The State We're In: Maine Stories (8 page)

She shrugged.

“That was what you were asking?” he said.

“Well, not if it makes you mad.”

“I’m not mad, I’m a little taken aback. True, I didn’t expect such a question. But yes, he and I went on a few double dates together, before I introduced him to Myrtis. As things turned out, I was sorry that I introduced him to her, but if I hadn’t, I suppose we wouldn’t have you, and that would obviously be terrible.”

“You say things to flatter me,” she said. “Can I ask you one more question? How did you go from your big important job to selling cars?”

He frowned. What could she mean? What was underlying
that
question? “Cars?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

“Mom said you were a used car salesman.”

“Then your mother was putting you on. I once had an office above a car dealership, but that’s hardly—”

“If you weren’t a salesman, then what were you?”

“It’s nowhere near as interesting as you’d like to think—or maybe as I’d like to think—but it’s not something I can talk about.”

“I wish I had a security clearance. There’s plenty of stuff I’d rather not talk about,” Jocelyn said. “Uncle Raleigh, does my mom just not tell the truth, or do you think she was confused because of where your office was?”

“I assume she was being sarcastic,” he said. “But I don’t know.”

“Whatever,” Jocelyn said. “So you won’t tell me what kind of women they were, either?”

“Tall and short. Educated and not. As your mother is fond of saying, the whole world is filled with people. If women came up to us in a bar, you could have a drink or a dance and not have sex, you know. It’s only in the movies that men like your father and I have sex all the time.” He might have said too much. “We might revisit this topic in a few years,” he said.

“But, so, I don’t get it about you and Aunt Bettina. She doesn’t seem anything like you.”

“At this age, people are nothing but their differences.”

She pulled the toe of her tights and let it go. Dust streamed into the air. She said, “Can I just call you Raleigh? It makes me feel like a baby, having to always say ‘Uncle.’ ”

“Fine with me,” he said. “Let’s continue this discussion in the morning, okay?”

“You’re going to save Mom’s house, right?”

“Please don’t feel that your home is going to disappear. That’s not going to happen, unless there’s an earthquake or a sinkhole.” He patted her ankle. “It’s summer,” he said. “What’s with the tights?”

“I’m growing my leg hair, and it’s at sort of an ugly stage.”

“I see. Well, good night.”

He was nothing like Bettina, Jocelyn thought. Bettina had given her mother different styles of Spanx for her birthday, which had been a total snark attack, and her mother hadn’t even realized it.

“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe,” he half sang. “ ‘Across the Universe,’ by the Beatles. A group from London who became famous and appeared on something called
The Ed Sullivan Show
.”

“You’re being retarded. You know I know who the Beatles are,” she said, springing up, then looking back at him over her shoulder. Did any marriages make sense, or was he right about what he’d told her weeks ago, and there was a sort of use-by date stamped on them with an invisible watermark, like semen on the sheets?

*  *  *

In the parking lot outside the school, Jocelyn said to Ms. Nementhal, “I don’t know why I did what I did the other night. I think I was just scared. Like you’d think I was involved in some way.” What she was talking about was not saying hello, let alone offering to drive Ms. Nementhal home after the boys threw bottles from the car and broke the window of the pizza place. It had sort of flipped her out to see Ms. Nementhal so rattled.

“Thank you for explaining,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“It’s not a very good explanation, I know. I don’t know why I do some of the things I do. It’s like I caused some problem when I didn’t, but I don’t think anybody will believe me.”

“Of course it had nothing to do with you,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“I talked to my uncle, and he said you probably understood everybody was in a panic. I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what to say.”

“We all have limitations,” Ms. Nementhal said.

“My mom’s recovering from surgery, that’s why I’m in Maine. I could have taken an after-school course in Concord to make up for my F in algebra, but my mom thought I shouldn’t be around after her surgery, so she sent me here, to take your course, and live with my aunt and uncle.”

“I see. I’m sorry about your mother. Will she be okay?”

“My aunt’s a whack job. She had a biopsy that turned out negative, but ever since she’s shoveled in food twenty-four-seven, which is what I was doing at the pizza place. I was picking something up for her. She has these constant requests that we just, you know, try to do our best with. Like, at midnight she gets desperate for Neutrogena. Things like that.”

“Neutrogena soap?”

“Right. Soap.”

