Is That You, Miss Blue?

by M. E. Kerr

  The first Wednesday of the new month was traditionally request night in chapel. Faculty members and students could request any hymn from Miss Able, who manned the organ.

  Immediately Miss Mitchell raised her hand and requested #397.

  We all rose and began singing, and Miss Mitchell stared hard in Miss Able’s direction until Miss Able met her eyes.

  I look to thee in ev’ry need,

  And never look in vain;

  I feel thy strong and tender love,

  And all is well again;

  The thought of thee is mightier far

  Than sin and pain and sorrow are.

  Everything was going along as always until suddenly I became aware of something odd during the singing of the second verse.

  It was something Sue Crockett was doing, and I stopped singing myself, long enough to hear.

  “Me in up springs heart new then And, thee of think only me let But.”

  I looked at her but she pretended she was singing the hymn no differently from anyone else. She looked back at me blankly.

  For some reason I looked back at Agnes Thatcher. She was standing there holding the hymnal upside down.

  I couldn’t see Cardmaker. She was in the last row.

  “Life quick’ning thy flows me Around,” Sue was singing. I nudged her.

  “Why are you singing it backwards?” I whispered.

  “Because religion is backwards,” she answered.

  Then the bell in my memory which was trying to ring rang, and I remembered Cardmaker’s vow to start an atheist club.

  “How can you be an atheist when your mother owns a white Mercedes?” I said.

  “A Mercedes has nothing to do with God.”

  “How can you not believe in God with all you have?” I persisted. “Atheism is for have-nots and malcontents.”

  “You know nothing about atheists,” she said. “A lot of us are worth fortunes.”

  “Way your it have.” I shrugged.

  At the end of #397, APE huffed herself up to the podium and rasped out, “No talking during hymn singing! How could you all be so rude! I’m sick in bed about it! Hear?”

  Cute Dibblee requested #434, which was nothing more than “Mine eyes have seen the glory,” and most everyone liked it and sang a rousing chorus of Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

  Still Sue persisted: “On marching is truth His!”

  I caught up with Cardmaker later, in the line to Dombey and Son.

  “I see your club is organized.”

  “You’re pretty dense,” she said. “We’ve been organized for weeks. We even rushed Agnes right under your nose.”

  “That was the reason for all the tricks then?”

  “Join us,” Cardmaker answered noncommittally, “unless you’re afraid if you cease to believe you’ll cease to behave.”

  “Who said anything like that?”

  “That’s what a lot of people think,” she said. “People don’t understand atheists.”

  “I think I do,” I said. But I didn’t tell her about my father. I decided against it—not just because we were in the dinner line and there wasn’t time, but also because for some reason it embarrassed me. Even though Cardmaker might think it was really neat, I held back because I was ashamed of the fact.

  “Why should you understand atheists?” she said. “Your life is without flak of any kind, so you believe.”

  “I have flak in my life,” I said. Neither did I talk to Cardmaker about my mother.

  “Oh really? What kind? A pimple on the chin in the morning? An A minus instead of an A plus?” She looked up at the ceiling and rolled her eyes around as if to belittle everything about me. “It must be very hard on you.”

  “Cardmaker,” I said, “what’s the matter with you? We used to be pretty good friends, I thought.”

  “My mother’s in the hospital,” she said. “We can’t afford it. I’m burned up at everything. My father’s still in trouble. Life is a hole you fall down.”

  “I know it,” I said.

  “I’m glad you didn’t say of all times I needed God more than ever,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “That’s what Cute said,” she said. “That dumb hillbilly!”

  “What do you have to do to belong to your club?” I said.

  “You have to actively oppose organized religion. You have to perform anti-organized religious tasks. I smell corned beef and cabbage,” she said as the line moved.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “We don’t want anyone who has to think about it. I told you that. Every member also has to perform a major act of unfaith in order to become a full member.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t give examples,” she said. “It gives too much of our secrets away. But each M.A.U. is assigned by me to the individuals.”

