Schooling (17 page)

He still looks at her . . . Is it?

No.

No . . . he stretches across her to pick up the doctor’s bag a T square . . . Don’t make a scene, then. Let’s go home.

54

But first he stops at Penford because she spots the spire from the road and begs not to go back yet. We can have tea there’s always tea and I’ve been to the gardens. First he says No. Then he says No again. Finally he reverses, one arm around her seat.

Jumping in place as he locks up the car in the sudden rain Hurry up hurry up to which he says, We really have to see about your core temperature huffing as they hustle from the carpark in the drizzle. I want to see the castle, she says, I want to see it, a child repeating herself.

Foul.

Disgusting . . . she has part of the sandwich in her mouth still laughing but trying, after all she has charcoal on her front, paint in her hair and likely still some left on her nose, let’s try not to have the bread fall from your mouth. This is not some slapstick.

Dreadful.

Please don’t make that face, Mr. Gilbert.

What this one?

Don’t. I’ll be sick.

Good God girl not here. They’ll behead us. What’s funny about my face? Don’t eat that sandwich to spare my feelings. I think this scone . . . throwing it down, it bounces . . . Has been around since the place was built . . . consulting the menu . . . Fourteen eighty-two.

Same heat system from then as well.

He laughs, fangish, flicking his eyes up at her, hazel they call that, the color of.

In Penford’s grand hallway, Gilbert follows her to a picture framed in ornate gilt curlicues . . . Here’s an epic of the art world. A reproduction of the
Martyrdom of St. Lieven
. He was a bishop, set upon and killed by these robbers. But first they cut out his tongue and fed it to their dogs for lunch. There it is in those tongs.

The bearded man a saint the ecstatic tongue a slice of ham. They are near the window the rain has stopped she is about to say something American possibly embarrassing for it has been a long day what with Betts the rain stale scones in the old stall and brownish ham in his sandwich a roil to her belly which could be love or bad food. She has felt adrift like this before both hot and damp.

He’s answering, Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s not the last time I’ll sign you out, leaning his shoulder against the old window with its buckled glass a microscope looking out to the stable teahouse the town down the hill. His skin in the western fading light like paper a sheen tired together at the end of the party.

Gilbert takes a step a slack to his knees as if to make out something behind a tree a sort of cary grant manner of coat through akimbo arm, After all, do you think I want an end to stale sandwiches? You went home for Break let’s speak about that, he says or does it come of her own accord memory can be like that math equations then the hen-house door in Felmar fixed with laces. Barefoot in the garden after a brief encounter studying the house four lit windows ceramic lamp by the television. Mother never let her watch in a dark room it is hard on the eyes. Father’s inadequate light rounded over his desk as he made cramped notation. No dog no company nobody to unexpectedly pass in front of the kitchen window no neighbor returning some bowl. The grass was sopping pyjama bottoms clung to her leg she might have riled herself into a tornado of fever. Gilbert still amutter because her thoughts come quicker than this. No one to find her a fright in the garden haunted statue galatea come to life. Inside poorly lit a father. Father in a name sewn into school clothes one hot night in a London hotel when the flat next door had a grease fire. Father in sellotape in set square in geometry. Your father

Pottering around on his amateur botany Wednesday like the old hen he

Was a smoker when I met him hair all over never met a comb he liked Lucky Strike his appendage a gangle of limbs thin as spaghetti straddling up to the bar staring at my hairpins those aren’t real his idea of a pickup can you imagine pulling me out against traffic to say he would never take no for an answer that was your father head hung over the railing of the liner while

Nothing’s changing

I stomped inside with girls from Brooklyn quickstepping into New York Harbor then up the seaboard stopping and starting into restrooms in Rhode Island for more Royal Crown the red peanuts I loved Connecticut night in a cabin stepping onto a mingy porch wrapped in a mingy towel where the badgered sky tested clouds zzzsshhh the distant highway sweet night my life opening me releasing me he is your father it was it was

Where do you go when you leave me like that, Catrine Evans?

