The teakettle whistles and I know that Ms. Olivia will be coming through the doorway at any moment. I consider sneaking back upstairs before she sees me.
"Mother, as much as I appreciate your concern for Hallie, the world just doesn't work the way you think it does. If it did, all the poor but clever young souls out there would be attending the best colleges and universities."
I replace the magazine and move back toward the bottom of the stairs. And that's when I hear Mr. Bernard deliver a doozy. "And what about when I was thrown out of Ohio State for having a beer keg in my dorm room and you made Father straighten it out with the president, who just happened to be his fraternity brother from Kenyon College?"
"That's different. That was absurd."
"Absurd or not, I wouldn't have graduated if Father hadn't pulled some strings."
"Then you would have graduated from somewhere else."
"You win. I'm too exhausted to carry on."
I hear Ms. Olivia's spoon go clinking into the bottom of the stainless-steel sink and assume she'll be heading to her den any second now, so I dash back up the stairs.
After Ms. Olivia retires to her den I come back down the stairs and this time cough to announce my presence before entering the kitchen. Mr. Bernard lifts the hanger holding my reconfigured prom dress from off the top of the pantry door. "Mother finished it last night. Isn't it to die for?" Just as Mr. Bernard had promised, Ms. Olivia could sew like a pro. She'd created a knockout gown out of his Macy's find.
That afternoon Mr. Bernard makes me watch the movie Funny Face starring Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, and Kay Thompson. Following that, he has me practice walking in the matching high-heeled sandals until he's convinced I can move properly.
"It's not a balance-beam routine," he keeps repeating. "Put your arms down!" Then he replays part of the movie. "Now observe how Kay Thompson elegantly sweeps into the room at the beginning of the 'Think Pink' number."
After carefully studying Kay sweep, I try again, but Mr. Bernard only groans.
"You would be so statuesque if you'd stop concentrating on walking and just let it happen. Stop staring at your feet. Just face forward, look straight ahead, set your shoulders back, and then glide like a swan moving across a placid lake at dawn."
"What if I fall down?"
"You're not going to fall. And don't take such lengthy strides. It's not a relay race. Poise comes from within."
As Mr. Bernard is making me descend the staircase for the umpteenth time, Mr. Gil walks through the front door carrying a bag of groceries and the newspapers.
“I’m surprised he doesn't have a book on your head and 'The Rain in Spain' playing in the background," says Mr. Gil.
"Honestly, you'd think she pushed a lawn mower all year," Mr. Bernard says to Mr. Gil with exaggerated exasperation.
"I do push a lawn mower all year," I say.
Ms. Olivia appears from around the corner and locates her mislaid eyeglasses on the coffee table. "Lovely," she says admiringly.
"You did an amazing job!" I say.
"I'd be happy to teach you to sew as long as you promise never to admit that you know how. A modern woman must never confess to being able to sew, cook, or type if she wants to make a real career for herself."
"Something about the darts is bothering me," Mr. Bernard says critically and hikes the dress up at my shoulders. "Mother, fetch me your gay deceivers."
"Gay what?" I ask. "Do I look like a lesbian?"
"Décolletage helper," explains an amused Mr. Gil.
"Oh, Bernard, I haven't seen those things for years," Ms. Olivia says dismissively. "Not since our twenty-fifth anniversary party when I had to rent a gown after the dry cleaner ruined mine." No sooner has she said this than Mr. Bernard is detaching the stuffed half-moon-shaped petals from the corners of a rose-shaped pillow on the couch.
"I am not going to stuff myself." I insist. Even I have limits when it comes to playing dress-up. "Besides, it's false advertising."
"Don't be ridiculous," says Mr. Bernard, who literally dives right in by pushing the velvety covered semicircle poofs into my dress, directly behind the darts. "This will be you in another year or so. Just think of it as a spring preview." He takes a step back, clasps his hands together, and finally appears to be entirely satisfied. "Hallie of Troy!"
Mr. Gil nods his approval. After checking my reflection in the front hall mirror, even I have to admit that the dress now looks perfect, as opposed to caving in at the armpits and bunching at the neckline. "Better to be looked over than to be overlooked," Mr. Bernard says in a sultry alto voice.
