Cheating Lessons: A Novel (15 page)

Lori’s composure dissolved into flattered giggles. “I’ve tried it before, once or twice. I used to date a shot-putter.”

“Date one? You are one!” Bernadette tripped over her words. “With your SATs and a
real
sport like track and field, you could be Ivy League material. U of M, anyway. Scholarship City.”

Lori gave a crow of laughter. “Ivy League? You’re nuts. My SATs
might
get me into Michigan State.”

“What, a 720 on Verbal? That’s excellent.”

“I wish. I got 520 on each part. What’s the matter?” Bernadette had stopped. “It’s not that bad.”

“Of course not. 1040. It’s fine.” Bernadette resumed walking. “It’s just—you said once you were good at tests. I thought you might have aced them, that’s all.”

“I did ace them. I got 1040. Why’d you think I had a 720 on Verbal?”

“I must have been thinking of somebody else.”

“Yeah, like yourself.”

“780,” Bernadette said automatically. It wasn’t like Mr. Malory to get things wrong.

“780! Get out.” Lori’s admiration was pleasant, Bernadette could not deny. “If I ever scored that high on anything, my dad would fritz out but good. He think I’m a dumb blonde—without the blonde.”

This jolted Bernadette back to her companion. “But—I thought your father was dead.”

“That’s what I tell people,” Lori said. “It’s just that he
should
be dead.”

Bernadette couldn’t believe it. She waited, on the off chance that this was a bad joke, explained any second. But no. Lori met her eyes steadily. She wasn’t joking.

They had passed the wooden bleachers and come to the trip wire separating playing fields from the graveled parking lot. Lori stepped on the wire for Bernadette.

“Thanks.”

“I’m not a liar,” Lori said.

“Of course not.”

“I’m the daughter of a liar, but I don’t think those things are genetic, do you?”

“No,” said Bernadette, a parishioner in good sacramental standing at St. Jerome’s. “Lying is an act of free will. Otherwise it can’t be a sin.”

They reached the little red Miata, but Lori made no move to get in. “My mom divorced my dad two years ago. Turned out he had a girlfriend. You want to know the worst part?”

Bernadette wanted nothing less, but Lori needed to tell. Even she could see that much. “What?”

“He had her for five years before we found out. Since I was ten. She lived in Farmington.” Farmington bordered Creighton to the west.

“Really? We went to this great Thai place once in Farming—”

“We never caught on. He missed my dance recitals, and gymnastic meets, and one time three days of our vacation, and we just thought, oh, he’s snowed in in Denver again.”

“Did he ski a lot?”

“He’s a pilot. When he
was
home he slept half the time. My mom thought he was anemic. She couldn’t figure out how he could keep flying with such iron-poor blood.” Lori gave a twisted smile. “I get my brains from my mom, can’t you tell?”

The smile did it. Bernadette’s heart contracted at its bravery. If Mr. Besh had appeared at that moment she would have swung her backpack into his cheating crotch with every ounce of her strength.

Lori went on. “He had these old albums from college he used to rave about—Spooky Tooth, Little Feat, groups you never heard of that he always swore were collectors’ items—and the day my mom told me about Glor—about the divorce, I went upstairs and sailed those albums out the window. My mom and I had a contest—who could get theirs the farthest. I won. She hated him more, she said, but I had the better arm.” Lori made a wry face.

“You have a great arm.” Bernadette couldn’t think of anything to say. Clumsily she patted Lori’s shoulder. “Your dad was some kind of sick.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s one screwed-up puppy.” She looked into Bernadette’s face and asked, as though she really thought Bernadette might know, “How can a person you think you love, who’s supposed to take care of you, look you right in the eye and lie? Year after year . . . and to my mother! I get so mad even now, I could—oh, I don’t know. It’s over.” She kicked at a patch of gravel, which hit the tires with impotent thuds.

“Poison him? A letter bomb?” Bernadette suggested. “Or wait, I’ve got it—acid. Blind him so he can’t fly.”

Lori gave a startled gasp of laughter. “I used to think about running away from home just so he’d feel guilty.”

“What! Lori, listen to me.” Lori obediently fastened her blue gaze on Bernadette. “
He’s
the bad guy. Not you. You want to do something, do it to
him.
Like the albums out the window—that’s the idea. I know Jesus says turn the other cheek, but then how can you be sure people get what’s coming to them?”

