I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia (3 page)

“I wish you’d explain,” I said.

“If you had any idea what I’ve been through, what they—” Neil clamped his jaw so tightly the socket bone pressed against his skin. He was a long, thin man with a brand new tic at the side of his eye. He made me think of a stick of dynamite, counting down to detonation. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m tired. Angela had a bad night again. Forget it.”

“How is dear Angela?” Caroline Finney asked. Everyone was dear to her and by and large the feeling was reciprocated, even if her heart belonged to Ovid, as she’d once confessed, blushing.

She and Neil discussed, in properly vague terms, Angela’s tortuous progress toward delivery, and the many alterations to their home that had been necessary to alleviate her allergies.

I once again returned to my chores and realized that
Fanny Hill
had been only a sample nugget. I’d hit the Mother Lode of erotica: slender volumes with plain white covers by Anonymous, and racy contemporary soft-core best-sellers, all hardcover first editions, and all the way back to
Peyton Place.

I furtively thumbed through the collection, sure that any minute the principal would find me out and haul me away. Consequently, I gasped when Neil tapped my shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry twice. Didn’t mean to scare you now or snap at you earlier. I only meant…I’m not the person to talk to about TLC. I’m sure Teller and Schmidt would agree. They’d be the first to say I’m biased—and a bad businessman.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “I’m not supposed to talk about—Some other time,” he said firmly.

It was true that Neil was not my idea of a tycoon. Ferreting out odd facts about Ben Franklin was one thing. He’d been really excited the day he’d discovered that old Ben developed the idea of street cleaning, for example. Research delighted Neil, not receipts and bills. However, it shouldn’t have mattered. TLC’s literature promised that the main office handled the paperwork for their franchises. I had lots more questions but, as he obviously didn’t want any further discussion of the subject, we returned to our tasks.

I peeked into another racy number called
M’lady’s Boudoir
and put it in a carton with its X-rated brethren. Then, for all his determination to be silent, Neil spoke. “They send us those letters inviting us to be a part of their team. Probably every teacher in the Delaware Valley hears their pitch every year. But they never mention how much you
won’t
make. How much will go to advertising,” he said. “You know what television time costs? And brochures and the building and the furniture? Not a clue.”

On my other side, Edie moaned. It appeared that the donor of the crystal lamp had shucked an entire boudoir’s worth of bibelots: a powder box, a mirrored tray with crystal handles, a bud vase, and a votive holder. I wondered what dreadful change of fate had made the crystal’s owner give her treasures away, and whether it was the same person who’d gotten rid of all the steamy literature. Edie, on the other hand, appeared to be wondering only about what would be possible in a room full of these objects.

She blushed, as if I’d seen through the cut glass into her fantasies. She put down the candle holder.

“They make it sound great,” Neil continued as he examined a flimsy-looking toy train set. “You should read the article
Philadelphia Magazine
did about the place.” He shook his head.

“Oooh,” Edie said. “I meant to tell you I saw it—the article and the picture of you.” She turned to me. “Neil looks soooo
handsome
,”
she said.

Neil’s expression grew darker and more strained. “I didn’t notice. All I could see is how good they made Wynn Teller look.”

“Neil!” Edie squealed. “You shouldn’t be jealous! The man’s adorable, true, but you’re cute, too.”

“I didn’t mean that.” Neil looked ready to explode.

Caroline Finney’s gentle voice intervened. “Wynn Teller,” she said. “His son Hugh was here, wasn’t he? Such an interesting child. He was in my ancient history class. A good mind, but then he left so abruptly. Has his father ever said where Hugh is now, Neil?”

Neil shook his head. “We don’t talk about things like… Anyway, I never met Hugh, so I never asked.”

Hugh Teller had been in my ninth grade class several years back, a bubble of a boy whose unfortunate name and shape prompted Baby Huey jokes. However, as if he were a character in one of the Broadway shows he adored, Huey Teller triumphed and became a star. The little boy had an enormous voice, an overwhelming, clear bellow designed for hard-of-hearing folk in the top balcony. He’d been the hit of our annual show and then, almost immediately, in midsemester, he’d transferred out. Whenever I saw an ad for a Broadway opening, I searched for Hugh Teller’s name.

