I wondered what I was dong here. I was standing on the porch of a little house in a quiet neighbor hood. I had just rung the bell and was listening to the tap of heels on the wooden floor as they approached.
The reason that I was there was that I had been invited to a party. Our senior English teacher had invited her favorites from her class to come to an end-of-the-year party. Miss O'Brien-English teacher from hell. At one point she probably was a good teacher, but she had become an alcoholic and was now totally unpredictable both in and out of class. She gave her top students bad grades and we had to go get the principal to change them. She probably wouldn't be back next year. But sometimes she had pizzas delivered to her class-you never know which it would be.
We talked about the invitation-and about a dozen of us decided to go. We thought it would be fun - and maybe funny to see the inside of her house and also to see her more drunk than usual. We decided that we could all leave early if it was boring.
The door opened and there stood Miss O'Brien. "Come in David, come in," she gushed. She smelled very strongly of some kind of perfume-and some kind of liquor. "Come on in to the living room." I noticed that she had on some rather tacky make-up which she had applied rather heavily. Blue eye shadow, heavy mascara, and bright red lipstick just a little outside the lines of her lips, making her mouth look bigger than normal. A strand of her dishwater blonde hair that she had piled up in a knot on top of her head had come loose. As I followed her down the hall I noticed that she was walking extremely carefully like she was drunk. Judging from the smell, she was. Although it could have been the ridiculously retro platforms with 4 inch heels that she was wearing.
We got to the living room and she told me to take a seat. I sat on the edge of an armchair and looked around curiously. It was furnished in a modern but nondescript manner. There were 7 or 8 bottles of liquor on the coffee table I thought it was weird that a teacher would be serving liquor to high school seniors, but maybe she was more aware of our drinking habits than we guessed. Or maybe she was just stupid. "Can I get you drink?" she asked.
"Could I just have a soft drink for now?" I replied. I wasn't much of a drinker.
"Sure, there's beer and soft drinks in a cooler in the kitchen-what would you like?" I decided on a Sprite. There was some horrible disco music on the stereo-KC and the Sunshine Band's Greatest Hits or something and she swayed in time to the music as she sashayed out of the room.
She was back in just a minute with my Sprite and a dish of some kind of salty snacks. "I expect the others will be here soon," she said brightly. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch. 8:25 and no one else in sight. I had arrived at about 8:15, hoping not to be the first one. I had a sinking feeling that either the others had played a trick on me or more likely that they had simply decided to do something else and hadn't been able to reach me before they left. I'd been on the phone for almost an hour before I left, talking to my parents who were visiting friends in Toronto for 2 weeks. My mom had felt it necessary to make sure I could recite the instructions for coping with every possible emergency.
Miss O'Brien began to sway and snap her fingers with the music again until she caught her foot on the edge of the carpet and nearly fell down. "Oh great," I thought, "Here I am trapped with a drunk bitch of a teacher in a disco hell."
She sat down in the other armchair and said, "They're not coming are they?" pronouncing each word extra carefully. This was the question that I had been dreading.
"Who?" I asked, stalling for time.
"You know," she said, "the other kids that I invited." Her eyes looked all moist like a tear was about to roll out of them. Suddenly it struck me that even adults feel rejected when nobody shows up. Nobody but stupid ole me.
"Miss O'Brien, I don't think they are." Now you may think this was a cruel thing to say, but there are several things to be said in my defense. One, my parents had taught me not to lie. Two, she already knew the answer. "And I think I should be going."
"Oh no, please don't - we can still have a -a - " she didn't want to say party, so she ended up saying "a good time." I doubted that seriously-a drunk English teacher who might pat your shoulder but could just as easily bite your head off? A floozy looking woman, heavily made up and wearing a light blue mini-dress, white hose and those ridiculous platform soles? A woman who was old enough to - to what? I realized that I couldn't tell how old she was.
Her face was lined, but it didn't seem to be old-age wrinkled. I assumed it was from all the booze she drank. Her hands were wrinkled a little but again, it was hard to tell if that was just a hard life or old age. Her legs looked pretty good in the white stockings or pantyhose-damned good. Her voice-well, let's say she could have been anywhere between 35 and 60.
"David, I know that you're young and I'm old-older, that you probably want to get away from here and join your friends, but will you stay just a little while with me?"
My parents had also taught me not to be unkind, and the pleading in her voice sounded so pitiful that I said "yes." I also kicked myself mentally.
"Thank you," she said quite seriously. "I know that kids don't like me-they think I'm mean and horrible, but I can be a nice person. I know that I'm an alcoholic and that's why I behave the way I do..."
"Miss O'Brien you don't have to tell me all this..." I began.
"No, I just want you to know that I can be nice. You'll see. And I really do appreciate your staying with me." She patted her eyes with her sleeve, then said, "I know-let's play a game!"
"A game?" I had horrible visions of the two of us playing Pictionary or some stupid party game.
"Yes, I know a game that I think you'll like. But you have to promise to call me 'Juanita'-at least while you're here this evening."
"Ok-er, Juanita." I supposed that was her real name.