Ms. Nementhal nodded. She did not have annoying bangs that flopped into her eyes. T. G. had said to her, “What’s the point of bangs, if the second you cut them, you start growing them out?” Ms. Nementhal had said nothing in class about T. G.’s absence, but Jocelyn felt sure she knew what had happened. She watched her teacher’s face for some sign of it, as they walked back toward the building.

“Is that guy Márquez still alive? You’d really like to meet him, right?”

“No, sadly. He died pretty recently, though. He was really a genius.”

“My uncle tested genius in something,” Jocelyn said. “Not that he thinks like Márquez.”

Ms. Nementhal nodded again. She’d gone to her car to get her cardigan. The school was too highly air-conditioned, but there were signs at the windows saying not to open them.

“What are your interests, besides my course?” Ms. Nementhal said as they walked up the stairs. She probably knew that Jocelyn had no idea what the course was about until someone else enrolled her.

“Music? Beyoncé, and everything? I’d like to see the Grand Canyon. My uncle said he’d go with me when I graduated from high school. You can walk out over it on some glass platform, or whatever. It’s all there, right below you.”

“I’d be scared to death,” Ms. Nementhal said. “Well, some of my other interests are tossing pots and French cooking, but I’m just learning about cooking. When I go to graduate school, I’m going to try to find a way to combine my interests in Egyptian art and poetry writing, and maybe I’ll take a course in French literature.”

Who would ever have thought Ms. Nementhal was anything but an overachiever? “Cool,” Jocelyn said. “Where did you go to school?”

“Yale.”

“That’s really hard to get into, isn’t it? Someone in the class is like dying to go to Yale.”

“I suspect I know who that is.”

Ms. Nementhal held open the side door. Jocelyn trotted ahead of her, her ears a little zingy, for some reason. Just listening to Ms. Nementhal had been exciting. She seemed to think she could do anything. If Jocelyn ever got into any college, it would be a miracle. Her mother said that tutoring for the SAT was too expensive, and she couldn’t disagree. All you could do was read stuff on the Internet and get pointers from your friends, the most helpful so far being that the questions were essentially simple, but they pointed you in a direction that made you question your own perceptions, so you’d change things at the last second and answer wrong.

They were already in the classroom, so there was no time to ask Ms. Nementhal a final question. It would have been: if Magical Realism was in poems—as they’d learned that morning, for what seemed like five hours—why had she made them read so many passages from Márquez? The Charles Simic poems were fun and went zooming around your head in all directions as if they were hummingbirds.

When class let out, Angie caught up with Jocelyn, who’d just been texted by her mother on her iPhone: T. G. was being moved to McLean, some mental institution outside Boston. It was the same place where
Girl, Interrupted
took place—which was a book she’d read in the bathroom, because her mother refused to let her read it.

“Jocelyn—isn’t that your aunt?” Angie said, looking up.

Oh, yes, it was: Bettina, coming their way, taking big strides, her face absolutely without expression, which was weird and whacked.

“Hi, Aunt Bettina!” she called, but she felt as if someone else had shouted her name. She’d only said hello because her aunt would have felt dissed if she hadn’t.

“We’ve been asked to preorder Girl Scout cookies, which really isn’t the point of Girl Scout cookies,” BLT said. She seemed a little out of breath. Why would her aunt have come to pick her up? Her mother always objected to people just jumping into a conversation. Bettina had not really greeted them and seemed to be very worked up. Was something wrong with her mother?

“Is everything okay?” Jocelyn said.

“I forgot your eye doctor appointment. I’ve got too much going on. We’ve got to hurry. It’s in Kittery. Anna, how are you?” Bettina said to Angie. Jocelyn watched as Angie opened and closed her mouth, then said, “Fine, thank you.”

“I suppose I should ask if we can drop you off, but we can’t go out of our way,” Bettina said to Angie. “Do you take the bus or walk?”

“Oh, thank you very much, but I like to walk home because it clears my mind and I can think about how I’ll start writing the next assignment,” Angie said, superpolitely.

“These assignments! You girls think about nothing else!”

Angie flashed her I’m-glad-we’re-all-girls smile. She actually blew a kiss with her fingertips as she turned in the opposite direction. Her Toms shoes made of silver, sparkly material that looked like she’d stomped through Christmas tree tinsel were totally great. Jocelyn watched her go, envying her. When Angie got home, there would be fresh-baked cookies. They were from a roll of store-bought dough, but still: her mother tried.

