The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Read online

  "She asked me what I was learning," Pippa said. "And then she asked me to bake her some blueberry muffins. She liked those. She said they are her favorite."

  "What else did you do?"

  "She asked me to take some tests and said I was doing really good. She said if I study hard, I might not have to repeat the fourth grade."

  Was that a good thing? Or a bad thing. Good. Definitely good. Preparing Pippa for the fifth grade was my goal. I just wish I'd known somebody would be testing my teaching methods.

  "What else did you talk about?"

  Pippa grew evasive. She chattered about her grandmother's raspberry patch, the fairies in a book she was reading, and then out of the blue she dropped it like a bomb.

  "The fairy queen warned me the question would be a trick one, so when Aunt Roberta asked me where I wanted to go to school, I told her I wanted to go to school wherever you would be my teacher."

  I glanced in the rear-view mirror. Pippa's lip trembled.

  "I don't know where I'm going to teach at the end of the summer," I said. "You have to go to school where it's best for you."

  Pippa rode in silent contemplation.

  "I told Aunt Roberta I'd rather stay here," Pippa said at last. "But Mommy hates it here. She says it's beyond the black stump."

  "Does your mommy have a job or some other reason why she can't just move out here?"

  "No," Pippa said. "She goes to the country club, and she likes to travel. She says Nutyoon is too far away from anywhere she wants to be."

  "Does she ever bring you with her?"

  "No," Pippa said. "She says I annoy her friends."

  The blasé manner in which she recited this fact made me want to throttle her mother.

  "Well if your Mommy doesn't work, nipper," I said, "then if she really does want to be a family again, she'll move out here so your Daddy can see the both of you all the time."

  The evil seed planted firmly in the fertile soil of Pippa's imagination, we arrived home in time to prepare for Adam's late-night return.

  There was a message on the answering machine when I got inside the door. Instead of hang-up phone calls, which I now realized must have been Eva fishing to find out the whereabouts of her husband, an unfamiliar voice asked for me.

  "Hello, Miss Xalbadora. This is Alice Wu, the secretary at Saint Joseph's school. We received your application. We'd like to set up an appointment at eleven o'clock on Thursday morning. If this time is good for you, please call me back at this number."

  I gave a fist-pump. Yes! At last something was going my way.

  I jotted down the phone number, and then I deleted the message. I didn't want Adam to know I was thinking about setting down roots in this town, whether or not he ended up staying. I was all fed up with not having a place to call my own.

  Chapter 23

  Linda Hastings telephoned on Thursday morning as she always did at precisely nine o'clock.

  "Are you sure this isn't a bother?" I asked.

  "I'd be grateful to get out of the house," Linda said. "You have no idea what it's like to be dependent upon other people to get around!"

  "Pippa helps the librarian read to the younger kids from ten to eleven," I said. "If you come, she can stay and play while I slip out for my job interview."

  "Did you tell Adam?" Linda asked.

  I grew silent.

  "I don't want to complicate things," I said softly. "He's already got so much on his mind."

  In the background, two orphaned fruit bats squeaked for their bottles.

  "Okay," Linda said. "I'll make an excuse for you to Pippa. But you'll have to tell him if you get the job."

  "I gave Adam my word I'd stay until the end of the summer. If Saint Joseph's needs me sooner, they'll have to hire somebody else."

  "Good," Linda said. "I'll see you in ten minutes."

  I hung up the phone and shouted down the hall to Pippa: "Time to get in the car! Don't forget your library card!"

  *

  I stared at the clean, quiet halls of Saint Joseph's Academy as I waited for my interview. From behind closed doors, the muffled sound of a teacher's voice rose and fell like the kiss of waves against the shores of a Gold Coast beach. Would -I- someday be one of those teachers? Or had my own stupidity condemned me to work as little more than a babysitter?

  I straightened a crease in my slacks for perhaps the hundredth time this morning. Why had I worn beige when the navy blue ones would have made me look more professional? I checked to make sure my blouse was fastened up to the next-to-the-top button so I didn't show any cleavage. Were my loafers too casual? No. A teacher had to run after kids. Perhaps they weren't casual enough?

