A Jest of God (7 page)

“Yes. Certainly. I’ll send a note home with James tomorrow.”

“I would have thought,” Willard says, “that a phone call might be somewhat more reliable. More likely to reach its destination, as it were.”

I want to say –
that’s not fair – you’ve no right to imply that about James – he would never do a thing like that.
But why should Willard believe me? And when it comes to it, am I certain James wouldn’t? Looking now at Willard’s face, I’m certain only of what he says, as though his eyes have the reptilian gift. It is said that a person cannot be hypnotized against their will, but that can’t be true.

“I’ll phone, then.”

I want only to get away. I would agree to anything. What does it matter?

“Fine. That’s settled, then,” Willard says, and I see I’m dismissed, permitted to go, let out of school.

Calla is in the Teachers’ Room, making tea. I had a feeling she would be. She must have seen my cardigan hanging there, and known I hadn’t gone yet.

“Hi,” she says. “Like a cup of the brew that cheers but does not inebriate?”

Another of her favourite sayings. She has dozens. They get on my nerves. But I suppose they always provide her with something to say.

“Oh – thanks. I mustn’t be long, though. I have to pick up some meat before the butcher’s closes.”

“Sure,” she says, quite gently, hardly a trace of irony. “Okay.”

Only now do I see how obvious I’ve been, saying something like that, without thinking, merely out of nervousness, a warning. An unnecessary one – is that what she is trying to tell me? That I needn’t worry? That she won’t attempt? But what in God’s name do I think she’s likely to attempt, anyway?
I know very well I don’t need to be afraid. She’s the same Calla I’ve known for years. I’ve told myself this, over and over. And yet some portion of myself wants to avoid her for evermore. She knows it – she must know – and when I think she realizes, I feel ashamed at my unenlightenment. I’m a reasonably intelligent person. I’m not a fool. I’ve done a certain amount of reading. But it doesn’t make much difference. I hold myself very carefully when she’s near, like a clay figurine, easily broken, unmendable. We’ve talked with each other in an excessively cheerful way ever since that evening. I suppose this is as good a way as any to camouflage the awkwardness we both feel and cannot admit or ever speak about.

“Been seeing the boss, Rachel?”

She pushes the tea cup towards me, across the table. She used to put the sugar and cream in my tea, for me, but she does not do that now. Another thing – she does not say
child
any more. Only
Rachel.
As though formality or great care had been forced upon her. I’ve wanted her to stop saying
child
or
kid
for a long time, yet now I feel unreasonably bereft.

No, I don’t. That’s senseless.

“What?” What did she ask me? “Oh – yes. I don’t see why he’s making such an issue of James. Remember – I told you? You’d think the reputation of the whole school was at stake.”

“He likes playing games with people, that’s all. If you once said to him, ‘Now listen here, Willard, quit making a mountain out of a molehill –’”

“You could do it. But not me.”

“Why not?”

“I –” I have to search for an adequate reason. “I can’t bear scenes. They make me ill.”

But this is too serious, and I want to change to something undangerous.

“Did you see Sapphire Travis’s shoes, Calla?”

“Sure. You could see them a block away. She painted them herself.”

“Really?”

“Yeh,” Calla says. “Some gloop she bought, a do-it-yourself shoe-painting kit. But why that screeching pink, I ask myself.”

“It’s a little bright, I agree.”

“It’s explosive. All her kids were staring like mad. With admiration, she thought. Well, this is uncharitable and lousy-minded of me. What harm does it do, after all? Brighten the corner where you are, and so on. Maybe I’ll get around to doing my old brogues a pale lilac.”

“Polka-dotted with silver.”

“Sure. Just the job.” And she chuckles throatily. She would probably do it, too, and find it more amusing than anyone. I envy this quality, but it appals me as well. She is gathering up the tea cups, whistling
She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage.

“Did I tell you I got a canary?” she says.

“No. Did you?”

“Yeh. Moronic little thing, actually. Not even a cheep out of it. I don’t think it’s scared of me. My guess is it is just simply anti-social and unmusical. I’ve tried singing all kinds of things. But no response. It’s not fond of hymns, and pop music makes it jittery, so what can I do?”

