An Uncommon Education (27 page)

She had been standing in the center of the room when she’d said this, facing the stage from the middle of where the audience would see us, arms akimbo. She filled that space better than an actor might, its emptiness and echoes suiting the cadences of her demands.

“I don’t see why the hell you have to drag your stupid swords with you,” Amy said, trying to balance a foil up against the wall.

Jun caught it just as it started to fall. “It’s too flimsy for that,” she said, laying it on the floor. She smiled up at Amy. “They’re not real swords.”

Amy huffed.

“I’m Jun,” she told Amy as I was pulling off my socks.

“I know who you are,” Amy shot back. “Economics, right?” Jun nodded. “Oko Industries, right?” Amy didn’t sound as bold as she wanted to. Jun’s nod was slighter. “See you tomorrow, Naomi,” she said to me. “Nice to meet you,” to Amy. She left.

“Do you know who her father is?” I pulled the covers over my head. “No, of course you wouldn’t. They say she’s gay. That her father would
kill
her if she came out. Anyway”—she got into bed and flipped off her light—“at least you’re making some useful connections.”

I
called Jun to borrow her car again the next day. “Maybe you should give her a little time,” Jun said when I got to her door. For what, I thought, and made my face say that, though I knew there were many reasons why she might want more time. Jun handed me the keys.

This time I turned into the driveway and killed the engine there. I slammed the car door behind me, wanting to make noise. My mother was standing just behind the open door, watching me as I walked up. A cat skittered past me, followed by two more. I walked up the steps, my fresh bafflement easy to read.

She smiled, put one hand behind my neck, and kissed me on the forehead. “They’re strays we’ve found. They were under the house. We’ll be giving them away soon.” She was suddenly chatty about the creatures, chatty enough that I took a second to bend down and look at them: a scraggly mottled thing, and a sleek black one—a baby, she thought. I listened to her absentmindedly, watching the motions without bothering to guess very hard at their meaning, like someone waiting for the subtitles at a foreign film. It seemed a long time before she was quiet again. We had just sat down together in the living room.

“It might not be cancerous,” she finally began, repeating my father’s optimistic tone and delivery. It sounded just as empty in her voice as it had in his.

“It might be, though,” I countered. “Can you possibly be more specific?” I went on. My tongue felt dry in my mouth; my voice clinical in my ears. She frowned, my bitterness hitting its mark. I wanted to grab her, squeeze her shoulders between my hands. “Where is it?” I asked.

She pointed to an area right above and behind her left eye.

“Have you seen it?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Dad says they’ll do the operation soon.” Another nod. I shifted in my seat. She offered to make some tea. “No,” I said. She had been getting up and sat back down. “How did they find out?” I asked. She told me she had lost some hearing in her left ear—well, nearly all hearing in the left ear, and that her balance was off.

“And you were going to fix hot tea?” I asked, challenging.

She laughed outright. It startled me into smiling. She so rarely laughed like that; whenever it happened I froze, as I did then, but it was gone before I could form an impression of it.

“I’ll get the tea,” I said. She stood. “Don’t get up,” I said. She didn’t listen to me, instead walked by me to the kitchen. We were playing different games.

There was a grove of tomato plants on her kitchen counter. The walls had been painted, too. A creamy white, almost yellow. They hadn’t told me they were painting the porch or the kitchen. I wondered if my absence had finally prompted my father to tend to something other than me.

“It’s a good color,” I admitted as she filled the kettle. I took it from her just as she was about to place it on the stove and light the pilot, doing what she’d been about to do. I had the feeling she was as irritated by me as I wanted her to be. But if she was, she didn’t let on. She took a seat, folding the napkin I had thrust in front of her.

“Listen, Naomi,” she said, her voice quiet. “Sit for a minute and listen.”

I shook my head. Then I moved quickly to her side and wrapped my arms around her, my chin over her shoulder pulling her in even closer. Her faint scent rose up as she warmed in my arms. For a short while she didn’t pull back.

“Listen, Naomi,” she finally said, again. I let her go. “Grandmother Carol is going to come stay with me for a little while”—she hesitated—“she’s actually due today. Your father’s getting her.” Grandmother Carol. The last time I’d seen her had been five years ago. She had told me she’d guessed I was too old for candy. “I can’t quite explain it,” my mother continued, “but she asked to come when we told her, and I couldn’t say no.”