  In a small alcove directly across from my seat, a statue of Saint Joseph overlooked the lobby, his face kindly as he balanced a chubby baby Jesus on one knee. The statue had been Anglicized to depict a man with sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes. He reminded me a little bit of Adam.

  "Help me out here," I said to the ceramic saint. "I could really use a break."

  Something buzzed inside my purse. It took me a moment to realize my long-dormant mobile phone had just woken up. I have mobile coverage? The school must have a repeater.

  I fished it out and looked excitedly at the three bars … just enough for mediocre reception. I stared at the phone number flashing on my screen. Call from Evelyn Wendig. Buzz. My mom had reverted to her maiden name. Call from Evelyn Wendig. Buzz.

  Ugh! Why did she keep calling when I never answered?

  I pressed 'decline' and waited until it went to voicemail. I then went in and deleted the messages she'd left since the last time I had mobile reception without listening to them. There were two voicemails from Gregory, both telling me he'd accidentally gotten some of my forwarded mail and could I please tell him where to send it? An odd lack of feeling settled into my gut, as though I listened to a telemarketer instead of the man I'd almost married. I debated calling him back and acting like I was doing great, but the truth was, I wasn't doing fine. The last thing I needed was Gregory jerking me around.

  I then listened to a voicemail from a past employer who'd called to tell me Saint Joseph's had contacted them to follow up on my resume and he'd given me a glowing recommendation.

  "Yes!" I gave the statue of Saint Joseph a fist-pump. "Finally something is going right."

  I scrolled through the older messages. Two people I knew from school, both of them friends with Gregory, had called to say they were sorry to hear we'd broken up and I was welcome to call them if I needed to talk. I shuffled those into 'save,' but at the moment, I didn't want to deal with retelling the same sordid tale. The last message I called back right away, Sienna, my best friend from Harvey's riding stable. It went to her voicemail, but I left a message.

  "Hi, Sienna. It's me, Rosie. Sorry it took so long to call you back. I took a job out at a cattle station taking care of this cute little girl. We've got no mobile reception unless I stand on the roof of the barn waving a bunch of tin foil, but the next time I've got some bars, I'll try to give you another call. Give Gingersnap a hug for me, okay? Miss you! Bye…"

  With nothing better to do, I logged onto Facebook and scrolled through the usual plethora of cat memes, snarky-cards, and selfies taken by all 32 of my friends, most of them people I spoke to less than once a year. Amongst those pictures was a post of Gregory's new girlfriend wearing my old engagement ring and an announcement 'Your Friend Gregory Just Changed His Status To Engaged.' I stared at the woman who stood in the midst of Gregory's familiar furniture, a dull pain in my chest where once upon a time I had loved him. Just like that, I'd been replaced. I clicked 'unfriend,' and then I blocked him.

  Thirty-one friends. I had 31 friends in the world…

  The headmaster's secretary stuck her head out into the hall.

  "Miss Xalbadora?" Alice Wu said. "Principal McMillan will see you now."

  I gave her a hopeful smile.

  "Thank you. I really appreciate it."

  I clutched th
e folder containing letters of reference from every teacher I'd ever done a practicum with. One of the upsides of having hauled all my worldly belongings with me when I'd come out here was they'd all been conveniently packed away in the barn. I took a deep breath and steadied my nerves. This was it. My first real job interview.

  The headmaster's office was neat and orderly. Principal McMillan sat at his desk, a small, thin man with a pointed nose, a thin moustache that jutted out like whiskers, and protuberant eyes that, despite his ferret-like appearance, were nonetheless friendly like an anime caricature. He wore a pair of round spectacles, and had hung up his suit-jacket on a coat-tree in favor of a short-sleeved shirt and bow tie. He stood up and shook my hand.

  "Miss Xalbadora. I'm pleased to meet you."

  "Principal McMillan," I said. "Macy Robertson had only nice things to say about the school."

  He gestured to a wooden chair. "Please, have a seat so we can talk."

