An Uncommon Education (26 page)

I
was awakened by the garbage truck before dawn the next morning. I felt disoriented; for a moment it could have been any time and any place. I got out of the car to stretch, and was overwhelmed by a pleasant feeling brought on by the pale sky and the sight of the peaceful neighborhood. I walked carefully around the side of the house, ending up in our backyard. But I felt like I couldn’t go in the back door, either, couldn’t bring myself to knock. When had my parents made this privacy, had they always had this power at their hands, the power to unite and shut me out, wordlessly? The barrier around the house was theirs, as tangible as if it had been constructed with solid materials. I stood there, the tears threatening to fall again. And then I turned around, took in the yard that had been mine and the one that had been Teddy’s, the long expanse that had joined them together.

I had thought the Steins, the current owners of 54 Coolidge, had changed everything that bore any trace of Teddy, but I hadn’t thought about what we’d made together, on my side, what might still be there. My heart dropped, almost as though it had just recognized a betrayal. We had made the hiding place in the far right corner of the lawn. The area looked promisingly empty. My father’s halfhearted gardening had not spread to it. I was there in a moment, scrabbling into the dirt, digging as though the appearance of any real daylight was sure to reveal me in the middle of a crime.

It was all still there. The cedar box with what we’d buried inside. I took out what was on top first, what we’d added when we dug everything up on Teddy’s twelfth birthday: six of our collected baby teeth in a plastic bag. “So they can find us and match us if we’re ever in an accident,” Teddy had said. A hand-drawn map of our neighborhood, which made me laugh; a photograph of the two of us in our bathing suits; an old scarf of my mother’s; a lock of hair taken from his mother’s dresser. “Whose was it?” I’d whispered. “No idea,” he’d replied with equal solemnity. When the map was fully unfolded, a hand-drawn picture of a yellow bird fluttered to the ground.

I picked it up and put it in my palm. It was so transparent I could see the skin of my hand through it. I placed it beside me as I reached for Rosemary’s papers, looking first at the photographs of Amelia Earhart and the young Mrs. Kennedy, and then the letter,

I hope you liked every-thing here. . . . Mother says I am such a comfort to you. Never to leave you. Well, Daddy, I feel honour because you chose me to stay. And the others I suppose are wild.

After the lobotomy, which had clearly failed to help her daughter, Rose said she had given up playing piano. She still did play, but only for Rosemary, and only when they were alone. Perhaps they had achieved an uneasy intimacy by then, despite how little they could understand about each other. I wonder if my mother might allow intimacy if it were similarly imperfect, if there was such a thing as an argument for it.

I reburied everything but Rosemary’s papers and the report on Teddy’s mother, the scarf, and the paper bird. They might have been items needed for a long winter: some for much later, if at all; some that I wanted to keep close by.

On my way out, I drove past 83 Beals. I hadn’t wanted to see it ever again; the images I retained of my father’s fall were too vivid to bear. To my surprise, it looked completely unchanged. Even a home that had been made into a museum, I supposed, might have been affected by the years. But not this one. I stopped the car and got out, standing on the sidewalk across the street. The flag waved in the wind but there was no other sign of life there. I thought of Rose’s voice on the recording in the piano room.
Things were so much simpler then.
It wasn’t the first time I had doubted her.

W
hen I got back to Wellesley I reparked the car in the lot, then walked the length of the campus back to Freeman. I pushed the keys under Jun’s door before returning to my dorm, trying not to wake Amy as I unlocked our door. I would call my mother. I would make her speak to me. I quietly placed Teddy’s drawing, my mother’s scarf, the hospital report, and Rosemary’s collection into a drawer, a compulsion drawing me to hide them away again, perhaps a fear that their long time underground would make them crumble in the light.

“Where the hell were you?” Amy was sitting up in bed.

“Out,” I said, shutting the drawer firmly. I moved to the closet and hung up my jacket with care, my back and shoulders stiff from the night in the car.

She flung the covers off and marched to the door, flipping on the light. Her face and pajamas, an old pair with nubs on the cloth, were pink and puffy. “I nearly called the police. You can’t leave a note?” I took off my shoes, then my socks. I would shower. I could get clean.

