Mourning Becomes Cassandra

by Christina Dudley

  It was the longest speech from him yet, although he delivered it entirely to Benny’s left ear while he scratched him. By the end of it, Benny was snuffling Kyle’s long hair and whimpering ecstatically from all the attention.

  “Oh, Kyle,” I said, “I’m sorry you thought you had to do that. But that’s all you did, right?”

  His rare smile flashed. “Isn’t it enough?”

  I saw Nadina and her friends emerging and waved. The dark-haired girl leaned close to whisper something to the others, and they erupted in laughter. “More than enough—don’t get me wrong. But did you know they have a nickname for you here?”

  His stony face returned. “Yeah…‘Bandit’ or some dumb name like that. I ignore them.”

  “But why ‘Bandit’?” I persisted.

  Benny was licking Kyle’s face, so Kyle shoved him away and stood up. “I didn’t steal anything, if that’s what you mean. Maybe they couldn’t spell ‘Vandal’ or ‘Trespasser.’” He shrugged off my puzzlement. “So what’s your deal, Cass? Did you really sell out and switch to friggin’ High School Musical?”

  “Are you kidding? After mixing up Agen Kolar with Ki-Adi-Mundi, you think I’m going to risk losing even more of your respect?” I fumbled in my handbag. “Here. Here’s another chapter. Check out my Clone Wars research and techno-wizardry and let me know what you think.”

  Taking it, he started to walk away, causing Benny to strain at the leash. I called after him, “Wait! Will I see you Saturday? Are you going to the mentor thing?”

  Walking backward, he nodded once and headed off down the hill. I was still watching him when I felt the leash jerk again and found Nadina beside me, her friends moving away in the other direction. Like Kyle she bent down to love on that ridiculous dog.

  “You like Bateman, don’t you?” Nadina asked, letting Benny lick her ear.

  “I do,” I answered. “I like him a lot. More than this dog, for instance. But I brought Benny the Wonderdoodle for you. My friend’s ex-husband dropped him off for a few days.”

  “He’s a beautiful boy—who’s a beautiful boy?” Nadina crooned at Benny, who rolled around on his back like a moron. She took the leash from me, and we started off toward the lake.

  Nadina really did have a gift with animals, or dogs at least. She patiently ran through all the range of commands and variations and figured out which ones Benny responded to—Phyl would be irked to know most of them were Jason’s—and then worked with him on walking properly on a leash. First she would set off in one direction down the paved path, and the second Benny’s attention wavered, Nadina would whip around and go another direction, yanking Benny along with her. After a few minutes of this, he learned to keep an eye on Nadina and save himself some discomfort. It helped that she was so tall and strong; I doubted I would have the same success when I walked Benny home.

  “Where did you learn all this?” I asked from my vantage point on the park bench. “Petco ought to have you teach some dog training classes.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been kissing the dog trainer’s ass for a month now, and I think she’s going to let me assist her, next class,” Nadina replied. She stopped and rewarded Benny with scratching around his floppy ears. “I learned it from my grandpa. He got a King Charles spaniel puppy when I was little, and I watched him train her.”

  “Did you spend a lot of time with your grandparents?”

  “I lived with them till fifth grade. My mom was off finding herself or something like that, and I’ve never met my dad. But when Grandpa died, Mom had to come back and get me because Grandma was losing it.” Nadina sat down next to me on the bench, looping Benny’s leash around one of the slats. “I miss him.”

  Coming fresh as I was off of our first mentors’ training (“Building trust”), I felt a thrill of eagerness that Nadina was already willing to show a little vulnerability. We were told that students typically were hesitant to trust, based on histories of hurt and abandonment, and we were not supposed to force their confidences. As casually as I could I asked, “What was he like?”

  “Big guy—I’m built like him. And he smoked for fifty years, so he was always sounding like he was going to hack up a lung. He made me promise when I was nine that I would never, ever smoke.”

  “And do you?”

