Language Arts

by Stephanie Kallos

  Dana was clearly puzzled, but passive. At least Mrs. Braxton hadn’t required him to remove his suit coat. She worked efficiently and quickly; Brax the Ax would have made an excellent triage nurse. Once Dana’s arm was firmly secured to his ruler, she leaned close, spoke a few quiet words into his ear, and then began moving through the room helping other children.

  Immediately, Dana started experimenting with his splinted arm, making sweeping arcs in all directions, tapping it against his desk.

  All was well until Mrs. Braxton resumed her place at the front of the room.

  “All right, children. Please sit up straight, position yourselves properly, take up your pencils, and begin your two-minute timed loop practice … now.”

  Mrs. Braxton swooped behind Dana with surprising speed and agility and wrapped her arms around him; the impression was of a huge, powerful bird descending from on high and capturing its prey within a pair of massive wings. After pinning Dana’s left arm to his desk, she forced a pencil into his right hand, laid the length of her right forearm atop his, and began trying to guide his first loop-practice efforts.

  Dana let go of the pencil immediately. It rolled to the floor. He began grunting and shaking his head, then bucking in his desk chair, then screeching as if in pain.

  “Dana,” Mrs. Braxton said, undeterred, her voice steady. “You can do this. Come on now …” She produced another pencil, placed it in his hand, and clasped her own hand over it.

  Dana’s panic exploded into rage, and he began to thrash against Mrs. Braxton’s substantial bulwark of a body so forcefully that she almost toppled. Unbelievably, she persisted throughout the eternity of those two minutes, keeping one eye on the clock even as she tried to wrestle Dana into submission.

  “… five, four, three, two, one!”

  By now, Dana was screaming. The rest of the class sat, stunned into silence by the force of his resistance and Mrs. Braxton’s inability to contain him.

  “Dana!” she kept shouting. “Dana McGucken! That’s enough! Calm down!”

  Take it off, Charles thought as Dana continued to flail and cry, his primal fear endangering both student and teacher. Take it off him.

  Mrs. Braxton struggled with Dana well beyond that two-minute mark. Finally, she stopped trying to combat or control Dana’s thrashing and began moving in sync with him, so that eventually the two of them were rocking, side to side, at Dana’s usual tempo. His screams diminished to wails, then whimpers, and finally to a kind of subdued keening.

  “I’m sorry, Dana,” Mrs. Braxton said gently, breathlessly, as she began removing the strips. “I’m very sorry. It’s all right. You won’t have to do that again.”

  When she turned around, her expression was frankly startled, as if she’d forgotten that there were other children in the room. A few of them gasped when they saw her face.

  “Mrs. Braxton,” Charles said quietly. “Your nose is bleeding.”

  She darted her eyes at him, then nodded. A series of self-composing gestures followed: she pressed her handkerchief to her face, replaced Dana’s fabric strips in the box, slid his ruler into a desk drawer, smoothed her hair, and looked up at the clock.

  “Let us continue,” she said nasally, still occluding one side of her nose with her hankie. “Please begin your two-minute timed bedspring-oval practice … now.”

  Dana remained mute and downcast, and on that day he exhibited a new behavior: using the thumb of his right hand, he aggressively massaged the triangular web of skin and muscle between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. He looked down and watched himself do this with a bleak desperation, as if administering a last-resort drug that might not take effect in time to save the patient’s life. (Years later, in the process of researching Cody’s condition, Charles learned from a medical dictionary that this area of the hand is known as the anatomical snuffbox, and that Dana’s massaging habit is often seen in people with fragile X syndrome.)

  Mrs. Braxton’s last instruction to the class as they left that day was to return the rulers to the supply closet and the fabric strips to the box on her desk. Charles was almost out the door when she spoke to him.

  “Charles. You did exceptionally well today during penmanship practice. You seemed to have no trouble with the immobilizing technique.”

  “It’s like wearing a cast,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I broke my arm when I was seven and had to wear a cast. Being tied to the ruler today, it … Well, it felt like that.”

