Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Some of the work students would be doing in Earth and Our Environment would involve memorization: activating parts of the brain otherwise dormant. Earth and Our Environment was a science course for non-science college majors, but even students enrolled in AP Physics had enrolled in it, for Adrian Kessler had master’s degrees in both biology and neuroscience.

  Nadia felt a little stir of dread, for she wasn’t at all gifted in science, still less in math; yet Mr. Kessler seemed reassuring. She liked it that the teacher’s warm hazel eyes crinkled at the corners with good humor. You could see he liked to tease.

  No one in Nadia’s family seemed ever to tease her—though she’d noticed how, in other families, teasing was a principal mode of communication.

  Especially parents and children. Dads and their daughters.

  Nadia’s father seemed confused by her—as if she was getting too big, too old. He’d looked away with a little knife blade of a frown between his eyebrows when at last—hesitantly—Nadia had worn her new bathing suit on the beach at Nantucket. (How self-conscious she had been! She wondered if Amelie had been deliberately misleading, assuring her that she looked “terrific” in the two-piece knit suit.)

  Nadia had been trying hard—very hard—to lose weight. Over the summer she’d gained weight out of anxiety—overeating, especially soft, creamy-sweet things like yogurt and smoothies—in the wake of what had happened to Tink; at her heaviest she’d weighed 119 pounds—horrible! (Nadia was just five feet four inches tall.)

  By the start of the fall term she’d managed to get her weight down to 111, which was still high—her goal was ninety-eight, which she knew to be Merissa Carmichael’s weight, or at least it had been Merissa’s weight months ago.

  Every girl Nadia knew obsessed about her weight except Merissa Carmichael, who appeared to be naturally thin. And Tink, of course—Tink had once remarked that her goal was to gain weight, not lose it.

  In her least favorite class, PE, Nadia was required to change clothes in the girls’ locker room, and she grew sullen and resentful, trying practically to hide inside her locker. She saw girls’ eyes moving onto her—her breasts, her wiggly buttocks and thighs—with expressions part envy and part scorn.

  This past August in Nantucket, in her new swimsuit but hiding inside an oversized shirt out of which only her pale, fleshy thighs seemed to emerge like something bloated, Nadia had felt plenty of eyes on her—men’s eyes—old men’s eyes, for God’s sake—and she’d never been so mortified as when she’d overheard a (male, middle-aged) friend of her father’s remark to him, on the veranda of their oceanfront cottage, Your daughter is getting to be quite a Renoir, eh? And she’s only, what, in middle school?

  Nadia had wanted to run away, humiliated. She knew very well who Renoir was—what sort of fat, flabby, bovine females the French artist had painted—and she knew what an insult it was, to be mistaken for being in middle school when she was seventeen and about to start her senior year of high school!

  Her manner, her little-girl breathiness. Her whispery voice and quick, tinkling laughter—these were ways to appear younger than her age.

  She’d hate herself, Nadia guessed. If she had to observe herself.

  Smiling too much. Tink had noticed.

  High school boys weren’t so attracted to Nadia as older guys out of school, and adult men. Strangers’ eyes moving onto her body made her feel both uncomfortable and thrilled.

  Text messages sometimes came to Nadia’s cell phone from boys she didn’t know, or hardly knew—she read with surprise, shock—embarrassment—and quickly deleted. Some of the IDs were clearly fraudulent, bringing Nadia the kind of messages a girl learns to quickly delete without reading.

  BABY TITS. ASS.

  BLOW. GO DOWN. FUCK ME.

  Nadia laughed nervously—as if the guy or guys who’d sent it might be observing her. Quickly she sent these ugly words into the tiny trash-can icon on her cell phone.

  If a friend asked Nadia about one of these messages, she said, giggling, “Oh, just nothing!” Or “Gross!”

  Lots of girls received these sexts. It was nothing personal, really.

  Never would Nadia tell or report sexting. Worse than being a whiner was being a snitch.

  And anyway—how could you know who’d sent it, let alone prove it? Girls who had reported nasty sexts or mean online postings had been punished by guys ganging together against them, sending a flood of obscene messages and even threats of murder.

