An Uncommon Education (22 page)

I
met Jun for a tennis practice a few nights after
Hamlet
had been cast. It was nearly the end of the semester, but a brief break in the freezing weather made Jun suggest we try the outdoor courts. I had to dig my racket out of the back of my closet. I was cold and stiff, and I swung the racket lightly as I waited to warm up, self-conscious of the last time we’d played and how out of practice I would be.

I was there early, and Jun didn’t arrive for several minutes. When she did, she told me that the gates would be locked and we’d have to sneak in, an idea I wasn’t keen on. I’m not sure who I thought would care, I just didn’t care to get caught. I was comfortable flying below the radar, or so used to it that I was sure everyone would notice me gasping for air if I came up any higher.

As I began to know Jun, I realized that she was one of those rare people who have the great gift of being able to do many things extraordinarily well. Among her less noble traits was the ability to break into just about anything, seamlessly. Freeman, her dorm, was erected mid-century, a bad time for its builder, John Evans II. Legend had it that he was going through a scandalous divorce and that his cigarettes were laced generously with cocaine. The floors were uneven and the doors slammed shut when left open, frequently triggering the lock. During Jun’s time at Wellesley, no locksmith was needed. She was as poised as any well-trained royal, and when she wanted to disappear she turned her regality to a stillness I’ve never seen matched. I saw it for the first time when she had dug the relic from the roof, and then again when we arrived at the courts and I watched her pick the lock at the gate; she never slouched, just moved with the fluidity of a natural force, as easy to ignore as wind or its absence.

“What will we do for light?” I asked as she shut the gate behind us.

“Oko Rule Number One,” she replied formally. “Learn to practice in the dark.” She hit the lights.

“Feinstein Rule Number One,” I muttered, fighting the desire to crouch down. “Lie low.” I pointed to a lit window on a large house situated on a slight incline to the rear of the courts. I was disoriented; I wasn’t familiar with this side of campus and wasn’t sure what building that might be. Also, it was a freezing, cloudless night and I felt too chilled to think well. The week had been unusually dry, and I was regretting that the outdoor courts were playable.

“Oh, that’s just Binky Silas, the dean’s cousin. There’s something wrong with him, but nobody knows what. He lives with her, and she looks the other way when he pulls out his binoculars.” She waved. “Give a wave. If we let him watch, he won’t tell the dean we’re here.” She dribbled her way over to the court.

“What are the other Oko rules,” I asked after the first rally ended.

Jun squinted. “Of tennis?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

She served to me. “Oko Rule Number Two: Learn to practice in silence.”

I missed her serve. “Isn’t tennis always silent?”

Jun shook her head. “No. It’s unavoidably squeaky. Anyway, a good player needs to know everything about her opponent. Breath is important. Usually I can tell a lot about a player by listening to how she’s breathing. You didn’t breathe when we played at Longwood.” She slammed the ball in my direction.

I hadn’t? I supposed she was right. “And three?” I exhaled.

“What’s Feinstein Rule Number Two?” Jun didn’t need to stop to question me.

I thought for a minute. “Know your Jewish players,” I said.

Jun laughed. “Oko Rule Number Three: Learn to practice without touch.”

“Impossible,” I said. The ball was in play again.

“Gloves,” Jun huffed.

I was out of shape, thinking too much. “So, four: smell, nose plugs. Five: taste. Licking the ball will be grounds for automatic elimination.”

Jun’s laugh was startlingly loud in the clear night. “The Japanese have a different idea of sense. Anyway”—she served again—“you’re not worthy of Oko Law. You’re out of shape.” We rallied for a moment longer until she finally missed. She was a gifted player, and it was distracting. I wanted to study her instead of beat her. I had been good because of sheer determination and overall athletic training; Jun was a true tennis player.

“Oko Rule Number Four: Learn to practice alone,” she breathed, “no opponent, for as long as you can stand it. Five: Learn to practice with multiple balls. Move, girl. I’ve got to break a sweat.”

“Are these your father’s rules?” I asked after another rally. I thought there was a hesitation before she answered. “My grandfather’s. Come get a drink.” I dropped my racket and trotted to her side of the court. The wind bit through my damp shirt. I grabbed my sweatshirt and zipped up. Jun was drinking deeply from her water. So she had been a little winded. She handed me the bottle.

