Viola in Reel Life (3 page)

“You girls are joining not only the amazing and fabulous class of 2012, but a legacy that includes Miriam Shropshire, Gloria Tucker, and Phyllis Applebaum…”

“Who
are
those people?” I whisper to Marisol.

“Who are those women you may ask?” Mrs. Zidar looks right at me as though she heard me. “They are
women of substance. Miriam Shropshire is a concert viola player for the New York Philharmonic who founded her own classical group, Strings Three, which has toured internationally for three decades. Gloria Tucker was the coach of the 1972 Olympic javelin team, and Phyllis Applebaum was the first woman president of the National Association of Garden Clubs….”

“This is the best she’s got?” I drop my head on the table in total resignation. I guess Mrs. Zidar didn’t get the memo: Women are leading corporations, and running for president and almost making it, and developing their own businesses, and being artists. It sounds so retro to bring up flower-arranging ladies. But all her talk about famous graduates is only to lead us into the real meat of her speech. She knows we have been dropped off, away from home for the first time, and while some of us might think it’s great, some of us don’t. She’s trying to swing those of us who don’t
do
the happy side of life to, well…the happy side of life. I would so be texting Andrew right now and telling him how boring and horrible this is if they hadn’t told us we are not allowed to make calls or text during the picnic.

Mrs. Zidar drones on, using phrases like “separation anxiety,” “in loco parentis,” and “the golden rule” in a speech that now sounds more canned than the Boston
baked beans I had with my black hot dog in the freezing-cold bun.

Our earnest RA, Trish, stands by the side of the tent, watching us. She smiles and waves when I catch her staring. It’s been a long day, but Trish is still sparkly, like it’s morning. I think Mrs. Zidar planted her there to show us that we’ve got someone older to talk to when we have nervous breakdowns or when the incoming freshmen finally realize that we’re stuck here until next summer, which seems like a thousand years away.

The sun sets, taking the last bit of September heat with it. The Indiana sky over our picnic tent turns deep blue with streaks of lavender and orange. Some stray clouds move toward the flat line of the horizon. It’s almost night and a chill goes up my spine.

As Mrs. Zidar wraps up her speech, and the sun disappears, homesickness spreads through the tents like the mumps. Night is always worst for sadness of any kind. The dark just buries you and makes you feel worse. Also, night seems to drag on twice as long as the day, and therefore gives you twice the amount of time to be upset.

Mrs. Zidar opens her arms wide. She smiles and says, “You will look back on these days with such affection. I know. I was in the Prefect Academy class of 1979.”

“Did they have the same ice-cream maker?” I holler. Big laughter fills the tent.

“Uh-huh,” Mrs. Zidar answers from the podium. “And I’ve got the triceps to prove it.”

At last, Mrs. Zidar displays a sense of humor. As she gathers the cards from her speech, the freshman girls look around the tent, some check their phones (at last), some stand up, but most of us stay seated. It’s as if no one wants the night to end, as if we wish Mrs. Zidar had another stack of cards to read through. We don’t want to go back to our rooms and start our new lives; we want to go home, where we know who we are and what we like, where familiar might be boring, but boring is better than the unknown.

Romy, Suzanne, Marisol, and I head back to Curley Kerner in a clump. Now I sort of feel bad that I briefly hated them this afternoon. I’ve always had my own room. I don’t like people peeping at my work, or having to worry if I put my shoes in the wrong place. They’re not making me feel bad; I’m doing that on my own. My roommates are basically okay, and I’ll take okay when I look around at some of the other freshmen who seem much worse than Marisol, Romy, and Suzanne. We don’t have a giggler, a brainiac, or a snob in our group, so I guess I should count my blessings, which right now I can count on one finger.

When we pass the fountain, Marisol climbs up on the bench and runs around the circumference. Romy laughs as Suzanne follows. Suzanne pulls Romy up onto the bench after her. I snap off my lens cap and film my new roommates through the cascading water where little lights turn the water silver. It’s a dreamy effect. I like it.

My desk has nails sticking up along the edge. I’ll have to tell Trish so she can get me a hammer to pound them in. That’ll give her something useful to do besides hovering over us like an older sister we didn’t ask for. This desk is so old I don’t know if it could even take the beating. It might end up as kindling for the next class bonfire.

