Enthusiasm

by Polly Shulman

  “ ‘Library Renovations,’ ” I read. “ ‘An extensive overhaul of Forefield’s Robert Rive Science Library and Media Resource Center is on schedule for completion in time for the—’ ”

  “No, not that. Underneath.”

  “What, this announcement? ‘Forefield Fall Formal. The president and faculty of the Forefield Academy look forward to welcoming students, alumni, and their guests to the 97th annual Columbus Cotillion, at 8:00 P.M., Saturday, October 12. Formal attire.’ Well, what good is that? We’re not Forefield students, we’re not alumni, and we’re not their guests. We’re not invited.”

  “Oh, that won’t matter.” Catching herself slipping into ordinary speech, Ashleigh began again. “I mean, That will be of no importance. With the crush of guests, two more will surely pass unnoticed.”

  “You want to crash the Snoot School Dork Dance? Are you out of your candy wrapper? What could that possibly have to do with Jane Austen?”

  “Surely, Miss Lefkowitz, you can see that a gathering of young gentlemen dressed in formal attire, well practiced in time-honored dance steps, and unaccustomed to the company of young ladies—and therefore bound to treat us with modesty and respect—is the ideal place to meet our matches. Can you be blind to the perfection of the plan?”

  Perfection! If the plan had any, I certainly was blind to it. In my experience, at least, boys who hadn’t spent a lot of time around girls were less likely, not more, to behave themselves.

  The sound of a maternal voice came faintly up the stairs.

  “Is that Mrs. Lefkowitz calling?” said Ashleigh.

  “Look—whatever you call me, you’re not calling my mother Mrs. Lefkowitz. She didn’t like it even when she was married to my father. If Helen isn’t formal enough for you, call her Ms. Gould.”

  “I shall call her Madam.”

  Before I could make any further objections, the person in question knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” I called.

  “Honey, I—oh, hi there, Ashleigh, you’re here too. I was wondering. I thought I heard bouncing, but I didn’t see you come in.”

  It astonishes Ashleigh and me that our parents have failed for so many years to notice how we use our tree.

  “Good afternoon, Madam,” answered Ashleigh.

  “Excuseth me, Sir Ashleigh. I bid thee, too, the fairest of afternoons. Evenings, actually. Killed any dragons today?”

  Ashleigh appeared too pained to reply. I took up her cause. “Mom, you’re years out of date.”

  “Oho, years out of date, ameth I?” she said agreeably. “How canst thou tell—the grammar? I pray thee, forgive thine old, antiquated mommeth. Keeping up with the latest in teendom beeth too difficult for me. Dinnertime, honey. Ashleigh, you’re welcome to join us.”

  “I thank you, Madam, but I knew not how far the day had advanced. My parents await me. Farewell.” Curtsying to my mother, the Enthusiast tripped lightly down the stairs and took her leave.

  Chapter 2

  I seek Counsel ~ a Domestic scene ~ Dancing Lessons.

  The next day was Tuesday, known in the Lefkowitz and Gould households as the Day of the Dad. I was glad. Not from any eagerness to spend time with my father, of course; relations between us have been strained ever since he left my mother and me for the Irresistible Accountant (or “Amy,” as he prefers me to call her). Rather, I needed the advice of his next-door neighbor, the savviest person I know: Samantha Liu.

  A visit to Dad and “Amy” often includes Samantha. Our fathers, both pediatricians, share a practice and a backyard hedge; Samantha’s mother, an allergist, also shares the hedge, of course, but she has a separate medical practice. The long bicycle ride over gave me plenty of time to consider Ashleigh’s wild plan. Though my father and stepmother didn’t expect me until dinnertime, I started early, hoping to find Samantha free for a chat. Some subjects are best discussed in person—particularly those subjects that live a mere tree’s breadth away from me. From time to time, Ashleigh and I overhear each other’s phone conversations.

  I was in luck: Samantha was home. Once we had installed ourselves comfortably in the Lius’ hammock with a pair of ginger ales, I opened my heart.

  “Okay, Sam, warm up the advice generator,” I entreated.

  “What’s up? Stepmother trouble again?”

  “No—at least, not yet. I haven’t seen ‘Amy’ for a week. Right now it’s Ashleigh.”

