Of course Monica took pride in her work as well. Yet she hardly wanted to become self-righteous about it: teaching at the Glenkill Academy was not quite like teaching in the South Bronx, for instance, where one’s capacity for inventiveness and energy and moral courage might be tested to the full. Week by week, however, she was becoming more confident; it might be said—perhaps soon it would be said—that Miss Jensen was one of the “popular” teachers. Her students had seemed mistrustful of her at first (because she was a woman?—she rather hoped that was all) but now they were relaxed and congenial, they laughed at her humorous remarks, they appeared to respect her, they were working hard at her assignments and quite clearly learning something. As for the Glenkill community, the adults—they too seemed to like Monica well enough. Even, perhaps, a little more than that.

(Should popularity matter so much, even in adulthood? Monica worried. But it was a matter of her job, after all.)

It was Sheila’s belief that most people were fraudulent, hypocritical, shallow, inconsequential. Their souls—as she was fond of saying—were no deeper than dime-store teaspoons. (Hearing this odd remark for the third or fourth time, Monica had wanted to ask whether silver-plated teaspoons were “deeper” than dime-store teaspoons.) Most people, Sheila said, move from one superficial experience to another and prattle about “experience” and what it meant to them; they take up one interest after another; one occupation or preoccupation. But nothing really touches them—they can’t be hurt. “It’s possible to feel affection for such people,” Sheila said, “but you can’t really be friends with them—the bond doesn’t go deeply enough. Somehow you can’t believe in their existence. They’re expendable. They don’t matter.”

Monica thought, chilled: She’s talking about me. But does she know it?

One very dark night when Sheila was driving Monica home along the Olcottsville Road, Monica said suddenly: “You think the capacity to be hurt—to be betrayed and hurt—is a sign of depth? Of seriousness?”

Sheila was driving rather fast considering the narrow road’s numerous curves and the faulty condition of the station wagon’s brakes, about which she often complained. She said, vague, distracted: “—of death? What?—I didn’t hear.”

5

One afternoon, having volunteered to sort through an accumulation of years’ work (“work and rubbish,” as Sheila said) in the vast closet in Sheila’s studio, Monica discovered, unframed, an exquisite little watercolor of a winter scene—a “realistic” winter scene. She even recognized the setting, a few miles down the Poor Farm Road, where the ruins of the old poor farm were visible from the road amidst a stand of scrub pine. How beautiful the painting was! How delicate! Her hand trembled faintly as she brought it, in triumph, to show to Sheila.