And before she knows what exactly sliding her arms through his studying what exactly around his waist and he recoils a step but she has her face firmly against his cardigan chest musty daytrip.

55

The drama begins one evening in a courtyard behind an old mansion obviously used for some other purposes, a school or some such. It is a ghostly
night. Swaths of fog make it difficult to see clearly. A figure emerges. A
young man in a raincoat. He approaches a waiting girl.

BOYISH MAN

What ho, young girl. I think I know who you expect to see.

GIRL

Perhaps you do not know me as you think you might.

The boy ignores her and checks his watch.

MANNISH BOY

She should be here by now.

GIRL

I want to be a delighted girl not delightful, you understand, but a girl with some perspective. He took me to a balcony to teach it. He said I will tell you how to translate what you see instead of what you know. Well I see a girl who does not know. I cannot find the pleasure in order they urge me to take. Cursed with an untidy mind. Once Sophie Marsden took me away across the back fields to a place of lying cows. We can sit on them she said. And though I did not believe, though I was afraid, I sat on one. In the thin sun, we sat each on our own cow while Sophie spoke of her brother’s achievements and I thought, I know what kind of girl I am. But ever after I have not found it.

SLINGS & ARROWS OF OWEN WHARTON

I can only laugh at you, your petulance, when I think of what has befallen me. Why I have rough hard stories, enough for two lives. You stand here before me in your rumpled knees as if I should pity you. I prefer your tales, your wandering, to bleatings on evil house matrons, long days, forsaken comfort. You are here to learn, not to love. Although you may learn not to love, which is another thing entirely.

GIRL

I don’t believe in your scars. They are more likely from pencil wounds, perhaps even self-inflicted ones, than cuts from a knife.

BOY-MAN

Recognize your own scars, leave me to mine.

Cue dead mother. Nothing. The boyish stage manager crosses and peers into the
wings. A silence ensues. A silence which says Look, where the hell’s the dead
mother? We’ve all paid quite a bit of money and if she doesn’t appear soon we’re
going home.

GIRL

At home, the home I had that is, another home from this one, not that this is not any kind of—

THE SAME BOY

This is not a home yet you eat here, jam sandwiches, thrice a day. You sleep here, bundled in your logic of scarves and mittens. Tell me you do not learn here, that you do not have at least one friend and two enemies. Do you not hunch over the toilet in the girls’ washroom, afraid to touch the cold seat, rubbing waxed paper to take the edges out? There’s the rub, a fistful of toilet paper. This is as much a home as any I’ve seen.

GIRL

We wanted horses but only had trees. We never named them, that would have been foolish, we rode out fields, our hair flaming back, nothing kept us, not fathers or dinners we were—

YOU KNOW WHO

Yes, bored.

GIRL

I was going to say that we were different then.

WHO ELSE

We?

GIRL

I mean me, for I never had a friend named Isabelle.

SICK OF HIM YET

You chose to leave her, this Isabelle, for you make your own decisions.

GIRL
 (sadly)

I have done it to myself.

YES YES

I arrived from somewhere else, time passes, they forget you have a different voice. Once I saw you in the corridor on my way to swim, you looked like you were hardly here, I pressed the back of my hand to your face to keep you with us. Say, I am I am I am.

GIRL

Take me for a buffoon?

PARTING LINE MAKE IT A GOOD ONE

Girl, I won’t take you at all.

Now it is the next day. Here is our heroine after an uneasy night of sleep, after all she has been confronted with the idea of her own complicity, but let’s
not get so trapped in false notions of time, look at this morning, look at this
day. April already, crocuses spotted by those who love nature. The girl is leaving breakfast.

Out steps a TALL BOY.

GIRL

They told me you had left for the city. I took you for dead.

GREDVILLE

I’m not so easy to kill, I am not a man on a motorcycle, yes that one back in Maine. Admit that you dreamed I would die the night I held you to a tree. Do you think you have that sort of magic, to wish a man gone and là it is so?

WHARTON’S BACK
 (consults script)

You’ve been phased out, Gredville. Get thee hence.

