The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman

by Ben H. Winters

  Since then, Bethesda and Tenny had maybe said hi to each other now and then, or “Sorry,” if they collided in the hall, but that was it. Bethesda hung out with the Schwartz sisters, and sometimes Violet Kelp, and she worked on the Mary Todd Lincoln Gazetteer and did math team and studied at the Wilkersholm Memorial Public Library. Tenny Boyer … well, Bethesda didn’t know what he did, or who he hung out with, or where. All she knew was that he sat in the back of every class with a spaced-out expression—and, she was now learning, he was the messiest popcorn eater in all human history.

  Bethesda handed Tenny a pencil, and he said, “Thanks, dude.” And then they sat in awkward silence. From the other room came the low murmur of a reporter on TV, discussing expected rainfall in various regions of the American Southeast. Bethesda’s father followed weather like some people follow sports.

  “Okay,” Bethesda began. “I’ll list some topics, and we’ll both write down everything you’re having trouble with. That way, I’ve got a list of what to focus on when we’re working together, and you’ve got a list of what to work on at home.”

  “Sounds good,” Tenny said, and then scratched his head. Popcorn crumbs cascaded gently from his hair. “Um, can I have some paper?”

  Half an hour later, after Tenny had gathered all the necessary supplies … and after he had borrowed some scissors to take the shrink-wrap off his copy of A More Perfect Union … and after he had finished his cream soda and asked Bethesda if it was okay to have another one … and after he had cleaned up the popcorn he accidentally knocked off the table on the way to the fridge … and after he had waited, repeating, “I’m really sorry, dude,” while Bethesda vacuumed the crumbs he missed … they finally began studying.

  “Let’s start with the Constitution.” Bethesda figured they’d done that the most recently, so it would be freshest in Tenny’s mind. “What do you know about the Federalist Papers?” asked Bethesda.

  “The what? ”

  “Okay,” she said, carefully writing Fed. Papers under THINGS TO GO OVER (T-GO). “How about the Three-Fifths Clause?”

  “It was … oh. Wait. Was it some kind of … huh. What was it? ”

  Bethesda wrote 3/5 Cl. under Fed. Papers and bit her lip. Okay, she thought. A lot to go over. No problem. We’ve got plenty of time.

  “Tenny? What are you doing? ”

  Tenny had closed his notebook and pushed A More Perfect Union away like a gross plate of food. He leaned way back in his chair and yawned.

  Wait. Is he—is he taking a break?

  “Tenny?”

  “Hey, you know what I don’t get?” he said absently, twirling his pencil between two fingers like a drumstick.

  “It’s not break time, Tenny,” Bethesda said with a worried frown. “Not even close.”

  Tenny didn’t seem to hear. “I don’t get why Ms. Finkleman—I mean, why Little Miss Mystery—”

  Bethesda cut him off sharply. “No. Stop.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’m serious, Tenny. We’re not talking about it.”

  Bethesda could guess what it was that Tenny wanted to talk about, and the truth was that she wanted to talk about it, too. In fact, it was all she wanted to talk about, practically all she could think about since Ms. Finkleman had summoned her and Tenny to the food court on Monday night and they had made their agreement.

  There was one thing about Ms. Finkleman’s deal that didn’t make sense … one thing that didn’t add up …

  If Ms. Finkleman was secretly the punk-rock singer/guitarist Little Miss Mystery, then why did she need Tenny Boyer to plan the rock show for the Choral Corral? Yes, Tenny was the kid at school who knew the most about rock—but Ms. Finkleman was actually a former rock star! Surely she knew more! Surely she was perfectly capable of creating the show by herself!

  And yet that was exactly the deal Ms. Finkleman had made with Tenny: He would choose the songs, plan the running order, decide who would be in which bands and who would play which instruments. He would watch all the rehearsals and give her notes to give to the kids. He would secretly make all the decisions for Ms. Finkleman, who would then relay them to sixth-period Music Fundamentals as if they were her own.