  Mrs. Braxton nodded. “That is an excellent insight, Charles. Would you be willing to share that with the class on Monday?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  Charles should have been cheered and flattered by this exchange, but it only served to remind him of his missing friend—the games of tic-tac-toe they’d played on his cast, the cartoons they’d drawn.

  He wondered if, way up there in the Land of Sky-Blue Waters, Donnie Bothwell was also learning the Palmer Method and, if so, whether his experiences were proving to be as dramatic.

  Art Without Boundaries

  Rain or shine, Tuesdays and Thursdays at precisely 9:15 a.m., a few select residents of Madonna’s Home are led outside; some walk unassisted, others use canes or aluminum walkers or wheelchairs. All are closely supervised. It is a slow procession.

  They are guided into a small bus, helped to their places, secured with safety belts.

  The caregivers take their seats.

  The journey begins.

  The bus driver, like most of us, maintains run-of-the-mill notions involving time and space. He takes his work seriously. A heavy rainstorm has started moving through the city, and he’s worried about getting his passengers to their appointment on time.

  A complex series of maneuverings over surface streets and freeways will eventually bring them to a Catholic church on Capitol Hill. The bus driver checks his watch. So far, they’re making good time. They usually do, going this direction on weekdays, midmorning. It’s the trip back, after lunch, that’s the wildcard. It could be a breeze; it could take an hour.

  The Madonna’s Home residents pay no attention to traffic conditions. They are free of travel-related anxieties. They don’t consult clocks. They abide by internalized and highly individuated global positioning systems. Each one tells a different story as to what is happening; each one has his or her own ideas about the destination.

  Giorgia D’Amati—a newcomer among these pilgrims; she has made this trip only two other times—sits immediately behind the bus driver.

  She perches on the edge of her seat, bright-eyed, smiling. Occasionally she pats her hair, tugs at the hem of her dress, and mimes the actions of applying lipstick, her small, olive-skinned hands fleet as swallow’s wings.

  Only she knows the truth.

  They are going to Italy.

  •♦•

  It is 1943, a midday in spring, and Giorgia is in a chapel in the Tuscan countryside having her photograph taken.

  She is in the company of three soldiers. “Come sono distinti!” she says. “Come sono belli!”

  Giorgia stands on the steps leading to the dais, her back to the altar. Next to her is a tall, gangly boy wearing a U.S. Army uniform: wool, filbert brown.

  Standing at the base of the steps is the best man; next to him is the other groomsman, the one who is taking the picture.

  She sees herself from the photographer’s point of view: dowdy and plain-featured, the opposite of voluptuous—Giorgia D’Amati is built like a deck of playing cards.

  But today, the silhouette of her body is indented slightly at the presumed location of her waist; skipping breakfast made it possible for her to cinch the thin belt of her homemade dress one notch beyond comfort.

  Giorgia is an excellent seamstress, but fancy styles and colorful fabrics are forbidden, even on such an occasion as this.

  From where the photographer stands, at a distance of several feet, the yard goods used for Giorgia’s short-sleeved shirtwaist appear to
be a mottled black and gray, the result perhaps of a laundry accident. But a closer look reveals a faint, all-over pattern of dainty flowers bound together by swirling ribbons: clouds of blurry-edged bouquets floating in a night sky lit by a weary moon and overlaid with mist, everything in gradated shades of gray.

  Giorgia has taken special care with her hair; her head is covered with marcel finger curls that she learned to make from an American magazine. According to the magazine, a homely face and an unremarkable figure can always be offset with attention to hygiene and style. Only in America do women think like this.

  Now her viewpoint shifts and she is standing in her own skin, looking down at her bare, thick-calved legs (at least she remembered to borrow Father’s razor and shave) and her newly polished but ugly shoes (no remedy for this).

  The photographer—pudgy and freckle-faced—calls out, Say cheese, Giorgia! And she replies, Romano, formaggio, Asiago, Parmesan! It is a standing joke among them and they all laugh.

  The camera clicks.

  Once. Twice. Thrice.

  She would have liked one more photo of her wedding day: she and her bridegroom kissing, or walking down the aisle, or at the rectory table, signing the banns—and she would have had one too, except at that moment, the chapel door bursts open, blasting them with a gust of cold, wet air (when did it start to rain?) and revealing a silhouetted figure backlit at the sanctuary entrance.