"Mae West," Mr. Gil interprets.
"Just don't dance near any candles," warns Ms. Olivia. "That polyester filling is highly flammable."
Chapter 58
Heads or Tails ♥
The day of the prom also happens to be the day my reply to the Cleveland School of Art needs to be mailed in if I want to attend the summer program. I'd passed my high school exams, much to the delight of Ms. Olivia and the relief of Mr. Bernard, and so I'll soon have a diploma. Though if I go to college it will mean living on campus and working weekends in the art studios and thus the end of my yard person days. It's a tough choice, no matter how many ways I look at it, and worse, I have to decide by tomorrow!
At about four o'clock in the afternoon I take the information packet, a quarter, and a bottle of Ms. Olivia's apricot cordial out to the summerhouse in order to think about what I should do. Every time I flip the coin and it comes up tails, which means I stay at the Stocktons', I find myself making it into the best out of three. And whenever the best out of three lands me in Cleveland I decide to start over. And whenever I decide to start over, which is often, I take a big swallow of cordial.
However, after an hour of coin tossing all that has been decided is that the floorboards need caulking, as my quarter slipped through the slats, never to be seen again, and the empty cordial bottle is ready for the recycling bin.
By early evening I can hear Ms. Olivia and Ottavio coming out into the yard to enjoy their customary sunset cocktail. Rocky often joins them. He's taken a shine to Ms. Olivia's beau, since Ottavio always hides watermelon candies in his pockets for Rocky to find. I'm quite certain that Ms. Olivia knows my whereabouts, since I asked her if I could have the apricot cordial and she saw me heading out to the backyard.
Mr. Bernard is still in the kitchen, where he's been busy most of the day preparing for the postprom breakfast bash. After much to-ing and fro-ing, he's finally decided on a South of the Border theme. The clincher was the full set of dishes decorated with red chili peppers that he found at a tag sale last weekend, along with two brightly decorated horse blankets that he's planning to employ as table runners. Starting last Monday he's been serving a new Mexican dish every night, experimenting with paella, corn bread, Tijuana chili, and honey-glazed deep-fried dough desserts. Yesterday he even had Ms. Olivia and Ottavio sipping green gazpacho instead of their usual glasses of wine.
"Where's Hallie?" I hear Mr. Bernard call out from the window of the Florida Room. "I want her to sample one of these virgin margaritas."
"I haven't seen her for over an hour," Ms. Olivia says.
"She's not in the house," Mr. Bernard says. "The cars are all in the driveway. I don't think she went anywhere on her bike. She was helping me slice Mexican breadfruit just a few hours ago."
"Perhaps she went for a jog," suggests Ms. Olivia.
"Don't be ludicrous, Mother. Does this have anything to do with the prom being tomorrow night? She's been acting peculiar all day."
I can see Mr. Bernard come out the back door and head toward the summerhouse. Once he's on the trail of something there's no stopping him.
"Why don't you leave her alone, dear?" Ms. Olivia remarks as he makes his final approach. "She's getting sloshed."
"Mother, you're an enabler." Mr. Bernard tries the door handle on the summerhouse, but I've turned the flimsy catch. Though he can obviously see me slouched up against t
he couch through the screen door.
"Holy jalapefios. Mother's correct, for once. You are imbibing."
He makes an eyeshade with his hand and pushes his face right up against the mesh to get a better look at my sad sack self. "It's the ghost of Lars come back to haunt us. Hallie, this is so unlike you."
"Sorry," I say. "I'm fine. Just a little tired. I might skip dinner if that's okay."
"Hallie, will you please unlatch this door? Listen, if this is about the prom, I didn't mean to coerce you into attending. Of course, you should do whatever you want... I just thought it'd be fun . .."
"No, it's fine. I'm going to the prom," I reply sloppily. Though I still don't get up to let him in. Quite frankly, I don't think that I can get up. My limbs feel as if they're filled with lead sinkers.
"Oh. Well, then is something else the matter? I mean, you don't normally tie one on before dinner."
"I'm okay, really. It's probably an allergy to pollen. Tomorrow morning I'll set out the glasses and dishes for the party."