I snap the cartridge out of my camera and load it into my computer. When my parents were my age, they had to shoot on film stock, and later would cut the film into sequences the old-fashioned way, on a Steenbeck. My mom thinks that the current way is superior to the old, though she says that the new technology has not made for
better
filmmakers, just
more
of us. Dad says that just because anybody can pick up a camera doesn’t mean that they can play it like a Stradivarius. A filmmaker still needs a story worth telling from a particular point of view. We can shoot video for cheap, and swiftly edit on our computers, but that doesn’t mean we have a story
for an audience. I always remember that when I’m shooting a subject.
What am I trying to say?
is the question I ask myself a lot. That, and when I get to The End,
Is anybody going to watch?

Marisol listens to her iPod as she lies in her bed flipping through a magazine. She wears new pajamas. I’m sure everybody will be wearing new pajamas tonight. I know I will. My mother got rid of my “Vote for Pedro” T-shirt and cupcake jam pants because they had holes in them. I’ll be mad at her until the day I die for that one. This is one thing all mothers have in common. When it comes to boarding school, or sleepaway camp, or a visit with the grand-p’s, a girl needs a new wardrobe from the underwear out.

Besides that, there won’t be time to shop for clothes or anything else because we’ll be too busy studying, and there aren’t any mothers around to run to the mall on a whim and pick up something we might have left behind. You have to have everything you need from day one. My stuff is all packed in Ziploc bags and marked by season. My mother is very methodical that way.

Every once in a while, Marisol unconsciously sings a bar of music, which is irritating. If she keeps doing it, I’ll have to say something. People who sing aloud while wearing earpieces should be banned from group living.

I slip on my headphones and listen to my voice-over, which I already recorded over the footage of my exile from Brooklyn. My mom films Andrew and me saying good-bye on the steps of our house in the neighborhood that I love.

The car is packed and Dad is motioning for me to get into the rental car the color of a ripe tomato. Mom hands me the camera as she climbs into the front seat.

I move the camera back to Andrew. He does this hilarious thing where he drapes himself on the wrought-iron fence in front of our house and pretends to sob like it’s going to kill him that I’m leaving. He looks like Buster Keaton in those old silents that Dad makes me watch. I keep the camera on Andrew’s histrionics as I climb into the car and shoot him out of the window until Dad makes the turn at the end of Austin Street, and Andrew ends up the size of a chocolate chip in the shot. Then, fade to black. Andrew Bozelli is gone. Or I’m the one who’s gone.

I left Brooklyn two days ago with my parents. We drove through Pennsylvania, a bit of Ohio (staying the night in Sandusky), and then to Indiana, north to South Bend. It already seems like a hundred years ago. It’s been just eight hours since they unpacked and left me, and I really miss them. It’s only ever been the three of us, and I guess I
thought it always would be. To be fair, my parents wanted to take me with them to Afghanistan. But they will be traveling with a news division filming a women’s solidarity group and there was no way that I could be homeschooled, as they would be on the move. It’s also dangerous—but I refuse to think about
that
.

Mom spent a “wonderful” year at the Prefect Academy when she was in the eleventh grade and is still friends with the girls she met here. Her mom, Grand, is an actress who was touring with the national company (bus ’n’ truck they call it) of the Broadway musical
Mame
starring Angela Lansbury (who Grand adores). Grand was the understudy for the Vera Charles character, and there was just no way to take Mom on the road with her. Mom’s father had remarried and Mom didn’t want to live with his new family, so she wound up at the Prefect Academy.

The footage of my parents from this afternoon jumps onto the screen. I must have been nervous because the camera moves in fits and starts, like it has the jitters.

I first filmed my mom as she stood on the tree-lined avenue that leads to the fountain. Mom’s hair was a mess from the car trip. She gave herself highlights from a home kit the night before we left, and they look like strands of red yarn on brown velvet on this video. My dad joins her, putting his arm around her waist.

My dad is losing his hair and has a strong profile, as sharp as a cartoon. He is handsome, my mom always says so. I don’t think daughters can give proper assessment of their father’s looks; he is just Dad to me.

My parents are a team—they met in film school. They are great cameramen, though Mom is a far better editor than Dad, who my mom says can be indulgent. I don’t think that’s true. My dad just likes the emotions he captures on film and doesn’t quite know when to cut away and let the moment speak for itself. As I watch them onscreen, my eyes fill with tears. A year is a very long time to be without them. I wonder how I’ll get through it.

I bet they won’t even miss me after a while. I’ve been Princess Snark lately. (That’s what Mom calls me when I’m just so over their badgering me about everything.) I can’t help it. I have zero patience. Really. Zero. I can hardly stand myself sometimes, much less other people. I think it comes from trying to be perfect. Although I can’t reach perfection, I drive myself crazy trying. Sometimes I wonder what will happen to me. If I keep worrying like this, I’ll grind my teeth down into flat nubs like my violin teacher, Mrs. Doughty. She has teeth so tiny, you’d think she’s part gerbil.

