Praying for Sleep

Robert’s new forest-green Jag or Dorothy’s Merc.
    There was the matter of temperament too: Robert had lived in Pacific Heights and on Michigan Avenue, and spent several years in Europe. (“No, no, I kid you not! It was Tourette sur Loup. Ever hear of it? A medieval city in the mountains northwest of Nice, and what do we find in the town square? A cross-dressing festival. Really! Tell ’em, Dot!”)
    He seemed ten years younger than his forty-one and you couldn’t help but feel the tug of his boyish enthusiasm. With Robert, all the world was a sales prospect and you willingly let yourself be hawked. Owen had more substance but he was quiet and had his temper too. He didn’t like taking second place to a handsome, wealthy charmer who resembled JFK in both appearance and charisma.
    But then last March, when Ruth died, the Atchesons became wealthy. This had little effect on Lis, who’d grown up with money, but it transformed Owen.
    For her part Lis too had felt some reservations about the foursome. Her discomfort, though, lay mostly with Dorothy.
    Dorothy, with the voice of a high-school cheerleader. With the perfect figure—and the clothes to showcase it. With a round, Middle Eastern face, and dark eyes always flawlessly made up.
    Lis could honestly say though that she felt more pique than jealousy. It was mostly Dorothy’s fawning that irritated her. The way she’d stop whatever she was doing to run errands for her husband, or errands she thought he’d want done. Robert seemed embarrassed by this excessive obeisance, which always seemed put-on, calculated, and Lis silently played the woman’s game of spouse sniping, concluding that what Robert really needed in a mate was a partner, not this little geisha, even one decked out with world-class boobs.
    Yet when it was clear that they’d never be close friends, the reservations Lis felt about the woman faded. She grew more tolerant and even asked for Dorothy’s advice on makeup and clothes (about which she was a generous wellspring of data). They never became sisterly but Dorothy was someone to whom Lis could confide sins down to, say, the fourth level of hell.
    It had been Dorothy, Lis recalled, who’d heard that the weather the next Sunday was supposed to be particularly beautiful and had suggested the picnic.
    “And who was Claire?”
    Eighteen years old, the girl had been in Lis’s English class her sophomore year. She was intensely shy, with a pale, heart-shaped face. “She was somebody,” Lis explained, “you hoped wouldn’t become too beautiful because it seemed there was no way she could handle the attention.”
    But beautiful she was. Seeing her on the first day of class, several years ago, Lis was struck immediately by the girl’s ethereal face, still eyes and long, delicate fingers. Teachers peg students instantly, and Lis had felt an immediate fondness for Claire. She’d made an effort to stay in touch as the girl made her way through her junior then senior years. Lis rarely singled out any youngsters from school; only on one or two other occasions had she maintained relationships with students, or former students, outside of class. She generally kept her distance, aware of the power she had over these young people. When she wore light-colored blouses she noticed boys’ eyes lose control and dart across her chest while their cheeks grew red and their penises, she supposed, irrepressibly hard. The shy or unattractive girls worshipped her; those in the inner clique were disdaining and jealous—for no reason other than that Lis was a woman, and they were not quite. She handled all of these feelings with consummate dignity and care, and usually kept home and classroom absolutely separate.
    But she made an exception for Claire. The girl’s mother was a drunk and the woman’s boyfriend had served time for sexual abuse of a stepchild in a prior marriage. When Lis learned Claire’s history, she began letting the girl into her life in small ways—occasionally asking her to help in her greenhouse or to attend Sunday-afternoon brunches. Lis knew this attraction to the girl had an enigmatic, almost a dangerous, side—the time, for instance, that Claire had stayed after class to discuss a book report. Lis noticed a tangle in the girl’s shimmery blond strands and with her own brush began working it out. Suddenly, she realized: teacher-student contact, with the door closed! Lis virtually leapt from her chair, away from the startled girl, and