GREDVILLE

But I’m not really ready to leave yet.

WHARTON

You’ve served your purpose, now vamoose.

Annoyed, the boy crosses to exit.

WHARTON AGAIN

Did you see the ghost back there?

Gredville shakes his head.

WHARTON

These absences are intolerable.

As Gredville goes, a DIFFERENT BOY, one with bastard eyes steps out
from a doorway.

BRICK

I believe you accentuate your differences in order to draw clear distinction between yourself and us. You are more American here than you ever were in Maine.

GIRL

Your round vowels and looped cadence betray Americans well have I known.

BRICK
 (in a snide aside)

She has yet to understand we are all one.

A CROW flies on.

PUCK

Words can make wings. Words raise a man out of himself.

WHARTON

Wrong play, lad.

Exit crow.

BRICK

When you stood on that hill and the highway, yes I said highway not motorway, rushed beneath you, you knew then, though you would not admit it, that this would be your last chance. Your American hair matted from lying in the leaves with Isabelle. You wanted to keep her. You had to have something, you no longer shared horses. Here was your last chance, you had to make use of it. What would it be? Something grand, something unforgettable.

GIRL

It wasn’t like that.

BRICK

You want to believe that Isabelle remembers, that she too remains bound by the tire tale. But Isabelle never gave it a second thought. The man, the motorcycle, the hill, the terror, it all disappeared with your flight here.

WHARTON

What an American day it is, a year ago, April, mother gone, what have you to lose, why not push heavy objects down down into the innocent. Oh blame the moon for wayward thought, or too much sugar from the cigarettes. Isabelle Isabelle. Moving on to skirts, to real horses, fielding comments regarding her legs, she no longer has use for bridled trees. You need some other way of holding on. Find the tire stashed under leaves, it waits for you. Go on, no innovation this, the wheel, after all. A matter of history. Oh it feels so good, the cool damp rubber, it has the weight you long for. But you would rather fly down that hill yourself. Ah, the tire goes for you, the man burps up and sails like you knew he would if you ever let yourself finish an idea to its logical conclusion. And now. You won’t let it go. You see the tire where it isn’t, coming around corners, in your sleep. It is not there, American girl. Nothing is. Which frightens you more. She’s gone. You left her in America. No tire, not even four, will bring her to you.

GIRL

I can see the flamenco dancers kept in her mirror and the way—

WHARTON

Oh, enough on this Isabelle already. She botched the auditions.

GIRL

Then tell me about my father.

A BRICK

You are not the first to compare his hand to a trout. Do you ever think back to a time when all you knew of this country was the word
sweets
.

GIRL

My
father. My father. You sat next to me, we leaned against Brinton you told me you feared for me, my shoes. First you said you had nothing on me. Then you looked out to Sophie sailing over the horizon and revealed, Our fathers.

IAGO

A common theme, the death of fathers.

WHARTON

Gredville!

Rebuked, the villain scuttles o fstage.

Wharton throws an arm around the Brick.

WHARTON

Watch her turn from you to see the laundry harridans share cigarettes, what a hash they make of it, the trickery, there is art to lighting matches in the wind, an art they do not have, but stay, no matter, look at this girl and her delight in the wind, sun, in the morning cast to the brickwork there, how red it glows. She is not hurried to anywhere, yet you tremble on the balls of your feet, appear ready to flee at any moment. When you do, will you name it she who walks away?

BRICK

What do you find so interesting in those biddies?

GIRL

Look how they enjoy the wind. Although it feels cold to us out here, to them, after a night by the presses, it must refresh. I lived in America in a town where summer lasted, where children baked in cars as they waited for mothers. We seldom wore shoes even on the hot tar, even riding bicycles—stay, I barely have it. But I remember the library where we watched films. How the seats were six lines of six. Books to be shelved lay piled against the walls. I remember seeing them as I surfaced from worlds of chariots and trenches. The books were talismanic in their ordinariness. You are just a girl in a library, they suggested. Did I think I lived an epic life? Did I think consequences restricted to celluloid?