  At that name, Samantha gave an affectionate, twinkly grimace. It always surprises me that the two of them like each other as much as they do. Samantha is more than a year older and at least a millennium more mature. Ashleigh’s reputation for eccentricity prevents her from rising to the upper circles of our high school world, even if she wanted to. Samantha, on the other hand, enjoys the status of a gymnast, a beauty, last year’s president of the sophomore class, and the sister of the famously hot Zach Liu, still an object of near-universal fantasy even though he graduated last year. In fact, it’s a measure of Samantha’s social standing that she can afford to be gracious to someone as odd as Ashleigh (or, I often think, me). Yet Sam is loyal and, though skilled at manipulation, essentially kind.

  “What is it this time?” she asked. “Let me guess: Ashleigh’s taken over your bathtub for her starfish collection? She’s excavating an emerald mine under your basement and you’re afraid your house will collapse? No, wait, I know—she’s decided to go to school every day dressed as Martha Washington.”

  With such intuition, is it any wonder Sam is so successful?

  “You got the first problem right on the nose,” I said. “Well, the left nostril. Not Martha Washington, Jane Austen—close enough, though. Jane Austen doesn’t involve a white wig, which makes her a bit better, I guess. Ash is refusing to wear anything but a long skirt. No jeans, no pants—she doesn’t want her ‘lower limbs’ to show.”

  “Oh, dear. I take it you’ve tried reasoning with her? Told her no one will sit next to her in homeroom and so on?”

  “When did Ashleigh ever listen to reason? Besides, she knows I’ll sit next to her.”

  “Well, you might not be in her homeroom this year, but I see your point. And begging didn’t work either, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Could you move her on to a new fad—get her interested in rooting for the football team or something?”

  I paused to smile at the thought of Ashleigh rooting for the football team. “This is a new fad, unfortunately. It started yesterday. It replaces the Wet Blankets.”

  “Then you’ll just have to bargain with her. Refuse to do something she wants unless she agrees to wear normal clothes. In the meantime, maybe you can find some sort of in-between outfit that would work for either era. A long black skirt or an Indian print, something like that. That way, even though she might not look crisp, at least she won’t look insane. Tell you what, if you don’t find an effective threat by the weekend, let me know and I’ll get a few of the girls on the gymnastics team to come to school in long skirts on Monday, so Ashleigh won’t be the only one.”

  A generous offer! No one, however fond of gossip, could blame a sophomore for dressing like the gymnasts, the most successful athletes at Byz High. Last year the girls’ gymnastics team placed first in twice as many meets as the football and basketball teams combined won games. They were the pride of the school and the leaders of fashion.

  “But I didn’t tell you the worst part yet,” I continued. “Ashleigh’s planning to crash a dance at the Forefield Academy, and she wants me to come with her.”

  Samantha gave a thumbs-up with her ginger-ale can. “There you go! Tell her you’ll go only if she gives up the weird wardrobe.”

  “No way, Sam! You want me to crash a dance at Snoot School? I’ll die of embarrassment.”

  “Face it, Julie, you know you’re going to end up going anyway. You can never say no to Ashleigh. You might as well get something out of it this time.”

  Much as I hated to admit it, she had a point. I finished my
ginger ale, thanked her, and made my way to my father’s house.

  After we finished our dinner of grilled chicken breast marinated in pomegranate juice and spinach-walnut salad with orange vinaigrette—my stepmother is a skillful if fussy cook—Ashleigh called. She was buzzing with news of some sort.

  I told her I would discuss it tomorrow and hung up hastily. The Irresistible Accountant disapproves of teenagers talking on the telephone. She especially disapproves of Ashleigh. Having extracted my father from his messy life, she wants to simplify and straighten out the only aspect that he couldn’t entirely leave behind: me. In her view, Ashleigh belongs to the world of mess. Amy much prefers Samantha, holding her up as an example of ideal girlhood. Although the feeling isn’t mutual, Samantha always advises me to keep the peace with my stepmother. Ash, in contrast, speaks her mind and encourages me to speak mine.