  She looked insulted. “No! I promised him!” Her zeal made me sorry he hadn’t also sworn her off of drugs, alcohol and loser boyfriends.

  I waited to see if she wanted to say anything else, maybe tell me about her own vices of choice, but she didn’t. We talked instead about incidentals: the movie she’d seen with Sonya and Carly from school, an irate woman at Petco, the book they were reading in English. Mike wasn’t happy with Nadina being so busy, apparently, but neither did she seem willing to go into more detail. True to teenage form, she didn’t ask me any questions about myself, apart from wondering what I kept giving Kyle. When I told her, she lost interest and didn’t pursue it further.

  After we had been sitting and talking for some time, Benny spied some ducks and almost hung himself trying to chase them, forgetting his leash was tied up. Laughing, we released him to shoot across the grass and flounder a few feet into the lake, where the ducks took wing and escaped. He trotted back, dripping and pleased with himself, and we took that as our signal to walk back to the school.

  “See you Saturday,” I reminded her at the bus stop. “I’ll be the one with the Dramamine.”

  • • •

  Because late September weather can be hit or miss, I was relieved to wake up to sunshine. Nadina could hardly dread sailing more than I did; I think the last non-ferry boat I had been on was the tourist barf-o-rama from Naples to Capri, a cruise that made top-five for Worst Memories Related to Physical Discomfort (only outscored by childbirth and late pregnancy). At least today would be no storm-whipped cruise. There was nothing to do but pop my Dramamine and put a brave face on it and hope the boat would be big enough to leave me nothing to do.

  Nadina and I agreed I would pick her up in front of the school and we would carpool to the yacht-owners’ house on Hunt’s Point. When I pulled up I couldn’t help chuckling because her look of disgusted misery mirrored the one I was hiding. Wordlessly I handed her the Dramamine, and she choked it down with her smoothie. “I didn’t want to do a solid breakfast this morning, in case I puke later,” she said morosely.

  The Hillards were major donors to Camden School, and they had graciously offered to skipper us on their cruising yacht and then host a barbecue lunch afterward in their spacious backyard. Troy had often teased me that I raised getting lost to an art form; sure enough, we were fifteen minutes late after having missed the camouflaged turn-off down to the water a couple times.

  The rest of the group had already gathered on the back deck. I recognized Mark Henneman chatting up a middle-aged couple I took to be the Hillards, booming out in his cheerful voice, while everyone else stood around in loose pairs of ill-at-ease mentor and sullen student. Way off at the end of the dock I could see Kyle’s lanky form dwarfing James’. At least they seemed to be talking.

  Catching sight of us, Mark exclaimed, “Cass and Nadina! Wonderful! We’re all here now. Let me introduce you to the Hillards and get you some life jackets.” I saw Nadina rolling her eyes as she fumbled into her purple-and-aqua number and slapped a dorky name tag on it.

  Mark told me that not all students had mentors yet. For the time being it was mentor triage, with newer, less-established students getting them, to give them a firm foundation. Fortunately for Nadina’s happiness, her friend Sonya was also there, accompanied by the sweet old lady of the appliqué jacket whose bravery had put me to shame, and the girls quickly went to stand by each other. After chatting briefly with Sonya’s mentor Louella, I made my way down the dock to Kyle and James.

  Somehow James managed to look jaunty in the ridiculously bright life jacket. He was saying something about Xbox versus Playstation, but when he saw me he broke off and reached out to shake my hand, grinning. “Hey there, Ca
ss, good to see you again. Kyle was just telling me about how your book is coming.”

  I gave Kyle an accusing look, and James added hastily, “No worries. Kyle specifically assured me that it’s not crap.”

  “Coming from Kyle that’s almost like winning the Pulitzer Prize,” I joked. Kyle said nothing, only giving his characteristic shrug. “Well, thank you, Kyle. I appreciate you reading it for me. I’m getting faster now; I think chapters four and five are ready for your discerning eye.”