“So who throws the other balls?” I asked.

Jun looked at me blankly. “Oh”—she grinned—“I have two siblings, a sister and a brother. My brother, Hiroshi, can operate one machine, and my sister and I can do two, so whoever’s hitting them has plenty to work with.” Her grin broadened. “The idea is to focus on one ball when others are coming at you. You should see us in action.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. Her straight black hair stuck to her cheeks in dark lines. I remember thinking that if even one piece was out of place it would show on her smooth face.

The breeze kicked up and Jun tossed a ball at my shoulder, her aim true. “C’mon. Don’t let the grass grow on the court.”

My father would say this very thing to me when I was young and wanted my coach to explain the reasoning behind every new rule of the game. I stared at Jun, wondering if there was something there to recognize.

“What?” she said.

“How did you know about the dean’s cousin?”

“Everyone does. C’mon,” she turned back on the court. We were sweating again in ten minutes. I was more tired than I had been in a while. It felt good, but I didn’t think I had much left. Had it been forty minutes, or was it only twenty? Jun stopped the ball. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to bite your lip when you play?” I immediately thrust it forward. “What if you bit it through? Who the hell trained you, anyway?”

I stalled, suddenly defensive. “My dad,” I said finally, “in the beginning. And then coaches.”

I could tell she didn’t quite know how to apologize. “He shouldn’t have let you bite your lip.”

“He didn’t know a thing about playing the game.” I breathed. “He was just a fan.”

“So where’d your talent come from?”

“My father claims my great-uncle Hershel was a whiz at handball.”

I made her miss the ball. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing at the handball or Hershel. I had been serious, but smiled when she laughed. “You have an Uncle Hershel?”

“Maybe. What’s it to you?” I snapped the ball her way.

She hit it back. “My parents had one name picked out before I was born: Jun. I think I was meant to be a boy. It’s really a boy’s name. Naomi is also a Japanese name,” she continued. We rallied for a while before she spoke again.

“My father started training me when I was three,” she told me. “I had coaches at four, tennis camp at five, competitions at six. When I went to school in London we had tournaments twice a year.”

I missed the ball and stopped. I was done. I didn’t want to tell her about how I’d started to play, how it had been like survival, like learning to fight. Only my parents knew about Teddy, and I hoped never to have to mention him to anyone else. I used to think that just the idea of him might break some kind of spell, might make his disappearance more real, less likely to fade away, revealing him in some unexpected corner.
I’ve said nothing about any of this
, I’d call out.
We can begin at the end, we can make it into a beginning.

“I just liked to run,” I said, “and my dad liked to watch me play.” Saying that made me miss him. “I didn’t really compete until I was thirteen. It made him too nervous.” He’d sit in the stands, yelling, until I forbade him.

“What about your mother?” Jun asked.

“She’s not much of a fan,” I said.

“Mine, neither. She’s more of a shopping mom. And she’s totally out of luck with me. In Japan my height makes me stand out like a giant.” The game had loosened her tongue as it had her body. “My mother used to reserve time for us in Tokyo stores every summer, but she gave up after seventh grade. Nothing fit me. It was like a weird nightmare, like shopping with all the money in the world in a country for dolls. She special-ordered my clothes, tried to make them look just like the ones in the stores. She had no interest in my matches, but my dad made her come to every one. I might have been a girl, but my father designated me firstborn.”

She had conceded my exhaustion and resheathed her racket. She walked over to hit the lights. It was dark. We both took a minute to adjust to it.

“What about you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” I replied quickly.

“Are you the only child in your family?”

I nodded, knowing she probably couldn’t see me in the dark.

“And your dad wanted you to play tennis?”

I nodded again. I stared out at the dean’s house, the light in the window.

“You’re pretty tight-lipped, aren’t you?” she observed.

Her directness shocked me out of answering right away. “I guess I am,” I said finally. “It’s kind of a family trait.” It was the first time I’d said aloud, maybe even realized, that my mother and I shared something so significant.

