The Number 7 (5 page)

As one of the first students in class, I had the opportunity to study my peers as they entered the room. Most girls entered in pairs or flocks. High school girls always reminded me of geese, waddling in groups and squawking as they strutted from one spot to another. None came to sit with me.

I suddenly missed the comfort of North Carolina. I missed familiar faces and names. Here, everyone knew each other. They already had their places and social circles. Even if they were geese, at least they had their gaggles.

At long last, a back-row companion came to join me. He had tan skin and long, half-hearted curly brown locks. He wore a tie-dyed shirt, frayed jeans, and a pair of leather flip-flops.
Seriously
, I thought,
flip-flops in November?

“You new?” His voice was deep. Really deep. His backpack fell off his shoulder and to the floor.

“Yeah.”

It was all I could think to say.

“I was new here last year,” he said indifferently looking to the front of the class. I couldn't really tell if he was speaking to me or just thinking out loud. Every word he said was monotone.
Stoner
, I assumed dismissively. Then he turned to me and smiled.

“So where you from?” It was a nice smile. A smile, I thought, he probably didn't flash often enough. And his eyes were large and lovely beneath his big eyebrows. His skin looked sun-kissed for so late in the year.

“North Carolina.”

“I backpacked the Trail through Damascus once,” he leaned over to me—close enough for me to smell his cheap, musky body spray, close enough to feel a surge of unexpected intimacy—and whispered, “Got poison ivy in places I didn't know could itch.” He then sat back up, grinning, as the opening bell rang.

“Chris.” He extended his hand. He had dirt underneath his fingernails, but not in a grimy way. It was more of an “I spend my weekends rappelling from rocks and spelunking water caves” dirt-under-my-fingernails.

“Louisa.” We shook and then turned to the front as Mr. Duncan wrote “PROPOGANDA” in large, block letters on the blackboard.

“Today we're going to watch
Triumph of the Will
, one of Adolf Hitler's most famous examples of propaganda,” Mr. Duncan announced as he turned off the lights and began the film. “Think about our recent conversations about propaganda and how this film fits into that genre. We'll discuss the images and film tomorrow.”

In English, I sat in the front row and met a girl named Allison. She had deep-set dimples and wore a stiff-collared blouse under a pink argyle cardigan. I didn't recognize the insignia on the sweater, but I knew Greta would.

“We're reading
1984
,” she said, handing me her copy at the beginning of class. “It's kind of weird.”

“Wait 'til you get to the end.” I glanced at the cover and returned the paperback. “I read it a couple years back.” I didn't disclose how much the book had affected me. I didn't tell her how it was one of the most important books in my life. Dad had given me the book to keep my mind off of Mom's cancer. As if it were that easy. In the hospital waiting room, sometimes in that god-awful armchair at the foot of her bed, I read because I didn't want to watch the drip, drip, drip. As Mom nonchalantly leafed through her
People
magazine, I read.

I sped through
1984
angrily. I wanted to throw the book and shout at her. At Dad. At everyone.
This isn't a normal thing, Mom! Normal people don't have to sit here and watch their moms hooked up to that! Normal people don't have to sit here and pretend like this is fine!
That's what I wanted to shout. But I didn't. I couldn't. Instead I sat there, furious at everyone for acting like everything was okay. For me, things were not okay.

“There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death.”

Orwell made me realize my mom might die. And then she did.

“Yeah,” Allison jerked me back to the present. “Well, we're supposed to be almost done, and I'm only on chapter five.” Allison took her pencil, twirled it around her hair and pinned it up in place. “Are you sisters with that new tall blond?”

“She's my older sister.”

“She and I have Gym together. She's gorgeous!” Allison sighed. “It's too bad about her injury. She looked like she'd be a good doubles player.”

“Her what?”

Allison popped her chewing gum and turned to face the teacher beginning her lesson on misplaced modifiers. By the end of class, I was surprised to find that I actually knew the difference between a misplaced and dangling modifier. Maybe grammar wasn't so bad after all.