My mom says Mrs. D lost all her teeth from grinding (!) and now wears dentures, which scared me to
death, like that could happen to
me
and
then
what? Mrs. Doughty’s teeth issues were enough to motivate me to get a bite guard, but I don’t think I’ll wear it here. I don’t want to be blah beige bedding/bad picture/bite guard girl. Can you imagine
that
?

I fast-forward to the footage of the buildings of the Prefect Academy. The gold letters on the sign came through clearly as I grabbed the late-afternoon light on the wood. Nice effect. I open the shot up wide and fill the screen with the slow pan of the fields. My hand is much steadier on this sequence.

Then I see a very weird thing. There’s something on the screen that I didn’t notice when I was filming the field outside.

In the distance, beyond the field, on the far property line of the school, I see something red move. A bird? I slow down the speed and look closely. It’s not a bird. It’s a woman. Strange. I don’t remember a woman in the shot, and I don’t remember anything red. She moves into the shot in full.

The woman wears a drop-waist red dress and a black velvet cloche hat. Her blond sausage curls bounce on the tops of her shoulders. She has matching red lips and tucks a small clutch purse under her arm. She wears black gloves with tiny bows on the wrists. She lights
a cigarette and, turning away from the camera, puffs. She looks up into the sky, just as I did when filming the Indiana clouds.

“Whatcha doing?” Romy leans over my shoulder and looks at the screen.

I almost jump out of my skin.

“Sorry,” she says. “I interrupted. You were concentrating.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, but I say it in a way that she knows it’s not. “Romy, don’t take this wrong, but I sort of need privacy when I’m editing.”

Romy slinks away, her feelings hurt. I will make it up to her later. Right now, I can’t worry about Romy because something crazy is going on here. I shot this footage this afternoon, and at that time there was no lady in the field. And here, on my screen, she walks in daylight. How did I miss her? What is going on?

I minimize the shot and save it. I’m too frazzled to figure this out right now.

Marisol looks up from her magazine. “Everything okay over there?” she says to me.

“Yeah,” I lie.

I turn the computer off. I look around at my roommates. For a moment, I consider telling them about what I’ve seen but they’d think I was nuts. And there’s one thing
I know after day one at the Prefect Academy—don’t give anybody a reason to label you because whatever happens on the first day sticks. Just ask Harlowe Jenkins from Quad 3, who is now known as Throw-up Girl because she hurled in the bushes outside the picnic tent after she tried mango chutney for the first time on her hot dog. I bet she wishes she’d have stuck with ketchup.

WHEN I’M HOME IN BROOKLYN AND HAVING A CRISIS
, I call Andrew and he either comes over to my house or I go over to his. But he’s a million miles away, so I text him.

The shared bathroom on our floor is tiled white from floor to ceiling. Trish told us to always wear flip-flops on the tile because barefoot, it just gets too slick and we’ll wipe out and break an arm or something. So far, this is the brand of good advice that the resident advisor shares with us. Priceless.

While I’m brushing my teeth, Trish pushes the bathroom door open and comes in, carrying her clipboard. “How’s it going?” Trish leans against the sink and looks at me in the reflection of the mirror.

“Great.” I spit my toothpaste into the sink.

“Tomorrow morning after breakfast, I’m going to take you guys over to Geier-Kirshenbaum Hall to pick up your class skeds.”

I nod. Trish shaves the ends off of some words (sked for schedule) as though it takes too much of her overwhelming
energy to finish them in a normal fashion.

“Coo?” Trish smiles broadly as she does it
again
, dropping the
L
off the end of “cool” as though it’s done everyday. Her Invisalign braces give her teeth a hermetically sealed look, like cream cheese in plastic wrap.

“Cool.” I force a smile on the
L
sound on the end of the word like I did when I used phonics flash cards when learning how to read. I don’t think Trish picks up on it though.

“Viola, I know you’d requested a single room. I found out that one may open up, but it’s not on our floor.” Trish makes a big, fake frown. “Do you still want it if it becomes available?”

“Absolutely!” I tell her.

“But I wouldn’t be your RA.”

“I know. But I’m sure you’d get somebody nice in Quad 11 to replace me.”

“Okay.” Trish seems sad that I would choose to leave her floor. “I recommend you give it a few days before you move. We may grow on you.”

Trish leaves the bathroom and I look into the mirror. You will never grow on me, Trish. Nor will this group living thing. Not ever. Never.

