Zipping up my coat at the door, I say, “I like her.”
“Oh. Good,” Cynthia says, and relief is there, soft as a leaf that falls at your feet.
“Are you leaving already?” I hear from the kitchen, and Cynthia’s mother appears. She is wearing an apron with a built-in towel, and holding a potato peeler. Cynthia and I have already made up about my going. I don’t know why her mother has to butt in.
“I have a dentist appointment,” I say. I am sort of starting to believe it. I have a smell in my nose of dentists’ hands. “Thank you for having me.”
“Well, you’re welcome,” Mrs. O’Connell says, and I can tell from her tone she knows I’m lying. I can feel her watching me as I go to get my bike. She is a sticky kind of person, like a spider in a web. I’ll tell Cynthia to come to my house next time.
When I get home, my father is there, standing in the entryway. “Where were you?” he asks. His eyes are flat angry. There is a white crumb of something he was eating on his cheek and I am careful not to look at it.
“I was at Cynthia O’Connell’s house. I told Ginger.”
“Uh-huh. Well, you didn’t tell me. Did you?”
“You weren’t here. So I just told Ginger.”
“She has nothing to do with this. When you want to do something, you ask me, not her. In case you have forgotten, I am your father. I decide where you will and will not go.”
I am not ready to take on the load of this. He has been so much better lately, I’d forgotten how he can turn. The thing to do is get past him, let it soak in that I am home now, he can be done.
“Sorry.” I start to walk past him.
He puts his hand on my shoulder, pushes me back in front of him. “I’m telling you,” he says. “Don’t you start this. Don’t you be taking off places without telling me.”
Oh. I see. He’s been thinking of Diane.
“Sorry,” I say again, and this time he lets me go.
In my room, I take out Cherylanne’s few letters, hold them all together, sort through them one by one, then hold them all together again. I can smell the dinner he’s making. Liver and onions, which I hate so much. Sometimes he makes bacon with it too and then I can mostly cover it up. I put Cherylanne’s letters back, start my homework, and don’t look up until he calls me to eat.
“People, PEople!” Mr. Hadd says. “This is BABY work! One leads to two leads to three! What is the problem with this problem? What do you not understand?” He is so genuinely amazed. Like a star has landed in his lap. Big fat eyeballs, looking out at us. And wounded, too. He looks at us like we have broken his heart. “Katie,” he says. “What do you not understand?”
“Well, just the part … I think …” I hate math so bad. I hate Mr. Hadd so bad. I take in a breath. “I don’t understand one thing you just said. On account of I’m a dummy. Duh.” I hear from the little muffled and surprised sounds the class is making I am a hero.
“Is that right?” he says, but what he means is, keep it up and you’ll go to pay your regards to the principal. That’s what he calls it, pay your regards. Eduardo Hernandez pays his regards about once a week. He always leaves smirking, but when he comes back his face is a little caved in. Everyone is nice enough not to stare at him, but since he sits right across from me I can’t help but see his hurt feelings. Well, now it might be my turn. Mr. Hadd is boring his eyeballs into me. I can keep on my path to make kids like me, or I can be quiet. I don’t really want to go to the principal’s office. I think I could make a good case for myself, but also they might tell my father. I shrug, look down at my desk, let the teacher win. I have other things to do besides get in trouble in math class.
Mr. Hadd sighs and turns to the blackboard, starts writing. He is about squeezing that chalk to death. I watch him put numbers and symbols down, but I am thinking about a new girl I met in our English class today. Taylor Sinn is her name. Sinn! She got seated in front of me. She had a big black purse like grown women have, the good kind of leather. It was gaping open and I saw a pack of cigarettes in there. Benson &c Hedges, menthol. Also a spray bottle of perfume and a natural-bristle brush that is not in drugstores, you have to get them in department stores. She’s really tall, but she’s still our age. She has green eyes slanted just a little to be so interesting, and she has long thick blond hair, straight as a board, and she wears a thin black velvet ribbon to hold it back. Kind of like Alice in Wonderland. I never saw hair like that, shot through with a kind of sparkle. I had to rein myself in not to touch it. I have tried ironing my hair but it has never been so straight as that.
