I'm Not Your Other Half (8 page)

I looked around Annie's room and saw that many of the watermelons had made way for photographs of Price, for dinner menus where she had eaten with Price, for a faded corsage Price had given her.

We really are just watermelon friends now, I thought. Friends left over from grade school. Friends who skinned their knees together and learned jumprope rhymes together and practiced putting on mascara together back when they still weren't allowed to wear makeup out of the house.

I'm the one who's immature, I thought. All this time I prided myself on being mature. I was the organizer. The one who gave speeches and mustered group efforts and rallied people to work with me. Annie was the simple-minded violinist who tagged along.

I had it backward. Annie's the adult. Look at her with Price. I can't share that much. My whole life? Are they kidding? They really want me to take my entire life and fold it into Michael's like one strand of a braid?

I'm like a spill, I thought. Michael is like a paper towel.

If I lie down next to him, I'll be absorbed, until I'm nothing but Michael. Except that Michael is perfect. I've never known a boy as wonderful.

“Oh, that reminds me,” said Annie, but I had not been listening, and I did not know what reminded her of something. “I stumbled on a Christmas present I made for you and forgot to give you. Oh, well. You can save it for next year.”

She handed me a tiny tree ornament. It was circular gold with a scrap of cross-stitch in it. I hoped she had dated it, because my watermelon collection was so extensive I tended to forget what arrived when. “Why, thanks, Annie,” I said, “another wa—”

But it was not a watermelon.

In deep electric-blue, tiny delicate crosses said

MICHAEL AND FRASER

I ran my fingers around the frame. Round, unending, in wedding-ring gold. I shivered. “You did a lovely job,” I told her.

But the shiver persisted.

“T
ERM PAPERS!” TRILLED MR
. McGrath musically.

All teachers have mannerisms. Sometimes you last all year without being irritated; sometimes the irritation sets in September fourth. Mr. McGrath's habit of singing our assignments had been irking me since about Thanksgiving. “Term papers!” he caroled again, more to himself than to us, as if there was some deep delight in term papers that we could not understand. He's caroled “Term papers!” every February for fifteen years, I thought, and he'll go on caroling it every February for twenty more. I don't think I want to be a teacher. I want to do something more exciting than assign term papers to hapless students.

“We have here,” cried Mr. McGrath, like a priest learning chant, “a list of seventy-five obscure Americans. You will have to do research in order to know which of them you want to research, as you will have heard of none of them. But each, in his or her own special way, contributed something meaningful to the culture, to the inheritance, to the very space that we citizens occupy today.”

“Ugh,” said the class in unison.

I looked at the list and was thankful that my science project was wrapped up. Blue-green algae were not destined to be a lifelong passion for me. We returned from the Science Fair prizeless; there were countless exhibits far more original than ours. I had spent most of the weekend tense, because there was a school dance that Michael wanted to go to; and, of course, we missed it.

The names were in alphabetical order, but other than that there were no clues. I knew I would do a woman, and I read through the names to find women. Even in obscurity, women seemed to do less than men when it came to American history. Only nine of the names were women. If I don't choose one right now, it'll get taken, I thought.

I stared hard at the names, trying to guess by their shape and symmetry which belonged to someone interesting. Annie and I were always attracted by special names. We used to love naming the litters of kittens her mama cat had. I remember one litter of all black kittens we named Rainbow, Crayon, Iris and Daffodil because they weren't. “I'll do Eliza Lucas Pinckney,” I announced.

Mr. McGrath checked her off. She was mine. I looked at her name again and began to feel a strange excitement percolating in me. I didn't know whether Eliza was an early doctor or a pioneer Congresswoman, whether she had done this in Maine or Oregon, and if it was in 1840 or 1910. I'll start on Eliza this Saturday, I thought. I'll drive to the State University Library to research her.

“The paper will be no more than thirty pages long and no less than twenty,” said Mr. McGrath. “You will use no fewer than ten sources and some of them must be periodicals. The bibliography must be correctly compiled according to the rule book you have from sophomore year. Two points will be deducted for each spelling error. Anyone using an encyclopedia in his bibliography will lose one grade.”