When I return to my room, Suzanne is already in bed (points for beauty sleep!). Romy is carefully folding her
giant daisy comforter into a rectangle at the foot of her bunk. I guess she wants to keep it new-looking for as long as possible. Marisol is at her computer.

“Day one: Viola Chesterton held hostage,” I tell them. They laugh.

I climb into my bed, which after a long day of saying good-bye, meeting new people, and that god-awful picnic is actually comfortable. I pull the blanket up over me.

“You may not hate this place so much in the morning,” Romy chirps.

“Wanna bet?”

“Breakfast should be good. They have pancakes in the dining hall,” Marisol says. “You can add stuff to them—raisins, chocolate chips, like, whatever you want.”

I lie back and stare at the ceiling. “I’m stoked.”

“You know, attitude is everything,” Suzanne says from the bottom bunk.

Romy pipes up. “Viola, Suzanne is right. It’s a hard adjustment for everybody. Your attitude will make the difference in whether you succeed or fail here.”

“I’m sorry. Nothing against you guys. But I just love Brooklyn. I loved my school and my room and my friends. I didn’t want a new school. I liked what I had.” I turn over in my bed, hoping that this will signal an end to our discussion.

“You may end up liking this more,” Romy reasons.

“Romy, I’ve only known you for one day, and already, you’re way too upbeat for me.”

She laughs. “So I’m told.”

I drift off to sleep. At some point I wake up and check the clock. It’s 1:15 in the morning, and I’m still here. I turn over and fold the pillow under my head. I close my eyes. I hear Suzanne blow her nose. I can’t get back to sleep. For a moment, I think I might get up and turn on the computer and email Andrew. Sometimes I do that when I can’t sleep. But I hear someone crying. It’s Suzanne. She turns over in her bottom bunk and faces the wall. Evidently, I’m not the only miserable girl at the Prefect Academy.

The morning sun fills the alcove in our quad with bright white light. I push the covers off my face. For a moment, I’ve forgotten where I am. My bedroom in Brooklyn faces a brick wall and I never get much light, so waking up in boarding school is like waking up in a bus station. I feel totally public. I look around. I’m alone. The bunk beds are made. I look to the other single bed. Marisol’s tacky quilt is smoothed over it. “Marisol?” I call out. No answer. I jump out of my bed and check the clock. It’s only eight a.m. Where are they?

I go to my dresser and pull out a pair of cigarette jeans, a Bob Marley T-shirt, a sky-blue bandanna folded thick around my neck, and my jean jacket, because it’s cold in here. I jump into my clothes, slip into my yellow patent leather flats, and grab my backpack.

The atriums are starting to fill with girls on their way to the dining hall. Some of them look a lot like me—the arty ones in jeans and hoodies—while the science/business/math brainiacs wear jeans with sherbet-colored sweaters with a white collared blouse peeking out. My shoes seem to be getting a lot of attention, and not exactly the kind I want. The girls look down at my feet like they’re huge yellow taxi cabs instead of the coolest flats they had at Verve on 8th Avenue.

As I push through the crowd alone, I wish I’d have made firmer plans with my roommates for breakfast. Why didn’t I hear them leaving? Why didn’t they wake me up? Romy was so nice yesterday—she even forgave me on the spot for snapping at her when I was editing. I begin to make a list about how I’m going to change my ways at this school and start over with a better attitude. I walk quickly and sort of desperately alone, and promise myself that I will make friends with my roommates, so I never again feel this sense of sheer abandonment. It’s a horrible feeling to be someplace new and on your
own. I vow to film anything they ask me to, and to keep my bed made and my stuff neat, and my desk cleared. I need Romy, Suzanne, and Marisol. They’re the only family I’ve got at this godforsaken school. And no family is perfect but I’ll take them.

I push through the glass doors of the cafeteria. The buttery scent of pancakes, sweet maple syrup, and smoky bacon fills the air. I close my eyes and see my parents in our sunny kitchen making breakfast and my eyes fill with tears. I quickly wipe them away.

The cafeteria kitchen is open and is in the center of the room with the serving area shaped like an
L
around it. The bottom of the
L
is where you pick up your orange plastic tray, then follow the line as it snakes around cafeteria-style with windows filled with selections: individual cereal boxes dropped in small ceramic bowls, sliced fresh grapefruit, bananas cut in half, bagels. There’s also an area to order hot food, like the pancakes Marisol was raving about last night. I make a note of where the line ends.

First I’m going to look for my roommates. I start at the tables closest to the door, round walnut laminate tables with orange, blue, and green plastic chairs around them. I scan them for familiar faces. Then I turn around.