“I heard he went to boarding school,” Edie said. “Out of state. Several boarding schools, in fact.” She didn’t sound interested. Hugh was too far away, young, and unavailable to be her True Love at Last.

I kept sorting, and discovered several accounts of exotic expeditions involving rough terrain, native guides, and derring-do. I envisioned the person who’d donated them, jettisoning their weight before setting off for the unknown again.

However, as the sorting wore on, I wore out, tossing increasing numbers into the miscellaneous carton. In went a tattered Dr. Spock, a dictionary of firearms, an out-of-date
Guide to American Antiques.
I belatedly realized that I could create a reference category, but that seemed too much trouble. Tomorrow’s volunteer could do it. I wanted out of this dithering and commotion and into my sweatsuit and a pot of chicken soup.

Reader’s Digest
Condensed Books landed in the to-be-sorted carton along with the World Book, Volume 18, So-Sz; a collection of poems about unicorns; a zip-code directory; a photographic homage to fireplugs; and a paperback about battered women.

I stared at this last one. Rita, much to her own surprise, was now researching spousal abuse. I picked up the book again. For twenty-five cents I could be a sport, jumpstart her project. If, of course, the book was worth anything in the first place. I opened it and scowled.

It was underlined and there was graffiti in the margins. I detest hacking through thickets of other people’s markings, and I was sure Rita would be equally annoyed. Or worse, she’d use this stranger’s underlines as a study guide. I tossed the book back in the box.

Still. For a quarter. I picked it up again, flipped through to see the extent of the damage, then paused at a notated passage.

I all but stopped breathing.
He put a gun to my head,
the text quoted an abused wife. Terrible. But still worse was the margin note, in minuscule, fastidious printing:
He did this and does this to me. I am so afraid.

Tiny letters, tidily printed. A small voice, pitched low, deliberately insignificant, as if cowering. Plain language, making her message horribly clear.

The noise and bustle around me, the slap of articles dropped, the thunk of pieces moved, the blur of talk, faded, and I was alone with the quiet voice, the hand that had underlined the passage in neat, true lines. She’d used a ruler. To be safe.

I could see her trying not to move, not to breathe as he held a gun pointed at her head.
He did this and does this to me. I am so afraid.

I looked in front of the book for a name, but there was none there or at the back, or on any of the pages I flipped through. Then I went through the book again, slowly this time, stopping at her careful underlines that together told her life history and secrets.

Battered women often survive by behaving in unusual manners that wind up misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, paranoia, or severe depression. They may even be institutionalized for the condition and undergo therapy, never revealing the real root of their problem.

Yes,
she’d printed in the margin next to this passage.
But I am not crazy, only afraid, and even if I could dare to tell somebody, nobody really wants to hear the truth.

Battering crosses all socioeconomic lines
was underlined.
Batterers are found in every profession and walk of life.
Her note made it clear that her husband was a successful, respected man in his community. Nothing like the undershirt and bottle of beer stereotype I’d automatically summoned, but a financially comfortable, well-tailored man who battered his woman in a well-appointed house.

Sometimes there was only a poignant
this is true
in the margin.

Often the beatings and therefore any telltale marks stop before the wife is going to do business entertaining.

This is true.

Battered women often isolate themselves because the batterer perceives anyone who is kind to her as a threat.

This is true.

The batterer is often also violent with the children.

This is true.

Bit by bit, in a mosaic of sad fragments, a picture emerged from the underlined segments and marginalia.

I looked around, almost surprised not to find her onstage with me, because I could hear her so clearly, calling for help. An hour ago, I had casually mentioned abuse to the girls, but now it had changed from an abstraction into one bright woman so terrorized and with so little hope, she’d sent an anonymous cry out into the world, like a marooned sailor floating a note in a bottle.

I am alone and terrified. Listen. Help me.