Taylor looked like a model, really pretty, with a face like someone drew it and stood back and said, “Now there!” Her clothes were all just perfect, a heather-colored A-line skirt, a Peter-Pan collar shirt and a heather cardigan. Circle pin. And Weejuns, burgundy. The boys were all having heart attacks and the girls got bristly and moved their butts around in their chairs and tried to act like they didn’t notice her when meanwhile they were practically breaking their necks turning around in little ways to have a look. Taylor knew the answers to every question Mrs. Brady asked, but about halfway through class she got bored and stopped raising her hand. I saw her elbow move from doodling and once I saw part of what she was doing, which was writing words in big fat letters, the kind that are sort of like clouds and lean into each other. I know how to do that, too. She came from a private school, the Bartlett School for Girls. It’s on a hill, really fancy, with a big sign in front and lacy gates, buildings with ivy growing up them. We drive past it a lot and I always wonder what it would be like to go there. I don’t know why anyone would leave a place like that to come here, where half the water fountains don’t work. But the cigarettes might be why. She might be the reckless type, which interests me quite a bit.
“Katie?” Mr. Hadd says. “Want to let the rest of us in on the daydream?”
I look up, try to think fast. And then the bell rings. I don’t get up right away, out of respect for the fact that Mr. Hadd was about to yell at me. But he clucks his tongue and shakes his head, then looks away. I can go. He will stare out the window and think, what oh what can I, Harry Hadd, do with these lamebrains?
Out in the hall, Eduardo taps me on the shoulder. “Saved by the bell,” he says. “Get it?”
“Yes,” I say. And we smile. It is friendly. I see that Eduardo has a bit of gold on one of his teeth. Now we know a little about each other. This is my best day so far.
Two days away from when Diane is to come, the weather turns serious cold. Everything gets frozen, including the pond a few blocks away. It’s a small thing, hidden behind a Mobil gas station. I like it because it’s so private. In the summer, I could wade to the middle and the water would still be below my knees. I will be able to ice-skate there now, and one thing I like is to ice-skate, although I am plain terrible at it. You would think after awhile a person could at least just skate straight ahead. I think I have bad ankles, though, because they lean in toward each other. I can’t stand straight on ice skates. I wobble and fall a lot. Still, this does not keep me from the main pleasure of it, which is that when I skate, in my head I see ballerinas. I have seen them on television often, and once my mother took me to see them for real. I was young, only six, but I remember every single detail about that day, including that sitting in front of me was a woman wearing one of those stoles where the foxes bite each other’s tails, and black round beads are where their eyes used to be. I still do not understand this idea. It seems like whoever made it up was saying, Ho, let’s see just how much I can get away with. The sight of that stole made me feel sick in the knees but I just looked around it to watch the ballerinas. I stayed so still watching them I had a crick in my neck later. They were so, so beautiful and of another world. That’s how it seemed to me. Their faces were full of a glowing peace and their movements were so smooth and silky, like I had no idea a real person could be. Their legs were very long, and their necks. It seemed like their fingers trailed behind their fingers. The
y had their hair up in plain but beautiful buns like Grace Kelly. One of them wore a little diamond crown, and when the light caught it right the sparkle would shine out so hard and far it made you feel like blinking. They wore white see-through skirts with wide ribbon ties that hung down and fluttered in the back. My mother used to tell me when I was little to go to sleep so the fairies could come and paint stars on my ceiling. She said they wouldn’t come unless I was asleep. This of course posed a dilemma. But anyway, I had imagined those fairies wearing dresses just like the ballerinas, so it was kind of a shock pleasure to see them for real. Now I think it would be a shock to see ballerinas dressed in anything but those dresses or doing things like walking around flat. I hope I never do see that.
Anyway, that is why I like to skate. I don’t like to bring anyone else with me to puncture the dream.
After school, I find my ice skates and head for the pond. I have worn my watch to keep track of the time. Our arrangement is that I can go places if I tell Ginger exactly where, and get home before he does. He acted like I was getting a big raise in allowance, two million a week. And I acted low grateful.
