The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  “Now, I don’t believe in Greek gods or inflexible fate,” she continued. “And I don’t believe we can be in control of how we are born, or for that matter, who we are born, or when or how we’ll die. But we have some control over how we live. We can pray to Lachesis and sway her to choose better lots for us.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She squeezed my forearm, and energy from her grip coursed through me. “You can transform yourself, Judy. You can take control. Let your relationship with Philippa guide you. Friendship is like a prayer to the gods.”

  “Okay?” Her hand was tightening around my arm, and I was beginning to feel overwhelmed.

  “But be wary of family. Families are in Clotho’s domain—and Atropos.” Although her eyes were motionless, I detected a wild feeling stalking behind them, caged in. “They are the beginning and the end, but they don’t have to be the in-between. They don’t have to determine us.” She seemed to be talking about herself, about something painful. She wanted me to respond, perhaps something clever or knowing or just considerate, but I couldn’t find the words. Emotion continued to pace behind her gaze. Abruptly, her eyes fell away, and she released me. Jesus. What was all that about? “Philippa’s good for you,” she added. “That’s all I mean.”

  “Sure,” I said, noticing an old Negro woman hobbling toward a bench on the other side, hunched over a cane, her coat bulky and stained, her hair tucked into a dingy purple hat. “What about her?” I said, and Miss M watched her inching forward, her cane tapping the pavers in metronomic rhythm. “Do you think she prayed to Lachesis?”

  “Every day of her life,” Miss M said, smiling sadly.

  Just beyond the woman, as if in counterpoint, Philippa was striding toward us, her ponytail swinging back and forth. She gave us a little wave, and Miss M said, “Ah, her ears must be burning!” Philippa was in a pale blue cotton dress and light cream sweater, and her cheeks were rosy from her hustle across the park. “Miss Martins?” she said, nodding with a touch of deference, “I didn’t know you were—”

  “I was just passing by and spotted Judy bent over her book. I felt duty bound to save her from sweet melancholy!”

  Philippa smiled, perplexed. “Well,” she said, “I lost track of time. I was journaling in the library, and suddenly, it was five o’clock!”

  “That’s wonderful,” Miss M said, her eyes lighting up. “It’s good to know you keep a journal. All girls should keep journals. I’ve kept one off and on for years. Dipping in and out as I needed to. It’s a great place to get things out of your mind and onto the page.”

  “I’ve always kept a diary,” Philippa said, adjusting the stack of books clutched to her chest.

  Miss M stood, stretched out her arms, and said, “Let me treat you both to a snack. Perhaps a soda or something.”

  Philippa and I glanced at each other to verify the change of plans. We followed Miss M across the park to a small café that I’d never been to: the Bright Spot. The inside of the café was cramped, but in front of it, spread across the sidewalk, were clusters of small café tables. We ordered sodas, pulled a third chair up to the table, and gathered around it. A breeze glided across the park, and the sun warmed us.

  At first, the conversation was halting. Philippa treaded carefully, either wanting to impress Miss M or at least not embarrass herself, which I understood but was irritated by nonetheless. I yearned for the intimacy Miss M and I had when it was just the two of us. Understanding how to drive a conversation, our teacher began asking us questions about ourselves, but not the usual questions. She didn’t ask what we were studying in history or what we like to do for fun. She asked us: “Who do you think is the best writer of the twentieth century?” I said D. H. Lawrence, and Philippa said Daphne du Maurier, who was a little too popular to have the proper ring of sophistication, but Miss M thought both of our answers were “splendid.” Then, she asked us, “Where would you most like to travel in the future?” We rattled off every exotic location we could think of, but Paris topped my list. Something about its mixture of culture and ruin appealed to me—a phoenix rising from the ashes of war. So romantic! Philippa mentioned Scotland, citing its steely gray skies and rugged highlands, its ghosts and castles, its literary mood, but in the end, she found herself agreeing with me on the City of Light. Miss M told us that she wanted to visit San Francisco, and Philippa lit up and began listing its merits, bursting with enthusiasm. Then, the conversation shifted, deepened. After taking a long swallow of her soda, Miss M said, “What do you two make of the opposite sex?” The question seemed to throw Philippa, but I piped up: “They’re more an obstacle than an opportunity.”