  I sat down and waited as the headmaster rifled through the paperwork.

  "I have here two letters of reference from different high school practicums?"

  "Yes, Sir," I said. "One was a state school, and the other was an all-boys college preparatory school."

  "But it says here your certification to teach only goes up to the seventh grade?"

  My face flushed pink with shame.

  "I had to support myself through college, Sir. I started out carrying a double-major, but couldn't afford the luxury of carrying extra credits."

  The headmaster peered over his spectacles.

  "You could go back another year and get the needed certification."

  "I could," I said. "But another year isn't going to make my money troubles go away. I was hoping…"

  My stomach fell. I was hoping maybe I could come here, get some on-the-job training, then quit and go back to Brisbane, take another year of school, and then after begging you to hold my position open for a year, most likely go someplace else where I can earn a lot more pay… I could almost feel my chances of getting hired fly out the window.

  "Because Saint Joseph's is a parochial school," the headmaster said, "we have a bit more flexibility about who we hire. But I must be honest. The parents who pay to send their children here expect more out of our teachers, not less. Macy Robertson teaches the seventh grade. While technically you are certified to teach her class, it's our policy to only hire secondary school certified teachers for the upper grades."

  My heart fell into my left shoe.

  "I understand, Sir," I whispered.

  Principal McMillan stood up. "I will discuss this with the board. Until then," he extended his hand, "it was a pleasure meeting you."

  I shook his hand, understanding that this was his polite way of saying, 'sorry … your credentials just aren't good enough.' I gathered my things and skulked out of his office.

  "Some help you were," I hissed at the statue of Saint Joseph as I passed it on my way out of the school.

  The statue, of course, stared beneficently down at me, the baby Jesus gurgling happily on his knee as his adoptive father made sure all the kids under his protection only got teachers who were adequately certified.

  I met Linda Hastings and Pippa up at the library. Pippa sat reading to a little dark-haired preschooler with a swarthy complexion, her expression rapt as the boy pointed at the pictures and repeated some of the words. I'd noticed her social phobias disappeared around the very young. It was just kids her own age which made her wilt like a head of lettuce in a drought.

  "How'd it go?" Linda asked.

  "Not good," I said. "They want somebody certified to teach through secondary school."

  Linda frowned, but she'd already done everything she could. It wasn't her fault I'd sacrificed a more marketable teaching degree to wrap my life around Gregory's dreams. Linda stared at her hands.

  "Maybe you should just tell Adam you'd like to stay?" she said softly. "Once his divorce is final, he'll need somebody to help him babysit Pippa. He isn't going to find anybody better than you."

  I opened my mouth to say, 'Adam's not certain the court will let him stay here,' but Pippa bounded up with her new friend.

  "Rosie, meet Justin." She pointed to the boy she'd been reading to. "He comes here twice a week for story hour."

  "Hello, Justin," I said to the little boy.

  The boy gave me a wary smile, and then bolted back to his mother who sat unobtrusively in the corner, watching her son make friends. She gave me a wave and mouthed the words thank you.

  "Are you all signed up for the summer reading program?"

  "The librarian wants to talk to you first," Pippa said.

  I glanced at Linda, but she seemed unconcerned. I excused myself and waited in line while a pair of tow-headed preschoolers checked out some slender picture books. Taped to the desk was a sign that said, 'Nutyoon Christmas Pageant. Sunday - 2:00pm.'

  The librarian was a plump woman in her late-fifties with dark curls salted with streaks of grey. She wore the stereotypical librarian glasses and a pink pastel short-sleeved twinset, complete with a necklace that terminated in a fancy pen, but her brown eyes and smile was anything but stodgy.

  "Hi," I said. "I'm Pippa's governess. Her father asked me to sign her up for the summer reading program as a volunteer?"

  "Ahh, yes," the librarian reached over the desk to shake my hand. "I'm Lisa Zinder. I was a friend of Katherine Bristow."

  "Oh, uh, hi? I was, um… hoping to sign Pippa up for the same day as Emily Peterson. Julie signed her up for Thursday mornings."