Jun nodded. I was grateful she didn’t pry. This, I think, was one of the things I had feared most about friendship: the need to explain the many things about myself I didn’t quite understand.

“I am an only child,” I told her. “And my dad did want me to play tennis. He’s always been really supportive,” I added lamely.

“But possessive, too, right?”

“Yes,” I admitted, too startled by her astuteness to lie. “I guess he is a little.”

“You remember everything you read, is that right?” she went on. I wondered if she’d been keeping a mental catalogue of things to ask me.

“Who told you that?”

She didn’t answer me directly. “Word gets around the house pretty quickly. You’ll be pretty useful at rehearsals if it’s true.” She gave me that lopsided grin. It was the first time anyone had treated my memory as a sort of joke, and it made me feel suddenly free. I felt almost embarrassed by my own giddiness and found myself trying to tamp it down.

I smiled just a little in return. “Most of it,” I admitted. “I remember most, not everything. I have to be paying attention to remember everything.”

She let go a short, happy laugh. “Who wouldn’t?” she asked. But then we both lost our way for a moment, in the conversation, in each other’s company, as though simultaneously struck by the desire to nurse private concerns. When I think back on it, I wonder if that moment, allowing each other the intimacy of silence, was the true beginning of our friendship.

The noises our game aroused had faded: the lights had stopped plinking and the wind blew hard through the gate. “Did you ever notice how so many things just don’t seem real at night?” Jun said. The light in Binky Silas’s window winked as something passed before it. “Poor guy. Needs a blow-up doll, I suspect.”

“Yes,” I laughed, “that would make him feel nice and fulfilled.”

“Well, at least it’d still be there when the lights went out,” Jun said, the tension somehow met and broken. “Do you want to play after next rehearsal?”

I had studying to do, but I was feeling less tired now, energized even. “Sure. I’d like that.”

She nodded. “I’d like that, too. I get tired of all this”—she gestured. But I had to guess at what she meant.

“Do you get to see your dad much?” I asked.

Her mouth tightened, but she answered me. “Sometimes in the summer.” This way she had of delivering partial truths felt as real to me as my own.

“He won’t want to see you play Hamlet?” I asked.

“Oko House Rule Number One-A: No Hamlet.”

“Would Gertrude be any better?”

She laughed. “No. Maybe Claudius, though. At least he becomes king.”

Seventeen

T
he following Tuesday night there was a knock on my door. I opened it to Ruth, standing with a thick stack of papers pressed to her chest. She smiled and held her free hand out to me, which was clenched until she opened it into mine. I stared at the box of matches in my palm.

“Forensic burning,” she whispered after looking comically from side to side down the empty hallway. “C’mon.”

Outside we met the other new initiates and most of the already established members of the society. It was a cloudless night again, the stars a bright jumble overhead. It was too cold to say much, and Ruth and the others kept the pace brisk. We were walking south, toward the lake, after picking up Ellie Pendergast, the mousy-haired girl from the tea, at Freeman Hall. Jun joined us there, too.

We walked along the east end of the lake, into the woods behind the president’s house and farther south still, keeping the water always to our right, even as we must have reached the lake’s far end and begun walking west. A few people had produced lighters, which, after a while, made it only more difficult to see in the dark. I tried to shake off an unreasonable fright that took hold of me, the memory of a red bird flying out of nowhere into a similar sky.

“What are we doing?” Ellie’s voice, high and tense, stood out in the near silence: “What’s forensic burning? What does burning stuff have to do with Shakespeare?” She was a stream of questions bouncing along at Jun’s side like an agitated puppy. Jun answered her with tones so hushed and soothing they were difficult to make out. I spoke to no one, only listened to one woman from Hawaii tell us how on nights of the new moon, the stars lit the way for spirits to walk down to the sea. Her companion didn’t believe her, and her questions interspersed Ellie’s. “Why would spirits need to walk to the sea? Or light, for that matter?”
How long have you guys been doing this?
“Can’t they fly?”
Has anyone ever been caught?
“Are they going fishing?”
Someone brought warm stuff, right? It’s pretty cold out here.
“How could I make that up?” the storyteller finally interrupted her friend. They both laughed, and I, listening, did too, a little.