Some girls look up at me. Maybe it’s the bandanna, but they size me up real fast then go back to their breakfast. Finally, I see Marisol’s shiny black hair pulled back in a braid. I wave. Marisol waves back, then turns to Suzanne who is dumping syrup on her pancakes. Romy sips her orange juice and looks the other way. I feel a freezing blizzard of a cold front as I weave my way toward my roommates.

“Hey, guys,” I say as I pull out a chair. They greet me back, but it’s not enthusiastic at all. “How are the pancakes?” I ask.

“They’re good,” Marisol says.

“You know, you guys could’ve woken me up. In fact, in the future, feel free.”

“We didn’t think you wanted to get up early,” Suzanne says matter-of-factly.

“I went to the gym first and ran on the treadmill,” Romy says. “I do that every morning.”

I’ve never run for exercise in my life, but I’m not going to admit it. “That’s great,” I tell her.

“And I went on a walk around the campus this morning.” Marisol smiles. “Trish gave a tour.”

“Oh, I would have done that,” I tell her.

“Really?” Marisol looks at Suzanne and Romy.

“Look, I know I was in a bad mood yesterday….”
Just saying it makes me almost start to cry, but I stop myself. “I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t anything about you guys—it’s me.”

Suzanne looks at Marisol, who looks at Romy. “Well, we thought…”

“What?” It sounds almost desperate coming out of my mouth.

“We heard you were taking a single room—moving out.” Suzanne shrugs.

“It isn’t definite.”

“This morning Trish said the list cleared and that you still wanted a single.” Marisol looks down at her breakfast. That Trish has a big mouth.

“Well…” And I don’t know why this comes out of my mouth, but it does: “I don’t have to take the room.”

“You should if it will make you happy,” Romy says.

“I don’t know what will make me happy.” My eyes sting with tears. I can’t believe these girls have, like, talked about me and decided that I’m not worth fighting for after one day.
One
day!

“That was obvious yesterday. You seemed…annoyed.” Marisol chooses her words carefully.

“We’re
all
new here. You seem to forget that.” Suzanne now sounds like a diplomat at the U.N. “It’s hard for everybody. So you should do what’s good for you because
the truth is, we want to have fun in our room and we don’t need an anchor dragging us down.”

“I’m not an anchor. And…I wasn’t annoyed at you.” I turn to Romy. “Or you.” I look at Marisol. “Or even you.” I take a deep breath. “I don’t adapt quickly to new situations.”

Marisol smiles with relief. She looks at the girls. “I told you Viola had her own sense of humor. We misinterpreted her feelings.”

“That’s it. That’s all. I was on the single room list when I applied. Now I’m here, and it’s changed.” I don’t need to tell them even
I’m
shocked that I’m turning down a single. I’ll look like a wing nut. I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, but I know for sure that I don’t want to wake up another morning and feel what I felt on this one. “I want to stay in our quad.”

“Well, go get your breakfast. They stop serving in ten minutes. By the way, the pancakes are scrumpts.”

I don’t even mind that Marisol drops the end of the word just like Trish. I go to the line and pick up an orange tray. I load on my carton of milk and orange juice and napkin and utensils. I look over at the girls, who laugh and talk as though we didn’t just have a totally intense conversation.

“What would you like with your pancakes?” asks an
upperclassman on work study wearing a chef’s hat and a name tag that says “Shawna.”

“Everything.” I exhale. “Hash browns, bacon, hot raisins, syrup.” I pile on a small paper hat of butter and another filled with peach marmalade. I don’t even like marmalade, but I take it anyway. I’m going to fill my tray with food options till it’s so loaded down and heavy it practically breaks my arms in half. Suddenly, I realize that I’m hungry,
really
hungry—the kind of hunger that can only come from being given a second chance.

“Wow. You don’t look like a big eater,” Shawna remarks.

“You have no idea,” I tell her.

Caitlin Pullapilly’s mother does not allow Caitlin to text or IM unless it’s a life-or-death emergency. It’s like 1990 for crying out loud, when it comes to communicating with Caitlin. What’s next, Mrs. Pullapilly? Hello Kitty stationery and postage stamps? Please!

Caitlin and I have to send plain old emails—and only on a schedule—because at Caitlin’s house, everybody shares one PC and it’s in the living room so it’s not like there’s a lot of privacy. I think this is so lame. Practically all of Caitlin’s relatives work in computer science. They are, like, geniuses and brilliant. Ridiculous that at home
they live in the Old West when it comes to computers. So when I open my email there’s a long letter from her because she has to get in everything all at once.