  And in return for his help, Tenny would get some sorely needed help of his own. Bethesda Fielding—glad to have a chance to make up to Ms. Finkleman for revealing her hidden past—would tutor him in Social Studies so he wouldn’t flunk Mr. Melville’s infamous Floating Midterm and end up at St. Francis Xavier next year.

  It was a straightforward agreement, a three-way pact, to which all parties had readily agreed. All very simple.

  Except why on earth did Little Miss Mystery need Tenny Boyer?

  As for why Tenny needed Bethesda—well, that part was no mystery.

  “Tell me about the Bill of Rights,” she said firmly, pushing Tenny’s book back across the table.

  Long pause.

  “Huh?”

  15

  “LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER”

  Kevin McKelvey sat at the giant antique Steinway that took up most of his bedroom, wearing his dark blue blazer and tie, his hair immaculately combed as always. He sighed. He looked out the window. He looked down in his lap. He cracked his knuckles. Finally, slowly, he lifted his hands up onto the keys and played a glittering glissando down the length of the keyboard. He sighed again.

  Kevin’s life, like his room, was dominated by the piano. Every day after school he went directly to the Band and Chorus room and practiced until Janitor Steve chased him out so he could lock the front doors. At home, after dinner, Kevin sat at the Steinway and practiced for a few hours more. His mother would stand just outside the door, listening; often he would find her there when he finally emerged to brush his teeth before bed.

  She would always smile and pat him on the back. “Piano is in your blood,” his mom liked to say. “It’s in your bones, dear.”

  Which was true. Walter “Walt” McKelvey was a world-class concert pianist who jetted around the world playing with various quartets, quintets, and philharmonics. When he was in town, home for a night or two from Berlin before taking off for Tokyo, he would lean against Kevin’s doorframe, arms crossed, and say, “All right, son. Show me where we are.”

  Kevin would sit and play the Goldberg Variations, or Chopin’s preludes, or something by Satie, while his mother beamed at her two geniuses and Kevin’s father listened solemnly, with his eyes closed. And then he gave notes. A half hour, maybe an hour, of corrections: “The adagio section is too fast, Kevin.” “You’re assaulting the keys, Kevin. Approach with diplomacy, not force.”

  And Kevin would nod. “Of course, Father,” and then Walter McKelvey would leave to catch a flight to Toronto or Charlotte or Kuala Lumpur, to accompany a symphony—and Kevin went back to practicing.

  Kevin sighed a third time and flipped opened the sheet music in front of him. For this rock-and-roll project, he’d been assigned to the keyboards (of course) and was playing for the eighties rock band, Half-Eaten Almond Joy. Their song, by a band Kevin had never heard of called Bon Jovi, was “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

  Well, Kevin thought, quickly skimming the sheet music, at least it’s not going to be hard.

  The original was done on synthesizer, not real piano, so it was basically just chording. He played E minor for two measures, four quarter notes per measure, and then for another two measures. Was the whole song just E minor? No—here at last came a chord change. He moved to C for a measure, to D for a measure, and then back to E minor. Easy.

  Kevin glanced at the vocal line, just to keep himself interested. “Tommy used to work on the docks,” he sang softly, continuing to bang out the chords (E minor, E minor), “Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck, it’s tough….” (C, then D.) “So tough …” (Back to E minor.)

  Right around there, right when the song moved back to E minor, Kevin felt a shiver beneath his skin. There was something about the way that E minor chord landed when it came back that agreed with the lyr
ics. Life really was tough for this Tommy guy. With his left foot, Kevin worked the sustain pedal, and the chords bounced off the walls of his bedroom. He kept singing. The second verse was about Tommy’s friend Gina, who worked at a diner. It sounded like she didn’t like working at this diner, but she didn’t have any choice, because of her and Tommy’s financial situation. The chords remained the same, but now the repetition, instead of feeling simple, was somehow deeply satisfying. Again the song moved through its simple changes, from E minor to C and then to D, like it was building, line by line, measure by measure.

  At the chorus the melody changed: more held notes, longer lines. Kevin sang out: “Whooah! We’re halfway there!” And then—bam!—out of nowhere, the E minor inverted, transforming into its bright-eyed cousin, G major! A big, gorgeous G major!