  “Was that Ashleigh on the phone, sweetie?” asked Amy. “I wish you would ask that girl not to call during family time. Your father and I only get to see you for a few precious hours a week. I think it’s very inconsiderate of her not to respect that.”

  Yeah, you wouldn’t want to waste a precious minute that you could be spending picking at me and criticizing my friends. This is what I did not say to Amy. If I had a dollar for every sharp remark I keep to myself, I would be able to fund the Stepfamily Peace Prize, my dream version of the Nobel, to be awarded annually to the person who displays the greatest familial restraint. I considered it especially unfair that, having voluntarily given up the pleasure of talking to Ashleigh, I should still have to listen to my stepmother’s complaints, just as if Ash and I had yapped away on the phone for hours.

  “Don’t you agree, Steve?” said my stepmother.

  “Hmm? Yes, of course,” said my father, getting up and heading to his study. He stopped on the way to kiss his wife on the top of her head. “I love to see my two favorite girls together. You two sit here, relax, and catch up.”

  I waited until the door had swung shut behind him, then took my bag and headed upstairs to “my” room, which I share with the I.A.’s sewing machine. The knowledge that she has an excuse to enter at any moment makes the room feel less than comfortable and far from private. Still, at least I would be alone there.

  “Where are you going, sweetie?” she asked.

  “Homework.”

  “How can you have homework when school doesn’t start for another week?”

  “Summer reading,” I lied. (I had already finished the assigned book—Lord of the Flies—back in June.)

  “Really? What are they having you read? Let’s see,” she said, reaching for my book. “Oh, you lucky girl—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility! I loved that book. She’s my favorite writer. The romance between your father and me was straight out of an Austen novel.”

  Right, like Jane Austen wrote about igsome schemers who steal other people’s husbands, I didn’t say. I awarded myself an imaginary dollar for refraining, bringing the total for the evening up to two dollars, and escaped upstairs.

  When I got home the next morning, I slipped next door in search of news. Finding Ashleigh still asleep, I pounced on her toes.

  She gave a most satisfactory squeal. “Juniper, get off!” she cried, mistaking me for her kitten.

  Mewing and pinching, I attempted to keep her in the dark as to my true identity. Pretty soon, however, she stopped thrashing blindly, opened her eyes, and identified me as a member of the Human Race.

  “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing up so early? What time is it?”

  “Long past a bat’s bedtime. Get up, lazybones!”

  Ashleigh buried her head under her pillow.

  I like morning. It’s the only time when my enthusiasm outstrips hers.

  “Fine, I guess you don’t want to tell me your news then,” I said, making a feint toward the window. That roused her. She sprang out of bed—or, more accurately, she rose with a speed somewhat greater than that of a daffodil emerging from the moist earth in March. In a mere twenty minutes she had put on a selection of interesting clothes and her Austenesque manner.

  “Let us repair to your abode, where there is more room, my dear Miss Lefkowitz—”

  “You mean your dear Julie—”

  “Quite right, my dearest Julia—Let us repair to your abode, where there is more room.”

  “More room for what?” I asked, retreating through the window. Ashleigh followed me out. Our rooms are more or less the same size, but in the course of her enthusiasms Ashleigh has accumulated far more stuff than I have. In particular, one large papier-mâché dragon hanging from the ceiling tends to bump you on the head if you try to walk across her room without looking both ways first. Well, it bumps me, anyway.

  “Dancing lessons, Twinkle-Toes,” she explained, diving through my window and landing on my bed. “If we are to discharge our duties as party guests with the dignity that befits our position as Ladies, we must learn to perform the required steps. I have here a book”—she thumped the pillow with it—“that promises to instruct us in the Art of Terpsichore.”

  “Whoa there! You want us to learn how to dance by reading a book called The Art of Sick Twerpery? Have you lost your lemon drops?”

  “Not sick twerpery—Terpsichore. Terpsichore, the Muse of Dance. It is she who breathes life into the Limbs of the Dancers as they perform their graceful movements.” She flung her arms out to demonstrate; a series of crashes followed. Luckily, nothing broke.

  “Very graceful,” I said, putting my desk lamp back on my desk. “Okay, so you want us to learn to dance by reading a book called The Art of Terpsichore?”