“She’s going to be awful,” I squatted down, putting my hands on her knees. “Let me stay instead,” knowing as I said it she would never allow it.

“You’re at school, Naomi. There’s no way. Your father would have both our heads,” she conceded. “You need to be there, Naomi. It’s good for you. Not just because of this. It’s good for you to be there.” She half-smiled. I hated the falseness, the niceties in her concession.

She looked older, the skin under her eyes slack and gray. “You’re not sleeping well,” I said. “I’m actually sleeping just fine,” she said. “More than I should!” She was brightly cheerful. The conversation was over. The back door off the kitchen was being unlocked. In another moment my father and grandmother were inside, my father’s delight at seeing me working in to an effusiveness. My grandmother took me in and frowned, looking like she’d swallowed something bitter.

“Well, Naomi, it looks like you’ve grown as tall as your mother.” I nodded. “And you’re at Wellesley?” I nodded. “Good,” she said, dropping her chin once.

I walked back out the door they’d come in and sat down on the top step. The Steins had added a patio set with an umbrella. What would happen to it when it rained?

“Go back,
ketzi
”—my father was beside me a moment later. I turned to him. “You have things to do there. I want to see my daughter play Hamlet.”

I tossed a stick out into the yard. “I’m not playing Hamlet, Dad, my character’s called Laertes; he’s just a sitting duck.” I looked back out at the rhododendrons lining the house with their thicket of black-green leaves and dense pink blossoms.

“Well, then you must be a really great actress!” he exclaimed. “My daughter is no sitting duck.”

I wasn’t really listening to him. I leaned my head on his shoulder.

He reached his hand up to my cheek, “Go back, Naomi. Get out before your grandmother starts in with the Hail Mistys. She brought incense.” I didn’t budge. “Listen, Naomi”—I didn’t want to—“there’s an appointment on Monday with the surgeon. If you’d like to come, you should.” “She won’t want me there.” “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

He took his hand from my face and clenched his fingers together in his lap as he spoke, “Your mother doesn’t know what she wants. You’ll come.”

I
had been told that Mr. Pope would attend opening night, but not that he would prop his feet onto the flat we had built to extend the stage, the one on which Laertes first appears, when he asks for the king’s permission to leave home.

Even though it was Claudius’s question that went unanswered, Tiney, as Polonius, glared at me, her face a caricature of white under lights and with makeup. In the trick of that moment, the whole play was full of ghosts; I could stand and view it from a remove and nothing would change but the staring, from Tiney, from Mr. Pope, from the audience. I think I spoke the line a moment before the last person in the audience to realize I was late grew still.

My father embraced me afterward in his light-blue shirt, his one item of dress clothing, my pancake makeup smearing his shoulder and cheek. We were all trying to pretend it was normal that my mother had come to see the play, too. I wondered what her mother was doing, alone, at home, and the thought of her there made me feel like we had been invaded.

My mother looked horribly thin, wrapped in a pale-blue cardigan that made her eyes seem to start from her head. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket as my father spoke, wiping the cloth over his face. She didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her, though together we smiled at my father as he continued his praise, flanking him like guardians.

I walked them to the door, through the crowd. “Are all these girls your friends?” my father asked as we wove through them. And then, at the door, “I’m glad, sweetheart. You should have good friends. They seem like good girls. Not so stuffy.”

Suddenly my mother’s hand was on my shoulder, her face at my cheek. The night was breezy, and the wind felt good once we were outside, but her skin against mine was like being quenched. She kissed me on the side of my head. “What’s the next play?” she whispered, standing back to look in my eyes. “Don’t know yet,” I answered. “Maybe
Macbeth
. I might not do it.” She nodded, her mouth pleased, like someone looking forward to any number of possible outcomes. “I’ve always liked
Macbeth
.”

“You ladies built this house yourself?” my father was saying, craning his neck back and looking at the roof. He tried to shake a support beam on the small front porch, testing its stability. He spoke again quickly: “Women, I mean. Wellesley women. Of course they built the house,” he grinned. “I’m not sure,” I said, thinking about it. “Maybe.”

