It took another year and a half before I did. By then, Sullivan’s business was hugely successful—she was turning down commissions from all over the region—and Elizabeth, her on-again, off-again girlfriend from New York, had decamped to Chatsworth and moved in with her.
I arrived on a fresh spring morning in a rental car. The two-hour drive up had felt liberating after the tight crush of taxi traffic in the city, and there was so much lush green even surrounding the parkway I could tell it was going to be a perfect weekend.
The town of Chatsworth sat about twelve minutes from the nearest exit, past two towns with friendly-looking little neighborhoods. I slowed down as I approached the center of Chatsworth, where there was a big rotary with a gazebo flanked by trees at its center. A couple and their kids were playing a game of tag around it. On the east side of the rotary, a little street lined with shops unfurled about six blocks. I tooled down the street, continued past the elementary school where I would end up working, and found the neighborhood where Sullivan lived.
Over the next couple days, Sullivan showed me around town and introduced me to the Chatsworth Library. The feeling I had when I walked in the doors—seeing the floor-to-ceiling windows casting light over the treasures that waited on the worn-wood bookcases dotting the room . . . the reading nook that would become my favorite spot . . . the schoolhouse charm of the building . . . and the reading group deep in conversation—probably cinched it for me.
In New York, my dreams of becoming an artist had just been crushed when my first gallery show was savaged by the press. I’d had my heart broken by my boyfriend, Daniel. As a star fashion designer, he had introduced me to life in the fast lane, but it had felt like a beautiful dress that never quite fit. Now I was in this place that was green and slower—in exactly the right way—and full of friendly people. I felt like I was losing something when I left Chatsworth, some part of myself that had been squished down for a long time. I went back to my life in the city, but I kept visiting and imagining what it might be like to live there. When Sullivan told me three years later that the elementary school art teacher was moving back home to California to help her elderly mother—right as I was finishing my art education degree—I saw it as fate. I intuitively knew that watching kids discover their own talent and creating things would be much more satisfying to me than a good art review would have been.
Two months into my first year of teaching, I knew teachers were not supposed to favor one kid over another. And I would never in a million years let on to anyone that I had a favorite. But was it any secret that sometimes there was a student that a teacher wanted to look out for? Maybe one that needed a little more care? Because they had selfish jerkface parents who didn’t encourage their talents, who made their kid feel like an inconvenience, who continually forgot to pick their kid up from school so that their kid was left waiting, feeling miserable and abandoned, with whatever teacher happened to be nearby until one of the parents got his or her act together, left his or her manicure/trainer appointment, and got his or her selfish jerkface to the school to take home his or her excellent, smart, sweet kid? Hypothetically speaking.
“Thanks, Elmira,” I said as my student passed me some books. “How’s Ms. Granger’s class?” Elmira Pelle had taken to helping me put supplies away sometimes after our art class. I liked having lots of art and picture books around for the kids to inspire them.
“Awesome.” Elmira grinned. “We’re reading Anne of Green Gables.”
“Really? Isn’t that a middle school book?” Elmira was in the fourth grade.
“Yeah. Well, I’m reading Anne of Green Gables,” she admitted.
“That’s fantastic. You have a lot to be proud of, you know that?”
“My mom thinks my grades should be better.”
I tried to breathe slowly through my nose. Elmira got all As. Maybe a few A minuses. But no Bs. Cool it, Dodie, I thought.
“Does she ever help you with your homework?” I asked, keeping judgment out of my tone.
“No, I never ask. She’s got her hands full with my baby brother, Teddie. She said I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
Um . . . what? “Did she and your dad enjoy the fall choir concert?”
Elmira had been fabulous. Before her solo, she had looked like she was going to keel over with stage fright, but when she got to the mic, her clear, high voice rang out, and all our jaws dropped.
“They didn’t make it,” she murmured.
I hadn’t seen the Pelles, but it seemed inconceivable that they had missed it. Elmira had one of the only solos.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured back.
Her brow knit. “It was weird. They said they were going to come, and they got a babysitter for my brother, but I looked for them and they weren’t there. My dad didn’t have a chance to work out last week, and that was his only night to do it. And my mom had to get her nails done while the babysitter was watching Teddie.”
Breathe, Dodie, breathe, I thought. But it was too late . . . I felt like an anemone at the bottom of the ocean. I could see the light of reason up above, and I couldn’t do any of the cruel and unusual things I was envisioning inflicting on Elmira’s parents. I tried to imagine being a calm, serene, yet colorful anemone. It didn’t work. I was still pissed off.
The truth was Elmira’s situation struck a little too close to home. Her artistic talent and love of books were not the only things that reminded me of myself. My father had run out on my mom and my sisters and me when I was four. But I had ended up with two loving parents throughout most of my childhood, thank heaven. My amazing mother had always been there for us, even before my stepfather came along. I wished I could spare Elmira the pain I’d felt each time my biological father, now known as Not Dad, had missed the important occasions in my life—birthdays, my bat mitzvah, graduations . . .
I handed her a stack of books. “You were fabulous. You’re not only a good artist but also a good singer. And a good shelver.”
As she turned to place more books on the shelves, I thought I noticed her quickly sniffing one, and the hint of a smile returned to her face.
Anoop startled me when he rang the doorbell the next afternoon soon after I got home from school. He was such a nice postman, and he never seemed to mind coming up the stairs to bring me my mail instead of putting it in my mailbox like he did for everyone else.
My students had been wild all day, and thinking about Elmira was getting under my skin. I hoped Anoop wasn’t going to cap things off by delivering me bad news like a jury duty summons. I was annoyed, but I slapped a smile on my face anyway. “Hi, Anoop.”
“Hi, Ms. Fairisle.” He held a postcard out to me, shifting his weight back and forth. I guessed new folks in town were quite a curiosity.
For the hundredth time, I said, “Please, no need to call me Ms. Fairisle. Call me Dodie.”
Anoop just touched his ocean-colored Winslow Homer cap and said, “Good day, Ms. Fairisle.”
“Thanks for the mail.”
It was exactly the opposite of what I had feared—and what I’d been hoping for: a postcard from my younger sister, Coco! She always drew these amazing little sketches on the front. In this one, she was staring at her arm as if waiting for something.