Nobody is on the street. It’s too cold. Being out here makes my cheeks hurt and my eyes water; the air I breathe in makes the back of my throat feel raw. Yet I like it, too. It’s kind of exciting. It’s like the air is saying, “HERE!” and your body is saying, “YES, I CAN DO IT!!”
The pond is frozen, all right, and ringed by weeds that have been frosted stiff white. I sit down, pull off my boots, and the air gets in right through two layers of socks. You have to respect that. I put on my skates, line my boots up, then walk crookedly over to the ice. I test the edge with one foot. It’s frozen solid. I walk out a few steps, stand still to take in some breaths of preparation air. And then I start gliding. It’s going well; the ice is not too bumpy and I can go pretty fast. I take a turn around the outside edges and don’t fall once. Then I do it again. Then, since I apparently have all of a sudden mastered that, I think maybe I’ll try something harder. I stop, try to skate backward, and fall down. Well, there. I knew it. It’s always a surprise the first time you fall. That’s the one that hurts the most. Usually by the time I’m done skating falling is so natural I don’t feel it at all. I get up quickly now, try again. But nothing happens except that I take wobbly baby steps in the backward direction. Plus I am ugly bent over like a person mopping a floor. This is the opposite of what to do to think about ballerinas. I try pushing off hard to go faster, and fall again. Falling can actually be boring.
In the center of the pond, the ice looks smoother. I’ll try there. At real rinks, the center is where the really good skaters always leap and spin. And they seem not to be thinking about it at all, not even really trying. Maybe that’s the secret, you have to be nonchalant, let the actions sneak up on your brain without telling it what you’re going to do. I think you stick one leg out, pull it in, and viola, you’re spinning like a top. I go out to the center and try this, think deliberately about nothing, and then quick stick my leg out. It doesn’t work. I fall hard this time, crack the back of my head against the ice. I lie there for a while, stunned, looking at the blue sky above me. Then, as I am getting up onto my knees, I fall through the ice. The water is so cold that at first I don’t feel it. But then I do, and it hurts so bad. I am on my hands and knees in the middle of the pond like a wrong kind of dog. I see my boots over on the shore and they look so warm and friendly to me. If only I can live I can put them on again. I stand up, crash through some more ice, then find some that will hold me. I skate back to the edge of the pond, walk over and sit down by my boots. My teeth are chattering so hard I think I might bite my tongue and start bleeding down my chest. But I don’t. I try to unlace my skates, but I can’t. They are too wet and my fingers won’t work anyway. I squeeze one hand with the other and water runs out of my mitten. And now I can’t separate the fingers I’ve squeezed together. Fear comes into me. I wonder should I yell help, but I feel too stupid. I try anyway. I say, “Help,” in a normal voice. And then I start crying. The tears feel hot.
I look around, see the Mobil station. I’ll go in there, ask if I can use the ladies’ room, and warm up. I’ll get warm enough to go home. And then I’ll never come here again.
It takes so long to get to the station. It is hard to walk on skates, that is not exactly what the designer had in mind. By the time I get there, I feel cold all the way to the core of me. A bell tinkles when I open the door, not the Christmas kind, just a regular kind to say to the attendant, Look alive, a customer’s here. I see a man seated at a desk in the corner. He is reading a newspaper, and he doesn’t look up. He reads like me, I think, and then I can’t believe it, but I fall down.
“Excuse me,” I say.
The man looks up, then rushes over to me. I am an emergency. “Oh, my God,” he says. “What happened here?”
“I was skating,” I say, and then stop talking. I’m shivering too much to talk right now. The floor feels so warm against me. It is a dark linoleum with some yellow specks in it. I see a little puddle starting to form around me and I try to push the water back under me. “I’m l-l-leaking,” I say.
“Wait right here,” the man says, and goes into a back room. When he comes out, he is holding an outfit like mechanics wear. It’s a faded blue color. “Jimmy” is sewn in red in fancy embroidery over on one side.
