“Unlike your father, who’s not sure he is your father, is that it?” I fired back.
“Bitch,” she said.
“That’s what I hear the boys around here call you, ‘my bitch,’ ” I said.
Everyone howled, and Cora turned bright pink. She looked at her audience and then, without any warning, swung her pocketbook at me and caught me on the left side of my head. She must have had something heavy in it, because it dazed me. I stumbled and then lost my footing and slipped on the short step at the library door. When I fell, everyone took off in every possible direction.
I heard Mr. Martin call my name as I was struggling to my feet. “What’s going on here?” he asked, helping me up. “My goodness, your head’s bleeding, Mayfair. What happened?”
I felt my temple and looked at my fingers. The amount of blood didn’t surprise me. “It’s all right. Head wounds usually bleed like this,” I told him.
“It’s not all right. We’d better get you to the nurse. C’mon,” he said, taking my arm. I was still a little dizzy. “What happened?” he asked again.
“The debate team lost control of itself,” I said.
“Who hit you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Absolutely,” he said.
We entered the nurse’s office, and Mrs. Milligan sat me down immediately and hurried to get a wet cloth.
“Did she fall?”
“No, someone hit her.”
“With what?”
“A pocketbook loaded with cement,” I said.
She began to work on the wound.
Mr. Martin stood there staring at me. “Who did it? What was the argument about?”
“CSI will confirm Cora Addison,” I replied. “I’m sure there’s some of my DNA on her pocketbook.”
“Was this about your stepsister?”
“It seemed to be more about Cora and her friends, but that’s just my opinion.”
“This is quite a deep cut,” Mrs. Milligan said. “She might need stitches. We need to be concerned about a possible concussion.”
“I’m not going to sleep, and there’s nothing one could do about a minor concussion, anyway, Mrs. Milligan. I’ll be fine.”
“I don’t know.” She looked at Mr. Martin. “I’ll clean it up and cover it, but I really think she needs stitches. I’ll run her over to the urgent care. And I’d feel better if she had an X-ray.”
“I don’t need all that,” I protested.
“You’re not a doctor yet,” Mr. Martin said. “Do what you have to, Lila,” he told the nurse. “I’ll inform her parents,” he said, and left.
I tried to resist, but Mrs. Milligan was determined.
“It’s out of your hands and mine,” she said. “The insurance company would insist.”
When we went out to her car, I could see students gaping at us from classroom windows. Mrs. Milligan saw them, too.
“You’ve attracted a crowd,” she said.
“I’m glad I can provide them with desperately needed distraction from their boring classes,” I told her, and she laughed, which surprised me. Could it be she liked me after all? Even after the things I said to her when I brought Allison to her office?
Less than an hour later, Julie arrived at the urgent care. I did require stitches, and an X-ray was taken. I had no concussion.
“How could such a thing happen now?” Julie asked Mrs. Milligan immediately. From the way she asked it, anyone would think she was blaming me, no matter what.
“I failed to duck, bob, and weave,” I said.
Mrs. Milligan told her as much as she knew. The rest would come later.
“I guess we’re going to have to seriously consider whether both of you should continue at this school,” Julie told me on the way home.
I didn’t say anything. My head was throbbing, and despite what I had told Mrs. Milligan and Mr. Martin, all I wanted to do was go to sleep.
My father was very upset when he heard about the incident. He came home as soon as he could and hurried up to my room.
“Hey, May,” he said, sitting on my bed and taking my hand. He looked at my wound. “Nasty. I heard what you told Julie. I thought I taught you how to duck.”
“I guess it was one of the few times I wasn’t paying enough attention.”
“You want to tell me how this happened?”
“It was the same girls who made those stupid accusations about me in the locker room, remember?”
“Oh.”
“They were emboldened by the resolution of that situation, and now we’re seeing the fruits of the politically correct compromise.”
“I’ll look into it myself this time,” he promised. “This time, there’ll be no politically convenient solution.”
I shrugged skeptically, but he did look determined. He went down to his home office to make some calls and returned in a little less than half an hour to report that Cora Addison had been called to the principal’s office and suspended from school. Her parents would have to go in with her when she returned.
Although Mr. Martin and Dr. Richards saw this as just punishment because Cora had resorted to violence, I knew it would not do me any good with the rest of the student body, especially the other two bitches of Macbeth.
This was far from over.
18
If there had been anyone who would say hello, smile, or be in any way friendly to me before this at school, he or she was gone, probably forever. My academic achievements, my freedom in pursuing advanced studies, and my self-imposed isolation from school activities already had done much to single me out as someone too different. Now I was surely going to be not only too different but also too much trouble, someone never to be trusted. I knew I would feel like I was walking around school wearing not a scarlet A like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter but a scarlet R for rat. Or a scarlet C for creep.
I didn’t look forward to it.
Later, at dinner, when my father talked about my violent confrontation with the bitches of Macbeth again, Julie looked like she had always expected it and wondered why something like this had never happened before. I could squeeze as much sympathy out of her as I could squeeze water out of a rock. However, Allison felt sorry for me, and after dinner, she came into my room to tell me so.