HAMLET

If I may just interject here.

THE BRICK AND THE GIRL

No.

HAMLET

I had a similar experience myself. Dislocation. Upon my return from a place with the marvelous name of Wittenberg (pronounce that
w
as a
v
if you will), I learned of my father’s death at the hand of my uncle. I was home but nothing was the same, for my mother married my father’s murderer, yes my uncle one and the same. Mother indulged her new husband something terrible and began affecting a certain giggle that new brides acquire but really is quite unfortunate in a woman over thirty. Now hold on, there’s a point, I’m getting to it. There I am, back
des vacances
, Father? Dead. Mother? Giggling. Uncle? Dad.

BRICK

Our fathers are quite well.

HAMLET

It’s the mothers we have a problem holding on to.

BRICK

I have a mother near London. When I went home at break she made me a marzipan cake. In the shape of something, rabbit or train.

HAMLET

Oh, well then, shall I kill myself, yes or no. As I was saying in regards to dislocation, to say the least, you can imagine coming home for the holidays and finding not only is your father dead but perhaps your uncle (now dad) had a suspect hand in that translation.

JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

I told her I was too old for cakes in shapes. She said the Ambassador might take us to Denmark as part of his job.

HAMLET

Denmark’s so dreary. What about Mexico?

BRICK

I thought how much easier it had been in junior school, when I could tell her about sports, she loved my re-creations of important matches, hockey, cricket, tennis. I was on all the teams.

WHARTON
 (throwing down script)

I can’t keep up with this.

GIRL

You played cricket. I was off the boat, touring. You leaned outside the door to the day scholars’ cloakroom, though to me it was just a door. You wore cricket whites stained with red, I must have wondered had you bled or picked cherries for I did not know then the color of a cricket ball, nor a bowler’s propensity for rubbing it against his his—

WHARTON

Pullover? Jumper?

BRICK

I developed a hacking cough from cigarettes. I couldn’t run as quickly and subsequently lost my place on the team. Not that I cared. Who would play simply to have subject for a mother?

GIRL

You made my father nervous. You stared out from under your hair. You had the eyes of a bastard, cold, hard and black as wells.

HAMLET

You spoke to your mother of lessons you had never studied, it was the cover of a book you glanced at in WH Smith’s while you waited for the train. You improvised stories, conceived friends you don’t have, tales your teachers never told you.

BRICK

I didn’t want to disappoint.

HAMLET

You knew you already had.

GIRL

They’ve gone in, the women who smoked in the sun. What I miss most is anticipation.

HAMLET

To extrapolate?

GIRL

To want.

BRICK

I was in a chemist’s shop in autumn. A salesclerk was working there, she had brassy hair and a nature to match. She wanted me to act differently. I couldn’t help her, for it was my nature as a schoolboy to act so, hers as a salesclerk to act là. I followed you, of course I did. I wanted your. Attention.

WHARTON

You’re jumping to the conclusion. She has nothing yet to give you.

Enter OPHELIA, late for breakfast, hair still wet.

WHARTON

Oh for God’s sake. You can’t just pop up out of context.

OPHELIA

The boy wants your reflection. He watches you take your books from the small wooden locker, notice you are missing one, one you have need of at that very moment. You walk to the rubbish, the radiator, the inkwell, the empty lockers below the window to find where they have stashed it. For, no matter how often you fail or how acutely you display disinterest, you reveal an ugly sort of fascination for your studies. This must be punished. Lo, you find the book underneath an old football bag that’s remained unmoved for weeks. You walk to your desk. You open the lid because you like the smell of wood. There’s nothing inside but pencil shavings. You wait for the Preptaker it’s six oh three. You wait for the Preptaker it’s six oh five. At the sound in the doorway, you turn. You see him watching, how you stare at one another. You will turn first because that is how it has to happen.

HAMLET

Wait a minute, there are times I turn first.

OPHELIA

You will go to fill your pen more times than necessary. Once you need the blotter, now the ink didn’t take. You have a cartridge pen. Why not use that? What do you think will happen if she sees you shamble past?