Read Online Tell Me One Thing by Deena Goldstone - Free Book Online

says as she moves off, glancing at Jamie as she does. “Enjoy your visit.”
    Okay
, Ellen thinks as she watches Nicole move across the room,
did she just mean what I think she meant?
She glances at Nicole’s left hand as she grabs the doorknob, surprised to see a wedding ring set with diamonds on her fourth finger.
Ancient history? Recent history? Recent enough for her to still be pissed
.
    IN JAMIE’S FIRST-PERIOD CLASS , his sixth graders, they’re discussing “The Road Not Taken,” the Robert Frost poem. Ellen sits atthe back of the class and takes it all in. She can see immediately that her brother is in his element, and she relaxes.
    Jamie has led the kids to see that the two roads that “diverged in a yellow wood” are more than just paths through the forest. He tells them nothing. He asks questions and entertains many answers without calling any of them wrong, and so the atmosphere in the class encourages conversation. Ellen can see that the kids raise their hands eagerly, that they are confident Jamie will listen to them. And he’s animated, moving around the class, touching a student on a shoulder here and there, even clapping his hands at one answer from a quiet, dark-skinned boy in the back. “Yes, Ritesh!” he says. “ ‘The traveler’ could be any of us—‘and sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler.’ That’s right!” The boy shimmers with good feeling that Jamie has rewarded his opinion.
    And when they get to the last stanza, Jamie reads it out loud. “ ‘I shall be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence: / Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, / I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.’ ”
    There’s a moment of silence after he finishes reading, and then a large boy with a puzzled look on his face blurts out, “What difference?” And there’s laughter from the other kids.
    “A good question, Kyle,” Jamie says, and then to the class, “What is ‘the difference’ Frost is talking about?” More silence. No one seems to know exactly.
    Jamie catches Ellen’s eye and they smile at each other. “The difference” has been the subtext of all their conversations the last few days.
    Before Jamie can lead his sixth graders to an understanding of Frost’s words, the bell rings and the kids get up, gather their things, books into their backpacks, jackets across shoulders. Jamie has a group of kids around him as one class files out and anotherfiles in, so Ellen keeps her seat at the back of the room. She doesn’t want to intrude, simply to observe.
    As much as Ellen is thrilled to see Jamie in his element, when his second-period class starts with a discussion of the same poem, she’s not sitting still for a repeat. She gestures to Jamie that she’ll see him later and slips out the door.
    As she’s walking down the quiet hallways, murmurs of teachers’ voices coming from open doorways, she recognizes the yellow doorway into the teachers’ lounge and slips in to return her coffee cup.
    At first glance, she thinks the room is empty, but as she rinses the mug in the sink, she notices the woman she spoke with that morning, Nicole, sitting at one of the round tables, grading papers. Her head is down. Her body is still, no wasted motions, only her hand with a red pen in it moves. She takes up such a small space in the room that it isn’t hard to miss her.
    “You teach math?” Ellen asks when Nicole looks up and smiles at her.
    “Algebra, I and II.” Then, “Did you watch Jamie teach?”
    “Yes.”
    “He loves it, doesn’t he?”
    “A lot,” Ellen says as she comes and sits at the table with Nicole. Then, “How well do you know each other?”
    “Oh, I could say intimately and not at all.”
    Ellen nods. She knows exactly what this woman is talking about.
    “But he disappointed you?”
    “Just till I got it through my thick head that he’d rather be alone than with me.”
    “Or anybody?” Is that what Nicole