  “Whooooooooooooa! Livin’ on a prayer! ”

  After the chorus, the song went into a third verse, then returned to the chorus before launching, whoosh, into a long solo section—then one more huge, triumphant chorus. When he finished, Kevin played “Livin’ on a Prayer” again.

  That same night, in the basement of his dad’s house, where he stayed on the weekends, Chester Hu was getting really frustrated. “I can’t do it,” he shouted to no one, tossing his drumsticks to the ground. “I can’t! I suck.”

  What Chester couldn’t do, he had decided after trying twice, was sustain a steady four kicks a measure on the bass drum, while hitting the snare on the two and the four, as was required to play the James Brown song “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Ms. Finkleman had named him the drummer for the sixties rock band (Band Number One) because Chester had briefly drummed for the Mary Todd Lincoln marching band. Of course, Chester had stunk in the marching band. Tromping along with his big shoulder-slung bass drum, he could never make it around the track without losing the tempo, losing his breath, or (on one extremely embarrassing occasion) losing the whole rest of the band and marching directly into a cluster of pom-pom girls.

  So, sure, he had been as psyched as everyone else about this rock-show thing—at first. But now, seated at the ancient drum kit that once had belonged to his uncle Phillip, holding the sticks in his hand, confronting the reality of how hard it was to play drums in a real band, his instinct was to quit immediately, take an F in Music Fundamentals, and go play video games. But Chester kept remembering all the crazy details of Bethesda Fielding’s Special Project—those pictures! The set list! The tattoo! Ms. Finkleman’s secret identity!

  How could he bail on this? It was like Batman had come to their school and was teaching a crime-fighting class!

  Face it, young man, he thought, it would be a shame to waste this splendid opportunity. Chester shuddered, realizing he had gotten that phrase from dorky Mr. Bigelow, the guidance counselor with the mole who always smelled like after-dinner mints.

  Whatever. Chester picked up his drumsticks and tried again.

  Pamela Preston was not practicing her maracas. When she got home from the mother-daughter yoga class she and her mom attended on alternate Friday evenings, she removed the maracas disdainfully from her backpack, plucking them out one by one and holding them away from her body like they were dirty diapers. She dropped them on the floor of her room, where they rattled lamely.

  It was bad enough that Bethesda Fielding’s Special Project had been a triumph, while hers had been a humiliating disaster.

  It was bad enough that traditional English folk ballads from the sixteenth century had been replaced by this rock-and-roll nonsense, depriving Pamela of the spotlight.

  But maracas? Her assigned instrument was the maracas? It wasn’t even a real instrument! It was something a preschooler made out of dried rice and an egg carton!

  Her friends kept telling her that it wasn’t a big deal—that doing rock would be “more funner” than folk ballads (as Natasha said), or that it would be “the sweetest sweetness of all time” (Todd). But the rock show somehow belonged to Bethesda, it was her thing, and that meant that Bethesda had become the most important person in the seventh grade. But that was Pamela’s rightful place, and she couldn’t just let that change for no reason.

  Wait. Wait!

  “Aha! ” Pamela cried. “I’ve got it! ” There had to be a reason!

  There had to be some reason that Ms. Finkleman—or Little Miss Mystery, whatever her stupid name was—had given up her rock-star existence. And there had to be a reason she kept it a secret all these years!

  There was something she didn’t want anyone to know! All Pamela had to do was figure out that secret something, and she could set the universe straight once more!

  “I am a genius! ” yelled Pamela Preston, running out of her room to find the phone. On the way she kicked the stupid maracas under her bed.

  Meanwhile, Bethesda Fielding closed the front door behind Tenny Boyer, watched him bike down the street, and settled down wearily on the big living-room sofa. Project SWT was not going well at all. Bethesda was trying to maintain a positive attitude, but after one week, she was already pretty sick of hearing Tenny Boyer say “Um” and “Oh” and “Huh?” and occasionally “What?” What was wrong with this kid? He always showed up late, he never studied—he didn’t even try! Even though he was the one who needed the help.

  Over and over again, they had these ridiculous conversations:

  “Tenny! Can you try to pay attention? ”

  “What?”

