Next to me, Christian regrips his pencil. We still haven’t had sex since he came back. Maybe he discovered the Bible while he was up at his lake house.
“And?” Britta prompts.
“Well, their advice: ‘This young man has been led off of the Lord’s path and now he’s trying to take you with him. You’ve done the right thing by resisting. Now, try to help him. Invite him to youth group meetings at your church or offer to read the Bible with him. If he’s strayed too far, you might not be able to help him. Leave him to fall into the hands of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Remember: God is always testing us. If you give in to this boy, you will fail God’s test.’”
“That’ll go over well,” I say. “No sex, thanks, let’s read some scripture instead.”
“I’m sure he’d respect her decision if he really loved her,” Christian says.
Does Christian think I don’t want to have sex with him? I sort of tried that night we were studying in the basement, but he was focused on trying to get me to go to Minnesota with him, and anyway, I doubt he would ever do it when his parents were home. We could go to my house. Dad’s never around, and Mom is always on the couch or in her studio.
Josh interrupts my thoughts. “Not a chance.”
The problem with my house is Nonnie. Not that she’d care that I was having sex. It’s just that it’s hard to be home without wanting to be with her.
Outside, someone is walking across the field in faded jeans and black boots. Dominic.
“Where’s that hoodlum going?” Christian asks.
“He’s not—” I start to say. But maybe I shouldn’t draw attention to my friendship, or whatever it is, with Dominic. “Wait, am I doing this right?”
“Hold up,” Josh says. “Did you honestly just use the word hoodlum? What is this, 1953?”
“Hoodlum. It’s a word.”
“Are we going to the soda counter after school? Maybe to a sock hop?”
“It’s a word.”
“So is greaser. But I’m not saying, ‘Hey, look, there goes that greaser Dominic Meyers cutting class again.’”
Britta looks out the window. “You don’t know that he’s cutting class.”
“Sure. He’s just heading out across the field as part of an independent study,” Christian says.
“I have the elements all lined up, I think, but it doesn’t look right.” I slide my notebook over toward Christian.
“An independent study in economics,” Josh snickers. “You know, supply and demand, price points, that sort of thing.”
Christian laughs.
“Knock it off, guys,” I say.
“What?” Josh asks. “He can’t even hear us, seeing as he is outside and we are inside.”
“What happened to hall-monitor Very? You were ready to bust him on the first day of school,” Christian reminds me, but it doesn’t feel like a joke anymore.
“If you guys don’t start focusing, Britta’s not going to get her essay done and she won’t get into Brown, and I won’t pass chemistry, and I won’t get in anywhere, even with Mr. Tompkins’s punny recommendations.”
“Sorry,” Christian murmurs.
“Right, Grace,” Josh says. “Let’s get back to this Chinese stuff.”
“By the way, my parents were wondering if you were going to come to Minnesota with us or not.”
“Oh . . . I haven’t really had a chance to think about it.”
“Hey, Very, isn’t that your sister?” Josh asks.
“No, she has art right now,” I say. But as I look over my shoulder, back through the stacks, I see Ramona sitting in one of the carrels. She has a couple volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica in front of her and is carefully tearing out pages. “Oh crap,” I mutter.
“What’s she doing?” Christian asks.
“Oh man, is she a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?” Josh asks. “That is so sexy. Is she seeing anyone?”
“You know, ‘crazy’ isn’t usually at the top of the list of things to look for in a potential girlfriend,” Grace tells him.
“Do you think you should go talk to her?” Britta asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, still watching Ramona. She has a small pile of pages in front of her. Grace taps my back as if pushing a button to start me walking toward Ramona. “Stop,” I hiss when I get to the study carrel.
Ramona looks up and doesn’t seem surprised—nor does she stop. With a raspy shriffft she tears out a page from the V volume.
“You can’t do that,” I say.
“Nobody will even notice,” she replies.
“It’s a library book.”