“I was just out, Amy. I’m sorry you were worried,” I added dutifully.

She snorted her disdain, momentarily speechless. “What the hell is going on with you? You missed last week’s RA meeting for your rehearsal, you disappear for a whole night, I haven’t seen you study, and you look too thin. Do I need to stage an intervention?” She seemed smaller than she had been first year; her face did. “Stop staring at me. Are you on drugs?”

I smiled.

“You’ve been crying.”

“I just need a shower.”

“I thought we were friends,” she said. “I thought we were really good friends.” Another girl’s voice might have cracked, but Amy just thrust her face in mine, her hair sticking out and tangled. The frame it made for her plain face was oddly leonine.

“I’m sorry, Amy,” I said, hating myself for dodging her but too tired to really care. “I need a shower.” I imagined myself already in there, the warm water on my back.

She was relentless. “I think you should find another roommate next year.”

“Okay,” I said. I began to open the door.

“You know, if your grades slip too much, they’ll kick you out.” I closed the door a bit. My grades had begun to slip. There was more than one lab report that was hurriedly finished after a late rehearsal and a snack at the Hoop when I wasn’t the only one who’d missed the dining hall hours. There were more than a few classes I had dozed through. I’d been able to stay afloat, but I was losing my singular focus on all things academic. At the same time, though, as I walked through campus recently I sometimes found myself breathing deeply, the feeling of air in my lungs occurring like a novelty. It had made me want to run again and, when I did, I found that Shakespeare’s lines were more to the rhythm of the body than the facts of molecular biology.

“Of course,” Amy went on, more to herself than to me, “you have a fucking photographic memory. Your grades will never slip
too
much. You can always
just get by
. God, what a waste.” She stormed back to her bed, throwing the covers back over herself. I thought she might be done, but she was glaring at me from her nest. “Do you know what you could do with that? And no internship, no recent work experience; you belong to Shakes and that’s it. You didn’t even try out for tennis. Med school is just around the corner. No one will take you, Naomi, if you keep this up.”

I still had my hand on the knob, listening. “You know, there’s no such thing as a true photographic memory. I think it’s just an idea. The mind can’t operate like a camera. It’s naturally flawed. I must have read that somewhere.” I grinned, hoping she might, too. When she didn’t, I opened the door to leave.

She leapt out of bed again as I walked away, raising her voice now that it would carry into the hallway. “You’re a wreck, Naomi, and you’re wasting your time here.” She checked herself for a moment after she’d said this, the words and her volume harsher than either one of us had expected. “I can’t believe you’re just
wasting
your time here.” She shook her head, incensed. I thought she might stamp her foot, like an angry child. “Fucking Wellesley education and look what you’re doing with it!” She gestured to me, as though I were evidence of something. “Do you have any idea what you’re letting just slip through your fingers? Is that what you really want?” Her voice rose on these last words, a shrill, tight whinny.

I wanted the warm water. I closed the door behind me. I stood under the stream for twenty minutes, giving Amy enough time to get dressed and leave. Then I leaned my forehead against the shower wall until I felt tired enough to sleep.

Nineteen

W
hen I woke there was a message on my voicemail. Jun. Looking for me, asking me if I wanted to talk about anything. I deleted it. The phone rang, but only twice. I picked up the receiver and dialed my parents. It was just past four in the afternoon and no one answered.

Opening night was in two days. I was due at the house for a six-o’clock call. I was there by five, stopping at the phone in the entryway to check my messages, try my parents again. Still no answer. I slammed the receiver into its cradle and walked into the kitchen. Ruth and A.J. were at the stove.

“You looking to play the ghost tonight?” A.J. asked when she saw me. Ruth turned around. I shook my head. “Are you sick, love?” A.J.’s watchfulness made my eyes sting with tears. I couldn’t risk talking.

“She’s fine,” Ruth said. “Try this, I’m teaching A.J. to make samosas.” I stared down at the food. I took a bite. It was doughy and spicy and nearly impossible to swallow. I gulped down some water, choking on it, as though relearning how to eat.

