Becoming the Butlers (18 page)

Domes of Cathedrals on Riverside Drive.

The city weeps, the sun never sets

On alleys slick with blood and sweat,

dewy with morning.

Sherman crawls into the East

Only to be conquered by indifference.

Still more secrets. Back issues of
Tiger Beat
magazine hidden inside
The History of World Art.
This, I suspected, was Olivia’s Achilles’ heel: an utter fascination with Michael J. Fox. The pages that contained his photos looked bleary, as if Olivia’s adoring looks had worn down his features, and there were even penciled-in check marks next to “Michael’s Pet Peeves” to demonstrate Olivia’s concordance. She was so ashamed of these teen magazines that the covers were torn off, the tables of contents crossed out, and hastily filled subscription forms ripped and then stuck back in the binding.

I reminded myself of my mission, and began to throw the contents of Olivia’s locker into the garbage bag. But I certainly couldn’t just throw them in like refuse, and took too much time planning where to put everything. What I really wanted to do was slip into the dark space of the locker and be enveloped in all that was Olivia: feel the coolness of the silk scarves and hear the sighs of her poem and breathe the almost edible scent that I imagined belonged exclusively to the Butlers—something like chocolate and oranges and cognac, which my father had always described as liquid velvet. Instead I took Olivia’s navy blue pea jacket and slipped the sleeves over my arms, snapping the buttons and turning up the collar. The jacket fit perfectly: not a stitch out of place. I stood straight, cocked my head, and placed my right hand on my hip. In light that dim, someone might even mistake me for Olivia Butler. Someone, perhaps, but not Olivia’s brother.

When I heard the noise I thought Jenny Gin and Tonic had returned. To his credit, my unexpected visitor tried his utmost to be polite.

“Hello, that’s not your locker. Excuse me, but what’s going on?”

Then he saw me in his sister’s coat, and his anger erupted so fast I fell back as if slapped.

“That’s Olivia’s! How dare you!” He took a deep breath. “I should call the police. They know what to do with people like you.”

Had it been anyone except Edwin Butler, I would have laughed at his theatrics and ask what the police would do with people like me? But because he was Edwin Butler, I remained silent. He stood before me in a white T-shirt and striped shorts, still panting from his exertions. He smelled, remarkably, like any other boy who had been playing basketball. Although I was amazed to see him, I was also amazed to see him flushed and breathless. He was wet and glowing with sweat. I was so relieved that he was real that I almost wept.

Why was Edwin Butler playing basketball on the roof at the
very
hour I decided to burglarize his sister’s locker?

The coincidence was enough of an answer for me. Not only was I meant to be caught, but caught only by Edwin Butler. No longer the usual anonymous face he scorned, I now had a name and a meaning. Edwin had stared at me not with the usual indifference he allotted to everyone, but with real emotion that practically burned like steam from his eyes.

Although the evidence was overwhelming (my Hefty bag bulging with Olivia’s possessions, the pliers from the school shop room, Edwin’s eyewitness account), I would never confess to being a thief. Maybe at first my intentions were larcenous. But the moment I opened Olivia Butler’s locker I didn’t so much want to steal, but somehow coalesce with her things. For a few moments I was that damp bathing suit, the beads of pearly shampoo, the cashmere scarf. I felt as whole as I’ve ever been. But try explaining that to your school principal.

Mr. Gregory was also still at the Winfield Academy, and Edwin marched me downstairs, carefully guarding me
as if we were in the middle of a basketball game. “Don’t worry, I’m not wearing my Reeboks,” I joked. His face remained grim, but Edwin didn’t intimidate me anymore. I was a Butler. I knew all of Olivia’s secrets: her Michael J. Fox crush, her subscription to
Tiger Beat,
her hatred of Sundays, her distrust of her father, and how Sherman was finally conquered by indifference. Even her coat had fit me as if custom-made.

