Little Doggies
"Put this on," Emily insists, handing me a brown, bulky shirt from the backseat of her car. She keeps driving toward the Dover Plains train station, though we will turn around mile before we get there. She wants to survey the area as if to find its redemption. This part of New York has the near monotony of Kansas cornfields. The mountains keep the horizon from disappearing into forever, which would be overwhelming.
"What? Now?" I begrudgingly remove my jacket, my head inches from the windshield as I contort. "You know, this is how James Dean died."
"Take that shirt off before putting this one on. You'll be too hot," she admonishes.
Pulling my Nightmare Before Christmas shirt over my head as her Echo lurches at thirty miles on a straight rural road, I grumble, "This is definitely how James Dean died."
"And take off your jewelry."
I slide my rings off and see Emily doing the same. "No, I am the only one in their employ. You don't have to pretend you are conservative. I would really rather you didn't." I don't want Emily to have to compromise in the least to accommodate me. I am so utterly proud of her, as one should be of a partner who can expound on the cultural conflicts in China and conjure a lime marinated steak taco dinner party with equal aplomb.
We had just come from the prep school that will soon be our home. The head of the school showed us our tiny-but-rent-free potential apartment and reminded me again that my hair needs to be shorter. (So, Xenites, mail in pictures of your haircut suggestions soon.) Emily is rightly enamored with the campus, walking to the gravel track and contriving a way to see the indoor pool. I would have showed her more, such as the stage I hope to make mine, but she felt they may not forgive us our trespasses quite so early and would prefer to save their good faith should they ever figure out that we are dirt-worshiping heathens. Boasting of nonsectarianism does not suggest they will react beatifically to pentacle tapestries, cracked Buddha statues, and altars to Anubis.
Failing to get to the Dover Plains train station, we stop at the staff Christmas party at a local restaurant. We were somewhat invited by the head of the school during our impromptu tour, but that did not mean we felt particularly welcome. I stammered with nervousness, as did Emily. In meeting the principal, she bloomed, prematurely but understandably addressing herself as my wife and being usually charming. Next to the towering and avuncular principal, she looks even more like a precocious teenager and it occurs to me that I never made her age clear. There are students as old as twenty-four and I would not relish confusion.
I shake hands with two older gentlemen, catching neither name when introduced, too confused when called "the new language teacher." I look over shoulders and pick out those staff members that could remotely be in my age bracket, which Emily helpfully labeled as anyone thirteen to forty. I saw only two, who could both have been family members of faculty. I may well be one of the youngest teachers, but Emily says the school's pamphlets suggest I am also one of the better qualified on paper. We shall see if this translates as well into life; Emily thinks I will find it difficult that I cannot interact with the students as I do while subbing. I believe I will find my level, as I nearly always do.
Anemia is not a one-horse town by any stretch of the imagination. It is a one-streetlight town, newly installed and regarded as a minor god. There are, however, so many horses as to necessitate the dry cleaners' advertisement that they now wash horse blankets. When Emily and I wandered the town to get a feel for our new home, we happened into a small store that specialized exclusively in horse accessories. They do not have the sort of people to support a proper coffee shop, but this saddlery thrives.
If nothing else, this should be an adventure. Now where is my cowboy hat?
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