  “And if you feel up to it, shoot me a chapter or two,” James said. “We lost one of our writers to Nintendo this past week—maybe you could do a little for us on a contract basis.” He fished in his wallet for a business card: James Kittredge, Producer, Free Universe. A little logo of the Milky Way floating above a hand.

  “‘Producer,’” I murmured, impressed.

  “A fancy word for Project Manager,” James said quickly. “I try to keep all the actual workers in line, on task and on time.”

  “Well, with Kyle’s approval I certainly feel confident enough to let you see it. Maybe I’ll send two chapters, one technical and one not?”

  “Perfect. Then give us a little while on our end to pass it around the office to some of the different development teams, and we’ll be in business.”

  Mrs. Hillard clapped then to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome again, everyone, to our home. Before we get under way, we just want to go over some basic sailing terminology and safety requirements, so if I could please have your attention. How many of you have sailed before?” Puking in a bag on my way to Capri surely didn’t count, so I kept my hand down. Only a few of hands were raised, Louella’s among them. “Just so,” said Mrs. Hillard. “We don’t expect much from you all except to duck if we say duck and practice some basic safety measures.” She went over these—the main one being to keep one hand for holding on to the boat so that we wouldn’t lose our balance—and indicated which parts of the boat were good for clutching onto: rails, side stays, mast, lifelines.

  Nadina sidled over to me and muttered, “This is too much to remember—I’m just going to hang on to you, Cass.”

  “Good luck with that plan,” I replied shortly.

  In the event, our little cruise didn’t require us to test our new knowledge. The Hillards did most of the work, with occasional help from the few experienced sailors; the rest of us were free to enjoy the breeze and sunshine and sparkle off the lake. The mountains were out—Rainier glowed blue-white and almost within reach. Something big must have been going on at Husky Stadium; we saw the cars backed up on the bridge, and the traffic jam added to our feeling of freedom. It was impossible not to relax; Nadina shrieked with laughter whenever the boat heeled unexpectedly, Sonya spotted a flipping fish, the grumpy older man Ray pointed out landmarks familiar to us all from childhood, and I even saw Kyle smiling. Maybe because we were the only two mentors there under 50 years old, James and I frequently caught each other’s eye when one of the kids did or said something humorous and would look away before we could laugh.

  Too soon it was over, but the good spirits carried over to the barbecue. Mark Henneman had us play a game where each mentor and mentee had ten minutes to find all the things they had in common, the crazier the better, and he gave us a list of possibilities to get us going: favorite books or movies, places we had been, names of people we had dated, shared talents or physical characteristics.

  Nadina whipped the list out of my hand and moaned, “We’re gonna lose! We won’t have anything!”

  “How do you know?” I countered. “We just have to be creative. Where were you born?”

  “Federal Way. How about you?”

  “Bellevue. But they’re both in the same county. We’ll say we were born in the same county. And your boyfriend is Mike. I dated a Michael in high school for two weeks.”

  “That’s two things. You’re married, right? What’s your husband’s name?” Nadina asked, getting into it.

  “Troy,” I said, after hesitating briefly. Is there ever a good time to mention someone is dead? Surely I could be forgiven for not squelching all Nadina’s enthusiasm for the icebreaker.

  “No way! Before I met Mike I really liked this guy named Troy who was on the Winslow Homer basketball team. He kind of liked me too, for a while.”

  “My Troy played high school basketball, too,” I said. Nice that her Troy was also in the past tense.

  By the end of ten minutes, when Mark asked us to wrap it up, we had compiled a respectable list.

  “Okay,” said Mark, “how many of you pairs found at least ten things in common?”

  Several raised their hands. Nadina grabbed my arm and held it up in the air with hers. “Fifteen things?” A few pairs put their hands down. “Twenty things?” Only we and Kyle and James remained. “Twenty-five things?” James put his hand down.

  “Whoo hoo!” yelled Nadina, punching the air. Mark asked us to share some of the things we had discovered, but when I reached for the list to edit a few of them, Nadina whisked it away. “Let me see…Cass and I both thought we might puke today. We both have moles on our ass—” (She danced away from my hand.) “We both dated guys named Mike, but her Mike dumped her, and we both dated guys named Troy who played basketball, only my Troy dumped me, and hers married her.”