“What a shame. Maybe it’ll change, though.”

“The other possibility,” Calla says, “is that it isn’t a canary at all. It is a bleached sparrow which has been fobbed off on me.”

She’s trying so valiantly, as she has done whenever she thought I was depressed, and so I do laugh, not to disappoint her. Then it occurs to me that she never speaks of the Tabernacle
any more. I want to ask her how it is there, these days, just to show I can speak of it. I want to ask her in a perfectly ordinary voice, if she’s yet received the gift of tongues. I ought at least to enquire politely.

But as soon as I think of that place at all, I’m back there in that indefensible moment, trapped in my own alien voice, and the eyes all around have swollen to giants’ eyes. How will I ever be able to forget?

“I must go now.”

Before I’ve even quite realized it, I’ve snatched my cardigan off the hook and I’m halfway down the wide grey cement stairs outside. Calla will think it’s peculiar, that I should rush off like this. But I can’t go back. The knowledge of having to go back tomorrow morning is difficult enough.

Grace Doherty is plump and neat. She wears a white straw hat with veiling, and a light-blue spring suit, new, and high-heeled shoes. Why has she found it necessary to get dressed up like this? An interview with the teacher? But the teacher is Rachel Cameron, whom she’s known all her life. Is it possible she doesn’t think of it like this, and is edgy herself, wondering what I will have to say about James? I can’t believe it. She was always self-assured, a girl who never bothered about schoolwork and managed to convey the impression that those who did were laughable or else had nothing better to do.

James is waiting for her in the hall. It seems a little cruel to keep him there, after all the others have gone, waiting and wondering what we’re saying in here. But I couldn’t talk to her in his presence.

I find I can’t call her Grace. But to say Mrs. Doherty would be silly. I won’t be able to address her directly at all.

“These absences of James –” my voice sounds distant, cold, a robot’s mechanical voice or someone reading from a printed form, “they’ve been causing some concern to us.”

“Why?” she asks, as though innocently.

Why? Listen to the woman. She wouldn’t care, I suppose, whether he ever got a scrap of education or not. He could grow up illiterate – it would make no difference to her. If ever he decides he doesn’t want to follow his father in the garage business, she’ll stare at him with total blankness. If he’s in a silver ship that one day lands on the moon, she’ll write him off sorrowfully as a boy who didn’t turn out well. Unless he gets in the papers or on
TV
for it. Then she would know it was all right to be approving. How shall I handle this?

“I’ll have to tell you frankly. On two occasions, when he was supposed to be sick, he was seen in the valley. I’m sure you didn’t know. Perhaps you were out, and –”

I have to allow her to save face, I suppose, although that is not my inclination. I don’t want to look at her, but when I do, I see that her mild placid eyes are in a fever.

“Of course I knew!” she cries. “What do you take me for, Rachel?”

I’m so startled I don’t know what to say. I must be gaping at her foolishly.

“Who saw him?” she asks fiercely. “If I may be so bold as to enquire.”

“I don’t know that I ought to –”

“Well, in that case,” she says scathingly, “it must’ve been Mrs. Siddley. She spends half her time wandering around down there with her little camp stool and that jazzy easel of hers. I’d like to see the inside of
her
house. I bet it’s a pigsty. You know as well as I do, Rachel, that she –”

She breaks off, glances at me, and then looks frightened.

“I didn’t mean to say that.” Her voice sounds subdued and discouraged, but then she speaks defiantly again. “If she’d only looked a little closer those two afternoons, she’d have seen I was with James.”

My first reaction is that she is lying, to pardon him. But when I scrutinize her face, it seems to me she isn’t lying after all.

“But – why? If he was well, why wasn’t he at school?”

“He’d had this bad tonsillitis,” Grace says. “The weather was so warm and fine, on those two days, and he was much better, but still not quite himself. I thought it would do him more good than school, just those few times, to go out around the river, that’s all.”

Her look is defensive now, and yet insistent, trying to explain.