  HOW’D YOU LIKE YOUR SLUT HEAD CUT OFF & SENT TO DADDY IN A BOX.

  (This was a notorious message a Quaker Heights girl had received the previous year in a case that was still pending. Nadia Stillinger wanted nothing like that.)

  Really beautiful girls like Merissa Carmichael were not treated this way. And girls like Tink—who were tough, and funny about sex.

  Nadia accepted this, for her own father winced at the sight of her. She would not ever be beautiful, she would always be one to be elbowed aside, pushed off the sidewalk, or her head gripped in a drunk boy’s big hands, forced to b**w him in a toilet stall, or in the front seat of his car, if she wanted a ride back to her house.

  It had to do with Tink, she’d thought. After Tink, Nadia had sort of lost control, for a while.

  Except now, with Mr. Kessler. Now Nadia had fallen in love for the first time.

  She would not ever be beautiful, Nadia knew. Amelie had all but told her, you have to be born with high cheekbones to be beautiful, and Nadia’s face was as soft-looking as a rubber doll’s.

  Maybe you take after your maman, Amelie said. You surely do not take after your papa.

  Nadia was ashamed to ask Amelie if she knew anything much about Nadia’s mother—if Nadia’s father had ever shown her photographs, for instance.

  Of course, that was ridiculous. Nadia’s father would never have spoken of her mother to Amelie, or to the previous wife, let alone shown them photographs of her.

  Nadia’s mother’s name was never mentioned in any of the houses in which Nadia had lived with her father.

  Years ago, when she’d been a little girl, Nadia had asked her father where Mommy had gone, and her father had said, Gone, Nadia. And she didn’t say good-bye to me—or to you.

  Still, Nadia knew her mother’s name. Even if it was a name banished from the household—Esther.

  This was a beautiful name, Nadia thought. An unusual name, out of the Bible maybe—“Esther.”

  Sometimes Nadia spoke her mother’s name aloud. Sometimes she whispered.

  More often, she called her mother Mommy.

  And this, too, she whispered when she was sure no one would hear her—“Mommy.”

  “Guys don’t like you if you’re smarter than they are. But if you’re too much dumber than they are, you’re a bimbo.”

  Nadia laughed uneasily at her friend’s remark. She knew what a bimbo was—if her stepmother Amelie hadn’t been so chic and so shrewd, with her flashy good looks, she’d be a bimbo. And the fat, fleshy, doughy-faced females in the paintings of Renoir, lots of them nude, looking steamy-warm as if they’d just climbed out of a hot bath—for sure, these were bimbos.

  Nadia said, “It’s scary to try for just-between. Not too smart, and not too dumb.” She’d laughed, and her friends had laughed, but was it funny? Hannah and Chloe were popular senior girls who had friends who were boys but not boyfriends—too much was expected of a girl, especially senior year, if you had an actual boyfriend.

  Nadia had been naive, or frankly stupid, imagining that Colin Brunner, one of the popular football players, whose father was a New Jersey state senator, would be her boyfriend.

  He’d laughed in her face, practically.

  Nadia’s in-box was jammed with SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT SLUT but she’d scarcely noticed. Quickly she’d clicked delete.

  Now she was turning her attention to her schoolwork.

  Nadia was excited about Mr. Kessler’s course, Earth and Our Environment. She’d looked ahead in the textbook and online, a
nd especially she’d been intrigued by the material about animals adapting behavior to environment—the pictures of South American jaguars, African leopards and elephants and giraffes made her smile, they were such beautiful creatures. Ecosystems—biomes—biospheres—the roles of living things in ecosystems—these were concepts Nadia could understand, and maybe she could talk intelligently to her father about them, since her father had majored in biology at Harvard before switching to a business major.

  When Mr. Kessler showed the class illustrations of the Earth as a single organism with countless diverse parts, as part of his PowerPoint presentation, Nadia felt reassured, somehow. As if it were revealed that there was a place for her after all. The idea of the Earth as a single organism made her feel safe.

  “And how do we know the Earth is a single organism?” Mr. Kessler asked the class in his genial fashion, as if they were just having a conversation together.

