Tom Perrotta - The Abstinence Teacher

Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise.

PROVERBS, 19:20

In the course of writing this book, Ive been lucky to receive invaluable advice and instruction and assistance from Maria Massie, Elizabeth Beier, Dori Weintraub, and Sylvie Rabineaumy gratitude to them all. Carol Luddecke of the Lentegra Mortgage Group provided me with an insiders perspective on the mortgage business. My friends Mark Dow and Kevin Pask were intrepid companions at a Promise Keepers weekend in Baltimore. As always, though, my biggest debt is to my wife, Mary Granfield, and to our kids, Nina and Luke, who give me lots of good reasons every day to abstain from work and have a little fun.

Also by Tom Perrotta

Little Children

Joe College

Election

The Wishbones

Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies

Tom Perrotta is the author of five previous works of fiction: Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Election, and The New York Times bestsellers Joe College and Little Children. Election was made into the acclaimed movie directed by Alexander Payne and starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick. Perrotta was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay of the movie version of Little Children, which was directed by Todd Field and starred Kate Winslet and Jennifer Connelly. Perrotta lives with his family outside Boston, Massachusetts. Please visit his Web site at www.tomperrotta.net.

ON THE FIRST DAY OF HUMAN SEXUALITY, RUTH RAMSEY WORE A short lime green skirt, a clingy black top, and strappy high-heeled sandals, the kind of attention-getting outfit she normally wouldnt have worn on a datenot that she was going on a lot of dates these dayslet alone to work. It was a small act of rebellion on her part, a note to selfand anyone else who caredthat she was not a willing participant in the farce that would unfold later that morning in second-period Health & Family Life.

On the way to homeroom, Ruth stopped by the library to deliver the grande nonfat latte she regularly picked up for Randall, the Reference Librarian, a fellow caffeine junkie who returned the favor by making the midday Starbucks run. The two of them had bonded several years earlier over their shared revulsion for what Randall charmingly called the warmed-over Maxwell Piss in the Teachers Lounge, and their willingness to spend outlandish sums of money to avoid it.

Randall kept his eyes glued to the computer screen as she approached. A stranger might have mistaken him for a dedicated Information Sciences professional getting an early start on some important research, but Ruth knew that he was actually scouring eBay for vintage Hasbro action figures, a task he performed several times a day. Randalls partner, Gregory, was a successful real-estate broker and part-time artist who built elaborate dioramas featuring the French Resistance Fighter GI Joe, an increasingly hard-to-find doll whose moody Gallic good looks were dashingly accentuated by a black turtleneck sweater and beret. In his most recent work, Gregory had painstakingly re-created a Parisian caf circa 1946, with a dozen identical GI Jeans staring soulfully at each other across red-checkered tablecloths, tiny handmade Gauloises glued to their plastic fingers.

Thank God, he muttered, as Ruth placed the paper cup on his desk. I was lapsing into a coma.

Any luck?

Just a few Russian infantrymen. Mint condition, my ass. Randall turned away from the screen and did a bug-eyed double take at the sight of Ruths outfit. Im surprised your mother let you out of the house like that.

My new image. Ruth struck a pose, jutting out one hip and sucking in her cheeks like a model. Like it?

He gave her a thorough top-to-bottom appraisal, taking full advantage of the gay mans license to stare.

I do. Very Mary Kay Letourneau, if you dont mind my saying so.

My daughters said the same thing. Only they didnt mean it as a compliment.

Randall reached for his coffee cup, raising it to his lips and blowing three times into the aperture on the plastic lid, as though it were some sort of wind instrument.

They should be proud to have a mom who can carry off a skirt like that at Randalls voice trailed off diplomatically.

at my age? Ruth inquired.

Youre not that old, Randall assured her. And you look great.

Lotta good it does me.

Randall sipped his latte and gave a philosophical shrug. He was a little older than Ruth, but you wouldnt have known it from his dark curly hair and eternally boyish face. Sometimes she felt sorry for himhe was a cultured gay man, an opera-loving dandy with a fetish for Italian designer eyewear, trapped all day in a suburban high schoolbut Randall rarely complained about the life hed made for himself in Stonewood Heights, even when he had good reason to.

You never know when opportunity will knock, he reminded her. And when it does, you dont want to answer the door in a ratty old bathrobe.

It better knock soon, Ruth said, or it wont matter what Im wearing.

Randall set his cup down on the Wonder Woman coaster he kept on his desk, next to an autographed picture of Maria Callas. The serious expression on his face was only slightly compromised by his milk-foam mustache.

So how are you feeling? he asked. You okay about all this?

Ruth shifted her gaze to the window behind the circulation desk, taking a moment to admire the autumnal image contained within its frame: a school bus parked beneath a blazing orange maple, a bright blue sky crowning the world. She felt a sudden urge to be far away, tramping through the woods or wandering around a strange city without a map.

I just work here, she said. I dont make the rules.

RUTH SPENT most of first period in the lounge, chatting with Donna DiNardo, a Biology teacher and field hockey coach in her late thirties. Over the summer, after years of being miserably single, Donna had met her soulmatean overbearing optometrist named Bruce DeMastrothrough an internet matchmaking service, and theyd gotten engaged after two magical dates.

Ruth had been thrilled when she heard the news, partly because of the fairy-tale aspect of the story, and partly because shed gotten tired of Donnas endless whining about how hard it was to meet a man once youd reached a certain age, which had only served to make Ruth that much more pessimistic about her own prospects. Oddly, though, finding love hadnt done much to improve Donnas mood; she was a worrier by nature, and the prospect of sharing her life with another person provided a mother lode of thorny new issues to fret about. Today, for example, she was wondering whether it would be a hardship for her students if, after the big day, she asked them to address her as Ms. DiNardo-DeMastro.

Although Ruth felt strongly that women should keep their names when they marriedshe hadnt done so, and now she was stuck with her ex-husbands last nameshe kept this opinion to herself, having learned the hard way that you could only lose by taking sides in matters as basic as this. She had once offended a pregnant friend by admittingafter persistent demands for her honest opinionto disliking the name Claudia, which, unbeknownst to her, the friend had already decided to bestow upon her firstborn child. Little Claudia was eight now, and Ruth still hadnt been completely forgiven.

Do whatever you want, Ruth said. The students wont care.

But DiNardo-DeMastro? Donna was standing by the snack table, peering into a box of Dunkin Munchkins with an expression of naked longing. She was a heavyset woman whose body image anxieties had reached a new level of obsession now that shed been fitted for a wedding gown. Its kind of a mouthful, isnt it?