  “You decide what it’s to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to eat at Miss Horton’s?” I asked as the line moved more rapidly.

  She shook her head. “We’re all eating at Miss Balfour’s because we can plan things. She’s always busy watching herself in the mirror.”

  I wasn’t asked to join whoever “We’re all” was supposed to be.

  I ate at Miss Horton’s table and over my shoulder noticed Cardmaker, Agnes, and Sue Crockett conferring together at the far end of Miss Balfour’s table. No one else at the table seemed to be involved.

  I figured that so far there were only three organized atheists at Charles.

  After dinner I found two things in my mailbox. One was an invitation to the Thanksgiving Day Dance at Wales Military Academy. It was from Sumner Thomas. Attached to it was a poem.

  You are enough bells

  And enough candles

  You are all the summer nights I can sleep

  And enough dreams.

  I had not seen or heard from Sumner Thomas since the night of my asthma attack, when he marched over for the dance.

  The second message in my mailbox was a telegram.

  TRY TO CATCH ME

  ON TELEVISION TONIGHT

  AT 9:30

  CONTROVERSY CHANNEL 6

  LOVE DAD

  Eleven

  AT NINE FIFTEEN, ARMED with a permission slip from APE herself, I left study hall to go to Tale of Two Cities. Agnes Thatcher accompanied me, since APE insisted that an E.L.A. member must be in my company while I watched my father on television in Billy’s sitting room.

  (If it strikes you odd that Agnes Thatcher was both an Extra Lucky Ass and a member of Cardmaker’s atheist club, it struck me that way, too.)

  Billy was the only person at Charles School allowed television. It was claimed that he watched only the news and certain erudite specials on the boob tube, but there were other claims that any afternoon at all between one and four, the soap operas were in process along T. of T.C.

  Billy seemed really delighted to have company, and he had already placed two large leather chairs before the tube, with a small table between them. On the table were glasses and two Coke bottles resting atop some chipped ice in a silver wine bucket.

  He was dressed to the teeth, as usual, and the glitter from his Phi Beta Kappa key, strung across his pinstriped vest, was so bright it was impossible not to imagine that he had shined it for the occasion.

  I never figured out whether Agnes’ presence was because APE thought it would protect Billy from me, or me from Billy, but Agnes had been her usual ungracious self about the request. When I’d asked her, at the beginning of study hall, she’d held her nose with two fingers of one hand, and reached up to flush with the other—the familiar gesture.

  Billy was the only adult at Charles who perceived that it was not necessary to act out in pantomime whatever it was he wanted to communicate to Agnes. He didn’t shout at her, either.

  He asked us both if we wanted some Ritz crackers to go with our Cokes, and he apologized because he didn’t have anything to put on them. He said he was suppos
ed to be on a diet, and he wasn’t supposed to interfere with our rules and regulations. I had the idea that all the while he was making this little speech, he had a Sara Lee chocolate cake in his freezer (there was a compact refrigeration/freezer unit next to a small sink and petit stove, in a far corner of the room, partially hidden by a screen). I believed he had a box of Barton’s liqueur-filled bonbons in the top drawer of his large oak desk, too. He was no less terrified of APE than all of us, I believed.

  There wasn’t much small talk before the program started.

  This is how it went:

  TRIPP: This is James Tripp and the name of this show, as you know, is Controversy. Good evening, viewers, and good evening to my guest, Mr. Theodore Brown. Or is it Dr. Brown?

  BROWN: Good evening.

  TRIPP: Is it Mr. Brown or Dr. Brown?

  BROWN: It’s Mr. Brown. You can call me Ted.

  TRIPP: Then it isn’t Dr., after all, even though your business seems to be some form of healing?

  BROWN: I don’t think of myself as a healer. The people who come to me are not sick. They’re seeking something, which is why we call them seekers.