For a long moment Lori stared at her. Then she broke into a rippling laugh. Bernadette was pleased. “Now why couldn’t that dumb counselor have told me that? She just kept saying to ‘deal with my anger.’ I like your way better.”

Bernadette coughed. “You do realize, I’m not actually suggesting—”

“Don’t worry. You’re kidding, I know, but I appreciate that, too. I didn’t mean to go on and on.” Lori pressed the unlock button on her key ring. “Anyway, we did great in court. I think of this car as a present from Dad.” There was no anger in her voice, only a philosophical self-mockery. “The SAT scores made me think of him. He got the highest grade on the airline’s entrance exam of any pilot they ever had. I used to be so proud of that. But now—” she made a face—“he probably cheated.”

“Lori—”

“Do me a favor? Forget I mentioned this.”

“Absolutely.”

They got in. Lori put the car in reverse and carefully backed out. The silence felt awkward. “What’s your mother do?” Bernadette asked, and held her breath in case Mrs. Besh turned out to be a kleptomaniac, or a porn star.

But Lori smiled. “My mom’s Miss Tanya.”

Miss Tanya’s School of Ballet had been a fixture in downtown Creighton as long as Bernadette could remember. “
I
took lessons from Miss Tanya when I was four,” she cried.

“No kidding? I took them about a hundred hours a week.”

“Do you still?”

Lori’s face wrinkled into distaste, as though there was something uncool about dancing. This, from a devotee of pompon, struck Bernadette as funny.

“I mostly just teach,” Lori said. “Beginning ballet three nights a week and twice on Saturdays.”

“
And
pompon,
and
study for the Bowl? God, Lori. It’s a wonder you’re not sleeping in class.”

“My mom’s taking my night students this month. She knows what the Classics Bowl means to me.”

They turned off Grand River into Bernadette’s subdivision. Lori glanced over at her. “You’d think I’d want to win it for her, wouldn’t you? And I do. But what I really want is to win, and take the computer or the check or whatever they give us and shove it in my father’s face.
Look at this,
I’d say.
I’m smart enough without you, I don’t need a father.”
She laughed at herself. “Is that dumb or what.”

Dumb? Suddenly Lori’s phone calls to Mr. Malory made some sense. He was kind and he was around. Compared with Mr. Besh he must look like the father on
The Brady Bunch. “
I don’t think it’s dumb,” Bernadette said.

She turned toward the window and made a quick, hidden sign of the cross. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And Saint Bernadette, too, if you’re listening. We have to win. Please.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 . . . then he seized his left foot with both hands in

such a fury that he split in two . . .

—The Brothers Grimm,
Rumpelstiltskin

O
n Thursday—Bowl Day Minus Three—Bernadette slumped at her desk in the classroom grown familiar as a cell and listened to her stomach rumble.

Two desks away, Lori yawned. Bernadette yawned back. Nadine yawned, too. David had his head down on his arms and hadn’t moved in some time. Anthony came in. He dropped his books with a bang that made them all yelp.

“Hey, Ms. Terrell.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice mysteriously. “I have something you’d love to get your hands on.”

Bernadette stifled a yawn. “What?”

Anthony waved his notebook. “The genuine, actual questions for this year’s Classics Bowl. Get ’em while they’re hot.”

Bernadette jerked upright so hard, her neck twinged, shooting a fiery pain toward her ear.

“You
do
?” Lori twisted around. “I don’t believe it. Read some.”

Bernadette catapulted out of her seat. She grabbed at the notebook, but Anthony backed toward the blackboard holding it over his head.

“Bet, he’s lying. He doesn’t have them.” Nadine’s gruff voice held amusement.

“Oh, yeah?” Anthony said. “Listen to this—”

“NO!” Bernadette screamed. Was he crazy? If he read them out loud, it was over. Everything would be over. She leaped up again.

Anthony fended her off as though she were a puppy. “Name the Laura Ingalls Wilder classic—ow!—about an elf who carries a tent camping,” he shouted.

Huh?

“
Little House on the Fairy.
Get it?” Anthony’s laugh was a bray.

Bernadette’s arms dropped to her sides. Her heart hammered painfully. “That wasn’t funny.”

“Well, it was, kind of. How did you think I’d get the real questions?” he asked her. “Kissing up to Phoebe Hamilton? She’s a little old for me.”

“And still in her right mind,” Nadine put in.