“That was very mean what they did to you,” she said. “They ganged up on you.”
“That’s the way people like that are, Allison. They can’t do anything unless they’re part of a gang. They’re really cowards.”
“It’s all my fault, isn’t it?” she asked me.
“Why is it your fault, Allison?”
“I heard they were saying bad things about me, and you told them off.”
“They were saying bad things about both of us, mostly me, Allison. Forget about them. They’re not important. I could sketch out their entire lives for you. They’ll end up eating their own hearts.”
I didn’t want to tell her they would probably become women just like her mother, but she brought up Julie herself. “I told my mother how you defended me, how you tried to help me with everything,” she said.
I put down my book and looked at her. “What do you mean, everything?”
“You know,” she said. “When you told me what to do and what to say and what not to say when Mr. Martin called me into his office that day.”
“But you and I had a secret,” I said. “You made me a promise you would never tell anyone, not even your mother, about our conversations.”
“I wanted her to know how much you helped me,” she said, raising her arms. “I wanted her to know how we were becoming real sisters and that she should feel sorry for you about what those girls did.”
“Okay,” I said.
What else could I say? But it was like sitting there listening to the ticking of a time bomb.
Allison returned to her own room. I closed my eyes. The throbbing had stopped but now suddenly began again. This time, it wasn’t coming from the wound. It was coming from my antic
ipation.
After nearly an hour passed, I thought nothing more would occur this particular evening, but I was wrong. I heard the knock on my door, and before I could say “Come in,” my father opened it, stepped in, and closed it behind him. The look on his face was enough. I didn’t need to hear anything.
He stood there looking at me for a moment. Then he shook his head and came closer. “Let me begin by telling you that Julie is quite hysterical downstairs.”
“Inordinately so?”
“No, King’s English this time, Mayfair, and no sarcasm. I’m warning you. I’m trying to understand this. You went to Allison and told her that the stories she had told her best friend about Mr. Taylor were being spread around in the school?”
“So?”
“Did you do that?”
“I did, after she was so upset about overhearing him say he was going to get engaged. You saw how depressed she was during those days, how she hardly ate and wouldn’t talk.”
“Yes, I did. Julie tried to talk to her about it. We both assumed it was boy trouble at worst but certainly not man trouble.”
I looked away. Why was he so sensitive to Allison’s emotional pain and so insensitive to mine? When was the last time he looked at me and wondered if I was happy or if something had upset me? Was it my fault? Because I was so intelligent, with an off-the-charts IQ, he believed I would always be smarter at solving my own problems than he would be? Did my brilliance make my father feel unnecessary?
Or had Julie turned him away from me completely so that all his fatherly attention and concern were directed at Allison? Whenever I had been alone with them, Julie’s conversation was usually centered on Allison. There was never any time to talk about me, ask about me, and care about me, unless it somehow supported her beliefs about who I was and what I needed on her terms and her terms only. She was the sun in this house, and I was barely just another planet.
I sincerely felt bad about it all, but another part of me was smart enough to ask if I wasn’t simply trying to rationalize and excuse my bad behavior. The bottom line was that I shouldn’t have used Allison to get my revenge on Alan Taylor and punish Julie at the same time, even though I still thought Allison had also been abused.
“According to what Julie is saying Allison told her, you advised her to tell Mr. Martin and Dr. Richards these fantasies and warned her not to say that any of it was a lie, no matter what. You told her to tell them what she had written in her diary. You pushed her into this situation, this confrontation, Mayfair. Is this true?”
“I gave her the best advice I could,” I said.
“You know that’s not true, Mayfair. The best advice was not to tell her to deny that anything was untrue but instead to only tell the truth. Did you know that what she was saying was untrue from the start?”
“I did not and I still do not know that to be a fact, just because she confused a date in her diary and her friend, who’s probably a young airhead, can’t remember details. Any psychologist can twist a girl like Allison into knots and get the district attorney to back off, especially if there’s a smart lawyer involved.”
“But . . . you didn’t know any of this to be a fact, and you’re the one who’s always preaching facts first, feelings second. I can’t believe this, Mayfair. What about this poor guy? You could have destroyed his career, his life. You nearly ruined him forever and, no question, put the school in a terrible position. Why did you take such an active role in this and manipulate Allison, and not only her but us? Me?”
I turned my gaze sharply on him, my eyes burning with the pain I felt inside. My father was betraying me, but he did not know why he shouldn’t. Maybe I was too smart for my own good; maybe I was my own worst enemy. “Don’t worry about him. He wasn’t lily-white pure, Daddy.”
“How would you know that?”
“I know,” I said firmly. “Personally.”
He flinched and then looked stunned. “What are you saying?”
“I have factual, positive proof that he took advantage of a student besides Allison.”
“What? Who? What are you saying now?”
I stared at him.