  TRIPP: Ah, yes, the seekers. At one hundred and fifty dollars a weekend and up. And you are not a doctor. You do not even have a degree in psychology, do you, Mr. Brown?

  BROWN: No, I don’t have a degree in psychology. Neither did Sigmund Freud, if I may be bold enough to insert his name in these proceedings.

  TRIPP: But Sigmund Freud was a doctor. An M.D.!

  BROWN: A biologist, if I recall accurately. He was not trained in the field he entered and excelled in. He was not confined to a limited area of inquiry.

  TRIPP: And you certainly aren’t, either, are you, Mr. Brown? For example, your experiments in human sexuality.

  BROWN: Yes. Certainly human, not bestial.

  TRIPP: You’re a very flip fellow, Mis-ter Brown. Perhaps it’s a cynicism derived from skipping about from field to field. At one time you were actually doing readings, weren’t you, of people’s handwriting?

  BROWN: The study of graphology is perfectly legitimate.

  TRIPP: I suppose as legitimate as tea-leaf reading, wouldn’t you say?

  BROWN: I haven’t done any tea-leaf reading. I think you should inquire more about Attitudes, Inc., which is our main endeavor. We have a group of—

  TRIPP: Mis-ter Brown, I’m the host here, and if there are any speeches to be made, I’ll make them.

  BROWN: I thought you were going to extend the guest the courtesy of describing his present work, that’s all.

  TRIPP: I will, Mis-ter Brown, just as soon as I let the listener put my guest’s past in perspective…. For example, Mis-ter Brown, in your various experiments with sexuality, isn’t it true that your own wife participated with a young research assistant, and that your wife left you—as did the research assistant?

  BROWN: The fact is—

  TRIPP: The fact is, Mis-ter Brown, if Brown is your real last name, the fact is you specialize in phony setups which feature very loose morality and, in plain words, provide facilities for people who indulge in ob—

  That was as far as Mr. Tripp got before Billy trotted rapidly across the room and turned off the set.

  “I think we’ve had enough controversy, don’t you?”

  I said yes, but I couldn’t look him in the eye, and I couldn’t look at Agnes, either.

  Billy said, “Those programs hire hosts that do everything to antagonize their guests, including lying about them. They try to be suspenseful, but they invariably result in bad taste.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It was very pleasant having you here all the same,” Billy said.

  “Lo leet you,” said Agnes.

  “Yes, well, I’m glad you could come,” he said.

  “Gite,” said Agnes, and we both started walking toward the door.

  Agnes opened it and started out and I started after her. Billy said, “Flanders?”

  I said “What?” without turning around to look at him. I just stood there with my back to him and my head down.

  “Flanders, Freud was a biologist. Your father was right. And he did a lot of experimenting where others thought he shouldn’t. At one time he even got himself addicted to cocaine. Flanders?”

  “What, sir?”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not, sir,” I said. “Most of that junk is true. I guess it all is. I guess when Mrs. Ettinger hears I’ll be sent home.”

  Agnes was standing outside waiting for me. I still hadn’t looked at her face.

  Billy came up around me and stood before me. He looked up at me and said, “I won’t tell Mrs. Ettinger, if you’d prefer. But it wouldn’t matter. We didn’t enroll your father. We enrolled you.”

  I said thank you. I was remembering the perspiration that began to dot my father’s forehead when it began getting rough for him.

  “My father means well,” I said, because I honestly felt that, even after what I had heard, even while I was still in the process of perceiving so many things—why the advanced therapy was always in another building, why we sometimes received obscene telephone calls I was always told to hang up on instantly…and even why my father didn’t really want me for weekends in the new Maryland place. I would only be in the way of all that sort of thing, without my mother to keep an eye on me, and me not knowing anyone in town to fill my time with. I would only be underfoot.

  Billy said, “Remember something, Flanders, about the Mr. Tripps in this world: When someone goes out to beat a dog, he can always find a stick.”