  Miss M laughed and said, “You’re not wrong.”

  Philippa smiled and sipped her drink primly.

  “I don’t give boys much thought,” I said. “I never want to depend on one.”

  Miss M raised her eyebrows, impressed. “It’s not easy, but you can do it. Both of you can.”

  Philippa absorbed all this but said nothing. For a moment, we were quiet, soaking up the beautiful afternoon, ruminating on the problem of men. Ending the lull, Philippa perked up and asked Miss M: “Where did you go to college?”

  “Mary Todd,” she said, tilting her chin up. “It’s a women’s college just outside Richmond, Virginia. Are you serious about college?”

  “I’d like to study literature,” she said. “My mother was a literature major. I’ve read quite a bit. Austen. Dickens. The Brontës.”

  Miss M set her elbows on the rickety table and leaned toward her: “Have you read Wuthering Heights? It’s our next book. It’s delicious.”

  “It’s one of my favorites. It was one of my mother’s favorites, too.”

  I was curious about what had happened to Philippa’s mother. She’d clammed up about her before.

  Miss M sized her up, eyes sparkling. “You have a passion for literature, don’t you? You both do.” She glanced at me. “You write wonderfully, Judy—very close to the bone. I appreciate your directness. And Philippa, you have a way of drifting into and out of intriguing ideas without losing your way. You have what I call a strong ‘thought compass.’ These are gifts. Don’t underestimate them.” She smiled at each of us, lingering a beat on our faces, as if to make sure her words sank in. “You know what I would love?” Her gray eyes danced, and we were alert with anticipation. “I’d love to hear you read from your own writing. A sentence or two.”

  “I just have a few of my random notes about Keats,” I said, feeling a bit thwarted.

  “Read one!” she said, as if it was a lark. “Don’t worry, I won’t judge you.”

  I flipped open my book, and at the bottom under “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” I’d written a few trailing thoughts. I didn’t want to read them. If I came across as stupid or, worse, naive, I’d be embarrassed. But her gleeful eyes wouldn’t let me off the hook, so I read this: “Keats is addressing the images on the side of an urn. He pelts questions at it, even though, of course, it can’t respond. He likes its contradictions: the scenes it depicts are full of action, but none of those actions are completed. The urn itself is ancient, timeless, but his interaction with it is fleeting, diverting. The urn is both satisfying and unsatisfying. All art is that way, I think, both resolved and unresolved.”

  “Brilliant!” Miss M put her hands together, her manicured nails glossy, impeccable. She looked at Philippa: “See, she gets right to it. The kernel!” I sat up straight, proud, beaming—and then a little embarrassed that I’d allowed her approval to affect me so much. “And now, Philippa. What are you going to share? Perhaps something from your journal you’ve been furiously writing in?”

  Philippa glanced down at the stack of books that she’d placed beside her chair. I could tell she was uneasy about reading, for the same reason I was, I imagine. She smiled meekly and fished out her diary. It had a delicate cherry blossom design on it—very pretty, very her. She opened it up and began flipping through the pages, her eyes scanning and skipping, making
a restless search for something suitable for our teacher’s ears. “Philippa,” Miss M said, lightly chiding. “Close your journal and open it to a random page and read it. If it’s too private, just do the same thing again. I want to hear your voice unfettered. You, on the page.” Philippa turned white, forced a smile, and then did as she was instructed. The pages fluttered through her fingers. “Stop. Just there,” Miss M said. Philippa craned over the milky paper, covered with her loopy script. She blinked, swallowed, and shook her head no. She repeated the gesture, stopping again at Miss M’s command. She took a breath, and said, “This is from the end of the summer, just after we arrived in DC.” She flicked her eyes at me, then read, “Today, I started unpacking my things. It’s a miserable task. I found some of my mother’s keepsakes.” She paused, worrying the edge of the page.

