To Be Sung Underwater

by Tom McNeal

  “Your AP scores,” he said once they were both settled. “They’ve come in.”

  “Are they okay?”

  Mr. Flood had hazel eyes that were at the moment shining bright. “They are to okay,” he said, “what Mount Rushmore is to minute.”

  “That seems good,” Judith said.

  She could see that Mr. Flood wondered why she wasn’t more excited. She wondered herself, and guessed it was because she wasn’t really surprised. She’d expected to do well on the tests, and she had done well. It was all part of the plan. While Mr. Flood bent his head to thumb further through her file, Judith stared into the deep grooves his comb had cut into the red stiff hair. The teeth of the comb, she decided, had to be really large and widely spaced.

  “So,” Mr. Flood said, raising his eyes to Judith, “what colleges are we thinking of applying to?”

  This was a question Judith could easily have answered—she’d spent hours of her idle summer time formulating lists of colleges to which she might apply, ranging from Major Reaches (Princeton, where Amory Blaine had gone) to Slam Dunks (Sage State, where Deena planned to go)—but to Mr. Flood she said, “I have no idea.”

  Mr. Flood leaned forward on his desktop, fixed his eyes on Judith’s, and told her that although he had been the school counselor for seventeen years, he’d never had one of his students admitted to one of the really top-notch schools—the Stanfords, Harvards, or Yales. He kept his gaze on Judith. “Until now, I’ve never had the right candidate.”

  At which point Judith grasped that the real news here was that she now had an ally in this process.

  “Well,” she said, “what do you think we should do next?”

  Mr. Flood smiled. As it happened, he had a plan, and it was already in motion.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of signing you up for the SATs next month,” he said, “and I’ve gotten approval for your enrollment in two classes at the college.”

  What? Judith thought, and Mr. Flood, looking down at his file, said, “Calculus and American literature to 1945.” He smiled up at Judith. “Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. It’s up to you, of course, but I’ve got the go-ahead from both your father and Admissions.”

  “My father?”

  Mr. Flood nodded. “I also talked to him about the schools you might apply to.” A brimming smile. “He takes a real interest in you. He’s the one, for example, who mentioned Stanford.” Mr. Flood chattered on. He talked about how they could use his seven-step plan for writing a “knock-their-socks-off” essay and which teachers should be asked for letters of recommendation and what kinds of points those letters should make. Her head was swimming.

  When she got back to class, Deena leaned over and whispered, “What did Floodcakes want?” and Judith, sensing that she might already be inches past a fork in diverging paths, shrugged and said, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Deena whispered.

  Judith, while checking on the teacher, who was intently watching several students diagram sentences on the blackboard, composed a small lie. “My father enrolled me in classes at the college two afternoons a week”—she squinched her nose to signal her annoyance—“and it looks like I can’t get out of it.”

  And so the school year proceeded, with the private Judith quietly making preparations for a departure the public Judith never discussed with either her father, because he himself never raised the subject, or Deena, because she was afraid it would cause her to retreat protectively, which Judith didn’t want, not as long as she was stuck here herself. The coursework at the college was manageable and even occasionally interesting, and she liked drifting onto campus and into the role of college student. She looked forward to one aspect of the arrangement especially. On Thursdays she had a standing date to meet her father for lunch at the faculty dining room, where she ordered either the Cobb or the Waldorf salad and sat with Professor Toomey more as an adult than as a daughter. “You know,” he told her once, “the other day one of my elderly colleagues wanted to know more about, and I quote, ‘the enchanting creature with whom I was dining last Thursday.’ ” Her father smiled. “When I told the old fool the enchanting creature was in fact my daughter, his predatory enthusiasm waned.”

  Judith, who wondered how foolish and old an old fool had to be in order to find her enchanting, asked who the old fool was.

  “Eldon Markham. He’s on wife number four. Every ten years or so, he takes a new twenty-year-old bride. I suppose to an old fool a series of young wives can seem a bolstering course.” Her father’s expression turned wry. “Though I have noticed that Eldon’s present bride does quite a lot of looking about.”

  This wasn’t the only time her father hinted at a world bigger and more pungent than that of fatherhood and scholarship. During another of their lunches, he remarked that he’d just received the most astonishing question from a student during that morning’s office hour. “We’d made an appointment. He’d said he had questions about Othello. But the first thing he said when he came into my office was, ‘Dr. Toomey, I need to know what to do to get somewhere with the girls here.’ ”

  Her father released one of his low puffing laughs and sat back, as if that were the whole story.

  “What did you tell him?” Judith said.

  “I said that being a valiant example of negritude worked for Othello.” Again he laughed and seemed done.

  “What did you really tell him?”

  Her father seemed amused in Judith’s interest. “What would you have told him?”

  She had no idea. “He didn’t ask me.”

  A small shrug from her father. “I told him if he’d only check the nameplate on the door, he’d see that the name was Howard Toomey and not Abigail Van Buren.”

  Judith said that sounded pretty brutal.

  “Yes, well, I presented it as a little joke, so that was how he had to take it. In any case, what followed was a perfectly banal but congenial discussion of Othello.”