“At least I’m using it.”
“This isn’t using; this is destroying.”
“You should have seen the dust on these. No one has touched them in years.” She adds the page to her stack before closing the volume and picking up another. “I’m saving them.”
“It’s vandalism.”
“That’s your opinion,” she says.
“No, I’m pretty sure that’s a fact. Hey, you’ve got the V volume right there. Why don’t we look it up?”
“Your friends are staring at us.”
I look over my shoulder. Grace lifts up her magazine, and Christian tugs on Josh’s shirtsleeve, but Britta keeps looking right at us. “Stop,” I say again.
“Don’t worry, Very. It won’t rub off.”
“What are you talking about?”
She pushes the books to the back of the carrel and picks up her stack of pages, which she shoves into her bag. Sidestepping me, she says, “See you later.” And that is that. I pick up the encyclopedias and put them back on the shelf, right where they belong.
“What just happened?” Josh asks when I get back to them.
“Nothing. I don’t know.” My face is hot, and I am sure the whole library is watching us. Ms. Blythe will be coming around the corner any minute, and I’ll have to try to explain something that has no explanation.
Christian takes my hand in his and gives it a squeeze. “What did she say?”
“She said she was using them.”
“Maybe it was an art project. Mr. Solloway loves that sort of thing,” Grace suggests.
“Right,” Britta agrees. “And it’s possible that Ms. Blythe actually set those books aside for kids to use. You know, old books she was going to get rid of anyway.”
“And Ramona was probably just messing with you, letting you think she was actually tearing up a library book,” Grace finishes for her.
“Exactly,” Christian says, giving it a stamp of finality. “It was just Ramona being Ramona. It was nothing.”
“It sure didn’t seem like nothing to me,” Josh says.
“Drop it,” Grace tells him.
And for once he does.
In the car that afternoon Ramona doesn’t mention it and neither do I. I think about telling Mom, but when we get inside she’s up in her studio actually working, and I don’t want to disturb her. Anyway, everyone said it was nothing. Everyone except Josh, who, let’s face it, is not the best judge for this sort of thing. So it’s nothing. Just Ramona being Ramona and messing with me.
She slips out the back door and makes her way across the lawn, where she disappears into a stand of trees, as nimble and insubstantial as the pixie she was in Nonnie’s poem.
iii.
Britta, Grace, and I are in Mr. Tompkins’s room after school, making posters for the peer counseling group’s Wellness Fair. We’ve been here for an hour already and the halls are silent. Even Mr. Tompkins is leaving, and he’s our club adviser. First, though, he tells me some more about Professor Singh, and asks if I’ve read any of her articles. “Working on them,” I tell him, not exactly truthfully.
He smiles and says good-bye. “Just shut the door when you’re done. It’ll lock behind you.” He claims he needs to get ready for hiking one of the four-thousand-footers tomorrow.
“Total lie,” Grace says once he’s gone. “He has a date tonight. I can smell it on him. I wonder wh
at kind of girl he dates.”
“Not seventeen-year-old students,” Britta says.
“The age of consent in New Hampshire is sixteen.”
“Good to know you’ve done your research. So tell me, what is the average length of jail time for a teacher who has sex with a student?”
Outside the window, someone laughs, loud and uncontrolled. I am writing the list of the groups that are coming on a big sheet of blue poster board.
“It’s too bad they wouldn’t let us have Planned Parenthood come. Or at least someone who would give out condoms.”
“Yeah, that would go over real well,” Britta says. “Local school gives out condoms, story at eleven.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wants to get into Brown. Spearheading a campaign to bring birth control to your peers seems like something they would love.” Grace leans back from her own poster. It’s a giant heart and the words Love Your Body in curly script.
“Do you guys know about that party tomorrow night?” I ask.
“Whose party?” Britta asks.
“Nobody’s party, I guess. It’s just out in the woods.”
“Oh, one of those crazy keggers,” Grace says.