“He’s only seven, Rachel, and he’s a clever kid. I mean, I think he’s quite clever. And yet if he’s sent to school too soon after being sick, and he isn’t feeling up to much, it only makes him cranky. I don’t see how he can learn anything then. I hate him to miss days like that, but then I wonder if it wouldn’t be worse to set him against school? I don’t want that. I want him to go on, as far as he –”

I cannot hear her any longer. I cannot listen as she elaborates. How could I not have known it of her, the way she feels, her determination and her hesitance? The way she cares about him.

“Listen, it’s all right, Grace. Now that I know what happened, it’s quite all right. I wouldn’t even have brought it up, if I’d known.”

The door creaks open a crack, and James’s blue eye peers in.

“Okay, honey, you can come in now,” she says. “We’re just going.”

He comes in and stands beside her, and she brushes his russet hair away from his forehead, as she’s been doing for years, no doubt. She has the right to touch him, at least sometimes. She puts an arm around his shoulders, and he squirms away, frowning. She smiles, not unpleased that he wants to be his own and on his own.

“Well, that’s all okay, then, Rachel?”

Her voice is filled with capability. She gains strength from his presence. This is what happens. I’ve seen it with my sister. They think they are making a shelter for their children, but actually it is the children who are making a shelter for them. They don’t know.

As she goes out with him, I wonder if James has told her he got the strap. He couldn’t have. She would have mentioned it. Why didn’t he tell? Didn’t he know how unfair it was? Or did he know only too well?

I’m tired, tired, tired. And this wretched headache won’t go. I promised Mother we would go to a movie tonight, but I don’t feel up to it. I think I’ll postpone it. I’ll take two aspirins and go straight to bed.

Some days it seems more difficult to be patient. There are times when they could riot, or shriek with twenty-six voices simultaneously, and I wouldn’t be upset. Other times, the slightest thing will be enough to set me off. I must try to be more equable. It’s the only way – it’s only right. But some days the slightest snick of a door latch, the slightest sign of scrabbling, will set my teeth on edge. This morning is one such day. I don’t know what’s the matter. Just that they seem to make so much noise.

Just – noise. The scraping of their feet on the floor. The juggling of books from inside the desk to outside – such an
easy procedure – how can it be so complicated for them? The trading of crayons back and forth, someone having a more exotic colour than someone else. The whispering that grows to a hissed largeness until finally in justice I cannot ignore it but have to deal somehow with it, nicely and reasonably, not doing as probably any distracted parent would be bound to do, shouting
Shut up! Just
shut up. Please.

“Peter, have you finished your arithmetic?”

Stoic silence. No reply.

“James – are you finished?”

Without warning, he puts his elbows protectively over the page. No speech. No explanation. Only this indrawing of his arms over the paper.

“Let me see.”

As soon as I’ve said it, I know it was mistaken, the last thing I ought to have laid claim to. But now I can’t turn back.

“Let me see how far you’ve got.”

This is all wrong, and I know it. He doesn’t intend to let me see, and I’m intruding and ought to approach him in another way, cool, unheated.

But his uncombed and untidied sorrel hair, and his self-protected face which seems to warn everyone away – there is something I cannot bear here.

There. I’ve pushed aside his arms, not with my hands, but with the ruler I’m holding. At first he offers no resistance. His elbows go slack, allowing themselves to be shoved across the desk surface. Then he changes his mind and his finger ends curl around the page, determined I should not see.

What’s there? What has he done instead of simple subtraction? A caricature? An unendurable portrait? He looks at me with a sly gopher-like idiocy, all innocent nothingness –
see, I’m too dumb to have anything here worth looking at.
The
cunning nonentity of his face. Is this necessary? Does he feel this is necessary with me?

He does not give a damn. He hates me. I am the enemy. God damn, what is this child hiding?

He won’t give in. All right. I’ll have to wrench it from him. What right has he? If he despises me, I must go on anyway. What is being hidden from me?

I must not tear his page, though. As I put my hand on it, his hand clamps down, firm, absolute. What is he doing? Why does he fight me so? Then he looks at me. His eyes are extremely blue, not the translucent blue of water or sky, but the assertive and untransparent blue of copper sulphate, opaque, not to be seen through. I do not know at all what is going on in those eyes.

“Have you finished your subtraction questions, James?”

No voice. I cannot get any response. He holds everything very still within himself. He will not let me see. He does not intend that I should ever see.