Edwin went into Mr. Gregory’s office first and I heard the murmuring of low voices. Then Edwin stepped out, and fixed his eyes, as if for inspiration, on a sepia-tinted photograph of Eugene Smith Winfield, the academy’s founder.

“Mr. Gregory will see you now,” Edwin told me, his voice as punctilious as Miss Layton’s, the school’s secretary.

I remembered my father describing how during staff meetings he always had the uncomfortable feeling of being stuck in the middle of a giant walnut. As I walked inside the principal’s office I understood exactly what he meant. The wall paneling, desk, bookcase, and chairs were all walnut wood. Even the brown carpet was speckled so as to resemble walnut. At first I didn’t see Mr. Gregory, and looked over my shoulder expecting some sort of practical joke. Then I could have sworn the floor sneezed, and I spotted our school’s principal two feet away, crouched on his knees, examining the corded tassels of the room’s thick brown curtain. He too was dressed in a brown suit with a brown tie and a weathered shirt that once might have been brown but now was faded or bleached to beige. Maybe I couldn’t get my father’s words out of my head, for suddenly Mr. Gregory struck me as looking like some sort of overgrown squirrel.

“Oh, Rachel, good afternoon!” he exclaimed, still hunched over. My father claimed that Mr. Gregory’s
pseudo-British accent was fake and that everyone knew the headmaster hailed from Hoboken, New Jersey.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Gregory.” I was still lugging around my Hefty bag crammed with Olivia’s things. Mr. Gregory’s eyes flickered briefly toward my left shoulder, and then, as if horrified at the obvious evidence, concentrated again on that worn curtain tassel.

“I suppose it’s true then?” he murmured, picking at something that looked like lint.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Why?” He sounded more curious than condemning, and I suppose it was a curious situation. It wasn’t like I had stolen Olivia’s wallet, or mugged her personally in the ladies room. I had rummaged through a school locker, which, for ninety-nine percent of most students, contained junk that even Senegalese merchants wouldn’t sell on Broadway.

“I thought it would help me,” I told him, deciding to be honest. Why bother to make up a story? I only lied when I needed to protect my father, and this time I was the only one in trouble.

“You thought stealing another student’s possessions would help you?” Still crouched down, he kind of hopped in a semicircle until he faced me. My school principal now resembled a guinea pig.

“And it did help me,” I protested.

Mr. Gregory finally stood up, his knees creaking beneath him. He was well over six feet, and like Jack in the Beanstalk he kept rising and rising. “Well you missed your mark if you were hoping to impress them.”

“But I
was
hoping to impress them.”

“Rachel, please be serious! This is a serious matter. I see you have your father’s sarcastic sense of humor.” He walked over and pulled out a chair. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“You’re not facing a firing squad. I just want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Why you did this.”

“I want to become a Butler.”

“Well…” My answer didn’t seem to faze him. “I suppose that makes sense. But only if you examine it on a superficial level. Did it ever occur to you that being a Butler might not be a field of daisies?”

“Anyone’s better than me,” I said miserably.

“I suppose you find your own family lacking.”

“You could say that.”

“It’s been a rough year for you and Jim. But you shouldn’t give up. Although your mother’s absent, you two still constitute a whole. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

I shook my head and traced a pattern across the carpet with the tip of my shoe.

“I really should expel you,” he said, studying me with his fist cupping his chin. “But since your father’s a teacher here, and I understand your home situation, I’ll only give you suspension, let’s say for three weeks. You’ll be allowed to come in and collect your homework and, if necessary, attend class for any exams. I’ll probably get a lot of flack for being so lenient.”

“Why do it then?”

“Maybe because I want to do what’s best for you.” Mr. Gregory stepped forward and tentatively, so very gently, placed a hand on my shoulder. “You shouldn’t be punished for other people’s actions.”

I wasn’t used to kindness, and it stunned me as much as if he had been cruel. Mr. Gregory had the tact to return to his curtain and study the tassels as I buried my face in my shirtsleeve.

