dogeeseseegod

Anna had often thought—trying to suppress, indefinitely, her feelings of dejection, even of an ambiguous, frustrated love for the world—that becoming a teacher would liberate her somehow. It was odd, then, at least for her friends, that just a few months later she had given up, had announced her resignation. 

 

It was an awful job to quit. You felt that you were letting down hundreds of children, casting their futures to the wind or else to the variable selection of substitutes (no doubt, she considered, some were talented in their own right, but the school could not provide a promise of consistency for her young prodigies). The other teachers liked to remind her of this, of the pain she was causing. 

 

She stood at the back of the scummy, dust-embalmed hall, deliberately averting her eyes from the betrayed children towards an abandoned tennis ball lodged in the corner of the ceiling. It was impressive how it had gotten there: the kids were young and not particularly crafty. It was a good school, they were saying—the deputy head teacher, frail in body but stern in speech, was waxing lyrical about a new Ofsted report—the heart of the community. After finishing up, the old woman lingered below the microphone for a while, swaying her head slightly like an insect at a lamp. ‘Oh…’ she said. ‘We have a sadder announcement to make, after all this joy. Miss Trenton is leaving.’ The name, posh and vaguely archaic, felt barely her own. Call me Anna, she thought. Call me that, at least.

 

When the minute, enthusiastic pupils had funnelled out of the room; when her final lessons were set in stone (and then carried through like the last visits to a patient in hospital); when the days flushed past, ever quickly; she started to experience an unbearable sadness. Not that she ever doubted her intentions, of course, but the real, fundamental loss of her failure was transparent. Here was something she simply couldn’t do, a path she could never take. However false, it had always retained that sense of possibility about it. Now even that was gone. 

 

And what had made her leave? A combination of things. A cocktail of disillusionment and minor embarrassments. Work is always a sacrifice—a gentle strain that leads us to become vulnerable and resentful—but here, the comments of her peers were too much. Alternately and always under the guise of great caricatures, she was too young, too clever for her own good, too naïve, too innocent, too sure of herself and the knowledge she was imparting. Those assholes, she thought. They couldn’t give a shit about education—about morality or what makes a good person. The musty, unpleasant air of provincialism seeped through the corridors with relentless, odious persistence. ‘And these children will ruin their lives,’ she muttered. Then, in quieter breaths: ‘like I have.’

 

Only twenty-seven—turning that age, almost unbeknownst to her, on her second-last day there—she already felt that all was lost. Her parents had been overjoyed by this new career. Though not exceptional in this desperate time, it was exciting that she had secured a genuine teaching post so young. Not an assistant or a helper or an advisor, but someone who was expected to deliver learning with confidence and authority. She would not tell them she had quit, not yet. 

 

They had moved to London in a kind of conjoined mid-life crisis. She had taken their old home, a dull and austere little cottage on the outskirts of town. 

 

Her friends were already there when she got back. Strolling from the little Golf she left parked on the side of the road, she scratched at her idiotic, bold ‘27’ badge so as to obscure it from their gaze. It seemed impossible to remove without ripping her cardigan. Tom and Zara were smoking on the narrow drive, the latter leaning against the muted brickwork. Three others were waiting round the back by the door she actually used, the one that wasn’t overladen inside with boxes. 

 

‘Tough day?’ Zara said. 

 

‘Why?’ she replied, clambering up the concrete. ‘Do I seem a bit out of it?’ 

 

‘You’re sweating.’

 

‘That’s fine. Everyone sweats. Even women.’ 

 

‘It’s November though.’ 

 

‘God, you’re right. I feel dreadful—so tired. I’m determined to have a good night, though. I deserve it, at least I think so.’ Then, as they reached the rest of the party: ‘Hey everyone! Thanks so much. You don’t know how much it means to see you all.’

 

‘Happy Birthday,’ they muttered. 

 

Inside, Anna gestured towards the drinks cupboard and quickly rushed upstairs, knocking over some boxes and stripping her clothes off so that, when she reached her room, it would only be a matter of putting different ones on. She would emerge as a new person, a veritable phoenix of attempting to enjoy her birthday. The window was open, the handle rattling slightly while a cool draught sauntered over her unmade bed. Only a mild glint of sunlight passed through, slicing the duvet into two distinct zones: a hazy, golden glow and a darker, obscured grey. Then she turned the light on.

 

It was cold. The sweat clung to her armpits, airy and entrenched like a spilt drink left out, her whole body some abstract spirit she couldn’t control. She slung her cardigan and top onto the bedpost by the wall and slackened her trousers. I look ridiculous, she thought—merely a deathly pale face floating above a thin, emaciated body. Perhaps it was just the effect of the wardrobe’s unflattering mirror. Her hair straggled a bit, pointing up or splitting away in jagged patches. 

 

Suddenly she felt good about herself, detecting an unkempt, charming quality that destroyed any self-doubt. There was no one to impress, no one to live up to. But deep down the dirtiness lingered, the dregs of other people’s thoughts. She ran across to the narrow, lurid bathroom and splashed some water around her armpits and wherever she sweated from, a few spits calmly tapping the floor as she darted around. Finally, she draped a long navy jumper over her head and slotted into near-matching jeans, dark as midnight. 