“You know about it?” I ask.
“Well, maybe not specifically that one, but I know people have them out there from time to time. Back by the skating rink, right?”
“How stupid is that?” Britta asks.
“I know, right?” I say. “It’s like flashing a light and saying, ‘Police! Come arrest us for underage drinking!’”
“Freezing your ass off and drinking cheap beer,” Grace says. “No, thanks.”
“It’s weird that we weren’t invited, though, don’t you think?” I ask.
“It’s not an invitation type of party, Very,” Grace says. She sees me writing Hartley’s Homeopathic Healing and adds, “Ugh. My mom took me there once. They gave me these pills that were the size of grape tomatoes and they always broke in my mouth and were all oily.”
“Do you even want to go?” Britta asks me.
“My grandmother thinks I need to get out more. Mom, too.”
“Well, your grandmother is dying—” Grace begins.
“Grace!” Britta interrupts.
“What. She is. Your grandmother doesn’t have much time left, so she’s all carpe diem, and your mom, well, she’s your mom.”
“Meaning?” I ask.
“Vicarious reenactment? I don’t know. I just know she’s the only adult who likes me better than Britta and it’s because I curse like a fucking sailor.”
“It’s true,” Britta says. “Trust me. You don’t want to go to that party. Why don’t we all go to my house and have an eighties moviefest instead. Some Brat Pack or maybe The Princess Bride.”
“Something from this century, and I’m in,” Grace says.
“There is no one of our generation who holds a candle to Ally Sheedy or Molly Ringwald.”
“Ally and Molly don’t interest me,” Grace says. “And the boys in those movies have the worst clothes. Popped collars? It’s like the whole decade was filled with douches.”
“That sounds fun,” I say. “I should be with Nonnie, though. And anyway, my mom has her art-department party.”
“Didn’t you just say she wants you to get out more?” Britta asks me.
A girls’ movie night is exactly what both my mom and Nonnie don’t want for me.
“Or we could come be waitresses with you,” Grace suggests.
“The boys who major in art are woeful, Grace,” I tell her. “They’re so full of—feelings.”
“I’m just trying to help.” She’s looking down at her poster and adding block letters that read EHS WELLNESS FAIR. “Be a good old chap and all that jazz.”
“I know.”
“Especially since, well, I’m not saying she’s useless, but Ramona is probably going to be useless, right?”
“Are you going to talk to her about the library?” Britta asks as she shuffles through her papers, double-checking everything.
“I thought you said it was nothing.”
“It is nothing,” Grace interrupts. “How’s this look?” She holds up her poster. The heart is lusciously red.
“Great.” I check the time on my cell phone. “I have to go, actually. I need to bring Nonnie in for a haircut.”
“No problem,” Grace says. “We’ve got this. Next up I am going to do Georgia O’Keeffe–style wavy lines. Subliminal messaging. This is going to be the most popular Wellness Fair ever.”
“Good luck with that,” I say.
“See you tomorrow night?”
“Maybe,” I say. “If I can get out of my mom’s art-department party.”
“You could tell her you were going to a crazy party,” Britta says. “Then you can just come and watch movies with us. Everyone wins.”
“You’re the tiebreaker,” Grace says. “Please do not subject me to a night of girls weeping over power ballads.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I say.
“Love you, Very,” Grace calls as I’m heading out the door.
“Love you, too,” I call back.
iv.
When I get up to Nonnie’s room, she is sitting in her wingback chair wearing her black pants and a white T-shirt. She’s put on lipstick, red, of course, and has mostly stayed within the lines of her lips, though it does bleed out into the cracks and wrinkles that surround her mouth. “Looking good, Nonnie.”
“We do have our big outing today.” She sniffs. “I would have gone on my own but I don’t trust myself on the stairs. I’m not going out of this world by falling down a set of garage stairs.” She holds out her hand so I can help her to her feet. “And it would be even worse if I fell and didn’t snap my neck. Good God, I could be laid up in the hospital with a broken hip like a real old lady. I’d probably get stuck with a ghastly roommate who wants to share Crock-Pot recipes with me.”