  “No, no, ‘the Art of Terpsichore’ is merely a description of the book’s contents. The volume itself is called Dancing. To be precise, Dancing and Its Relations to Education and Social Life, with a New Method of Instruction, Including a Complete Guide to the Cotillion (German) with 250 Figures. By Allen Dodworth. Published in New York, 1888. New and Enlarged Edition.”

  “I don’t care what it’s called, you can’t learn to dance by reading a book.”

  “Yes, you can. It has 250 figures. See?” She opened the book to show me.

  “ ‘Number Forty-eight. The Inconstants,’ ” I read. “‘Three couples.—They arrange themselves in a phalanx behind the conducting couple; the first gentleman turns round, giving his left arm, crossed at the elbow, to the left arm of the gentleman behind him, with whom he changes places and partners; he goes on without interruption to the last lady; when he reaches the last, the second gentleman, who is then at the head of the phalanx, executes the same figure, and so on for the rest, until every one has regained his place; general waltz follows.’ Well, that’s as clear as crumb cake.”

  “Nonsense, it’s perfectly simple. The first gentleman goes like this, then the second gentleman goes like that, then he takes the lady’s arm, and they go like this, and meanwhile the third gentleman goes like that, and the lady goes like this, and the other couple does the same thing, and then they all dance. Come on, try it, it’ll be fun.”

  I picked up my desk lamp and put it back on my desk again. “That’s a dance for three couples,” I said. “Maybe we should start with something for one couple.” I paged through the book. “ ‘The Galop, the Racket, the Esmeralda (or Three-Slide Polka), the Minuet, the Lancers, the Quadrille.’ You realize, don’t you, that nobody dances these things nowadays? We’d be better off learning the fox trot or the twist. Or just figuring out how to wiggle with dignity.”

  “Fox Trot? Faugh! Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy never danced any such thing. That’s a Twentieth-Century dance.”

  “Well, what makes you think they danced the Esmeralda? This book was published in 1888—that’s a good seventy-five years after Pride and Prejudice.”

  “Okay, perhaps not the Esmeralda,” said Ashleigh, “but they’re always talking about the Lancers. Let’s learn that.”

  “Right, the Lancers. Ever popular with the crisp crowd. Kids were trampling each other t
o get to the dance floor when they started to play it at last year’s prom.”

  Ash shot me her Scornful Look. Taking Mr. Dodworth’s volume in one hand, she began reading minuet instructions aloud while prancing up and down the room. For a third time I returned my lamp to its place on the desk. It was a bit dented, but the lightbulb was intact.

  My mother put her head in the door. “I take it Ashleigh’s here?” she said. “Hello, Ashleigh. Funny, I never hear you come in. Broken anything?”

  “Nothing important,” I assured her.

  “Ah, Ms. Gould! Just whom I most wished to see! Do us the kindness to step over here, Madam,” cried Ashleigh, taking my mother by the elbow. “We are short a couple. Would you rather be a Gentleman dancing with an imaginary Lady, or a Lady with an imaginary Gentleman?”

  “The lady with the imaginary gentleman, I think—that’s pretty much how things stand anyway, so it won’t take much imagination,” said Mom. “What are we dancing?”

  “The minuet,” answered Ashleigh, showing Mom the book.

  “Don’t you think it would be easier with music?” suggested my mother. She turned to me. “Run and get the Mozart string quartets from the dining room, honey—oh, and grab some Strauss too, in case we want to waltz. Ashleigh, want to give me a hand with the desk? If we push it under the eaves, you might stop running into it.”

  My mother was right to take charge. She turned out to be an excellent dancer. Who would have guessed? Ducking from time to time when a turn took us too close to the slanting roof, we mastered the three essential movements—the walk, the slide, and the balancé. Then we practiced combining them into various figures of the quadrille. Another surprise: this turns out to be nothing but a slightly-less-dorky square dance. We made a stab at the minuet, which is a bit more complicated, and rounded off the lesson with a waltz.

  “There,” said Ashleigh, after my mother had left. “Now we will indeed be ready for the Forefield ball, where I, like Elizabeth Bennet, will find my heart’s mate—my Mr. Darcy. And you, like Jane Bennet, will find your Mr. Bingley.”