“So what do you think of Pennsylvania?” Allison asked as we walked to lunch together.

“It's all right.”

I was still getting adjusted and finding my niche, but I was adapting quickly. Greta still considered the move social torment, but I quietly wondered if even
she
was beginning to come around.

“Where do you live?”

“October Hill Road. The orange house.”

“Oh man, that place is ancient. Any spooks?” Allison grinned.

I shook my head and hoped she wouldn't see my uncertainty. Allison invited me to sit with her friends. It was a godsend. I would have rather sat alone in a bathroom stall than face sitting alone at lunch. But after spending ten minutes at their table, I wondered if the bathroom stall was a better fit for me. Sure, I blended in well—my Greta-inspired outfit matched Allison's J. Crew table—but I felt like an imposter. I excused myself from the group and made my way to the lunch line. I was glad not to be sitting alone, but I wished I could find another table of girls who were more like me.

What would those girls be like? What would we do together? Picnics with our favorite books? Brontë sister tea parties? Thoreau-inspired walks through the woods? Would we live deliberately? Would we suck the marrow out of life? Or am I the only teenager who thinks of stuff like that?

As I took in the panoramic view of my new cafeteria, I saw Chris sitting at a table with other kids that looked like him: hippies, Dead Heads, nouveau-Rastafarians. Chris whispered something in the ear of an attractive girl with dyed black hair and pale skin. From the look on her face, he wasn't delivering Whitman lines. She grabbed his shoulders and fell against him, laughing.
Take note, Louisa
, I thought.
Try to avoid seductive voice and deep brown eyes.

In Photography, I was lucky to be sitting in on the first day of a new lesson and a new assignment. I was half-listening to Mr. Franz explain the criteria of the project, staring at my 35mm camera, and wondering why Dad couldn't have signed me up for Digital Photography, when something Mr. Franz said perked my ears.

“You'll want to investigate old family photographs. Ask relatives about the context of the photos, who's in them, how the pictures came to be.”

As he paced back and forth at the front of the room, all the girls in class followed him in dreamy doe-eyed stupors. He was young with a lean build, and he dressed smart. A Ramones T-shirt under a corduroy blazer. Occasionally, he'd wink at the class, making us feel like we were close, personal friends rather than students. I could see how he'd captured the fancy of some of my classmates.

“This project is about digging deep into your family history, looking at grandparents, aunts, and uncles differently.” He paused, giving us time to process the assignment. “The photos need to be a timeline of the person's life. Think of it as a retroactive Facebook timeline, but I don't want anything electronic. This is
Film
Photography. We're going old school, so ideally, the oldest picture should be more than twenty years old.

“Assemble the photographs in chronological order and display them in an album. This is a photographic
essay
. I want to see art, creativity, thought. I don't want to see misspellings or Scotch tape. These essays need to look professional; we'll be showcasing them at the Wyeth Spring Art Show. And guys? Make sure you don't use any priceless family heirloom photographs. I don't want any angry phone calls from Mom, chewing me out about how you retouched Aunt Mildred with watercolor.”

Someone raised her hand. Mr. Franz acknowledged it by lifting his eyebrows.

“When's it due?”

Franz rubbed his hands together. “In a month. End of December, due the week before holiday break. That's why I'm giving it to you now. Spend Thanksgiving talking to your family and searching through albums. Now, take the rest of class to start brainstorming.” Mr. Franz retreated back to his desk in the front corner of the room.

Who could I showcase? I didn't have an extensive family; I didn't really know either set of grandparents. Not even those in whose house I was now living. God knows I couldn't ask Dad about them. He was a regular Fort Knox. So while other students sat constructing lofty branches on family trees, I spent the remaining ten minutes doodling sketches of the old, black telephone.

