The Blonde of the Joke (13 page)

O
ne day, after Physics class, I stayed behind. Ms. Tinker didn’t notice me at first; she was too busy puttering around at her desk, gathering up papers and rearranging things for the next class. But I hovered at the edge of her desk until she finally looked up and saw me. “Vincenza,” she greeted me. “What can I do ya for?”

I ignored her mistake. There was no point, and anyway, I was pretty sure by then that it wasn’t a mistake at all. “I wanted to ask you something,” I said.

“No such thing as a smart question,” she clucked. I was aware of her stance on questions. It was Classroom Policy #4. There Is No Such Thing as a Smart Question—Only Smart Answers.

“I just wanted to know—when I saw you in the mall
that day. In Ann Taylor Loft. How did you know about the Sign?”

“Can’t have been me. I’ve never been to the mall,” Ms. Tinker said, averting her gaze. “I do all my shopping at craft fairs. Where do you think I got this?” She tipped her purple beret at me. “You can’t find something like this at the mall, now can you?”

“Just the same,” I said. “I know I saw you there. And you gave me the Sign. I’m sure of it.”

“Hmm,” she mused. “Very interesting. Do you like physics?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

“I knew you would. Physics is phun, and you’re one of my best students. I think this will interest you.” Her left eye twitched. She took a piece of chalk and pranced over to the blackboard, where she began to write out a long, complicated equation that I didn’t understand at all.

She pulled her fist back and forth across the blackboard and, as if by magic, neat white rows began to appear. Numbers and symbols, but also hearts and stars and clouds, none of it in any intelligible configuration. I found myself squinting, trying to make sense of it all. I was far from Ms. Tinker’s best student, but even I knew enough to know that a heart is not an accepted symbol used in physics.

Ms. Tinker was humming a cheerful, bouncing little tune. Finally, when there was no more space on the blackboard, she finished it all off with a giant equal sign and a
smiley face, which she circled several times before she turned around and faced me victoriously.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“That’s because it’s meaningless!” she exclaimed, pleased with herself. “Physics teaches us many things. But I don’t really understand physics. I used to be a special education teacher, you know. There’s not a lot of physics in special ed.”

“If you say so,” I said.

“I’m just an old woman,” Ms. Tinker went on. “I believe that there is no such thing as a smart question. But one thing I have learned about physics—this was in the teacher’s manual—is that the answers are always right in front of your face. Asking questions just shows that you don’t care enough about the answers to figure them out for yourself. Does that make sense?”

“Sort of,” I said. “I mean, no, but maybe.”

“You can’t learn a lot in school,” Ms. Tinker said. “That’s why I mostly focus on making sure everyone’s notebook holes are reinforced. What else am I supposed to grade on?”

“Um,” I said. If she was trying to make herself seem more reasonable, she was failing.

“No one can answer anything for you,” Ms. Tinker said. “Especially me. I’m just going by the teacher’s manual, anyway. What do I know? Well, I know a few things, but none of them have to do with physics. I know about felting. I know how to speak a little bit of Flemish. That’s not very
useful; hardly anyone speaks Flemish, except maybe your friend Francie.”

“Why would Francie speak Flemish?” I asked.

Ms. Tinker giggled mischievously. “Let’s just say I have good reason to believe that your dear friend might be a robot. Or a hologram. Have you seen the outfits she wears?”

“This conversation makes no sense,” I said. “Are you for real?”

She cackled and pushed her glasses up on the end of her pointy nose. “If I wasn’t, would it make a difference? It’s all the same in the end. The teacher’s manual says that up to three-quarters of physics is belief. It’s what you believe that matters. If Newton hadn’t believed in gravity, where would we be now?”

“Where?”

“Floating around in outer space, that’s where!” she yelped in exasperation.

“I guess,” I said.

“Don’t be foolish. You know I can’t abide foolishness,” Ms. Tinker reminded me.

She tugged on one earlobe, then another, and twitched her nose, and bared her teeth in a toothy brown grin. I didn’t make the Sign back. I left the classroom, unsure of whether Ms. Tinker had told me anything at all. I guess there’s no such thing as a smart question.

