for
your
Robert."
    "He's not
mine,
" I said. "This has nothing to do with me. I just wouldn't want to see Amanda get hurt. I mean, Robert's—"
    "Maybe Robert's not as picky as you are."
    "Fine," I said. "I'm sure you're right. Set them up, Sue."
    But eventually Sue must have begun to see the fact of this herself because she never brought the subject up again with me, and as far as I know she never tried to arrange anything between the two of them.
    Amanda leaned down and embraced me. She smelled like Windsong, or Charlie, some kind of inexpensive but pleasant drugstore perfume. "Really, Sherry," she said, "you need to move. It was one thing to live out there when it was the country. There's too much traffic now."
    "Thank you, Amanda," I said. "But, really, the deer had nothing to do with the traffic. It—" But Amanda had her eyes closed tightly, as if she were praying or trying to block out what I was saying. I said, "Well, maybe we will. I mean, Jon won't move, not yet, but I might rent a place for Monday and Wednesday nights. We'd already talked about it, before this."
    Jon.
    I hadn't thought, yet, to call him.
    He would be hurt, I supposed, if he knew that he was the last to know—although it was over now, and what could he do? And I hadn't been injured. The car was drivable. When I got off the freeway I'd stopped at a gas station and called the police to report it. A deep-voiced woman had taken my statement—the location, my license plate number over the phone—and she said she was sorry but that these things happened all the time, as if she thought I had called to complain.
    Anyway, there was nothing Jon could do, and I had to teach. I was already late. When I stood up to go, Robert Z said, "Now be careful in the hallway, sweetheart." He came over to me and squeezed my elbow. "Walk slowly."
    ***
    I SAW it, again, on the drive home:
    A tan twisted body, looking half human, half animal, in the median, sprawled.
    The knees were bent as if it were running, still, in its sleep. In its death.
    I slowed down. I felt I should. Out of respect, or to really
see
it.
    I looked closely and saw that it was a doe, no antlers.
    It was dusk, but I could see her clearly, even her face, and that the eyes were wide open—and the awfulness of it struck me then, that here was a thing I'd killed. Some escaped, transfigured daughter of a goddess—the ghost of a younger woman trying to escape from something or someone just behind her, giving chase.
    Where had she thought she was going? Was she trying to get back to the dark of the woods on the other side of the freeway, wondering how she'd come to this wrong road, and where to go—but blindly, led by scent and a dull drumming in her ears?
    Jesus,
I said under my breath.
Oh my god, forgive me.
    But would the gods blame me for this? Or forgive me for this? Or would there be some special punishment in hell for the woman who'd killed this beautiful animal, this divine creature, whether it had been an accident or not?
    Maybe an elliptical machine in hell.
    An endless