Special Topics in Calamity Physics (18 page)

"Your point?"

"She's tweaked. Wouldn't be shocked if she went Klebold."

Georgia sighed. "Well, everyone and their grandmother knows she's still banging Charles after all these years —" "Like a screen in a tornado. Sure." Georgia leaned closer to her sister. (I had to be very still to hear what she

said.) "You really think the Bluebloods go all Caligula on the weekends? I'm not sure if I believe Cindy Willard."

"Of course," said Eliaya. "Mom said royals
only
bed royals."

"Oh,
right,"
said Georgia, nodding, then breaking into toothy laughter, a sound like a wooden stool being dragged across a floor. "That's how they keep their gene pool from getting contaminated."

Unfortunately, as Dad pointed out, there's often a seed of Truth within the Flash and Trash (he himself wasn't above perusing a few supermarket tabloids while standing in line: " 'Plastic Surgery Smash-ups of the Stars'— there's something rather compelling about that headline.") and I'll admit, ever since I saw Hannah and Charles together in the courtyard on the first day of school, I suspected there
was
something clammy going on between them (though I'd decided, after a Sunday or two, while Charles was almost certainly infatuated with Hannah, her attitude toward him was pleasantly platonic). And though I was in the dark regarding the Bluebloods' weekend activities (and would be until the middle of October) I
did
know they were quite preoccupied with maintaining the superiority of their line.

I, of course, was the one contaminating it.

My inclusion into their Magic Circle was as painless as the invasion of Normandy. Sure, we had
faces
eventually, but for the first month or so— September, the very beginning of October—though I saw them all the time peacocking through campus, and acted as hushed, horrified journalist to the anxieties they inspired ("If I ever see Jade injured, facedown in the street, homeless, riddled with leprosy—I'll do humanity a favor and run her over," pledged Beth Price in my AP English class), I only ever hung out with them at Hannah's.

And obviously, during those first few evenings, the scenario was more than a little humiliating. Obviously it made me feel like a dumpy bachelorette on a reality show called
In-sta-love
no one wanted to take for drinks and I sure as hell could forget about dinner. I'd sit on Hannah's shabby chaise longue with one of her dogs, pretending to be transfixed by my AP Art History homework while the five of them talked in hushed voices about how "hardcore," how "juiced," they'd been on Friday at mysterious places they'd nicknamed "The Purple" and "The Blind," and when Hannah emerged from the kitchen, immediately they'd hurl me greasy little sardine-smiles. Milton would blink, aw-shucks his knee and say, "So how's it goin', Blue? You're awful quiet over there." "She's shy," Nigel would observe, deadpan. Or Jade, who without fail dressed like a famous person working the red carpet at Cannes: "I
love
your shirt.
I
want one. You'll have to tell me where you got it." Charles smiled like a talk show host with poor Neilsen Ratings and Lu never said a word. Whenever my name was mentioned, she examined her feet.

Hannah must have sensed we were heading toward a stalemate, because shortly thereafter, she launched her next assault. "Jade, why don't you take Blue with you when you go to Conscience? It might be fun for her," she said. "When are you going again?"

"Don't know," Jade said drearily, sprawled on her stomach on the living room carpet, reading
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
(Ferguson, Salter, Stall-worthy, 1996 éd.).

"I thought you said you were going this week," Hannah persisted. "Maybe they can squeeze her in?"

"Maybe," she said without looking up.

I forgot this conversation, until that Friday, a worn, gray afternoon. After my last class, AP World History with Mr. Carlos Sandborn (who used so much gel, one always thought he'd just come from swimming laps at the Y), I returned to the third floor of Hanover to find Jade and Leulah standing by my locker: Jade, in a black Golightly dress, Leulah, a white blouse and skirt. Standing with her hands and feet together as if waiting for choir practice, Leulah looked pleasant enough, but Jade looked like a kid in a nursing home impatiently waiting for her designated fogey to be wheeled in so she could read him
Watership Down
in a monotone, thereby earning her Community Outreach credit, thereby graduating on time.

"So we're going to get our hair and nails and eyebrows done and you're coming," Jade informed me with a hand on her hip.