The front door slammed. The house was filling. Two or more members were arguing. I heard Ellie insisting she’d heard it was
Macbeth
. A hand was on my shoulder. Phyllis, looking down. “A.J. says you’re sick.” I shook my head. “She’s fine,” Ruth insisted, flipping pierogis. Phyllis scowled at Ruth’s back. “Are you okay?” she asked me. I nodded. “Then go get dressed. I want to run Ophelia’s postmortem again before the run-through.” I stood up, but felt dizzy as soon as I did. How long had I slept? Jun was there before I saw her, her hand on my arm. As if sensing us, Phyllis whipped around. “Is she sick or not?” she demanded.

“No,” Jun answered. Phyllis frowned and turned away. Jun walked me out of the room, down the hallway, then let me go at the door to the basement. More people walked in. I opened the door and went downstairs, sitting heavily on the first chair I found. Jun was behind me. There was no one else there. “I can’t talk about it here,” I told her. She said nothing. The door above us slammed. More people.

I made it through the run-through, pretending to study between acts. I snuck down shortly after Laertes’ death to listen to the phone tell me again that I had no messages. I walked out without waiting for Phyllis’s notes, walked back to my room alone. It was hot and stuffy there, the heat not yet scaled down for spring, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep. Amy wasn’t there. It was late, almost two in the morning. I pulled on my running shoes and sweats.

I walked around outside for a while then went to the track. There were no lights and I couldn’t find the switch. I walked to the starting line and began to stretch.

As I coaxed myself into a run, I tried to picture the tumor in her brain. White, the size of a ball; it couldn’t possibly be that perfectly round. And was it white in actuality or only in an X-ray? How did it grow? When would it first have been there? Did she feel it, did she feel a foreign object or just the deterioration it effected as it grew, forcing other things to shut down as it blossomed, unseen? Someone came up behind me. Jun. I didn’t acknowledge her, just let her run beside me, wanting to be lost in my mind as it spun, in my body as it grew tired.

We took a few more laps before I increased my speed, Jun matching me easily. I listened to her breath, then mine, until I was exhausted and stopped. I had classes in a few hours and opening night in a day. I crouched down to stretch but sunk instead into my own arms.

“How did you know where I was?” I mumbled to Jun.

She spoke softly, steadying her breath. “You fidget when you’re upset, like you need to take off. I figured you were too rattled to be anywhere that wasn’t open space.” I looked up. She was smiling a little.

“I went home last night. I should have returned your car sooner.” Jun said nothing.

“I slept in it. I didn’t go in. It’s my mother.” I looked away as I told her. She was crouching, too, mirroring me. It was so comforting, the first comfort I’d really wanted; she seemed to absorb something for me.

The night was heavy with quiet. “Has she been sick for a while?” she asked cautiously.

“Sort of.” I wondered if, when I became a doctor, I’d be less overwhelmed by the complexity of weakness. “The tumor is new.” I shrugged, too exhausted to find more words. I suddenly found myself wondering if the tumor could be related to the depression, if they were two symptoms of one problem, of a mind invading itself. I looked at Jun, questioningly. Could she have read my wonder and replied with an answer?

“Come.” She stood up. “Stretch.”

I stared at her. “My father used to call me that.”

Jun smiled at me. Her smile was never even, as though she didn’t want to commit to a grin until she was fully sure. She wasn’t a pretty girl, I remember thinking, but she had a welcoming face. “I meant to stretch. You’ll be stiff.”

I stood up, then stopped myself. I trotted to the side of the track and was sick. The release left me sobbing. Jun was beside me again, her arm around my shoulder.

“She won’t return my calls,” I spoke when I could. “She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“She will.” I felt her shiver. “Let’s get you home.”

“I can’t go back. My roommate hates me.”

“She won’t hate you any less if you’re standing out here.”

We made our way back to Stone-Davis. When Jun and I walked through the door, Amy was there, waiting. “Is she drunk?” she demanded. It would be morning soon. Neither one of us answered. Jun was carrying foils and books. Phyllis had asked us to try having them with us at all times. “A soldier has to learn an intimacy with his preferred weapon so that it can be like an extension, and appendage, whatever works for you.” She had taken to wearing a pair of heavy wooden clogs that thunked when she walked. “It has to be authentic, ladies. The audience will get up and leave if it looks like a couple of girls playing fight.”