  “It’s okay, dear,” Miss M said, her voice at once soothing and tinged with anticipation.

  Philippa went on: “It’d been a long time since I leafed through the yellowing and brittle human-interest articles she wrote for local newspapers—pieces about piano protégés, spelling bee winners, struggling single mothers, down-and-out Dust Bowl farmers, women scientists, and dock workers. When I read through them, I imagined, not just who she was, but who she might’ve been.” Her cheeks flushed, but she continued. “According to Dad, she wanted to be a novelist and tell stories about the lives of everyday women doing extraordinary things. Because of me, she never wrote a novel. That is, because she had me, because I killed her, because having me killed her.” She halted, closed her diary, and looked away from us and out at the street. So, that was it: her mother died in childbirth. Her eyes were dry, but I understood she’d just offered us a secret part of herself, something she didn’t tell just anyone.

  Miss M leaned toward her and took her hand. “You are so courageous to share that with us! It was beautiful.”

  Philippa smiled at her, her eyes expressing a mixture of gratitude and relief. For a moment, I shared that gratitude. For Miss M and for Philippa. We formed a circle, a version of the three fates, and the thread connecting us was our writing, our private thoughts, like an unbroken line of cursive.

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 9, 1948

  We’ve been bonding over the Romantics. We smoke, sip whiskey that Judy pinched from Mr. Peabody’s decanter (I do a terrible job pretending to like it), and we revel in the flamboyant lives of these poets—their drug addictions, sexual exploits, and socially radical ideas. We swoon over their indulgent language and weigh the pros and cons of an opium addiction: inspired lyricism versus early death? Half of the time we’re making fun of them, the other half we’re taken with them.

  Occasionally, we vent about school or parents or The State of Things. We chat about the fallout of the war, about the upcoming presidential election, and about what we want to do with ourselves. I told Judy I wanted to write like my mother. She told me she’d thought about writing or maybe music but said what she really wanted to be was a flaneur and “cast about Paris, drinking absinthe, skipping stones across the Seine, and studying human nature.”

  Most days, literature demands our attention. Language of any sort—poetry, novels, essays, songs. Even single words stir us. For instance, Judy came up to me today, leered at me, took a dramatic inhale, and said: “unravish’d,” and then, “refulgent,” and, in a deep throaty tone, “disquietude.” I laughed and began improvising: “The unravish’d bride’s restless and… refulgent eyes exposed her… deep disquietude.” Judy added, “In other words, when the groom dropped his pants, his prick was too small!”

  Miss Martins senses us growing close. When she glances our way, I catch warmth in her eyes. Although she doesn’t fawn over us—it’s not her style—she makes subtle gestures, gentle nods and half-smiles, that tell us that she’s with us, that she remembers that day a few weeks ago when I read from my diary about my mother at the Bright Spot, that doing so fused us together. It’s like we belong to a secret society, just us three, and Miss Martins is our guide, our inspiration.

  Judy nabbed a book of Keats’s letters from the school library today. We read them to each other and debated their meanings, attempting our best approximation of a British accent—very Ronald Colman, I think.

  With a cigarette between her lips, Judy read one from December 1817. When she finished, I said, “What is Negative Capability?,” a concept he’d mentioned but not clearly defined.

  “Opposites attract,” she said, taking a drag.

  I must’ve seemed baffled because she shook her head and added: “Why two things that shouldn’t fit together somehow do—like us.”

  “Genius,” I said.

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 13, 1948

  Because of a stupid filling, I had to make up my test after school, but it was difficult to concentrate. Perched behind her desk, lit by a beam of the afternoon sun, Miss Martins looked impossibly fresh in her trim dove-gray suit, mauve scarf, and yellow wedges. She must shop at Woody’s or Garfinckel’s. She’s no penny-pincher, that’s for sure. Where Judy wants to create mystery with her formless sheaths and bulky sweaters—like she wants to keep the exact dimensions of her body a secret—Miss Martins aims to be seen. When I have my own money, I want to shop for darted blouses, form-fitting pencil skirts, and tailored slacks like hers. A real woman’s wardrobe. Judy would say that I’m unforgivably materialistic. But being surrounded by the bourgeois opulence of Château de Peabody, she can’t talk.

