Home Schooling (16 page)

Did I have any idea what those words meant? he'd demanded. Dr. Bergius's intensity frightened me a little, and so did my ignorance. What did the words mean? What did they mean? I pictured Dr. Bergius running frantically around under a low grey sky, his arms raised, while a young woman stood petulantly off to the side.

Well, Dr. Bergius said at last, neither did he know the exact meaning of the words. And yet, didn't I feel, as he did, their wonderful musicality?

On Dr. Bergius's desk, between a black telephone and an onyx pen stand, there was a framed portrait of his late wife, whose name, he told me, was Eva. With her prominent cheekbones and small, shrewd eyes, Eva seemed unnervingly lifelike. When he'd met Eva, he said, he'd been a medical student and she'd been studying what would now be called Home Economics at a girls' academy in Leipzig. She was, he said, a lovely, lovely girl who adored nature, flowers, and animals. That was in
1934
, in a very different world, he said, absently tugging at his bow tie.

In spite of his long interest in the subject, Dr. Bergius was a newcomer to the realities of commercial broadcasting. He might as well be honest about this, he said. The station had been on the verge of bankruptcy when he took over, and the situation was still precarious. He was going to need the help of the announcers, news director, music director — not that the station had a music director at present, but that would come, fingers crossed — and the salesmen. And the copywriter. “That's you,” he said, beaming.

“Yes,” I said, nervously. I didn't want Dr. Bergius questioning me about my qualifications. I'd been hired as a receptionist, but during the transition period, in the days before Dr. Bergius arrived, the previous copywriter had quit, and I'd been offered his job, no questions asked, no experience necessary. I'd inherited a desk in a corner near the coffee room, and an antique Royal typewriter on which to compose copy. I thought I was improving. As far as I could tell, it was all a matter of rhythm and timing, in order to transform the dull, repetitive half-truths of commerce into something that didn't entirely offend the ear. A matter of musicality, as Dr. Bergius had just said of poetry. I thought of mentioning this, but I didn't want to sound pretentious, as if I was trying to come
across as more knowledgeable than I was, or worse, trying to compare myself to a famous poet.

At the conclusion of the interview, Dr. Bergius came out from behind his desk and took my hand. He was tall, with the slightest stoop. His bow tie was the same velvety midnight blue as his eyes. No doubt he should have gone into radio years ago, he said, but his mother had wanted a career in medicine for him. Such a devoted mother, how could he have disappointed her? Anyway, medicine had been good to him. He had no regrets.

And now he had his own little radio station. He smiled slightly and opened his office door for me. Before I left, I happened to glance at the window in the wall of Dr. Bergius's office. It looked directly into the control room. One of the announcers, Brent, was at the microphone, reading a piece of my copy. Once, Brent had buzzed me on the intercom and summoned me to the control room. “Never begin with a question,” he'd told me. He'd been referring to a piece of copy I'd written for the Star Cinema, on Station Street, the first line of which read:
Are you in the mood for a Wild West adventure?
Anyone listening, Brent had pointed out, would naturally feel like saying, No, damn it, I'm not in the mood. “Starting with a question is a sure sign of a novice,” he'd said. He'd put his hand under my chin, forcing me to look at him. “It's all right. Everyone makes mistakes,” he'd said. “That's how you learn.”

One morning Dr. Bergius came and stood beside my desk. He straightened my pile of yellow newsprint. Then he said, “I met your mother. She was in the grocery store when I was there. To be honest, I thought she was you. You resemble her to a remarkable degree.”

“I know,” I said. “Everyone says that.”

“It's true” said Dr. Bergius, “Let me tell you what happened. I said good morning to your mother, or, as I thought, to you. Then something made me a little unsure. I took a closer look. ‘Excuse me,' I said, ‘but are you Rachel's mother?' She laughed and said
indeed she was. It was very pleasant, meeting unexpectedly in the store like that. Your mother is a very gracious person, Rachel.”

“Thank you,” I said. I erased a typing mistake, then typed:
Don't miss out! Prices have been slashed — quantities are limited!