"Oh," I said, nodding, spinning through the combination of my padlock, though I don't think I was actually entering the combination, only vigorously turning it in one direction, then the other.

"Ready?"

"Now?" I asked.

"Of course
now."

"I can't," I said. "I'm busy."

"Busy?
With
what?"

"My dad's picking me up." Four sophomore girls who'd drifted by had

snagged, like garbage in a river, by the German Language Bulletin Board. They blatantly eavesdropped.

"Oh, God," said Jade, "not your
wonderdad
again. You'll have to let us know his civilian name and what he looks like without the mask and the cape." (I'd made the serious mistake of bringing Dad up the previous Sunday. I think I actually said the phrase "brilliant man" in relation to him, also "one of the preeminent commentators on American culture at work in this country today," a line lifted verbatim from the two-page spread on Dad in
TAPSIM,
the American Political Science Institute's quarterly [see "Dr. Yes," Spring 1987, Vol. XXIV, Issue 9]. I'd said it because Hannah had asked what he did for a living, how he "kept busy," and something about Dad simply invited the boast, the brag, the self-congratulating monologue.)

"She's just kidding," Lu said. "Come on. It'll be fun."

I collected my books and walked outside with them to inform Dad my
Ulysses
Study Group had decided to meet for a few hours, but I'd be home for dinner. He frowned at the sight of Jade and Lu standing on the Hanover steps: "Those two tartlets think they can read Joyce?
Heh.
Good luck to them—let me revise that—pray for a miracle."

I could tell he wanted to say no, but was reluctant to make a scene.

"Very well," he said with a sigh and a pitying look. He started the Volvo. "Tallyho, my dear."

As we walked to the Student Parking Lot, I heard his rave reviews.

"Shit," Jade said, looking at me with surprised esteem. "Your dad's
magnifico.
You said he was brilliant but I didn't realize you meant in a Clooney way. If he wasn't your dad, I'd ask you to set me up with him." "He looks like what's his name . . . the father in
The Sound ofMusic,"
said Lu.

Frankly, it could get a little stale how Dad, within minutes, could elicit such worldwide acclaim. Sure—I was the first person to stand up and throw him roses, shout, "Bravo, man, bravo!" But sometimes I couldn't help but feel Dad was an opera diva who garnered reverential ratings even when he was too lazy to hit the high notes, forgot a costume, blinked after his own death scene; something about him seized approval from everyone, regardless of the performance. For instance, when I passed Ronin-Smith, the guidance counselor, in Hanover Hall, it seemed she'd never gotten over the minutes Dad had spent in her office. She asked not "How are your classes?" but "How's your father, dear?" The only woman who'd met him and not inquired after him ad nauseam was Hannah Schneider.

"Right. .
. Mr. Von Trapp," said Jade thoughtfully, nodding, "Yeah, I always had a thing for him. So where's your mom in all this?" "She's dead," I said in a dramatic, bleak voice, and for the first time, enjoyed their astonished silence.

They took me to purple-walled, zebra-couched Conscience, located in downtown Stockton across from the public library, where Jaire of the alligator boots (pronounced "jay-REE") gave me copper highlights and cut my hair so it no longer looked "like she did it herself with a pair of toenail scissors." To my surprise, Jade insisted my new grooming initiative was complimentary, care of her mother, Jefferson, who'd left Jade her black American Express card "in case of Emergency" before disappearing for six weeks in Aspen with her new "hottie," a ski instructor "named Tanner with permanently chapped lips."

"I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can do something with those broom-bangs," Jade instructed my hairdresser.

Also funded by Jefferson, over the next two weeks, was my six-month supply of disposable contact lenses procured from ophthalmologist Stephen J. Henshaw, MD, with eyes like an Arctic Fox's and a bad head cold, as well as clothes, shoes and undergarments hand-selected for me by Jade and Lu
not
from the Adolescent Department of Stickley's, but at Vanity Fair Bodiwear on Main Street, at Rouge Boutique on Elm, at Natalia's on Cherry, even at Frederick's of Hollywood ("If you ever decide to get kinky, I suggest
this
for the occasion," Jade instructed, thrusting something at me that resembled the harness one dons before skydiving, only in pink). The final coups de grâce to my previous dull appearance were moisturizing makeups, the thyme and myrtle lip shimmers, the day (shiny) and evening (murky) eye shadows exhumed especially for my skin tone from Stickley's cosmetics main floor, as well as the fifteen-minute application tutorial by gum-chewing Millicent with her powdery forehead and spotless lab coat. (She artfully crammed the entire white light color spectrum onto both of my eyelids.)