David jotted something down. “I have one. Name the English novel that describes Anthony at work.”

“Well,
Animal Farm’s
a contender.” Nadine made a hideous face at Anthony. “But it could be
Lord of the Flies.
”

“Ooh, ooh. Let me try.” Lori ran a silver fingernail down her book list while they all waited. “Okay. What English novel describes the Wickham Warriors’ halftime show?”

Nobody knew.

“
Middlemarch!
” she cried. “Get it?”

Groans from all around, but Lori settled back in her chair with a very satisfied expression.

Bernadette recovered from her scare. This was a competition, after all. “What did Tarzan say when his girlfriend put a plastic bag over his head?”

“Jane—Air?” David guessed.

Bernadette whistled. “You’re quick,” she said, and earned one of David’s louder burps.

It was as though Madison Avenue had announced a prize for the worst pun. They couldn’t stop themselves.

What did you call a residence with HBO in every room?
House of the Seven Cables.
What did the hammer say when he took the remote control away from the pliers? It’s
The Turn of the Screw.
What did they call Johnny Bench when he retired to New York?
The Catcher in the Rye.

“These are worse than my cousin’s joke books. And he’s only six.” Nadine scoured her book list. “Okay, okay. Gimme a good name for a bathroom sink store.”

“Vanity Fair!”

At first no one noticed Mr. Malory. He stood in the doorway with a pink box under one arm and a black scowl on his face. Bernadette, who could sense fresh doughnuts through stone walls, looked up. So did David.

“Hey, Mr. Malory,” David called, leaning back on two chair legs. “What did the waitress say when the guy ordered a martini?” He answered himself immediately. “ ‘Olive or twist?’ Get it?
Oliver Twist
?”

“I ‘got it’ all the way from the main hall, Mr. Minor. Let’s hope your knowledge is more impressive than your wit.” Their teacher’s voice was clipped and cold and burningly sarcastic in a way they’d never heard it.

David’s chair legs crashed forward. Anthony folded himself into his desk. Lori laced her hands in front of her, kindergarten-style. Through the open seatback of Bernadette’s chair, Nadine’s foot prodded her in the ribs just like old times.

Mr. Malory looked them over as though they were something a plunger had brought up. He unlocked the file drawer in his desk and took out the familiar red binder. This he opened with great deliberation. “Ms. Besh,” he said. “Suppose you tell us who wrote
Lyrical Ballads.”

Panicked blue eyes sought Bernadette’s. “I can’t think—” Lori stammered.

“Ms. Walczak?”

“Coleridge and—Byron?”

“Coleridge. And.
Wordsworth!
” He smacked the desk top. “Coleridge and Wordsworth, only the most influential poets of the Romantic period.” He rifled through his papers. “Who had the Romantic Poets?”

Everyone started leafing through their assignment packets as though they had to check.

“Ms. Besh.”

Lori squeaked.

“Do you see Romantic Poets on your assignment sheet?” he asked with dangerous softness.

“I guess I didn’t get to them yet, Mr. Mallory.”

“And when
were
you planning to get to them? Between cartwheels, perhaps? Or were you hoping to ink a few names on your arm the day of the Bowl?”

Lori looked stricken. Bernadette shut her eyes.

Then opened them. She could split Romantic Poets with Lori. “Mr. Malory, what if I—”

“
No.
” He hurled the doughnut box the width of the room. It thwacked against the doorjamb. “The bloody
hell
with this. Do you think I’ve done all this work so you can act like a bunch of asses?”

No one answered.

“I’ve not given up my afternoons
and
evenings
and
weekends for the pure pleasure of your company. I had hoped you would rise to the challenge. That you’d feel you had something to prove. But obviously I’ve been kidding myself.” He slammed the binder shut. “Pinehurst Academy knows how it feels to be winners. Perhaps if you ask them nicely on Sunday they’ll describe it to you.”

He strode from the room, giving the door a good bang behind him.

Bernadette stared at the bent box of doughnuts, its poor sugary contents squashed and spilling out, and suddenly time warped and she was ten years old, shopping with her mother at the grocery store.

Bernadette had waved a coupon in one hand and a box of doughnuts in the other. “ ‘One Free Coffee Cake, Any Flavor. Not Good on Doughnuts or Sandwich Rolls,’ ” she recited to the cashier. “So these don’t count, Mom.”