“Aunt Bettina, is everything okay with my mom?”

“Well, she has Lyme disease, it turns out, so I can hardly say everything’s fine. She called just a while ago. It’s in an early stage, though, so let’s hope she has a quick recovery.”

“Lyme disease? OMG. We had a unit on that at school.”

“Please use the English language and don’t act like you’re texting me,” Bettina said. “We’ve discussed that before.”

“Oh, shit! Poor Mom!”

“Could you favor me with a slightly more profound thought, do you think? Such as, ‘What’s the time frame for her to feel better?’ or ‘What should I do around the house to make things easier on Mom?’ ” She stopped and stared at Jocelyn. “And do you think you could stop acting like someone’s trying to pass you a volleyball and walk at my side, so I don’t have to shout? You are capable of walking in a straight line, I assume?”

“Aunt Bettina, you’re always on my case!”

“Well, someone has to try to communicate with you. Your uncle’s gone to California. At least, I think that was his intention before he got a phone call from that brother of your friend, Nathaniel, is it? who acts like T. G.’s condition is of no concern. His father went to McLean’s today with his lawyer, and your father got a call, with what’s his name—Nathaniel—whining that they were lacking a pitcher for their softball game. He thought your uncle should do it.”

“I don’t understand. He was going to California? Why?”

“Your uncle used to call these spur-of-the-moment trips his Magical Mystery Tours. He doesn’t give very good explanations, you know that. But wait. I think he’s taking that trip next week. Did he tell you about it?”

“No,” Jocelyn said glumly. Adults were totally secretive. They wouldn’t tell you the most interesting things, like about a trip somewhere, but they’d ask repeatedly how many washings were still to go before the color came out of your hair, and why you were wearing tights. A robin pulling a worm from the grass got Jocelyn’s attention. It was obvious why Charlotte Octavia had broken off contact with her mother, but it seemed sad that she didn’t have much of a relationship with her father, either. Try as she might, Jocelyn couldn’t imagine Raleigh acting as aggressively as his wife.

Bettina had parked far away, though there were many closer parking places. When they got to the car, Bettina said, “You’re on your own with those essays from now on. I’ve told Raleigh, he’s off the hook. It’s your future and you can figure out how to proceed. You aren’t helped by his substituting one word for another.”

“Aunt Bettina, excuse me, but Uncle Raleigh
makes me
show him my homework.”

“Well, I personally think he might have gone to McLean with Hank Murrey and his lawyer, that’s where he is, not pitching a softball game, I don’t think.” Bettina raised the cotton vest she was wearing to her face and blotted her forehead. Gross! Anybody knew not to do a thing like that. Her aunt was sweating. She did not turn on the ignition. Finally, talking more to herself than to Jocelyn, she said, “Okay, it’s off to the eye doctor’s.”

“I didn’t know about this appointment,” Jocelyn said. Her aunt said nothing. She felt like she was in
Alice in Wonderland
. Nothing made much sense. Next, a white rabbit would appear, but until it did, she stared at the digital clock in the car. She thought if she focused her attention on something, she might not cry. Summer school was exhausting, T. G. was in a hospital somewhere she’d have no way to visit, and her mother had Lyme disease. Just great.

Parallel-parking, Bettina hit the curb with the back wheels, hard. “For Christ’s sake,” she said. “They build curbs now like they’re soapboxes in Trafalgar Square, like we’re supposed to stand there and rant about something. Just like my trip to England, which I suppose I’ll never see again, it’s so impossible to travel because they have to body-search everyone.”

Oh, please let me live through this summer, Jocelyn thought, as she followed Bettina into the building. This was the eye doctor’s? Why were they there? She sank into a chair and picked up
People
magazine, while Bettina charmed the receptionist, thanking her profusely for working her in, her sickly sweet smile at odds with her bizarre body language. The vest she was wearing made her look like she’d gotten tangled in a parachute. And she was sweating like she’d been doing Zumba. She stared at the magazine as her aunt took the clipboard from the receptionist and sat in a chair beside her to fill it out. She skimmed an article about Jennifer Aniston and her new fiancé. Good looking, in a conventional way. It would be so great to be Jen, with totally perfect hair and a flawless complexion and no Aunt Bettina in her life. So what if she’d lost Brad Pitt?