His eyes washed over me, and then it was almost as if I could see a cartoon light bulb go off above his head. “Let me understand this, Mayfair. Are you now saying that you were the one sexually abused by Mr. Taylor?”
I turned away. “I have trouble thinking of it as sexual abuse, Daddy. I’m old enough both chronologically and mentally to know what I was doing. It’s the aftermath that I consider abuse, and that’s why I was so easily convinced that Allison might have been another victim,” I said. I didn’t want to mention any other motive, especially my chance to expose Julie so he would see her for what she was.
“I can’t believe this. Why wouldn’t you come to me if that was true?”
“As I told you, I didn’t see myself as a victim then, and when I did, I felt more foolish than violated. We know who would enjoy seeing me embarrassed the most.”
“You don’t mean Julie.”
I didn’t reply. Then I thought and said, “Among others, especially the bitches from Macbeth.”
“You’re not eighteen,” he said. “Of course you are a victim.”
I smirked. “You know my opinion of chronological age versus mental age, Daddy.”
“Your opinion isn’t important in such a situation. There are legal opinions here.” He shook his head. “This is too much. I don’t understand what you did here or why. You hid what happened to you and decided instead to use what Allison told you to get back at this man? Is this the gist of what you’re telling me?”
“I guess so,” I said.
“You guess so?”
“Yes! That’s the gist of it!” I felt my eyes flooding with tears, something I hadn’t felt for some time. “Yes, yes!” I cried. “That’s exactly what I did.”
He sat for a moment, stunned. “Why, Mayfair? You’re so much brighter than most people, brighter than anyone I know. This wasn’t the right way to handle things.”
I wiped tears off my cheeks. “Maybe intelligence isn’t everything after all, Daddy. Maybe we underestimate the power of feelings. I was hurt, and logic didn’t make it any better this time.”
“What exactly happened between you and him?”
I sat for a moment looking out the window, wishing I were like a cloud that could be blown toward the horizon and not have to linger in one place.
“Mayfair?”
“What usually happens between men and women?”
“When?”
“The day Julie sold me out in school, that day, that afternoon and evening.”
He thought a moment. “The time you said you were at the library?”
“I guess it qualifies as research now and nothing more.” I turned to him. “I don’t want you doing anything about it now. It’s too late.”
“You should have come to me. You shouldn’t have tried to get revenge or justice this way, Mayfair.”
“Should have and could have are probably the most used concepts since the invention of the wheel.”
He nodded. “Well, Julie is rightfully upset, Mayfair. My marriage is in real jeopardy here.”
He knew my feelings about his marriage. He didn’t have to hear it. “I wouldn’t call that jeopardy,” I muttered nevertheless.
“She makes me happy, Mayfair. It’s not up to you to judge that. I have a life to live, too. I mourned your mother’s passing. I suffered. I was ready to give everything up and not care, but I wanted to be strong for you until you could be strong for yourself, and when I thought you were, I looked after myself somewhat, too. I don’t feel guilty about it, and you will never make me feel guilty about it.
“No father could ever be prouder of a daughter than I was of you. I was right there for all your amazing awards. I bragged about you until my business associates wanted to take me out to be shot. My office walls are covered with your plaques, citations, and letters from every respected institution that in
volves academic accomplishment.
“During those early years after your mother’s death, I tried to be your mother and father. I did the best I could. You’ve gone way too far this time, Mayfair. Not this school and certainly not Julie and I are capable of giving you what you need, apparently.”
He lowered his head and sat quietly for a long moment. The tears that burned inside my eyes boiled over. I turned away quickly, and then he rose and left my room.
When I was very young, reading books that college-age kids were struggling with and doing math problems that high-school teachers wouldn’t attempt, much less try to teach to seniors, I used to wonder if I had really been born like other children. The possibility occurred to me, especially after reading Frankenstein, that I might have been created in some laboratory. I asked my mother.
At first, she laughed, but then she saw that I was really thinking it might be so.
“Oh, no, no, Mayfair,” she cried, and hugged me. “You were born on a very sunny morning. I was dreaming of giving birth to you and woke up when my water broke. Your father was so nervous and excited that he was very funny. He put on two completely different shoes and never realized it until he was at the hospital.
“It was only five fifteen in the morning, but on the way there, he stopped at that traffic light at the base of our road, the one everyone complains about because there’s so little traffic that it barely needs a stop sign, and he just stayed there waiting for it to change while I was moaning. He suddenly realized how silly and nervous he was acting and shot ahead. These were wonderful memories for us after you were born.
“The moment I looked at your face, I knew you were going to be something special. Two days old, and you looked at me and listened as if you were already two years old. You were the favorite of the maternity nurses, too.
“No, my darling, wonderful little girl, you were not created in a laboratory, unless you want to call my womb a laboratory.”
She held me and laughed.
I could hear her melodic laugh now. I hadn’t heard it for so long. It had been buried under too much in my brain, maybe, but when I remembered it now, it didn’t make me smile. It made me cry.
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