"Yes. My mom took it back."
"Mercy!" Mrs. McQuat said.
"It was a push-up bra," he explained further.
"Go back . . . to your prayers, Jack."
In her ghostly way, she left--genuflecting in the aisle and making the sign of the cross. In her kindness to him, Jack couldn't help but feel that she was more alive than he first thought; yet the message Mrs. McQuat had left with him was as chilling as an admonition from the grave.
God was watching Jack Burns. If Jack turned his back on God, He would see. And if God was looking so closely at him, this was because He was certain Jack would err. (The Gray Ghost seemed fairly certain of this herself.) Whether the fault lay with his father inside him, or with the independence of mind and imagination already exhibited by the little guy, Jack seemed as predestined for sexual transgression as Emma Oastler had predicted.
He prayed and prayed. His knees were sore, his back was aching. Moments later, he recognized the smell of chewing gum in the pew behind him--this time, it was a fruity flavor. "What are you doing, baby cakes?" Emma whispered.
Jack didn't dare turn around. "Praying," he answered. "What's it look like I'm doing?"
"I heard you kissed her, Jack. It took four stitches to close her lip! Boy, have we got our homework cut out for us! You can't kiss a girl like she's a steak!"
"She bit herself," he explained, to no avail.
"Passion of the moment, eh?" Emma asked.
"I'm praying," Jack said, still not turning around.
"Prayers won't help you, honey pie. Homework will."
Thus did Emma Oastler distract him from his prayers. If Emma hadn't found him in the chapel, he might have followed The Gray Ghost's instructions to the letter. And if he'd successfully prayed for the strength to restrain himself, which of course meant restraining the little guy, too--well, who knows what Jack Burns might have been spared, or what he might have spared others?
12
Not Just Another Rose of Jericho
Years later, Lucinda Fleming would still include Jack among the bored recipients of her Christmas letter. He didn't know why. He never kissed her again. He hadn't kept in touch.
Emma Oastler's theory was that Jack's third-grade kiss on Lucinda's neck was her first and best--possibly her last. But given the sheer number of children Lucinda Fleming would have--they were mentioned by name, together with their ages, in those repetitive Christmas letters--Jack would be inclined to refute Emma's theory. Spellbound as he was by Lucinda's prodigious childbearing, Jack could conclude only that her husband had been kissing her--even happily. And in all likelihood, the husband who had spent the better part of his life kissing Lucinda Fleming had not caused her to bite through her lower lip and pee all over herself.
Looking back, Jack wouldn't miss Lucinda--or the rage she saved seemingly just for him. It was The Gray Ghost he would miss. Mrs. McQuat had done her best to help him not become like his father. It wasn't her fault that Jack didn't pray hard enough, or that he lacked the strength to control what The Gray Ghost called his "urges"; that he turned his back on God was more Jack's failure than Mrs. McQuat's or his dad's.
He had a ton of homework in grade four. Emma genuinely helped him with it. Jack's other homework, his sexual education, remained Emma's responsibility; she was tireless in her role as his self-appointed initiator.
As his grade-four teacher, Mrs. McQuat stayed after school two days a week to help Jack with his math. He actually concentrated on the math; with The Gray Ghost, there were no distractions, no conflicting desires to breathe her in. He never dreamed about Mrs. McQuat in anyone's underwear. In fact, Jack should have thanked her for the sympathy she showed him--not only for what she said to him in the chapel, but the degree to which she tried to counteract the command Caroline Wurtz took of the boy whenever she turned him loose onstage. (Or turned him not-so-loose, as was more often the case with Jack's performances under The Wurtz's uptight direction.)
He was cast as Adam in Miss Wurtz's cloying rendition of Adam Bede. THEY KISS EACH OTHER WITH A DEEP JOY, the stage directions read. Overlooking the disastrous results of the Lucinda Fleming kiss, which afforded no joy of any kind, Jack devoted himself to the task. Given that The Wurtz had cast Heather Booth as Dinah, the kiss was indeed a daunting one. Not only did Heather make her disturbing blanket-sucking sounds when he kissed her, but her twin, Patsy, made identical sucking sounds backstage.
Miss Wurtz had cast Patsy as Hetty, the woman who betrays Adam. And what a god-awful misinterpretation of Adam Bede it turned out to be! Jack-as-Adam eventually marries the identical twin of the woman who cheats on him! (George Eliot must have rolled around in her grave over such a liberty as that!)
And The Wurtz was overfond of the passage at the end of Chapter 54. Following her own inclinations, as ever, Miss Wurtz gave the passage to Jack as dialogue, even though it is actually George Eliot's narration. Looking into Heather Booth's love-struck eyes as he delivered his weighty lines didn't help. " 'What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?' " Jack-as-Adam asked Heather-as-Dinah, while she persisted in making barely audible sucking sounds in the back of her throat--as if his kiss had made her ill and she were readying herself to vomit.
"Jack," Mrs. McQuat said, when she saw his performance, "you must take everything Miss Wurtz says with a grain of salt."
"A what?"
"It's an expression--'with a grain of salt' means not to take someone or something too seriously."
"Oh."
"I wouldn't agree that there is no greater thing for two so-called human souls than to be joined for life. Frankly, I can't think of a comparable horror."
Jack would conclude that Mrs. McQuat was unhappily married--or else, if her husband had died and she was a widow who still called herself Mrs., The Gray Ghost and the late Mr. McQuat had not enjoyed many silent unspeakable memories at the moment of their last parting.