Mr. Bernard abandons his post at the door and I can hear him conversing with Ms. Olivia just a few feet away. There's a buckeye tree practically next to me, right outside the open window. And it's erupting with buttery flowers that reek to high heaven and are making me want to puke. I wonder what idiot decided to call Ohio the Buckeye State.
"Is she drinking to forget or to remember?" I hear Ms. Olivia casually inquire.
"I don't know.” Mr. Bernard raises his voice. "And what difference does it make? Will you just please go in there and speak to her?"
"Sinclair Lewis and William Faulkner did some of their best work under the influence. Perhaps she's just in the middle of an enormous artistic inspiration," Ms. Olivia suggests.
"Like Raphael," Ottavio helpfully suggests and smiles at Ms. Olivia. Because whatever Ms. Olivia says is absolutely dazzling as far as he's concerned. The man ha un grande amore per Ms. Olivia. Last week he presented her with two baby Angora rabbits, which I have to admit are awfully cute. Ms. Olivia named them Alessandro and Manzoni, after the author of The Betrothed, her favorite Italian novel. After A & M mowed down the lettuce, cabbage, and carrots, Mr. Gil and I constructed a spacious hutch for them out of plywood and wire mesh. I assume it's just a matter of time before Mr. Bernard lists them in the phone book.
"I vote we leave her alone," I hear Ms. Olivia say. "Not everyone is a compulsive sharer like you, dear."
"Mother—"
"Why should I talk to her?"
"Because I certainly don't know what to say. Besides, that Unitarian church of yours, that debating society for the religiously challenged, has AA meetings at least twice a day. I think she's upset about the prom or graduation or Craig. Or perhaps it's a womanly concern."
"Bertie, I warned you not to interfere. You'll never change. Even as a boy you were always trying to tame wild animals and bringing every abandoned baby muskrat into your bedroom for rehabilitation. Sometimes you just have to let nature take its course."
"Mother, I'm being serious."
"So am I, my darling. Why must you always treat the word no as a request for more information?"
"Because if you ask me, a sixteen-year-old having a Dionysian revel on the day before her cotillion is a desperate cry for help. It's not as if she doesn't have a lovely dress and matching shoes to wear."
"Oh ... all right. Though it's not as dramatic as all that."
"Not as dramatic as all that? Mother, she's drunk off her ass!"
"Well, I haven't the slightest idea what you expect me to say."
I drag myself over to unlatch the door and then watch while Ms. Olivia nimbly treads the few feet to the summerhouse across shattered buckeye flowers. She taps lightly on the wooden frame, even though we can see each other perfectly well through the screen door.
"Are you receiving visitors?"
"It's open," I reply.
"What an enchanting spring evening to be enjoying some liquid refreshment." She alights on a white wicker chair with a green-and-white-striped damask cushion, and I can tell that her careful eye doesn't miss the Cleveland Art Institute catalog lying on the coffee table with the empty bottle of booze resting on top of it like a paperweight.
"You know, Hallie, some people are born in the right place and time and never think anything of it—just lead their lives, often in the same manner as their parents before them and their grandparents before that." She pauses and looks out the window. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say anything. However I can't help but notice that Ms. Olivia appears radiant. The lines of last winter have disappeared entirely from her forehead, now that they've been filled in again by love.
"And perhaps they're the fortunate ones. Because others can sense that they've been born in the wrong place, maybe out on an onion farm, when inside they're really city folk. Or they were born in Toledo but belong in the Australian Outback. Some people even sense that they were born in the wrong time—that they would have flourished in the nineteenth century or else the 1950s. And many are simply ahead of their time. Galileo was sentenced to life confinement for writing that the earth moves. Hypatia, the head of the Alexandrian Library in a.d. 415, was burned to death for being a scientist."
You can always count on Ms. Olivia to work a woman into her examples.
"Darwin knew he would be persecuted. He purposely held back his findings as long as possible, until a contemporary threatened to 'out' him as an evolutionist. So you see, dear, everyone must experiment to find their own place and time." With that Ms. Olivia rises, smoothes the wrinkles from her skirt, and moves toward the door.
"But how will I know if and when I find them?" I ask.