My mother squeezed my hand and as quickly as it had begun the conversation was over. They were gone before I realized they were leaving. I watched them cross the street from the small porch, wondering if I might have said something different and kept them, wondering at how one small thing said can mean the difference between interest held or lost. My mother slipped her arm around my father’s waist, an intimacy I had never seen before.

A few people burst out the front door, laughing. They were followed by a steady stream of partygoers making their way onto the lawn to enjoy the cool night air. Sister Sledge blared from the stereo—“A tradition we can’t kick, from the seventies,” Calbe explained regretfully—and the lights went down everywhere but in the kitchen, which was packed with light and food, like a hive.

I walked back into the house. Phyllis was at the door, handing out masks.

“They’re optional,” she said in response to my quizzical look. “It’s tradition. Most of the people who come to these parties”—she gestured to the crowd, thick at the door—“they’re not ready to be done with the play. Too worked up, poor things.” She held up a Snow White and a Minnie Mouse. “Two dollars for the night.” She studied me. “You should have stayed in costume. It would have been better for business.”

“What do you think? Minnie Mouse?” She nodded to a small woman grabbing the hand of the man beside her, both trailing Tiney as she marched in through the front door. They ignored the masks and Phyllis, who muttered something under her breath as Tiney guided her parents to a corner to say goodbye. They were both as fair as she, though the father, in particular, wore a humorless expression, and the mother’s was too full of false cheer. Tiney was still dressed in her ornate, bloodstained costume. Her makeup made her face look stiff and old. I wondered why she hadn’t changed.

I made my way into the kitchen just as Jun came in through the front door half backward, banging it as she made her way through, laughing and talking to a tall boy behind her. She saw me. “Naomi, Keigo came—my cousin. He’s at Harvard. I mean, he’s visiting, but I didn’t think—hey, Keigo, this is Naomi.” She was overflowing with delight. I smiled and offered my hand and he smiled back and took it with both of his.

He was very tall, with Jun’s strong jaw and small, warm eyes. I realized how long it had been since I’d felt that thump of attraction at the sight of a boy.

“No flirting, Keigo,” Jun said sternly. But they both laughed as soon as she said it.

“Come,” Keigo said, pulling a Yoda mask down over his face, “let’s go dance. I want to dance with some lezzies.” Jun punched him in the shoulder, and I went with them into the next room, the music so loud we could feel it through the floor. Keigo caught my eye and inched closer as we danced, and I shot a quick look at Jun, wondering if it was okay. It must have been getting colder, because just a few minutes later it was too crowded to move without bumping into someone. A group of men, or boys, all wearing masks, walked in, pushing me into Keigo. He grinned, holding up his hands. I smiled. “What’s with the chain gang?” Phyllis was asking, standing beside the one in front. It looked like he whispered something in her ear, and she tossed her head back and laughed.

It was suddenly bliss to leave school at the door, to dance in a dark room full of other people who wanted to do just that. Keigo became more and more good-looking as the night wore on, but I lost track of him and grabbed my first drink in disappointment.

I backed up, stepping on the foot of someone very tall: Ronald Reagan. He bowed low to me as I stared at him. He smiled a little when he straightened, bringing up just the edges of his mouth. The lower half of his mask, just below the nose, had been torn away. I found myself staring at his lips. He reached out suddenly and took my hand, kissing it quickly.

I snatched it away. He felt too tall, and I was dizzy. I downed my drink and sat down in the nearest spot, hard. Phyllis saw me and forced her way over. “Get up, go home, sleep it off. Don’t ruin my fucking play.” I stood up and hugged her. She pulled my hair back, looked me in the eye, and repeated what she’d said. I nodded. She assessed me a moment longer and squeezed my hand, dismissing me.

Somehow I made it home and fell asleep, but I dreamt of my mother. I had lost her in the Kennedy house, and after looking everywhere found her at the bottom of the stairs, Rosemary’s letters in hand, waiting for me.

T
he next night after the performance, I’d had two beers before I was out of costume, trying, literally, to drink away my thoughts as others seemed to be able to do so well. I felt immediately queasy, though, and kept myself to the kitchen, refilling drinks and food, not yet ready to plunge into the crowd again, still thinking of the dream I’d had the night before. As soon as my stomach settled I grabbed another drink and made my way into the great room, which was even more packed than before.