  I should’ve studied harder. I only took a brief glance at my notes during lunch. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if Wordsworth or Coleridge wrote “The World Is Too Much with Us.” I could quote Keats—“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it”—but I couldn’t recall who wrote that poem. So, when I turned in the test, I asked Miss Martins.

  She closed her grade book, set aside her pen, removed her delicate wire-rimmed reading glasses, and said, “What did you write on your test?”

  “Wordsworth,” I said. “That must be it, right?”

  She beamed.

  “Sordid boon!” I blurted.

  “Yes, that’s from the poem. It’s funny you latched on to that phrase.”

  “Sordid means ‘morally questionable,’ ” I said. It was all rushing back. Memory works in strange ways. You pull back the curtain on a memory, and then an entire mob comes crashing through.

  “It does. And ‘boon’?”

  “Hmm… A gift.”

  “An immoral gift.” She offered a sly smile.

  I shrugged and returned the smile, a little embarrassed.

  “Well, I hope you answered all the questions about Keats correctly. At this point, you and Judy are devotees.”

  “The question about ‘Ode to the Nightingale’ was a gimme.”

  “For you it was,” she cooed proudly. “Speaking of ‘Nightingale’…” Her voice softened, her head and shoulders dropping into a conspiratorial posture. “Did you know that Judy wants to change her name?” Everything about her gesture felt intimate and secretive.

  “She’s adopted,” I said, wondering if I should’ve offered that information. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t a secret, but she might not know that about Judy.

  She sensed my concern and said, “She mentioned it in one of her compositions. She wants to be called Judy Nightingale.”

  I considered it. “Gee, now I need a literary name.”

  She clapped her hands together, thrilled. “You have one! Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.”

  “Not the same thing.” I waved a hand at it.

  “Why not?” She smacked her desk in teasing reproach.

  “Watson’s such a common name, and detective fiction isn’t serious literature.”

  “What?” she protested, wrinkling her forehead. “I love a good detective story.” She beamed at me.

  “You do?” I’ll admit, I was a little shocked. Miss Martins deigned to read popular fiction? Unbelievable, especially consideri
ng her swooning poetry recitations. I hadn’t taken her for a lover of the lowbrow. She floated above such things. Her lilac perfume swam around in the air, as if little by little, her beautiful skin was dissolving, becoming ether.

  “Nothing gives me greater pleasure,” she said. “I’ll stay up late if it’s good enough. I just finished Ray Kane’s latest, Love’s Last Move.”

  She opened up her desk drawer and extracted the novel. “Would you like to borrow it?” she said, handing it to me. “It has a wonderful surprise ending,” she added, her smile becoming furtive, as if recalling the delicious pleasure of the plot twist.

  I didn’t know what to do, so I took it, holding it out at arms-length. On the cover, a stream of smoke drifted from the barrel of a polished black revolver artfully positioned on a scattering of blood-red rose petals.

  “Take care of it,” she said, winking at me. “I want it back.”

  I said thank you and goodbye, and, still astonished, tucked the “sordid boon” under my arm.

  * * *

  As I walked out the south doors, Cleveland Closs was sitting on the wall’s edge under the portico, reading a textbook, which was strange. It was unseasonably warm and perfect for the park. Everyone else had fled. I caught a glimpse of a lobster diagram. Biology. I tucked Love’s Last Move out of sight, and said, “Hello,” a bit formally, then added, “Why are you still here?”

  He didn’t say anything. His thick blond hair was disheveled, and his iceberg blue eyes were unfocused but somehow intense. I startled him, I think. Over the past few weeks, I’ve watched him from a distance as he sulked with determination in the back of English class.