  Before one of the brighter students, like Virgil Nagy, could answer, Nadia’s hand leapt into the air.

  “It has a single name—Earth?”

  “Well—yes. . . . But entities are not names, you know, Nadia—you would be you, if you were not Nadia Stillfinger.”

  This was sweetly funny; this was a gentle sort of teasing. Nadia guessed that she’d said something stupid—as usual—but Mr. Kessler was deflecting it, so that the class would not laugh at her.

  Other hands had lifted around her, but Nadia plunged on, stubbornly: “Because it has a single—atmosphere? So things can breathe?”

  A much smarter answer!

  Because he respects me. And he looks at—ME.

  Because he can see into my soul and he does not laugh then.

  Soon it happened that Nadia was doing very well in Earth and Our Environment—her highest grade!

  Where usually, in the past, science and math had been Nadia’s weakest grades.

  Where usually, when class discussion became abstract or intellectual, Nadia held back for fear of making a fool of herself, she now leapt in excitedly, competing with the really smart students when Mr. Kessler directed discussion to what he called “hypotheticals.”

  For instance—global warming.

  “The future can’t be exactly predicted—of course—but certain characteristics of the future can be predicted, extrapolating from the present, and past history, and projecting into the future. There are parts of the world that are clearly drying up—and other parts, along coastlines, that are flooding—eroding away. Environmental scientists have studied masses of data and have, overall, come to disturbing conclusions. So, your generation will inhabit this future that is evolving—which scientists are hoping we can remedy, or slow down, through global legislation. Can you think of ways in which the environment is not local—or national—but global?”

  Discussion was lively. The most informed student was Virgil Nagy. Virgil spoke in a rapid nasal voice, rattling off statistics about temperatures worldwide and “carbon footprints,” and for a while just he and Mr. Kessler were talking; then another student asked about the future—and Mr. Kessler said, frowning, “All we know about the future is that it doesn’t exist—and never will. The future is the present time, perceived from the past.”

  Urgently Nadia’s hand waved in the air. Her fingernails gleamed a pale coral pink and, though slightly bitten, prettily caught the eye like fluttering butterflies.

  “Isn’t there a future, somehow? People talk about it all the time and make predictions.”

  Mr. Kessler said, “What I mean is, there is no future—just as there is no past. These are abstract ways of speaking, not to be taken literally. There is only a continuous present. We exist only now.”

  This was a blunt statement, meant to be provocative, maybe. It was like Mr. Kessler to provoke students into discussions, even upsetting them sometimes.

  “Mr. Kessler, what about a time machine?”

  “Well, Nadia, you tell us. What about a time machine?”

  Nadia squirmed happily at her desk, which was in the third row, near the windows. There was a buzzing in her ears, but it was a benign, glowing sort of buzz—honeybees in the sun, not hornets.

  “Like, in movies and things, there’s these time machines—scientists do experiments—sending somebody into the future, and . . .”

  Virgil Nagy, on the far side of the room, laughed scornfully. Without troubling to raise his hand, he said, “Sci-fi is not science. It’s made up.”

  “But—can’t there be a time machine, Mr. Kessler?”

  Nadia sounded anxious. As if the possibility of a time machine, or a future, had some personal meaning to her and wasn’t just a discussion topic for science class.

  “Nadia, I’m glad you brought up this just-slightly-digressive-but-relevant subject. I knew I could depend on you.”

  This was a casual, harmless remark—(wasn’t it?)—a teacher meaning to be kind, encouraging, cheery, and upbeat. It didn’t signal a special, secret meaning—(did it?). But Nadia sat entranced at her desk, staring at Mr. Kessler as if memorizing not only the teacher’s words but every molecule of his being.

  I love him. He is the one. Not—

  —anyone else.

  In his affable, smiling way Mr. Kessler was explaining to the class that in science fiction—“science fiction—Virgil is quite right about the distinction between science and fiction”—individuals can travel into the past or the future through some sort of ingenious machinery. “But unfortunately, in the universe there is no place where there could be a past—and the future hasn’t happened yet, so the possibility of going there is palpably absurd.”