She turns back and with a quizzical look and contemplative tone says, "I'm not sure we ever truly know. Oftentimes we're only aware when we're not where we belong. Or occasionally we back into our destiny. Or else come upon it by a process of elimination."
"But how did you find it?" I ask.
"By making the biggest mistake of my life," Ms. Olivia replies with an amused glimmer in eyes that shine like forget-me-nots in the kaleidoscope radiance of dusk. "Hasn't Bernard ever told you how I met the Judge?"
I shake my head to indicate that indeed he hasn't. I vaguely recall Herb saying something about a Farmers' Union and picturing a nymphlike Ms. Olivia waving her placard on the steps of a Parisian Court House and catching the eye of the dashing young counselor Abelard Stockton as he confidently marched in to support The Workers.
"The Judge married me," she says and smiles mischievously, fully confident of the shock value of this revelation, "to another man! Or at least he interpreted for the Parisian official and so it was really the same thing."
"Excuse me?" Was it Ms. Olivia or the apricot cordial now doing the talking?
"I ran off to Paris to marry Leon, a dashing and talented French water-colorist I met in Cambridge and with whom I fell madly in love. Or so I thought. And the Judge was boarding with le maire, who performed the midnight nuptials. It was everlasting love at first sight."
But what happened then? How did she know it was Everlasting Love with the Judge? And what about poor Leon? All these questions burst in my mind like firecrackers on the Fourth of July, and yet before I've managed to utter a single word Ms. Olivia has spun on her heel and flitted out the door. Then she briefly pauses in front of the window screen around the side of the summer-house. "Life is a gamble, isn't it, Hallie?" says the gray mesh silhouette. "If you're the type of person who wants to win big, then sometimes you have to bet big."
Chapter 59
Wild Card «
The day of the junior-senior prom dawns clear and bright, the morning sun an enormous disk of pure gold against the liquid blue sky. At breakfast Mr. Gil refers to it as a "Chamber of Commerce day," perfect in every way, the only reason a person needs to live in Ohio. The hepaticas that we planted last month in the blue garden, or le jardin bleu, as Ms. Olivia calls it, appear to have shot up three inches during the night. The house is as aroma
tic as the Macy's perfume counter in Cleveland. Mr. Bernard says it's the fragrance from the Dutchman's-breeches that are closely knitted together in the bed directly underneath the windows of the Florida Room, their cream-colored flowers with fernlike leaves resembling a delicate lace shawl draped across tall green stems. And the cicadas are calling as if it's already summer.
The day passes in a blur of activity and preparation. Threatening me with a steel-pronged circular hairbrush, Mr. Bernard forces me to blow-dry my mane so it looks "more First Lady and less Cowardly Lion." Then he plunks me down with Ms. Olivia at her vanity table and scowls over our heads, all the while insisting upon "more contour and less shine."
Finally it's early evening, I'm all gussied up, Mr. Gil and the Stocktons have officially declared me "exquisite," and Craig arrives.
"You look totally beautiful!" exclaims Craig, handsome in his black tux, red bow tie, and shiny black shoes, clumsily proffering a lovely corsage of red tea roses. Only he appears more terrified than thrilled by the transformation, as if this must be my twin sister and the real Hallie is out back chained to the shed wearing a tracksuit covered with lawn mower grease.
Now, normally I would say something sarcastic, such as "You sound surprised.” But wearing a fancy dress with high-heel shoes and seeing my boyfriend in formal wear makes me feel proper all of the sudden, and so I just say, "Thank you very much." And I glance down to make sure the "gay deceivers" aren't launching themselves skyward like two doves in a magic act.
On the way out the door Mr. Bernard executes a sneak attack on the back of my neck with an atomizer of stinky sandalwood perfume. "Finishing touches," he breezily declares while I wave my arms as if killer mosquitoes are circling.
First we stop at my parents' house. Eric is there with his date, Emily, the permanent rebound girlfriend; my little brothers and sisters are dirty from playing outside all day, and my father is yelling at them not to touch us. Mom is carrying baby Lillian in one arm and a plate of cookies in the other. It's hard to believe that she produced a child only eleven days ago, but after all, she's a birthing machine. The twins have already decorated the baby with small purple sunglasses and plastered a haphazard array of dinosaur stickers across her Snugli.
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