The classroom was like a chorus, with Mr. McGrath uttering his guidelines and the kids moaning after each one. Little cries of “That's too much, Mr. McGrath” and “But I'm on the baseball team and I don't have time for all this” filled the room. Mr. McGrath simply went on caroling, “Term papers!”

I told Michael about it when we met by Annie's locker between fourth and fifth period. “I love research,” I said. “It's so exciting. You find a sentence here and a clue there and you piece this person together. It's like a treasure hunt.”

Michael stared at me as if I were insane. “I hate research,” he said emphatically. “I like it all prepared for me, ready to read.”

“I was thinking I'd get started Saturday. Look Eliza up at the State University Library for a few hours.”

“But Fraser,” protested Michael, “we were going skiing on Saturday. You can research Eliza any time. Besides, you don't even know who she is yet. Maybe there's a biography on her at the local library in Chapman.”

“I like big libraries. Sitting with all the college kids. Walking past a million books. Anyhow, we've been skiing four straight weekends in a row, and it should be clear to you that skiing is not my strong point. You go skiing. I'll go to the library.”

Michael sighed. “All right. If you can wait to get started until after lunch, I'll drive you up.”

“No, no. You ski. I'll research alone.”

“Come on, Fray. We just got out of Computer Club and Madrigals in order to spend time together, and you're arranging to spend an entire Saturday without me? Be kind. You're kind to animals. Be kind to me.”

During a slow period at Toybrary, I crossed the library to look Eliza up in the
Dictionary of American Biography.

Pilsbury … Pinchback … Pinckney, Charles … Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth … Pinckney, Eliza Lucas (1722–1793).

Oh, good, I thought. Colonial and Revolutionary War. I like that period.

Eliza turned out to be some woman. At age sixteen she managed three plantations in South Carolina—by herself. She set out live oak trees for future navies. She studied enough law to draft wills for her poorer neighbors. Because her plantations were mortgaged, she had to find a profitable crop. She revived silk culture and directed experiments with flax and hemp. She was the first person in South Carolina to make a success of growing the dye indigo. She was also, said the
Dictionary,
“popular in Charleston society.”

I lost interest in anything besides Eliza. She was my kind of person. I tried to imagine her—sixteen, seventeen, eighteen; dancing at the balls in Charleston by night, running agricultural experiments by day. What color is indigo? I thought.

I could feel her, across the years. Eliza. Even her name sounded strong.

I thought I was pretty terrific, running Toybrary. Big deal. I didn't introduce new crops to the New World.

“Fraser,” interrupted Miss Herschel with extreme annoyance. I jumped. I had been in Colonial South Carolina with Eliza. “All these phone calls on the library line are unacceptable. You tell them to call you at home. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Miss Herschel,” I said. I hate being yelled at. I can't help feeling that at my age I should be past that. Miss Herschel and I should have a conference if she doesn't like what I'm doing; she shouldn't yell at me as if I were nine. “I'm sorry,” I said. “Who is it? I'll call him back.”

“For once it isn't a him. It's a girl named Connie. She's still on the line.”

“Connie! How neat. I haven't heard from her in ages.”

“Don't use my phone to have your reunion,” snapped Miss Herschel, and she stalked off to help a little boy find out about the longest, tallest, hugest and heaviest of all the things that fascinated him. About the only way to keep little boys from checking out war toys is to give them the
Guinness Book of Records.

“Hi, Connie,” I said happily. “How are you? Where've you been?”

“Where have
I
been?” said Connie.
“I've
been right here. You're the one who's been away. In Michael's arms, presumably. A limited horizon, perhaps, but no doubt a satisfactory one.”

I laughed. “It's great to hear from you.”

Connie giggled. “You make it sound as if I've been out of the country for years. Try looking past Michael's shoulders once in a while. We're all still here. Listen, though. A few years ago your mother was interested in old bonnets and antique hats, and the Wickfield Museum is having an exhibit. Want to drive over Saturday with my mom and me?”