  At least her phrasing was vague enough that you didn’t know if Troy was alive or dead. If I added any more people to the Elvis-lives list, I would have to stage Troy’s death on national TV to set the record straight. Mark Henneman must have noticed my quandary because he quickly moved on to the others. Nadina and I unearthed the most things in common, but not the most unusual, unless you counted the mole. Sonya and Louella could both tie a cherry stem in a knot with their tongues; Ray and his student Tan were both in a hot-dog-eating contest; and Kyle and James each won the same geeksta rap CD at some video game conference in Seattle last month.

  “If you both won the same CD at the same conference, did you run into each other there?” I asked.

  James slapped Kyle on the back, I kid you not. “I dunno, Kyle—were you one of the eight hundred guys wearing glasses and a fanny pack?”

  “Dude,” rasped Kyle, “I thought that was you.” He actually smiled again—twice in one day!—while James laughed heartily.

  • • •

  “I didn’t know Bateman ever talked,” Nadina remarked on the ride back. “He never talks in school. He must like his mentor guy.”

  “I think he does,” I answered, smiling to myself. “They’re both smart and know lots about video games and StarWars and such.”

  “Yeah…” she played with the window control, up down up down. “Mike doesn’t talk much to me, but he talks to his guy friends about the music stuff. Does Troy talk to you?”

  I took a deep breath. Time to take the bull by the horns. We were pulling up at the school, and I deliberately waited to answer until I shut down the engine, so that I could look at her. “Nadina, this is kind of weird, but Troy doesn’t talk to me at all. Because he died about fifteen months ago. I’m a widow.”

  “Shut up!” she shrieked. “That is not even funny to joke about.” I grimaced apologetically but didn’t know what to say. For some reason, maybe because my secretly-dead husband was beginning to loom comically large in my Camden School doings, I didn’t feel that treacherous tightening in my throat.

  Her mouth popped open, then shut. She made several attempts to speak, all unsuccessful. I put my hand on her arm to reassure her. “It’s okay. I don’t know what to say either. He had a heart condition no one knew about, and he just died very suddenly while he was driving. We had a little girl, who was with him in the car, and—and—she’s gone too.” Nadina’s mouth continued to work, and some objective part of my mind noticed she looked a little like a fish after it’s been landed on the boat deck.

  “You’re all alone?” Nadina finally managed. “That really sucks.”

  “Not all alone,” I said hastily. “I was alone for a while, but now
I’m living with some good friends, and I still have them and family and church and even my in-laws.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “Really,” I persisted. “The last month has been the best since the accident, and today was so fun I almost forgot about it. Let’s not end the day on this note. Are we hanging out Tuesday?”

  Nadina continued to stare at me, and I wondered if she would want a mentor trade-in. Maybe it was too much to ask: not just—surprise! I have a dead husband—but wait, there’s more! My daughter also died! I underestimated her, however, and what she had been through herself.

  After another moment Nadina shrugged and started to get out of the car. “Works for me. See you then.”

  Chapter Nine: Going Deeper

  “So what was your daughter like?” Nadina asked me one afternoon, some weeks later.

  It had taken her some while to return to the subject, but I discovered talking about Troy and Min to someone who didn’t know them was unexpectedly easier. I found myself lifting the lid on those boxes of memory I tried to stuff under the bed: what Min had been like and what I had dreamed of for her; how Troy had been my husband and best friend.

  We were at the lake again, having walked Benny. Nadina and I spent most of our weekly time going for walks, with Benny whenever I happened to have him—Benny, who showed improvement for every hour spent with Nadina. (Phyl remarked on it, and even Jason complimented Phyl on finally showing dominance over Benny: “I’ve always told you, Philly, you weren’t aggressive enough. You’ve got to show dogs you’re the alpha. Glad to see you’re finally getting some backbone.”)