  “I need you to focus, Tenny. To try.”

  “I am. I’m totally … wait, what did you say? ”

  At the end of their first week of work, Tenny had learned basically nothing. Wait! Not quite true: He had, after much confusion, grasped the concept that “the 1700s” meant the same as “the eighteenth century.” But to earn Tenny a passing grade on the Floating Midterm, they were going to have to do better than that. A lot better.

  Bethesda had told Ms. Finkleman she was an amazing tutor. She had promised her this would be no problem.

  “I can do this,” she said, trying to talk herself into optimism. “There’s still plenty of time. I can do this.”

  As she trudged up the stairs to her room, Bethesda looked longingly back toward the kitchen. Her father was whistling as he fixed himself an elaborate sundae, pouring a thick stream of chocolate syrup into a bowl overloaded with ice cream. But Bethesda kept walking. She had lyrics to memorize.

  Bethesda closed the door to her room and clicked through her iPod to find the song the Careless Errors were doing in the rock show: “Holiday” by a band called Weezer. Bethesda had wasted an entire night trying to get Tenny Boyer to understand that Benedict Arnold and Benjamin Franklin were two different people, and instead of diving into a giant bowl of walnut fudge, she had to memorize some song so she could prepare to humiliate herself in front of the entire school.

  How had this happened?

  Oh, right, she thought glumly. Me. Me and my stupid Special Project.

  Just then her father yelled up the stairs: “Hey! Bethesdaberry! You’ve got a phone call! It’s Pamela Preston.”

  Bethesda stopped. Pamela Preston?

  Halfway across town, Patricia McKelvey was standing outside the door of her son’s bedroom, her arms crossed, her brows furrowed with concern. Her son, Kevin, was in his room, playing the piano as usual, but it was a song she didn’t recognize.

  She wasn’t sure what song, but it was most definitely not Beethoven.

  She was about to crack the door to see what was going on, when she heard her son … singing. Singing loud.

  Mrs. McKelvey couldn’t exactly make out the words coming from under Kevin’s closed bedroom door, but it sounded something like “Livin’ on a praaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayer!” Then, when the song ended, she heard another unfamiliar sound. Kevin was laughing. Deliriously, gleefully laughing.

  16

  THREE LITTLE WORDS

  TO: Winston Cohn

  FROM: Isabel Van Vreeland

  SUBJECT: UPCOMING CHORAL CORRAL/YOUR TOTAL HUMILIATION

&nb
sp; My dear Principal Cohn,

  Sorry if this email contains the occasional misspelign. My hands are trembling from what I have just witnessed in my Band and Chorus room, where our own Ms. Finkleman and her students are preparing for the upcoming Seventeenth Annual Choral Corral. Ms. Finkleman is creating a show

  Principal Van Vreeland tapped her chin for a moment with a perfectly manicured forefinger, and then deleted the word show.

  Ms. Finkleman is creating a MASTERPIECE that will surely go down in the history of the All-County Choral Corral as one of the

  Stop. Delete, delete.

  as THE SINGLE GREATEST performance ever. In sum, Principal Cohn: WE WILL DESTROY YOU.

  “Principal Van Vreeland? If I might?”

  The principal looked up with a sour expression. She hadn’t realized Jasper was still hovering over her shoulder. I should really get him some kind of bell, she thought suddenly, and then mentally filed the idea for later.

  “Not to be a metaphorical rocker of the figurative boat, of course.” He wrung his reedy hands together with consternation. “But I wonder if you are certain this sort of communication is such a good idea?”

  “My god, are you irritating,” the principal snapped as her finger plunged down on the send button. “I have total confidence in Ms. Finkleman, in Lady McMystery, whatever her name is.”

  “But—”

  “But what, Jasper? Because at this moment, I’m having far less confidence in my choice of assistant principal! ”

  Jasper blanched. “But nothing! Nothing at all. I was just going to say how completely I agree with you. Always. Obviously.”

  Just then a sharp ding sounded from Principal Van Vreeland’s computer, as a reply email arrived. Together, the principal and her assistant leaned forward to read the three little words flashing merrily on the screen.