The next day we had a substitute, and again the next. A
week later, with no explanation, we heard that Ms. Tinker would not be returning to Sandra Dee.

Francie and I met at the subway later that day. We had been collecting stuff for Jesse for a while now, and it was starting to build up. I’d brought a few things for him when I’d visited, and sent some of it with Liz when she went to visit him, but I couldn’t deliver it nearly as fast as we were stealing it. We had to make a big drop.

Francie arrived at the station in gold stiletto sandals that laced all the way up her calves, denim cutoffs so short that they revealed the lowermost curve of her ass, and a skintight Smiths concert T-shirt that she had cropped right above her belly button. She had her hair pulled away from her face with a pronged, metallic headband.

“You look like a total slut,” I told her. “A slutty pineapple.”

“I look beautiful,” she said. “What’s wrong with looking like a slut, anyway? I don’t see why people always criticize. I thought everyone liked sluts! Did you bring the stuff?”

But what I was really thinking was that she looked different these days. Still slutty, just different. While she’d always cultivated that unkempt, greasy style, today she just looked kind of dirty, like she hadn’t showered in a week. Her eyeliner was crooked and crusted over. And there was something desperate in her eyes, in her tone of voice. It was like
she was trying too hard; like she knew she had to struggle at what had always come so easily to her.

I opened the duffel bag I was carrying and showed Francie the loot. It was everything we had stolen for Jesse over the past couple of weeks. This time I’d warned him we were coming.

“You know, you don’t have to come with me to Jesse’s just to be nice,” I told Francie. “I could do it myself if you want.”

“Babe,” Francie said. “You think I’m coming to be
nice?
What planet are you on?”

“I know. But you don’t have to. I just want you to know.”

“I definitely want to. I know I can convert him,” Francie said.

“I thought you didn’t have time for boys.”

“Exactly.
Boys.
Jesse is clearly one hundred million percent
man.”

I hated how Francie was always talking about how hot Jesse was, and not just because he was my brother, either. There was something that seemed thoughtless about it, as if she was willfully forgetting the truth of the situation, or even making fun of it. Francie was the one who was always looking for the Most Beautiful Thing. Francie knew from beautiful. And it seemed to me that she of all people should be able to see that even if Jesse still looked okay on the outside, he could never really be beautiful again. But maybe Francie was seeing something else entirely.

“Well, good luck with that,” I said. “You’ll look good in widow’s weeds.”

Francie gave me a cross, regretful frown. “Don’t talk that way,” she said. “Look at everything we have for him. It may not be the Holy Grail, but for now it’s enough.”

“I’m starting to wonder,” I said.

“You can’t wonder,” Francie said.

Jesse was on the couch when we got to his place. He had actually cleaned it up, if only slightly. “Hey, Hot Stuff,” Francie gushed.

“Hey, Sexy,” Jesse responded.

She left her glossy mark on his forehead.

“I love your apartment,” she told him. She was taking it upon herself to inspect it, standing at the window examining the architecture, knocking on the plaster walls, looking for signs of sturdiness. “Someday I’m going to have a place just like this.”

“I love your outfit,” Jesse said. His voice was froggy.

“Valentina thinks I look like a slut.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Jesse said.

“That’s what I said.”

No one had said a word to me. It was as if I wasn’t even in the room. I examined the chips in my nail polish while Francie cuddled up to an amused Jesse and threw her arm around his neck.

I spoke up. “We brought you some stuff.”

“More booze, huh?”

“Not exactly.” I opened up the duffel bag and dumped the contents out onto the floor. The hats, the tank tops, the books, the toys; all of it was there. We had been collecting it.

“Awesome. Thanks. So remind me why you guys are always giving me this stuff?”

“Don’t ask so many questions,” Francie snapped with good nature. “Look!” She pulled the Brookstone flashlight from the pile. “A hand-crank flashlight. So you will never be without light. It charges your cell phone, too; you just need to get the attachment separate. What kind of cell phone do you have?”

“It’s a Nokia,” he said.

“I’ll see if I can get you the right thingy,” she said. “I bet they have them at Radio Shack. I don’t know about you, but my phone is always running out of batteries.”

“You’re awful,” Jesse said. “Stealing all this stuff. Luring my innocent little sister into your shadowy underworld.”

