White Lilies

This is a short story I wrote as a form of therapy after my senior year of high school when I took a creative writing class in college. Senior year was a pretty tough year for a lot of us, a couple people I knew committed suicide later. Reading it now, it's kind of funny but also reflects a certain amount of self-indulgence. I wrote it at 18, a year after graduation. Hope you like it!

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My first impressions of Mrs. Weyrick are somewhat hazy, but her most remarkable feature is her hair. It is frizzy and a bleached-blond color. Her hair looks remarkably like a refugee from a bad eighties sitcom. Not only is it frizzy and bleached, but it has no body, so it sits on her head in weird angles. I am quite sure the intended effect is the “tousled” look, however, the look comes off more like “bed hair.” It is about four inches long, in tight springy curls that tend to frizz more than spring.

Her second major feature is her small, thin mouth. It isn’t particularly remarkable by itself, but she wears bright red and intense fuschia lipstick, which she is constantly chewing off. On several occasions, I have caught myself staring at her mouth, fascinated as she chews her lipstick while I’m talking. Not only is this annoying, but before she is able to reapply her lipstick, her mouth is its normal color with a brief line of vivid color in a perfect oval outlining her lips.

Mrs. Weyrick’s voice is the stuff of dreams—for a phone sex operator. Her voice is medium-low pitched, and often catches in the back of her throat, like a singer with a head cold. She speaks with a soft, gentle inflection, probably from her years as a juvenile delinquent counselor. I often marvel at how a woman with such a beautiful voice and such a wealth of experience could make so many students so upset with only a few words dropping from those thin, lipstick-edged lips.

We are playing a piece by Jan van der Roost. It reminds Mrs. Weyrick of her days belly-dancing, and she proceeds to regale us with tales of her days with tiny cymbals in each hand, and rattles at her waist and ankles. She does a tiny dance and shakes her hips to show us how to belly-dance, and I can barely keep my breakfast from making an appearance in the middle of class. I am certain her second husband, Dave, appreciates this experience. Her students, myself included, do not. However fascinating belly dancing may be in an abstract sense, it is far from fascinating, and bordering on repugnant, when it is your six foot tall, two hundred pound, middle-aged band director.

By this time, Mrs. Weyrick has retired the bleach blond hair, and now has a truly resplendent auburn color going. I could be nice and say that it looked pretty, but I would be lying. It is just a difficult to look at her new hair without strong attempts to swallow laughter, but at least her hair is longer, and less frizzy now.

She tells us a story of when she went to a horn convention as a performer in Washington D.C. Apparently, an inebriated conductor asked her to sit in his lap, an event which Mrs. Weyrick tells in its full glory and hideousness. Adam, the tuba player, turns to me, and says, “He must have been very drunk!” Although I am sure Mrs. Weyrick heard the comment because I saw her purse her lips, she displayed no other outward signs of annoyance or displeasure.

Partly because of community college and my job, and partly because of personal issues, I begin cutting classes at the high school (I only take band at high school). The only reason I stay in band is because nothing in the world means more to me as a high school senior band member than going to All-State. I see it as the pinnacle of my musical success in high school.

I finally quit band right before an important contest at Columbia Basin Community College. I remember my friend Melissa’s words when she saw me a few days later. “Why didn’t you tell us? How could you do this to us?” I broke from my friends, from the close-knit community of people for whom I cared because of my resentment towards a woman. A woman who didn’t care about me one way or the other.

I attended the awards banquet for the third year in a row. Both of the previous two years, I received “Most Valuable Player” awards. I know that I will not receive one this year, and many people will not want to see me here at all. My closest friends welcomed me, and it was their friendship and support that gave me the courage to attend the banquet and even have the audacity say hello and wave to Mrs. Weyrick. I received no awards that year, no surprise to me.

When I returned from a family vacation at the end of the summer after graduation, my friend Michelle tells me that Mrs. Weyrick has breast cancer. This woman that I had resented and nearly hated now had breast cancer, and there was a possibility that she could die. I could be glib and say that I had an epiphany, and I realized what a selfish little teenager I truly am. I could say that I realize that teachers are the worst people to hate because they have the most difficult jobs. I could say all that and more, but the only true thing to say is that the news barely affected me, and I cared far more about my co-worker Dave and his condition than I could possibly ever care about his wife.

When I came to visit before I leave for Central, I brought some white lilies with me. I presented them to her with a card in which I wrote, “I’m sorry for everything I did to you last year. Get well soon. Rachel.” She acknowledged my gift and said, “You were young, it doesn’t matter.” Although I felt obligated to offer my apologies and regrets for my past behavior, she still managed to irk me with her comments. “Young, doesn’t matter…young and stupid,” I muttered to myself leaving her office.

The last time I went home, I went to visit the band at a basketball game. Mrs. Weyrick was sporting a stylish wig due to the loss of her own hair because of chemotherapy treatments. The wig was a dark reddish-brown that looked like it came from a fashion plate made in the ‘60’s. It was short, with long, tapered sideburns. I find it ironic that the only time she is capable of having a good hair day is when her own hair is gone. I waved hello to her, and she waved back. I went to sit by my friends.

I haven’t seen her in a while, and I can’t truthfully say that I miss her.