I wouldn't have called Bethany gracious. She was too plainspoken, without guile. However, it was true, we looked alike. We were the kind of mother and daughter people often mistook for sisters. We had the same heart-shaped faces, the same large, pale-grey eyes. Even our feet were the same shape, narrow at the heel and wide across the toes. We both tied our light brown hair back in a pony-tail. We borrowed each other's clothes and went shopping together. All the years I was growing up, going to school, sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, Bethany would say, “Thank the Lord I have you, Rachel. I'd be lost without you.” What she meant, I thought, was that we had each other. We had each other and no one else. Not long after I was born, my father had disappeared. His name was Gary. I knew nothing about him. When I was younger, I had begged Bethany to tell me what he'd looked like, what kind of person he was, what kind of music he liked, whether or not he smoked, if he went to church, and she would shake her head. Well, I would say, you must remember something. No, I don't, she'd insisted, laughing a little; I have total amnesia.

For years I tried to add the name Gary — its two crisp, hurried syllables — to the list of people I prayed for at night. But what I breathed into the darkness returned to reside stubbornly in my mind. I imagined a father with a different name: Charles, Edward, Rupert. Something substantial, the name of a conscientious, reliable individual. Finally, I gave up. I came to believe there'd only ever been Bethany. Bethany in the moonlight, working magic in the soil, digging and tilling and adding nutrients and then something, some little thing, germinating. Me.

It occurred to me that Gary, wherever he was, whoever he might be — if, indeed, he had ever existed — would be only a little older
than Simon. Or even the same age, or younger. Thinking this, I started a game. I imagined that Simon was Gary in disguise. He was biding his time, pretending to be my boyfriend so he could get to know me. He cared about me the way a father would. He planted kisses on the top of my head and took me for Sunday afternoon rides in his car. I came to believe this wasn't a game, but the truth. Then Bethany invited Simon to our house for tea, and there was no sign of recognition between them, only a little animosity on Bethany's side.

She'd made a pot of herbal tea and set the table with her pink raffia placemats. She offered Simon freshly baked oatmeal cookies and raisin scones. Simon talked to Bethany and ignored me. He and my mother were adults together, he seemed to be implying, while I was merely a child. I was jealous. Did Simon find Bethany prettier than I was, livelier, more interesting? Before he left, Bethany had taken him on a tour of her garden, pointing out her successes and her failures, including a clump of dried-out, decaying bog myrtle. Gallantly Simon said he couldn't imagine anything dying on her, and she laughed and cut two of her precious peony blooms for him. They were a deep rose pink, the size of the human heart.

He thanked her, looking slightly dumbfounded, and I said, “Watch out, they're crawling alive with earwigs.”

Dr. Bergius straightened my supply of yellow newsprint, then immediately brushed against it with his suit jacket and had to straighten it again. He took his time, then stood back and gave me a long look.

“That's a bad sunburn you have, Rachel,” he said.

“I know,” I said. I lifted my shoulders a little, defensively, which made me wince. I was wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps. My legs were sunburned, too, but at least they were hidden under my desk.

“Cold compresses,” Dr. Bergius said. “Plenty of fluids. Aspirin would help. I have some in my office, if you like.”

“It doesn't hurt,” I lied. “It looks worse than it is.” I did feel ill and feverish, and every part of my body ached and burned. The day before, I'd gone out with Simon in his boat and we'd got stuck for hours on a sandbar in the narrow channel between two small islands. Simon had been sure he could navigate his way through at low tide, but he'd been wrong. He'd tried ramming the engine from reverse into forward, then running out of the cabin to stare down at the murky water. He'd banged his head hard on the lintel over the door, which infuriated him and he started cursing, calling his boat an unseaworthy old tub, threatening to sink it. And you, he said, pointing a finger at me, you'll go down with it, how will you like that? Then he looked away, breathing hard.