Greta had had a fantastic day. People had flocked to meet her, and she'd already received two invitations to the next football game.
So much for worrying about being a social pariah
, I thought. I listened to her relay the day's activities on the car ride back to the house, watching as she drove with the same gracelessness with which she'd handled the mail that morning. Hadn't Allison said something about an injury? What'd happened? Something was wrong, but I was too afraid to ask. She'd angrily accuse me of prying—as she had done countless times before—and then I'd feel even further isolated from her. This was the fortress Greta had built around herself. She was on one side of the moat, and I on the other. So I did what she'd trained me to do: I looked away.

That evening, after answering all of Dad's incessant questions about our day and the school—Did we learn anything new? Did the teachers seem qualified? Were there healthy lunch options?—we sat down to a salmon dinner. Dad was usually a lousy cook, when he cooked at all, but he did have one or two good signature dishes and this was one of them. He said he'd learned the recipe from his father, who would drive the hour or so to Philadelphia to buy fresh salmon from the fish market. It was one of the few stories Dad had ever told us about the man, so I had committed the details of the story to memory. Grandpa would bake the fish whole: skin on, head intact, and the body stuffed with dill and garlic butter. And then he'd fillet it tableside: delicately removing the head and tail, carefully slicing the large fish in two, and removing the bones as he made his way from top to bottom. Dad talked about the process as if it were an art form and Grandpa, the artist. Grandpa served his salmon with new potatoes and homemade crème fraîche, dyed orange with red caviar. The ritual had been passed down to my father, one of the few family traditions bestowed. It seemed that any others had worn down with time.

So salmon dinner is what Dad prepared in celebration of our new school. He'd cooked it perfectly.

“I have news,” Dad began, nervously clearing his throat. “The house in North Carolina sold.”

Neither Greta nor I spoke. What was there to say? There was no turning back now.

“I guess that's that,” Greta finally whispered before taking a sip of water.

“Let's toast this new beginning!” Dad held up his glass encouragingly. “To Chadds Ford Community College for creating an English position for me midsemester, to Andrew Wyeth High School for making a home for you both on such short notice, and to Gerhard Magnusson's salmon dinner for being the one meal I can do justice!”

My jaw froze in place. My mouth went dry.

“What?” I choked.

Dad gave me a blank stare and blinked twice. Greta looked at me as if my entire existence made her life more difficult.

“
Gerhard
Magnusson?” I repeated, disoriented.

“My dad's name was Gerhard Gustav Magnusson. I've told you that before.”

Of course. Eloise and Gerhard Magnusson. How had I missed it? For weeks, I'd thought about the call. And now I knew. It wasn't a dream—it was my grandmother. My
dead
grandmother had called me.

Dad held up his glass, but Greta only raised her eyebrows acrimoniously. She folded her arms as I sat in agony, unable to talk about my discovery. I was onto something.

“Tell us something about him,” I said finally. I was tired of being in the dark, tired of the secrecy.

Dad paused and stared across the table at both Greta and me and realized he couldn't deflect. We were waiting for him to answer.

“He used to, uh, keep model trains.” He scratched his brow with a bony knuckle. He looked a bit uneasy, but did he also look relieved? I couldn't tell. Maybe it was good to exorcise these stories slowly. After all, we couldn't live in this house without knowing them. Dad would have to confess sooner or later.

“He ran them all through the house. There are a couple little cutouts in the bookshelves in the parlor. You might have seen them.” He gestured with his fork. “That's where he ran the tracks. Ran them through the walls, down to the cellar. Sometimes when he was working, he'd put a smooth stone or pinecone on one of the cars and send it up. Little deliveries just for me. I felt special when he did that. I kept them all, but I'm sure they're lost now.”

Something Dad said reminded me of my Photography project.

“Dad, we kept all those picture albums from the attic, right?” I flaked off a piece of the pink flesh and held it to my mouth.

“I think so.” He wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. (Memory 11: she only used cloth napkins. She said they were better for the environment and “très chic.”)

“I have this photography project . . . I need to find four photos of the same person from different stages in his or her life. I was thinking about using Mom, but I just wanted to look at all our old photos to be sure.”