“Take this back there and change into it.”
I look at him.
“You need to get out of those wet clothes.”
I’m not sure what to do.
“Really!” he says.
I just keep looking at him. I notice that my teeth are still chattering. They are making a loud, clicking sound. I think this is how people with false teeth sound when they eat.
The man sighs, worried impatient, and then bends down to take my skates off. It’s hard for him, too, but he does it. And then I get up, walk back where he told me to go. My feet make squishy sounds, leave big marks. I can’t really feel them.
I feel so embarrassed taking my clothes off, but the door is locked and anyway, I’ve started to think I might die if I don’t change. My underwear is still dry, thank goodness, and I leave that on. Otherwise I would have that dilemma of where do I put my bra.
I come back out into the room and the man looks at my bare feet. “Oh,” he says, and sits down, starts taking his shoes off.
“That’s okay,” I say, and so does he! Right exactly after I say it, he says it too.
He hands me his socks and then he puts his shoes back on without them.
“I don’t want to take your socks,” I say.
“Put them on,” he says, and I do. They do not have a smell, which is so courteous.
He’s mopped up all the water while I changed, and the place feels luxurious now, all dry and closed against the wind. He sits down and laces his fingers across his stomach, leans back in his chair, looks at me. Now that we are done with the drama part, we can relax a little. “So what happened?” he asks. “Did you fall through?”
“Yes,” I say, and then, “it was very solid at the edges.”
“Yeah, you can’t really tell.” He covers up for my ignorance just like me.
A bell rings from outside, loud. A car is there, pulled up to the pump. The white smoke that pours from the tailpipe is all hysterical looking, like smoke gets in real cold weather. Just ripping out of that pipe like escaped snakes, then flat disappearing. “Be right back,” the man says. He goes out and talks to the driver, then puts the nozzle in the gas hole. He pops open the hood, checks the oil. He cleans the windshield perfectly. He does this all without even trying. Then he hangs up the nozzle, takes the driver’s money, says something to him, and comes back in fast, stamping his feet to get the warmth back.
“Whoa!” he says. “Cold!” And then, “Would you like some hot chocolate?”
I nod. The Queen of England has never felt better than this. It is something to be saved. And this man is shiver-handsome. He real
ly is. He has brown wavy hair and blue eyes like Superman. He is wearing jeans and a red-checked flannel shirt, and the buttons are open at the top of his throat in a way I can’t look at. Although I did see a V of very white T-shirt and some dark curly hairs reaching up. He puts some coins from his own pocket in a machine in the corner of the room, then hands me a thick paper cup. It is the too-dark, skinny kind of cocoa but I know that now it will taste delicious to me. Say I could even have marshmallows. “No thanks,” I would say. “Don’t need them.”
“Where do you live?” the man asks. “Can I call your folks for you?”
Even after all this time, I still get a hard knot of pain when I have to tell people that my mother is dead. “I only have a father,” I say. That’s how I do it. I keep her out of it, for sacred reasons.
“Oh. So … should I call him?”
“No!” I say quickly. Oh, boy. My father would have what they call a field day with this. “You what?” he would say about nine thousand times. And then of course I’d get punished. No. I don’t think I’ll tell him. I’ll just let my clothes dry and then go home. The man has draped my things out on the desk top. But they are awfully wet. They’re going to take a long time to get dry. I look at my watch. It’s wrecked. “Do you have the time?”
He looks at his watch. “Four-twenty.”
I’ll never make it.
But then I think of something. “Would you mind if I borrowed this uniform? Could I just wear it home and give it back tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
This is working out fine. I can get back and dry everything before he gets home. Ginger won’t say anything to him, I know she won’t. I can trust her.
“Are you Jimmy?” I ask.
He nods, smiles. “Well, actually, Jim.”
“Oh. I’m Katie. I’m sorry I fell in.”
“Don’t be sorry, I’m just glad you’re all right. I watched you skating for a little while. And then I got involved with the newspaper. Sports page.” He adds that part low, like he’s a little embarrassed.
Joy School Page 4