  The librarian flipped through her lists and frowned.

  "Is there any way Pippa could come on Mondays? I've only got one volunteer signed up that day, Sarah Colbert."

  Sarah. The little girl with the pureblood Hanoverian. And a handsome father…

  --An emotionally unavailable father who is on the rebound!--

  At least he's interested in me. Unlike Adam...

  "Would that be in place of Thursday? Or in addition to it?"

  "It's up to you," the librarian said. "We could do it either way."

  "In addition to it," I said. "Does it start this Monday? Or the following one?"

  "School gets out next week on Wednesday," the librarian said. "Bring Pippa by on Thursday morning for our kickoff orientation, and then the following Monday she will come here to work."

  I strolled over to where Pippa had dragged Linda Hastings over to a kid's puppet theatre tucked into the corner of the children's room. She performed a makeshift play with the soft, fur puppets; one, of course, being a unicorn. It felt good to see the carefree child, and not the moody 'tween who'd come back from her mother's. I reached into my shorts pocket and fingered the list. Math, friends, roots, school, horse.

  "Do you have a piece of paper?" I asked Linda.

  Linda rummaged through her voluminous purse until she found a small notepad and several different colored pens. I wrote out a note.

  'Horse wanted for short-term lease. Must be suitable for a novice rider. Call Rosie at 0428 951 000.'

  I pinned it to the bulletin board, in between all the business cards, advertisements for landscapers and 'work at home' flyers. There. Maybe somebody would call?

  I drove Linda home, making insubstantial chit-chat about Sunday's Christmas pageant, all the cooking Linda had been roped into doing, and the fact I had yet to hit up Adam to attend. I dropped her off, and then drove Pippa back to the station in silence. It felt bittersweet to see the big, white barn and small ranch-style house come into view.

  "We're home!" Pippa headed for the front door and let out Thunderlane, who greeted her with his usual, lengthy doggie talk.

  I stared at the yellow house, with the fresh row of marigolds I'd planted on both sides of the walkway and the neatly trimmed lawn, a bit greener than it'd been before because I now watered it several times each week. It had begun to lose that forlorn look of a house that was no longer loved. Whether or not I had a future here, I'd begun to think of this stat
ion as my home.

  Bloody hell! That's how I'd gotten tangled up with Gregory. Although at least in Gregory's case, he'd talked about marriage before I'd made assumptions about the apartment we'd rented together. Adam, on the other hand, had never been anything but clear that my place here was only temporary.

  This home didn't belong to me…

  I crumpled up the piece of paper upon which I'd written The Plan.

  As I was making supper, Adam called in from his business trip. Since I was stirring a pot of pasta, I handed the phone to Pippa. After a while she handed it back and said her father wished to speak to me. His voice sounded warm, and welcoming, and sent a pleasant tingle up my spine.

  "Hello, Miss Rosamond," Adam said. "And what adventures did you have today with my daughter?"

  "I signed her up for the summer library program. And tomorrow afternoon, she'll meet with Emily from three to five."

  "Maybe you could invite Emily to come over for a sleepover this weekend?" Adam said. "Since all Pippa does is talk about her new friend, the least I can do is meet her?"

  "Emily spends the weekend with her father."

  There was a moment of silence. Adam's tone turned serious.

  "I met with Roberta Dingle today."

  I sucked in my breath. First Eva … and now Adam.

  "How's Professor Dingle doing?"

  "She's doing well. She asked how you were doing?"

  Doing? How was I doing? I'm not doing so hot, Professor Dingle. You sent me out into the middle of paradise to take care of the cutest little girl and most drop-dead gorgeous man on the planet, and now I don't want to leave.

  "I'm doing fine," I said aloud.

  "She said she thinks you've done an admirable job. According to her tests, Pippa is nearly caught back up to her age group."

  "Does that mean you can enroll her in school?"

  Adam hesitated.

  "That's why I wanted to talk to you," he said. "Roberta … she's finished her investigation for the judge."

  My heart sped up. My mouth felt suddenly dry.

  "And…" My voice came out almost a whisper.