  An unexpected guest, a presence so startling and compelling that Giorgia loses all awareness of her bridegroom, the best man, and the photographer. Girl or boy? Giorgia wonders. Bridesmaid or ring bearer?

  Indeterminable at the moment, but apparently and in either case born in a barn and not dressed at all as one should be to enter the house of God: an odd style of dungarees, threadbare in places and yet unpatched; a man’s shirt, unpressed and too large, with tails untucked and sleeves rolled up; and heavy Dutch-boy-like shoes that—who would have believed it possible?—are even uglier than Giorgia’s.

  The gender question is resolved soon after, for not even an excess of rumpled fabric can obscure the undignified jiggling of two ungirdled breasts.

  No bridesmaid then, and definitely not one of Giorgia’s sisters; none of them would dress for church in such a manner—dungarees, a man’s shirt, and no brassiere!

  Worst of all, the girl’s head is uncovered.

  But then—slowly slipping back into an awareness of her own physical body—Giorgia realizes with shame that she is bareheaded as well. Her vanity over the marcel curls made her forget!

  Giorgia locates the picnic basket she stashed beneath the altar (they packed a lunch to have after the ceremony), hurriedly plucks up a large cloth napkin, and flings it atop her head. It lands askew and off center, forming a floppy awning that substantially narrows Giorgia’s peripheral vision. As she whirls about to face the Intruder—attempting to project a theatrical combination of distinction and haughty disdain—the napkin slips farther, so that one corner droops over Giorgia’s left eye. She immediately feels a fool, deservedly ridiculous for attempting such pretensions. Hardly the desired impression. And yet, at least she has made an effort.

  As the woman continues to walk down the aisle (she does not even take the time to genuflect!), the soldiers begin to back away, receding into the storm, for the rain is now torrential.

  Giorgia calls out to them—“Tornate qui!”—and then she notices something, a puzzling alteration to this story, “The Sunflower Bride,” a story she has enacted in one form or another many times and that has always been under her control:

  The Intruder is now wearing the camera.

  Did the groomsman give it to her? Why would he do such a thing?

  Looking beyond her, Giorgia sees that the soldiers have gone, without a word of goodbye. The chapel door is closed. She is alone and face to face with this person, this trespasser, who has ruined everything—not a woman, after all, but a young girl, maybe sixteen or seventeen, around the same age as Giorgia herself.

  The girl’s absurd masculine attire (she even wears that stolen camera on a strap across her chest like a man!) cannot obscure a delicacy, a feminine essence that Giorgia lacks and, furthermore, could never attain were she to swath herself in miles of ribbons and flounces.

  Giorgia begins to pace. She mutters, “Io sono la sposina.” Then she turns to the Intruder and makes a shooing motion. “Non dovreste essere qui. Voi andate, io resto!”

  The girl asks a question, using words that Giorgia does not recognize. Not that it matters; Giorgia has no intention of interacting with her in any language.

  Giorgia draws the napkin lower so that it covers her face. She carefully realigns its position so that one corner falls over the exact center of her sternum and then pins it there with her right extended index finger; it presses firmly through her flesh to her breastbone and is angled precisely toward her heart.

  Steal my picture now if you want, Giorgia thinks. Crook, heathen, killjoy.

  And the girl does; Giorgia hears a faint click.

  Giorgia remains like this, a statue, no longer caring how foolish she appears, ignoring the girl, who has started to murmur in that incomprehensible language. Her voice, not unpleasant, is still an irritant—such presumptuousness.

  Eventually, the murmuring ceases, the girl stops taking pictures, and there is the decrescendo of slow-moving footsteps in retreat.

  Giorgia peeks out from under her napkin/veil. The Intruder has departed.

  At last! She is alone again in the sanctuary. Hungry, too, and tired from so much standing. Her feet feel bloated, sweaty, too ample, as if they are balls of dough that have risen inside her shoes.

  After sitting down on the altar steps and freeing her feet—what a relief it is!—Giorgia wiggles her warm, yeasty toes. How good it is now to feel the cool, rain-washed air against the skin of her soles.