The unhappy excursion in the boat had been all Simon's idea, not mine, but I did feel responsible for the way things had turned out. While we waited for the tide to float us free, we sat on the bow of the boat and drank beer and passed a bag of stale potato chips back and forth. On one of the adjacent islands a party was going on, five or ten kids out on the lawn in front of a house, a Rolling Stones song blasting out across the water. I loved the Stones, but it was true the music seemed to get caught in the recalcitrant ocean currents and the burning heat of the sun, becoming oppressive, inescapable. Simon stood, hands on his hips, at the boat's rail and yelled across the water at the kids to shut up, shut the fuck up. Naturally they responded by shouting obscenities in return, parodying Simon's anger, jumping around like apes, beating their chests. I had to smile. I saw the scene through their eyes: the middle-aged man, his naked sparrow's chest, his gut slack over the waistband of khaki shorts. Me in my pink two-piece bathing suit, my ponytail. The adamantine sky. The sinking ship. I was starting to enjoy myself. In my head, I began to compose a poem. I felt myself grow distant
from the scene. I viewed Simon objectively, coldly. Then again I allowed myself to look at him with pure affection and warmth. I imagined that he would, in front of our motley teenaged audience, begin to make love to me. I slipped my bathing suit straps off my shoulders and stretched out in front of the cabin window, now somewhat aslant, to sunbathe. I intended to look voluptuous and irresistible, but instead I fell asleep. When I woke thirty minutes or so later, we were underway.

Dr. Bergius repeated his advice, telling me I should rub cold cream on my sunburn; I should have a cool bath and let the water soak into my skin. “Let me bring you a glass of water and an Aspirin,” he said, and I said, “No, I'm fine, really.” I wished he would go back to his office. He had this sad, far-off look on his face. “Perhaps one day I will have a chance to talk with your mother at greater length,” he said. “I must see what I can do.”

His interest was unwarranted enough to seem like trespass. He went down the hall, then turned abruptly and walked back to his office and shut the door. I depressed a few typewriter keys softly, without leaving a mark on the page. I liked being a copywriter, even if I wasn't very good at it yet. The stuff I wrote wasn't beautiful, or poetic, or even especially true. I knew it was mostly junk. Even so, if I did manage to write something that seemed okay, even more than okay, brilliant, perfect, I sat there reading to myself over and over the lines of faded type on the cheap yellow paper.

In the back porch of our house Bethany hung bunches of everlasting flowers to dry. In the winter she took the dried flower heads and separated the petals, spreading them out on the kitchen table. Then, using a pair of tweezers, she painstakingly glued each individual petal to a sheet of paper. The petals formed textured designs that represented birds or deer or flowers. Once, she did an evening landscape, a sky of gold and mauve and crimson above a field of russet-browns. She liked it enough to hang it on the kitchen wall.
That summer I took it down and ran my fingers slowly over the rough, prickly surface. I felt within myself a corresponding irritability. Felt skies, I thought.

Since that day in Dr. Bergius's office, I had learned that Rilke's mother had wanted a daughter, not a son. Her disappointment made her spiteful, and she forced Rilke to pretend he was a girl; she took hours to comb his hair into fat, silky ringlets. She pinched his pale cheeks to give them some colour. I thought of Dr. Bergius listening in some long-ago twilight as his mother read to him — a simple, motherly act he'd spent his whole life trying to repay. Then I began to think about Bethany's mother, my grandmother, whose coldness and remove were incomprehensible to me. Bethany had run away from home when she was eighteen, because her parents wouldn't give their permission for her to get married. And then, when things hadn't worked out with the man she'd loved and she got pregnant with me, she'd tried to go home, but her mother refused to see her. Clearly, there were shades, gradations, in the spectrum of parental love that were dangerous, extreme, yet somehow, in the end, tolerable. Bethany said she didn't blame her mother, not any longer: people were what they were, she said. And I suppose I didn't blame my father. Not entirely. I wished I knew, though, what had caused his sudden flight or banishment, because that would tell me something, wouldn't it? Tell me something about myself. Bethany promised one day she'd tell me everything. One day.

But that day never arrived. Bethany was always too busy cultivating and nurturing all those fragile, needy plants. In her garden shed she kept poisons to eradicate disease, fertilizers to encourage growth. She had little sharp scissors and knives to cut out dead or stunted shoots. She was a horticulturist; she was a woodswoman. Her hands were sinewy and tanned and muscular, and looked as if they rightfully belonged to someone else. That summer, the summer of
1974
, the summer the American president resigned from office and received a full pardon — an event that came to serve as a kind
of neutral marker in my mind — I found her in a far corner of the garden. She was wandering among the great massed shapes of shadow and light in a kind of trance, her eyes shining, her dress stained with grass and dirt. I said her name and she didn't hear me. I went right up to her and put my hands on her shoulders. The air between us became as clear and untroubled as glass. We were our twinned selves, like to like. We were in a dream. It was a good dream, mostly, all the menace and danger kept manageably distant, like a thunderstorm far out at sea.