The Last First Day by Carrie Brown Page A

big hands swinging her racquet wildly as if she were being attacked by bees. She had looked great in tennis shorts, all those freckles on her legs. She’d tried awfully hard at it. He’d loved her for that, her determination to get out there and play with him—to keep him in shape, as she said—despite having no talent for it.
    My god! I am so
terrible
at this! she would cry in frustration, watching a ball she’d hit sail off into the trees. And then the next one would follow, equally wide of the mark. Sometimes she had made him laugh so hard he’d have to stop, doubled over, and rest his hands on his knees. She didn’t mean to be comical. She just was. Once she’d thrown her racquet at him.
    She could get fighting mad, too, his Ruth. You didn’t want to cross her.
    Usually he did not need to speak or raise a hand to ask for silence in the chapel on this first night. Ruth had asked him that one time how he managed it, and he’d been truthful when he’d said he didn’t know. He didn’t believe he was in control of it, actually. The boys familiar with the ritual fell quiet of their own accord, knowing it was expected of them. The younger ones, glancing around, alert to something happening in the room, eventually grew silent, too.
    That shared silence was magical for Peter.
    Tonight, however, the boys did not seem to see him standing there. They turned around and exchanged fake punches with the fellows behind them, or tapped the shoulders of the boys infront and then withdrew their hands, gazing innocently toward the ceiling. He watched all this but felt unmoved by it, as if standing at a great distance. Laughter broke out here and there. He saw teachers lean forward, frowning at the miscreants.
    Peter waited for the horseplay to stop, for conversation to cease. He didn’t know what else to do. He could not see Ruth in the darkness of the chapel. He wondered if she had gone home, perhaps, to get ready for the party afterward. He was sorry that he’d been pulled away from her earlier. He’d wanted to take her arm, walk with her down to the chapel. He’d missed her today. He felt that more often these days, sometimes at odd moments: he
missed
her beside him. Like any man, he admired a beautiful woman, had stolen his share of looks at centerfolds over the years. But really the only woman he’d ever wanted was Ruth.
    He’d felt it from the moment she’d showed up at his house when they were twelve years old, his father the town physician who had taken her in when she was alone.
    At the far end of the aisle, the square of blue twilight glowed steadily.
    Peter understood that his extreme height, the pronounced size of his big head, wielded a kind of drama; just standing up in front of them could make the boys be quiet in the classroom, though his size rarely seemed to intimidate little children. When he stood on the sidelines at athletic events, there always seemed to be one or two urchins, the children of faculty members, hanging on to his arms like monkeys and walking up his sides in their grass-covered sneakers.
    He was sorry, but not as sorry as Ruth imagined perhaps,not to have had children of his own. He was mostly sorry for Ruth; it was really Ruth to whom children were drawn. It had been hard for him to bear the longing in her eyes sometimes.
    He’d tried to give her so many children, in a way. All these decades of boys.
    They’d been enough for him, but perhaps not for her. Still, she had not complained. They had not spoken of it, really.
    That, too, had been a mistake, perhaps.
    He knew in general that he could put his height to good use. He had seen how it worked in the classroom. His stature, his athleticism … these had helped him be a good teacher. During graduate school, he’d left Ruth alone in New Haven for three months while he’d served briefly on a commission for training seminarians in rural ministries as schoolteachers. As the panel’s youngest member, recommended by a history professor