  Palpably absurd! This was the sort of phrase Adrian Kessler often uttered, a repudiation of a commonly held belief, but in so genial a way, you didn’t feel insulted if it was a belief of yours.

  Which was why many of Adrian Kessler’s students liked him, very much—and others, who resented the comparatively low grades he gave them, disliked him.

  “Because ‘past’ and ‘future’ are notional concepts—they are ideas, not realities or entities. Of course we all plan for the future and remember the past—but our relationship to each is very subjective, and tenuous. ‘Past’ isn’t a place like Antarctica—you can’t travel there.”

  Virgil Nagy said, sneering, “There is no there—there.”

  Gordy Squires said, objecting, “But there are potentials—like seeds, genes, fetuses. They exist in the present but come into being in the future.”

  “That’s true, Gordy. But still there is no future in existence. The future has to evolve out of what we have now—the present.”

  “But if you shoot an arrow, it flies to its target—in the future. . . .”

  “An arrow flying to its target is always in the present.”

  Mr. Kessler went to the green board to make chalk figures, which Nadia copied in her notebook, hoping she might understand them afterward. Something about the way Mr. Kessler spoke about this subject—arrow, target, flying, always in the present—filled her with a nervous sort of anticipation, as if some profound truth were about to be revealed, which would illuminate her.

  Instead the bell rang. No fifty minutes passed so swiftly as Nadia’s fourth-period science class!

  And there were too many people waiting to talk with Mr. Kessler—one of them, Nadia saw with dislike, was Sasha Coleman, who seemed always to be lingering after Mr. Kessler’s class to ask him some transparently made-up question and to lean close to him, displaying her slender legs in lime-green tights beneath a chic, very short leather skirt.

  So Nadia took up her backpack and left the room with the others, indifferent to which of her classes was next.

  She was basking in the glow of Mr. Kessler’s warm gaze. She was basking in the glow of Mr. Kessler’s words, intimate as a caress, in front of the entire class—I knew I could depend on you.

  Soon then modified to Nadia, I knew I could depend on you.

  Virgil Nagy fell into step with Nadia. Since she’d become one of the
more serious students in Mr. Kessler’s class, Virgil seemed to be noticing her for the first time, though they’d been in numerous classes together and had in fact each transferred to Quaker Heights at about the same time.

  It was flattering, in a way, that a boy like Virgil would want to walk with Nadia—boys who were attracted to Nadia Stillinger were not usually what you’d call brainy.

  Except it was hard to talk with Virgil, who loomed over Nadia like a giraffe. He had to be nearly six feet.

  “You always seem so happy, Nadja. What’s your secret?”

  Happy! This was a surprise.

  It was like Virgil to speak in this awkward way, which seemed just slightly bullying. Unwittingly he repelled girls he hoped might like him, and repelled boys even more—the word for Virgil among even nice guys was geek.

  Nadia supposed that Virgil was just shy and socially uneasy like she herself. But she had learned to be, she believed, charmant. Virgil, with his slightly grayish teeth, which were crooked in front if you looked closely, and his habit of staring into your face, hadn’t a clue.

  “Actually, my name is ‘Nad-ia’—not ‘Nadja.’”

  “Oh—sure. Sorry.”

  Virgil was crestfallen. A flush rose into his long, mournful, bloodhound face.

  Virgil was said to be foreign-born—from Budapest. He spoke with an accent and seemed always about to stammer. His father was rumored to be separated from the family and taught at somewhere prestigious, like MIT or Harvard. His mother taught math at the local public high school. But no one really knew much about Virgil, except he was super bright/a super geek. He was respected without being liked, though everyone would have said he was a nice guy—except for being a pain in the ass if you were in classes with him, since he invariably got the highest grades and his long, lanky arm was always flailing in the air.

  Virgil was almost stammering now. Wanting to intrigue Nadia by saying something further about the future—time machines—as if these were subjects Nadia really cared about, while really wanting, she sensed, to ask her something more personal.

  “Of course I know your name is ‘Nad-i-a’—I’m sorry to mangle it.”