“There’s a box of Kleenex on the upper right shelf of the bookcase,” he said softly. “By the way, who should tell your father about the incident?”

“I will,” I answered. But my father would not learn about my suspension that afternoon. That morning’s mail had brought two letters from Madrid, one from my mother, the second from my mother’s lawyer.

ELEVEN

“Your father’s back,” Hector, our doorman, said as I entered the lobby.

“So what?” I asked.

“You’ll see what I mean,” he answered, rolling his eyes.

The apartment door was propped open with a nearly empty bottle of Stolichnaya. Stubbed-out cigarettes and empty glasses, like a trail of clues, led into the living room. A smell like burnt popcorn wafted from the kitchen, and a record played at top volume, the song unidentifiable because of a stuck needle.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Anyone home?”

James, in only his underwear and a sleeveless T-shirt, hobbled into the living room. His bare limbs, yellowish white and pimply with goosebumps, looked like the skin of raw chicken. He peered at me through bloodshot eyes, his hands trembling so that his cigarette looked like a streak of red light.

“Hendrix!” he shouted.

“Who?”

“Jimi Hendrix. Your mother and I saw him at Woodstock. That’s where we met. She sat next to me, in a fringed poncho and paisley skirt that went down to her bare feet. Nobody wore shoes, even though the mud was thigh-high. You can’t imagine the dreadful scene: acres and acres of unwashed feet!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked irritably. I was in no mood for one of my father’s drunken tantrums, not after what had happened at school. My father stumbled over to the stereo, where he examined the record jacket.

“Maybe Hendrix didn’t play at Woodstock,” he announced, frowning. “Maybe it was the Monterey Festival. Now I don’t remember. I should have put on Joan Baez instead. I’m pretty sure she was there. The funny thing is, I hated Woodstock. I only went because my brother Joey wasn’t old enough to drive. You may find this hard to believe, Rachel, but I was supposed to be his chaperone. And I got lost instead.” My father crouched down and picked up a glass from the floor. He grimaced as he swallowed the cloudy remains, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Here,” he said, giving me his cigarette. “Can you put this out for me?”

I dropped the butt into the glass he held, where it extinguished with a sizzle. My father’s breath smelled medicinal, as if he’d been downing Vick’s cough syrup, and I wondered just what he had drunk.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, kiddo, skipping that whole hippie thing. I hated it. Peace, love, and understanding—what a bunch of crap! I never saw more heads being busted than at antiwar marches, and the real bastards weren’t the police. But I had to pretend to your mother, who wanted to be a thinner and prettier version of Janis Joplin. Let me tell you, the strain got pretty great. I liked Sinatra and Como, renting tuxedos and dancing
cheek to cheek in the Waldorf ballroom. There was only so much fresh air and electric guitar I could take. Your mom and I were always pretending, from the moment we met. I told her I knew Jethro Tull, and she said she had just graduated from Miss Porter’s School and lived on Park Avenue.”

“Something happened,” I said softly.

“You could say that. Why don’t you pick up those two envelopes on the hall table. I think you’ll find the contents very interesting.”

The flat envelopes were so light that they could have floated in my hand. Both postmarks were from Madrid, España.

“Oh shit,” I exclaimed.

“I’d be a lot happier if that was the actual salutation,” my father said quietly. “At least ‘oh shit’ shows some remorse.”

The repetition of that one guitar chord was like a nail piercing my skull. Somebody began to knock on the door. Neither of us moved. “What fresh hell is this?” my father muttered, finally heading toward the hallway.

“Yoo-hoo, Professor Harris!”

Mrs. Rosen stuck her head inside and took two small steps toward us. She was dressed in black, and held a prayer book. Her forced smile faded as she caught sight of my father in his underwear.

“Well, excuse me,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Rosen,” my father cried, “but who do you think you are, barging into my apartment, barging into…” He stopped, staring at her somber attire. “Did you just come from a funeral?” he asked quietly.