"You are a goddess," Lu said, smiling at me in Millicent's hand mirror. "Who would've thought," cracked Jade. I was no longer apologetically owl-like, but impenitently pastrylike

Dad, of course, witnessing this transformation, felt the way Van Gogh would probably feel, if, one hot afternoon, he happened to wander into a Sarasota Gift Shoppe and found next to the cardboard baseball caps and Fun-in-the-Sun seashell figurines, his beloved sunflowers printed on one side of two-hundred beach towels on SALE for just $9.99.

"Your hair appears to
blaze,
sweet. Hair is not supposed to blaze. Fires are supposed to blaze, illuminated clock towers, lighthouses, Hell perhaps. Not human hair."

Soon, however, rather miraculously, apart from the odd gripe or humph, most of his indignation subsided. I assumed it had to do with his absorption with Kitty, or, as she called herself on our answering machine, "Kitty Cat." (I hadn't met her, but had heard the latest headlines: "Kitty Swoons in Italian Restaurant Due to Dad's Musings on Human Nature," "Kitty Begs Dad's Forgiveness for Spilling Her White Russian on Cuff of His Irish Tweed," "Kitty Plans Her Fortieth Birthday and Hints at Wedding Bells.") It was bizarre, but Dad appeared to have accepted the fact that his work of art had been shamelessly commercialized. He even seemed to harbor no ill will.

"You're satisfied? You're responsible? You respect the youths in this
Ulysses
Study Group, which unsurprisingly, spend more time roaming the mall and bleaching their hair than tracking the whereabouts of Stephen Dedalus?"

(No, I never quite disabused Dad of the idea that I spent Sunday afternoons trying to scale that Himalayan tome. Thankfully, Dad had no real taste for Joyce—excessive wordplay bored him, so did Latin—but in order to avoid even the most basic questioning, I told him periodically that due to the weak constitutions of others, we were still unable to make it past Base Camp, Chapter 1, "Telemachus.")

"They're actually pretty sharp," I said. "Just the other day, one of them used 'obsequious' in conversation."

"Don't be cheeky. They're thinkers?"

"Yes."

"Not lemmings? Not leg warmers? Not nitwits, net-heads, neo-Nazis? Not anarchists or antichrists? Not pedestrian youths who believe they're the first people on earth to be
mizundahstood?
Sadly, American teenagers are to a weightless vacuum as seat cushions are to polyurethane foam — "

"Dad. It's fine."

"You're positive? Never rely on intoxicating surfaces."

"Yes."

"I'll accept it then." He frowned as I stood on my tiptoes to kiss his rough cheek. I made my way to the front door. It was Sunday and Jade was resting her elbow on the car horn. "Have a swell time with your chicks and charlies," he said and sighed a little theatrically, though I ignored him. " 'If others have their will, Ann hath a way.' "

There were a handful of occasions when Jade, Lu and I screeched with laughter over something, like the one time they invited me "mall slumming" and a crew of chickenheads with their boxers on display trailed us with stupid smiles around Blue Crest Mall ("Serious mafuglies—just as I suspected," Jade said, surveying them through a rack of scrunchies at Earringz N' Thingz) or when Jade debated the mysterious dimensions of Nigel's candlestick ("Given his shortness, it could be powerful, it could be pygmy"; "Oh, God," said Lu slapping a hand to her mouth) or driving to Hannah's, the time Jade and I flipped off a scab (her word for any "forty-plus hideous male") who had the gall to drive a meandering Volkswagen in front of her. (Following her lead, I unrolled the window to stick my hand out and my hair—now a fascinating Bornite color, Atomic number 29—thrashed in the wind.)