There were long unmarked segments about the history of violence in America. I skimmed through them until, near the end, I found another underline.

…sooner or later the violence escalates. Many times, the batterer kills either himself or his spouse.

And in the margin, her whisper, cramped letters half trying to hide themselves and their message:
I know he will kill me. He says so. I believe him. He will kill me soon.

I put the book on my knees and lowered my head, nauseous and disoriented, wondering if she was still alive or already murdered.

Who are you? I checked every single page again, but still found no name. She had probably even been afraid to use her handwriting, choosing instead unidentifiable printing.

Why? I asked her. You want to be heard, need to be heard, want to be saved, but you’re making it impossible. Which school donor are you? Do you have a child here? Will I see you the day of the sale and not recognize you? Will you watch to see who buys your book?

And as I sat, head down, wondering, I noticed a mailing label on the carton from which I’d pulled the book. I leaned closer. The label had Sasha Berg’s name on it.

Sasha? Impossible. She wasn’t even married. But then, all it really took was a man, not a wedding ring.

Sasha. I squinted at the notes in the margin again. I’d recognize her handwriting, not this anonymous printing.
Sasha?
She was wild, took too many chances. Lots of times I’d been cast as her rescuer, but not this secret, furtive way. It didn’t make sense. But then, neither did a man’s terrorizing and brutalizing a woman make sense. And it was true, what was written there in the margin.
Nobody wants to hear.
Maybe I’d never listened.

This very afternoon, when Rita insisted that Colleen’s boyfriend was or could be abusive, had I asked questions, intervened, helped out? No, I’d busied myself with classroom detail. I didn’t want to hear.

In fact, to be completely honest, most of me still didn’t want to. In truth, I wished I’d never opened that book.

But now that I had, I couldn’t ignore it. I gathered up Sasha’s cape, as well as my Agatha Christie, psychology, erotica, and Little Golden Books, and I made my farewells. The rules said the merchandise had to stay onstage until Friday, when it could be paid for. I decided a private niche backstage qualified. That way, no other volunteer could forget the cape was already sold.

Back in the confusion of ropes and props, dusky light filtering through a small window helped me spot a chair on which to store my treasures. I moved to do so and tripped over my own fool feet, splatting spread-eagled on the floor.

One more reason to feel sorry for myself. Or rather, two, as in sore knees. I dusted myself, tossed my purchases on the chair, and limped off. Only the underlined book traveled with me.

It had already told me more than I felt prepared to know. Now it had to tell me what to do about it.

Three

SASHA’S APARTMENT IS NEAR THE RIVER, ON THE FRINGE OF SOCIETY HILL’S smartly restored Colonial streets. I could and would have walked there if the weather, my sinuses, or my spirits had been in better shape.

Which is to say I drove, and which isn’t to say I was thereby warm or insulated. I have a ’65 Mustang. Wine-red burgundy. Convertible. Classic. Once upon a time, it was a part of my brother-in-law Sam’s brief youth. When he mutated into corporate lawyerhood, a secondhand sporty car no longer fit his image, but there I was, without an image and with tongue hanging out.

That was many years and payments ago. Both the buggy and I had aged considerably in the interim. In the case of the car, it was most obvious in the cracked and gaping plastic rear window, which I could not afford to repair, and which turned the car into a mobile wind tunnel as I drove. The only reason I kept the top up was to fool pedestrians into thinking I was sane and snug.

I didn’t lock up when I parked. Why irritate thieves too dumb to notice that they could stroll in through the back window?

The foyer of Sasha’s building was marvelously overheated, and I bathed in the hot dry air. With one hand I pushed the Berg button. With the other and a tissue, I ministered to my nose.

“It’s me,” I said into the little grill.

“Bea who?”

“
Mandy!
Remember? From third grade on?”

“Your ridiculous ailment is getting boring,” she said, but she took pity and buzzed me in.

As my head warmed up, it attempted to function again, which wasn’t good news. I didn’t want to think about the book and the questions that had brought me here.