The Last First Day by Carrie Brown Page A

him, sitting back and wiping the wetness off her cheeks, he’d looked at her from under his bristly eyebrows. The look had been sly, pleased. He was happy to have aroused her pity, if that’s what it took.
    Later that same night, before they went to sleep, she had trimmed his eyebrows. She’d made him sit down on the seat of the toilet, his big face upturned, long legs sticking out of his boxer shorts, while she wielded a tiny pair of sewing scissors over his eyes in the bright light from the fixture above the bathroom sink.
    You look like a bad old hog, she said, nipping and tweezing. A big wild old pig.
    Eyes closed, he had smiled, reached for her, running his palm up the inside of her thigh.
    She’d swatted him away. I’ve got a pair of scissors here, she said.
    When she finished, she looked down at him.
    His face had been calm, untroubled. The lines across his forehead and around his eyes and mouth were the kind of lines that people who smiled a lot tended to get; they made him look good-humored.
    She, on the other hand, had awful grooves between her eyebrows, as if she’d spent her whole life frowning, as if everything that had come before her had required her careful inspection, had misbehaved and refused to stand still properly.
    She leaned down and put her lips against his forehead. She loved the way Peter smelled, of wood smoke from the fireplace and of Drysol, the old-fashioned deodorant he stubbornly preferred—it was hard to find these days—and of his whiskey from before dinner.
    Better? he’d said. Less piggy?
    She’d kissed him again.
    A thing of beauty, she’d said, is a joy forever.
    At the entrance to the chapel now, she hesitated, letting people move past her. She looked up the path, but there was no sign of Peter in the group of boys and teachers coming down the hill. People greeted her, embraced her, kissed her on the cheek, marching forth with unrecognizable faces out of the shining night.
    She smiled brightly. Hello! she said. Hello, hello!
    She caught a glimpse of Charlie Finney, the school’s new vice president. He’d come to Derry just three years ago. He was a big, fit young man, highly competitive on the tennis court—he had quickly abandoned Peter for younger, spryer opponents—and with a weightlifter’s exaggeratedly developed chest. He had a high, intelligent-looking forehead, receding blond hair, a long pointy nose. He reminded Ruth of an Irish setter. His wife, Kitty, seemed like a cheerful person, busy with their three rambunctious young boys, all of them thick-legged, curly-headed people like Kitty, always in a kind of sweaty state, it seemed to Ruth.
    A few times Ruth had run into Kitty on campus, and she had seemed eager to talk with Ruth, but one little boy or another was always dashing off or bonking his brother on the head or something—Ruth watched them, marveling—and mostly the women’s interactions had ended with Ruth waving an awkward good-bye at Kitty’s apologetic retreat.
    Once, in the post office, Kitty had looked imploringly at Ruth, meanwhile trying to restrain a squirming toddler from running into the parking lot after his brothers.
    I’d love to have you over for tea one day, Kitty said, just to hear about all your time here, Ruth. You know so much about this place, and you’ve done so much … but the house is always such a mess, and Charlie hates it when …
    She had trailed off.
    Stop it, Nicky, she’d said sharply to the child thrashing in her arms. Then, to Ruth, she had turned an embarrassed face, damp eyes. Sorry, she’d said.
    Ruth felt surprised. Peter was regularly acknowledged for his contributions to the school, but it wasn’t often that people took note of her work. Yet she could not think about this; she wanted so much to reach out and touch the head of the child in Kitty’s arms. What a crop of perfect curls he had, like a cherub’s.
    You can come to our house, Ruth said. Bring the boys. Anytime.
    I’d love that, Kitty had said.