  “Good night, sir,” I said.

  “Not that your father is to be compared with a dog,” Billy said. “It’s simply an old saying.”

  But I was thinking in a lot of ways he was a dog, a dirty dog if it was true that he had involved my mother in—I couldn’t finish the thought. I wanted to push it out of the way.

  She’d never had a mind of her own. I’d always remember her mouthing his opinions, beginning most of her sentences with “Ted says” and “According to Ted—”

  I felt Agnes sock me in the shoulder as I stepped out onto Tale of Two Cities. She hurt me and it even felt good—probably saved me from having another little accident, I thought; light into me, Agnes.

  “Dand!” she shouted. That was my name in Agnesthatcher.

  I looked at her and she had a furious expression. She made her nose pug to imitate the snub-nosed Mr. Tripp. Then she made the motions of a prizefighter, dancing around punching an opponent.

  Much later that night, long after light bell, when I returned from the infirmary after another injection of epinephrine to quiet an asthma attack, I found a note on my floor which Agnes had pushed under my door.

  What did you do to deserve tonight? What did any of us do to deserve things? Aren’t you ready to join AAAC?

  Unfaithfully, A.T.

  P.S. Your father’s great-looking!

  I wasn’t ready to become an atheist yet, not because I believed that much in God, but because I didn’t believe that much in my father anymore. Not enough to want to be what he was.

  Twelve

  ON THE WAY TO Wales Military Academy for the Thanksgiving Day Dance, I sat beside Miss Sparrow on the bus. She was a redhead like me, with freckles and blue eyes like me. I hoped I wouldn’t end up like her, for she had an air of tragedy about her. She taught drama and smelled of strong Turkish cigarettes, and she was the only member of the faculty who dressed with a great deal of style. She wore fur-lined capes, and scarves with large bold patterns, hats with feathers, and fantastic shoes with toes and heels carved out, wedgies, slippers, a vast assortment. When she wasn’t in The Caravan, where it was rumored she chain-smoked sixteen cigarettes at one sitting, she was in her room reciting scenes from plays into her tape recorder. Everyone said she was secretly in love with Reverend Cunkle, and he with her, and just to be near him she had given up all her Broadway dreams. He was married, with a family of four, and lived
across from Charles School opposite St. Thomas church. About the only time they saw each other was during play rehearsals, since he took an active interest in anything theatrical.

  “Are you excited?” she asked me.

  I wasn’t. I was wishing Sumner Thomas was Cute’s cousin, John Dowder, for one thing! For another, there is definitely something unexciting about an afternoon tea dance.

  “I’m not too excited,” I said. “Were you, when you were my age, at dances and things?”

  “I was a drama bug,” she said. “I had no time for silly boys.”

  “Not ever?”

  “Seldom,” she relented. “I went to high school with Ernestine, and she was the one the boys chased.”

  “Miss Blue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Our Ernestine Blue?”

  “Our Ernestine Blue. ‘Nesty.’”

  “‘Nesty.’” I repeated the nickname, trying to conjure up some image of Miss Blue which would fit with this new information.

  I said, “I never thought you were that old.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “I thought you were about thirty-five, but I thought Miss Blue was at least twenty years older!”

  “I’m thirty-nine. She’s a little over forty.”

  “Miss Blue?”

  “Our Miss Blue,” she assured me.

  “Well, I wonder what happened to her?” I said, and as I said it, the driver of the bus shouted out, “WALES!” We were there. With a great whoosh the front door of the bus opened.

  Before I got up, I turned to Miss Sparrow. “What happened to Miss Blue?” I said.

  “I lost track of her after high school. Her family moved to Kentucky.”

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I mean look at her now.”

  “Everyone changes,” Miss Sparrow said.

  “And you’re not friends now?”

  “I didn’t say we weren’t friends now.”

  But they weren’t, even though she didn’t say they weren’t. No one was friends with Miss Blue so far as I knew.