“Oh, Connie,” I said. “Either I work on my term paper or I go skiing with Michael. I'd love to go with you, but I can't.”

“Oh,” said Connie politely. We went on talking for a few minutes, but there was nothing much to say.
I don't have time for you,
was the gist of my response. What a terrible thing for a friend to say, I thought. But I did not know how to retract it. It was true. I didn't have time for Connie.

Michael picked me up Saturday to drive to the University Library. I had my notebooks and pens. I like to take notes with a thin blue-tipped felt pen on narrow-lined white loose-leaf paper. If I don't use that paper and that pen, it doesn't feel as if I'm really taking notes.

Michael had borrowed Judith's car, a tiny old Datsun that was once white, but the Hollander clan, even the new members, are not of the car-washing habit, and now it was a speckled gray.

Above us the sky was a clear deep blue—a sky pretending to be July, but really icy, frigid, cruel February. So blue. I wondered what color Eliza's indigo had been—the same emotional, deep, piercing blue of the sky above me?

A thin white jet trail split the heavens. A stab of wanderlust cut me and I wanted to be on the plane, breaking sound barriers and going new places. “Michael,” I said, “don't turn left, we have to get on the Interstate.”

“We're not going to the library. There's something I want to show you on the computer,” he said.

“Eliza predates computers. Come on, Michael, let's not waste time. I'm totally not in the mood for computers.”

“Trust me,” said Michael, and he was smiling a secret sort of smile, and I relented and let him drive on home. We went down to his sacred basement, me in a bad mood, because I wanted to look up at the blue sky and think about Eliza and indigo, and him in a terrific mood because of his computer secret.

We threaded among the video-game consoles, color television, radios, tape decks, light panel, and of course the modernistic desk that held the microcomputer, its screen and printer. I began to think longingly of Connie's trip to the museum to see all the old bonnets. Anything would be preferable to pretending interest in Michael's computer games.

Michael turned to me eagerly. Oh, God, he was so handsome. Tall and broad, and infinitely appealing when, as now, he was excited. “What I was thinking is this,” he said, bursting with pleasure. “On your history project, we can file your notes on the disc. You won't have to bother with notebooks and messy papers. When it's time to write the final copy, we'll just call everything up on the screen. You can write here with me. The computer will print it out perfectly, and I have a spelling check program too, so you can't possibly make a spelling error.”

I stared at him. This is my paper, I thought—about Eliza—the woman I picked. It has nothing to do with Michael.

“What do you think of these headings?” said Michael. “I put them in after you talked to me last night about Eliza.” He jabbed a few buttons and called upon the screen his ideas for subdividing my paper. No fewer than twenty-three divisions had been provided for: food, dress, weather, climate, family, family history, health, indigo, silk, rice, plantation life, sons, education …

“Michael,” I said, “it's a high-school paper, not a five-volume treatise on women in the Colonial South.”

Michael paused and looked at me uncertainly.

“Anyhow, you can't seriously expect me to haul all my books from the library down here, type in the information when I don't even know how to type, and come to your house whenever I want to work on it. Really, Michael. It's far easier just to take pencil and paper to the library. Anyhow, it's my project and I'll do it my way.”

His face closed in, white and pinched like Katurah's that day at the Dairy Bar, and he turned away from me.

From the day I began dating him, I had never hurt Michael. It was easy enough to do, that was clear. Just take all his efforts and throw them in his face as if they didn't matter. He didn't do all that for himself, I thought. He did it for me. What's the matter with me?

With a considerable effort Michael turned back, smiled at me ruefully, and said, “I guess you're right, Fray. I just got excited and didn't think. I'll drive you over to the library.”

How I loved him. Using my nickname was like a verbal kiss across the room saying, I'm sorry, you're right, let's not fight. Fray. But I had no nicknames for Michael. He was not a Mike, not a Micky. I kissed him instead.