  She pulls another napkin from the picnic basket and smoothes it across her lap. She extracts a panettone from the picnic basket, remembers to loosen her cinched-in belt before she eats.

  My bridal feast, she thinks, happily.

  She is just about to take a bite when another person barges into the chapel: that woman, the one Giorgia foolishly believed to be a mother or a new novitiate. She too is bareheaded. What is the world coming to?

  Come along now, Giorgia. You know you can’t be in here by yourself. Come back and join the others. It’s lunchtime.

  “Naturalmente, è ora di pranzo! Che male c’è a starsene un po’ da soli? Lasciatemi in pace! Questa è la casa di Dio!”

  Giorgia folds her arms across her chest, ducks her head, and applies the force of her will toward making her body as heavy as possible.

  Oh, Giorgia. I wish you didn’t make me do this …

  The woman calls out to someone beyond Giorgia’s field of view, and he appears; Giorgia might be inclined to like him, his fallen state notwithstanding, were it not for his loyalty to that witch of a jailer.

  She steels herself for a battle. Just let them try to banish her from God’s house. She is no match for a fallen angel; she knows she will lose. But she can still put up a fight like a man.

  •♦•

  A sudden commotion in the church basement makes Cody look up: one of the people in the not-Cody group is being carried through the room where they are eating lunch; a big man—as big as Big Mal—holds her as if she were a baby. She isn’t a baby, but she’s very small. She is struggling and shrieking in a language Cody hasn’t heard before.

  He watches for a while. Then he looks away, stuffs a handful of rice crackers into his mouth, and starts chewing. The sound is loud enough to block out the sound of that tiny woman’s screams until she is gone.

  Storybook Cottage

  Charles was in his office, grading. An assignment that he gave to all of his students near the start of the year—Seven Postcards—had come due. He’d been at it for hours, ever since he got home from school, stopping just long enough to make a sandwich. It was getting late.


  Feeling restless, he pushed himself away from the desk, rubbed his eyes, twisted from side to side in his desk chair, and pondered the options:

  He could put off finishing until the weekend.

  He could brew another pot of coffee and soldier on.

  Or, he could take a break and resume his archaeological efforts in the crawlspace.

  Part of the problem: he was distracted. His eyes kept straying to the answering machine, where a pinprick of red blinked at him, incessantly, accusingly. There were two messages. Both required a response.

  Message one:

  Hello, my name is Mike Bernauer, I’m a reporter with the Seattle Times, doing a follow-up article about a piece that appeared back in 1963. I’m calling to find out if you’re the Charles Marlow who attended the Nellie Goodhue School that year and …

  Message two:

  Charles. Stop avoiding me. Call me back. Tonight. I’ll be up.

  Charles thought of himself as being in his office, even though there was, in fact, no door. It wasn’t even a room, really, but an efficient at-home workspace wedged into a triangle-shaped niche next to the stairs. It had been created in the first couple of years following Cody’s diagnosis, after Alison felt it necessary to repurpose the upstairs bedroom that used to serve as Charles’s office.

  She’d found the design in an issue of that magazine Martha Stewart published—Charles could never remember the name but thought of it as Martha!—and then, voilà: she’d unveiled this marvel of organization.

  It was touching, really, her heroic effort to solve a wrenching domestic problem, a deprivation counterbalanced by a gift. That was Ali all over.

  The earliest structural alterations to the house—Charles’s under-the-stairs office and the mold-mitigation remodel—were necessary at the time, and both turned out well. However, there was an unintended result: the bifurcation of their family—Ali and Cody retreated upstairs to the playroom, Charles and Emmy to the crawlspace, and from that point on, the divide between them continued to grow.

  Charles pitied the poor house sometimes. Built in the 1930s, exemplary of an architectural style known as storybook, it retained its charming, eccentric exterior: exaggerated peaked roofline, intentionally off-kilter brickwork, small in scale but expansive in whimsy. True, Charles had let the yard go a little, the herb and vegetable garden completely, but overall it looked pretty much the same as it had when they’d moved in as newlyweds, the large down payment a wedding present from his in-laws.