  Judith and her father ate for a minute or so in silence. Then Judith said, “Why do you think he came to you for advice about girls?”

  Her father had ordered pork chops and sauerkraut. He popped the last bite of chop into his mouth and said, “I have no idea.”

  Another silence. Then Judith said, “What would you have told him if you absolutely had to tell him something?”

  “Had to? Why in the world would I have to?”

  Judith borrowed from Deena’s Book of Horrible Consequences. “To keep God from splitting my skull with a lightning bolt sometime in the next ten minutes.”

  “Ah, well, in that case.” He pushed away his plate and sipped from his coffee. “I guess for starters I might’ve suggested being a good listener. And not losing track of one’s backbone.” A slight smile formed on his lips. “A fellow wouldn’t want the girl who would want a spineless man.”

  “And vice versa,” Judith said quickly, and was relieved that after looking over its logic, she believed what she’d said. Evidently her father did, too, because he gave a small nod and said, “Yes, and vice versa.”

  The weeks slipped by. Mr. Flood arranged for letters of recommendation from the college library, the Rufus Sage Hospital, and one of her high school teachers (he gave them each what he called “a model letter for their reference and convenience”), and after several revisions she finished her college-entrance essay without any help whatsoever. She recounted the story of her father falling in love with her mother during the blinking realization that a book might be both an escape hatch from the ordinary and a door into the extraordinary, and concluded that she’d received from both parents—she knew she was laying it on thick here—“not only a love of literature, but also the gift of curiosity.”

  She’d planned on showing the finished essay to her father, but when the time came, she didn’t. She didn’t know why. Somewhere along the line, the process of her application to colleges had become the Unspoken Subject. Her father, probably following the model of his grandparents, didn’t ask questions, an
d although Judith had loved talking about college the year before, when the event seemed distant, she’d become less interested in discussing it as the days brought its reality closer. The truth was, something about going off to college caused a disquiet within her, and the feeling had arisen full-force the morning she was driving down Highway 385, away from Rufus Sage, to take her SATs. Some part of her didn’t want to go away to college, and why that was she couldn’t guess. Leaving Rufus Sage wasn’t a problem. Leaving Deena behind wasn’t an insurmountable problem. Starting a new life wasn’t a problem. Just the opposite. It was what she wanted. And yet.

  In November, Judith’s mother called to say she was going to Paris for Christmas. “I’m going with this brilliant French lit guy at the U who has an apartment in the seventh arrondissement,” she said. Her mother gave the French word the full treatment, and Judith considered asking if she had just coughed up phlegm, but said nothing.

  Jonathan, it turned out, was going, too, and Judith knew there was no possible answer to any question she might ask about this arrangement that she would want to hear. So she mentioned the fact that she’d been applying to colleges.

  Twelve hundred miles away in Vermont, her mother seemed to be covering the phone and yelling, “Come on in!” Then, into the phone, she said, “You’re already applying to colleges?” in a tone suggesting that Judith was jumping the gun by a year or two.

  “Jesuit schools mostly,” Judith said.

  Her mother seemed again to have covered the phone and was talking to someone there in the house. When she came back on, she said, “I’m really happy for you, Judy, how everything’s coming together.” She wanted to hear more, every little detail, but she had company. Could she call back a little later?

  And so the winter passed. The metal fire escape that had lain beside the county courthouse since October was finally attached to the courthouse itself, construction of a new Safeway on Morehead and Third Streets was ceremoniously commenced (to compete, the old Jack & Jill immediately started a policy of doubling its issue of S&H green stamps), wheat rose above four dollars a bushel, and, to Judith’s mild satisfaction, Ironside, McGarrett, and Columbo kept cracking their cases. Judith’s SAT scores were good, but not as good as her APs had been, and her applications to several upper-tier eastern schools were rejected, though she was wait-listed by one, as well as by Stanford, her Major Stretch school on the West Coast. Although Mr. Flood’s attention flagged somewhat after the Ivy League rejections, he still warned against “senioritis,” so as the months slipped by, Judith kept up with her schoolwork, spent odd leisure hours in the company of Deena (more) or her father (less), read novels, and tinkered with the plans she’d made for herself. She had by this time determined that she would marry someone with a quiet sense of humor, a respectable profession, and—she knew this one might be trouble—a bearing that suggested savoir faire (a term she’d lifted from Amory Blaine) without junking the backbone. She herself would have a career. For a long time she’d thought it would be in the law or higher education or possibly business, something anyhow that would require a briefcase, but lately she’d begun reading about the various people involved in the behind-the-scenes production of television and movies. She and her husband would not have children, perhaps because of some physiological shortcoming (preferably his, so that she might appear at once forgiving of him and forbearing of life’s little reversals). They would live in a large house with cheerful wallpaper, high ceilings, walk-in closets, and at least one secret passageway.

  This was the general framework, anyhow. Then, in the spring, the UPS man delivered a small, bare-root citrus tree to her father’s door, and shortly thereafter, on the first Saturday in May, Judith’s father sent her off to buy a large terra-cotta pot to put it in.