“That’s a very specific fear, Nonnie.”
Her fingers press hard into my flesh, she’s so unsteady on her feet. I push open the door and she regards the stairs that go down to the garage, wooden and open. For sure she can read my thoughts because she says, “There are no bedrooms on the first floor of the house and I’m not going to set up one of those rental hospital beds in the den.”
“You could use my dad’s office,” I tell her. “You know he offered. He said he could take some of his stuff to the college and box up the rest.”
“Dallas,” she says, shaking her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t want to be stuck surrounded by all those concert posters and album covers. I will stay up here in my garret. And when it all gets to be too much, I’ll pitch myself off this landing.”
“It might not work. You might wind up with that snoring Crock-Pot-cooking roommate in the hospital.” I say this but all the same I’m picturing her broken body on the floor of the garage and I shiver.
It takes us several minutes to get down the stairs. She’s embarrassed. I can tell because she isn’t saying anything and she’s always saying something. Once onto the concrete floor of the garage, we walk across to the door. I open it for her and she lets go of my arm before stepping out into the sunshine.
I reach for her arm and start guiding her toward my car, but she tugs me around the side of the house to see the bottle cap mural. It has evolved again, and the evening sun makes it sparkle.
“I can’t decide if it’s beautiful or ugly,” I say.
“That is my favorite state, that tipping point between the gorgeous and the grotesque.” She leans closer to it. “Your mother asked if we could take it down, but I told her no.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s mine.”
I look at the ground. Maybe. Or maybe it’s mine. And I don’t want it taken down, either, I realize. “I guess it’s not doing any harm,” I say.
She looks at it a moment longer, then says, “I can’t go around town in a subcompact. We’ll take my car. You’ll
drive.”
Nonnie has a sky-blue Sunbeam Rapier with a soft top. “Your car is a subcompact.”
“My car is British,” she replies, as if that makes all the difference. “The keys are upstairs. I’ll get myself situated.”
I open the passenger-side door as wide as it goes. There’s plenty of room for her to navigate around to the door since Dad’s car isn’t in its spot in the middle garage bay.
I run up to her room and find the keys on a dresser next to a picture of Nonnie dressed in safari clothes leaning against a truck and holding a monkey. It’s from a photo shoot for an article she did for Vanity Fair. She called the monkey Nietzsche and wanted to bring it home, but was told she wouldn’t be able to get it through customs.
Downstairs she is sitting in the front passenger seat with her hands folded in her lap. It makes me feel a bit like hired help.
I slide into the driver’s seat. I need to let the seat back a few clicks, and then it feels comfortable, like I’ve been driving it for years. “I’m not the best on stick shift,” I tell her.
“Neither was I.”
I get the car started and drop it into reverse, and we lurch out of the garage. When I put it into first and try to start, I stall.
“It’s a tricky clutch,” she says. “You’ve got to push it in all the way and then ease it out nice and slow. It senses fear.”
My second try I get it and we cruise down the driveway and turn onto the road that snakes down the hill to town.
“I was going to leave this car to you, but you might as well take it now. You don’t need to be driving around in that tin box anymore.”
“Really?” I ask. I turn to look at her and hitch the steering wheel. Nonnie grabs on to the door handle.
“If we make it back alive I’ll sell it to you for a dollar so you don’t have to pay the estate tax on it.”
“Nonnie, don’t talk like that.”
“A thank-you will suffice.”
“Thank you.”
I take us to the salon in Essex’s lone strip mall: A Cut Above. The salon’s owner is Carl and he’s been cutting Nonnie’s hair since she moved to Essex. When we come in the door, he throws his hands up like a southern preacher and says, “Imogene, what have you done to your hair?”
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