Francie flipped her hair and used her arms to push her boobs up and forward, practically to her shoulders. “It’s not my fault I have a gift,” she said.

“You have many gifts,” he replied. “Look at all this stuff. How much would it have cost?”

“Close to six hundred dollars,” Francie said. “I did a spreadsheet in Excel.”

Jesse still hadn’t gotten up off the couch. Francie mussed his hair and was examining his face without shame. He had
not changed. Even with the gifts, he still looked like shit. Something had gone wrong. And I saw a quiver in Francie’s lower lip, a failure of confidence, as she realized it for herself.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked.

“I love it,” he said. It didn’t really sound like he was there.

I wanted to be surprised, but for some reason I wasn’t. I’d heard somewhere that up to three-quarters of physics is belief.

Francie stood without taking her eyes off him, and you could tell the wheels were turning in her head, trying to figure out what was happening. I’m not sure she’d ever believed me before when I’d told her he was dying. But now it was obvious. His eyes were fluttering open and shut like he was about to fall asleep. You could see his rib cage vibrating through his T-shirt.

Francie looked up at me, flailing.

If up to three-quarters of physics is belief, then what’s the other quarter? I guess it’s just physics.

“Maybe we should go,” I said.

“Sorry,” Jesse said. “I just got really sleepy all of a sudden.”

“It’s cool,” I said.

Francie didn’t talk much on the street outside. She took slow, narrow steps down the sidewalk, her heels clomping awkwardly. “Things are changing,” she said after a while. We were cutting through the circle on the way to the subway,
looping around the fountain. “I can feel things changing. Not just the weather, either, even if that’s part of it. I get this feeling now and then.”

I snorted. “Ha!” I said. “Now you’re psychic? Like what exactly is changing?”

“I can’t explain it,” Francie said. “But I guess it’s something like a new chapter starting. Don’t you have, like, this sense of the unknown lately? Usually I have, like, a general feeling about where things are heading, but for the past few weeks I just have no idea at all.”

“I hope it’s heading somewhere good.”

“It usually isn’t,” she sighed.

We walked along together. Francie’s hair was blowing wild. We made our way through the park and across the street, where a new building was going up. “I wonder what used to be there?” Francie asked.

I wasn’t going to give her an answer, because I had none, but I wouldn’t have had time anyway, because a bunch of construction workers suddenly started yelling at her from the building site.

“Look out, Blondie,” a dude called. “You got all your snacks hanging out the back!”

“You’re beautiful!”

“Wanna have my baby?”

You’d think she would have been used to it. That kind of thing would only have amused her before. But that day Francie froze at the catcalls. She stopped and turned, facing
the guys who were shouting at her, but said nothing. Her shoulders dropped. She just stood there.

“Francie, come on,” I said. “Don’t listen to them. They’re just assholes.”

She looked over her shoulder at me, still frozen in one spot. The guys, emboldened, were coming closer.

“Lemme smell your panties!”

“You like it rough, don’t you, baby?”

“You’ve got a pretty face. Wanna sit on mine?”

I touched Francie’s shoulder. She was breathing hard. “Francie,” I said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“I can’t,” Francie said. There was panic in her voice.

“What?”

“I can’t move,” Francie said. “There’s something wrong with my legs.”

The guys were circling now, only a few feet away. They looked kind of nervous, too, like they’d never taken it this far before but knew that they couldn’t turn back. “What about your friend?” one of them asked. “Is she a slut like you?”

I had to do something. Francie wouldn’t move. So I stepped out in front of her, my feet wide, my shoulders square. I felt a certain blackness behind my eyes. I was not afraid. “Fuck you all,” I said quietly. There was really no need to shout. “Really, fuck you all. She’s fourteen fucking years old.”

“Fifteen next month,” Francie managed to wheeze, but I don’t think they heard her.

That was all it took. I’d barely said anything, hadn’t even raised my voice, but I looked each of them right in the eye, and as I looked each of them in the eye, an absence crossed their faces, like they had forgotten why they were even there at all. “Sorry,” the fattest one said. “Only playing around.” And just like that, they all wandered off listlessly, back to work, leaving us.