 

‘I’m so sorry. Sorry guys.’

 

‘That’s ok,’ Tom said. ‘You haven’t been that long. We can amuse ourselves.’

 

She was worried because he and Zara were the only two she knew well. Everything about the others was inexplicable, likely uninteresting. They too understood very little about her; she was just an old friend back in the area for a job, looking for people to kill time with. The traits or ambitions of those that fit the bill were redundant. It was better not to know, not to feign concern.  

 

And yet, always in conflict with herself, she began: 

 

‘So, Alan, what kind of stuff are you into—in your spare time, I mean? I know what you do for work, of course.’

 

‘I sculpt.’

 

‘Oh, that’s actually pretty cool. What like?’

 

‘Little characters. Busts sometimes.’

 

‘Naughty.’

 

‘You know what I mean. Famous faces… people I know, occasionally.’

 

‘Could you sculpt me?’ she asked, grinning timidly. 

 

‘Theoretically. I’d prefer not to.’

 

‘Fine,’ she said, pouring a hefty amount of gin into a tumbler. ‘It’s nice to be among friends.’

 

They endured flaccid exchanges like this for a while, cramped into a rough circle under the low ceiling of her living room, under the darkening sky. Outside, the shadows and low voices drifted further and further away, casting an ominous, plaintive silence over them. Drinking quickly now, she felt both light and heavy, a swollen rope dangling from a post. It was the general moroseness of the night that she couldn’t understand. Awkwardness was fine. But this dour spirit seemed to pronounce with exceptional clarity that the celebration was in fact closer to a funeral for her short-lived career, for any worth that she had in the world. The others, she assumed, were successful. They could afford to look down upon her mediocrity. She wouldn’t be happy even if she had what they had—those miserable custodians of modern life, boring and inevitable. 

 

Alan, Mia, and Sophie left before midnight. Staring at the clock, almost to the detriment of conversation, it was as though Anna thought that just passing that sacred equilibrium would prove their worth. Now, in their failure, she hated them. Zara and Tom were not much better. They grew up together, but what did that count for? They were charming in small doses, an attractive, successful couple—mildly cultured. To spend too much time in their influence was stifling.

 

‘I love you guys,’ she said. 

 

‘That’s nice,’ Tom replied, smiling. 

 

He had sipped on a bottle of Stella for at least an hour. Zara was driving. 

 

Anna stewed in the ambiance of the quiet, dimly lit room, suspecting in it an imbalance and a discomfort like the close of an intervention. They are thinking that I’ve had enough, she sensed; they despise me. ‘Alright, you guys probably want to be off now. It’s late. You have work tomorrow, surely?’

 

‘So do you.’

 

‘Last day. What a waste.’ 

​

.  .  .

 

The dull saloon cars and the tacky old Porsche of the headteacher gleamed in the sun’s tedious gaze. It was one of those oddly bright mornings that sneaks in amongst the seemingly endless Autumn showers. Bleak clouds stood by, relegated to the outer edges of the horizon, but never came. Trees scorched a blurred red as though viewed obscurely through the smeared glass of a wood-burner. Even the grass held this faintly abstract quality, nourished with dew and shimmering in resplendent bliss. 

 

She had walked to the school. She was hungover. Her red shoes scattered about the pavement and she looked down in a vain attempt to frighten them into submission. It was a bad day for heels. These ones, typically, were not too tall, yet now they swivelled uncontrollably under the weight of her condition. There was something between her and the world. Perhaps like Dorothy she would click her feet together and vanish entirely, away from this illusory, weightless landscape and back to the dustbowl—to her family, to life with a sense of purpose and grit. But that was impossible.

 

Indeed, the walls—strolling past now as she did—contained some of that imaginary charm that made her own childhood so appealing: innocent, plump clouds; rainbows; fleshy, pale fields; sheep gently mimicking the sky in a lucid valley of green. But then there were the people that populated this cramped, airless place. She nodded as they walked by, flashing an indistinct, almost mocking smile that she hoped would exonerate her from all that was obvious and terrible. She felt, under a cloak of immense panic, an acute outbreak of shame flowing through her body. She had failed everyone. Hating them, at least silently, was acceptable. To infringe upon the care and the passion of this institution, however, was unforgivable. 

 

Prozac and painkillers hovered on her tongue. Then the flush of tepid Evian, the bottle creaking and unfurling clumsily as the kids filed themselves away, becoming blips in a machine, panels in the comic books she had so lovingly gazed upon when life seemed docile and strange.

 

‘Miss Trenton?’ a voice murmured. 

 

Her forehead was plastered to the desk. Removing it would be a great feat, and she was rightfully proud when, a few moments later, she had. ‘Be quiet,’ she said. ‘Be quiet, child. Whatever you have to say’—she drew a breath—‘no one cares.’ 

 

Then, slowly dragging her head down to the same position, she began to cry.