  9

  It took two trips in Señor Rocha’s truck to haul Judith’s old furniture to Red Roof Mini-Storage. Besides the bedroom set that had been sitting by the pool, Judith had decided to take a few odd things of her father’s, as well as the old Persian carpet she’d had in her basement room as a girl, and which, since her father’s death, had been rolled and stored in the ceiling joists of the garage.

  “No problem,” Señor Rocha said when he eyed the extra furniture and cartons.

  He’d brought along a nephew named Raul, evidently just up from Mexico, because whenever spoken to, Raul would smile broadly and slide his eyes toward his uncle. Judith had never recovered the Red Roof key from Shutters; the hotel hadn’t called, and she couldn’t muster the will to pursue it. She’d told Señor Rocha that she’d lost the key, and he brought with him a long-handled pair of bolt cutters that snipped the padlock shackle without much effort. After removing the lock, he regarded it for a second or two. “Very cheap,” he said, coming down hard on cheap, and drew from his jacket pocket a used lock, heavier than the other and recently oiled. He inserted its key and the shackle sprang neatly free. “Much better,” he said.

  Judith took the first lock into her hand and looked at it. When she swung the severed U-shaped shackle away, the action seemed strangely familiar, as if it might have come from a not-quite-remembered dream. She’d thought she would throw the lock away—it was useless, after all—but she didn’t. She dropped it into her shoulder bag.

  Within the storage room, Judith and the two men rolled out the pad and the Persian carpet first, then Judith helped with the drawers and lamps while Señor Rocha and Raul moved the heavier objects. After the quagmire that editing had become, it felt good to have work requiring little beyond physical effort. “Anywhere’s fine,” Judith would say to the men, and then add, “How about right there?”

  As they neared completion, Señor Rocha said, “There’s enough room left to live in.”

  “Oh, I’ll fill it up,” Judith said. “I have more stuff to bring later.” This was a lie she didn’t want to linger over. Even with the maple bed disassembled, the arrangement of the furniture had begun to suggest her bygone room in Rufus Sage.

  She walked up to the vending machines near the office and returned with three Diet Cokes and two bags of potato chips (Judith, a little worried about the whole flawless-size-six thing, decided to forgo the chips). Señor Rocha and his nephew squatted in the shade with their backs against the cinder-block wall. They ate and drank and talked in low, genial-sounding Spanish while Judith stood looking out over the nearby buildings, feeling the same cool breeze that had swept through her on her first visit here.

  “Good place for houses,” Señor Rocha said, turning slightly to face the breeze. “Free air conditioning.”

  Judith laughed, and Raul gave his wide smile of incomprehension. He and his uncle went back to Spanish. Judith leaned against the wall. Hers was an end unit that faced east from a slight knoll, and it overlooked stucco buildings, chain-linked storage yards, and a huge, expansive structure, roofed but unsided, where triangular wooden braces were assembled. A large and weathered sign said JAKLOPS TRUSSES. The busyness was the perfect distance away—the whine of the saws was faint, and Judith couldn’t see the faces of the workmen, though every now and then a shouted, or even sung, word or two of Spanish carried on the breeze, along with (or did she just imagine it?) the faint odor of cut wood. For the first time since that afternoon at Shutters, she felt pleasantly transported beyond the borders of her own life.

  Judith turned and said, “I have a question for you, Sergio.”

  Señor Rocha said nothing, but shifted his old buried eyes.

  “I have a friend,” Judith said. “How hard would it be for her to get a Social Security card?”

  Sergio Rocha made an exaggerated frown that was the facial equivalent of a shrug. “Easy,” he said.

  “How much would it cost?”

  Another facial shrug, this time with a smiling component. “Very cheap.” Again his cheap was emphatic. “Fifty bucks,” he said. “Maybe less.” His eyes were calm, and Judith had the sudden idea that his eyes did the listening. He said, “What is the name of this person who needs the Soci
al?”

  Judith printed the name on a piece of paper and gave it to him.

  Three days later, she found a sealed envelope lying on the cutting room table when she entered. It was labeled Mrs. Judith. She opened it, reached in, and—this had the effect of a magic trick—pulled out a Social Security card for Edith W. Winks.

  That night Judith again slept poorly and awakened early. On her way to work, she stopped at a Postal Annex and found that when it came to establishing an address for Edie Winks, she had her choice of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, or Toluca Lake. She chose Toluca Lake, to keep things simple, and a day or two later, at Kinko’s, she had a small photo taken against a solid background while she was wearing a black sweater and long dangly earrings, and another taken with a white top and different earrings, also dangly. Then she used these photos to order identification cards for Edie Winks from two Internet companies, each card to be mailed to Edie Winks at her Toluca Lake address. What she was doing, exactly, Judith wasn’t sure. A kind of experiment, she supposed. A diversion. An alternative form of travel. The life of Edie Winks as an exotic destination, a small Caribbean island surrounded by turquoise water, a single red umbrella on a white beach, beyond phones, beyond televisions, beyond work and husbands and husbands’ assistants, beyond speech, in fact, except—Judith smiled—perhaps a word in the morning with the cook and the gardener, who, come to think of it, were handsome and solicitous men with skin the color of caramel.