The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman (3 page)

Ms. Zmuda taught Pre-algebra and coached the math team, on which Bethesda was a star. Bethesda found her grading papers with her feet up on her desk, her chair tilted back at a relaxed angle.

“Bethesda!” Ms. Zmuda said, startled, as the front legs of her chair returned to the floor with a loud clunk. “Do we have math practice today? ” Ms. Zmuda threw open a desk drawer, digging frantically for her graphing calculator and flash cards. “Give me one second, will ya?”

“It’s not that,” said Bethesda. “I’m working on a Special Project.”

“Ah! Melville, eh? ” laughed Ms. Zmuda, and she did
a quick little Melville impression, her eyebrows wiggling with comic menace.

“Exactly. So, anyway, I’m looking for some information. But to tell you the truth, I’ve already asked every other teacher and no one knew much, so I sort of doubt you’ll be able to help either.”

“Well, gee whiz, Bethesda. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Ms. Finkleman. Band and Chorus,” said Bethesda quickly, not even bothering to open her spiral notebook. “Know anything about her? ”

“Huh,” replied Ms. Zmuda. “Okay, well, I guess you were right this time. I can’t say I know much about Ms. Finkleman. Nice enough, but she kind of keeps herself to herself, know what I’m saying?”

“That’s what I figured.” Bethesda sighed, heading for the door. “Have a great weekend, Ms. Zmuda.”

“I mean, I’m sure you’ve already heard about the tattoo.”

Bethesda stopped walking.

Bethesda paused
at the door to the Band and Chorus room and looked up and down Hallway C to make sure the coast was clear. She was 99 percent sure that Ms. Finkleman would already have left for the weekend, and that no one else would be around—it was now 4:27, and there was never
anyone
left at school, kids or teachers, after four o’clock on a Friday afternoon. But checking to make sure the coast was clear seemed like a nice, solid Mystery Solver kind of thing to do.

Bethesda felt just the slightest bit ooky about rooting around in a teacher’s desk, but there was no helping it. She needed this Special Project to be a big ridiculous slice of awesomeness with a cherry on top (as her dad would say), especially after her display of bravado in the lunchroom this afternoon. She took a breath and cracked the door….

And heard music. Soft, lovely music. Piano.

Argle bargle,
Bethesda thought.
The Piano Kid.

Bethesda pushed the door the rest of the way open and there he was, hunched over the piano bench, his back to Bethesda, tinkling away.

Kevin McKelvey was a tall, thin boy with green eyes and a splash of freckles across the bridge of his nose. Bethesda didn’t know him that well. In class and at lunch and stuff he kept pretty quiet, and otherwise nobody saw much of him. He was always busy doing what he was doing right now: Practicing the piano.

Kevin’s father was the concert pianist Walter “Walt” McKelvey, the only real, live celebrity in the Mary Todd Lincoln parent community. The second famous fact about Kevin was that he practiced the piano four hours a day, and was therefore known as the Piano Kid—although some people called him the Suit Kid, because he wore a navy blue blazer and tie to school every day. Once an obnoxious substitute teacher named Mr. Beshelov, who thought he was funny, had kidded Kevin about it. He asked Kevin if he had a date after school, and Kevin mumbled no, but Mr. Beshelov kept needling him until finally Kevin stood up and gave this whole little speech about how his father said you had to have respect for the
instrument, which meant having respect for yourself, and he would appreciate very much not being teased about it by a so-called grown-up.

How could Bethesda look through Ms. Finkleman’s desk with the Piano Kid hanging around? She cleared her throat. “Hey, Kevin.”

The Piano Kid stopped playing and twisted around on the bench. “Oh, hello, Bethesda. What are you doing here? ”

“I, um, I just need to …” Bethesda suddenly figured out how she could make this happen. “Kevin, what’s that you’re playing? ”

“Oh, um, it’s a piano.”

“I know. I meant, what song are you playing? ”

“Right. Duh.” Kevin blushed bright red. “It’s Bach. The Goldberg Variations.”

“I really like it! ” said Bethesda, twisting a tannish reddish lock with her forefinger. “I liked the part that you were doing just then.”

“This part?”

Kevin turned back to the piano and started to plunk out the notes again.

“Yeah, that part,” she said encouragingly. “It’s totally clamfoodle.”

“It’s totally what?”

“Clamfoodle. Meaning, just, like, really good. My dad makes up words sometimes,” she added, strolling nonchalantly toward Ms. Finkleman’s desk. “He’s a total goof. Anyway, keep playing. I love it.”

Kevin kept playing, totally focused on the Goldberg Variations, as Bethesda sat down at Ms. Finkleman’s desk.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t much help.

There were no pictures of family members (like Mr. Melville had on his desk) or pets (like Mrs. Howell had on hers); no coffee mug with a jokey slogan about golf (like Mr. Carlsbad’s). Just a pencil sharpener, a bowl of those little clementine oranges, and the teacher’s edition of
Greensleeves and Other Traditional English Folk Ballads.

Yeesh,
Bethesda thought.

Ms. Finkleman had been teaching at Mary Todd Lincoln for eight years. Was it really possible that she had sat at this desk for all that time and not done anything to make it personal? There was no hint of the individual who sat here—just a perfectly neat desk and a sad little bowl of fruit.

Bethesda slid open the top drawer, and it banged against her knee. “Ow! ” she hollered, and Kevin stopped
playing. She quickly straightened up, laced her hands in front of her, and leaned her chin on them as if lost in concentration. “Wow,” Bethesda murmured. “That part was really great.”

“Oh, thanks,” Kevin said. “Um, what are you doing?”

“Just listening.” Bethesda smiled. “Just enjoying. Is there more? ”

“What? Oh, sure. Yeah. That was just the first three variations, sort of. There are thirty of them.”

“Perfect!” said Bethesda. “I mean, I’d love to hear the rest. If you don’t mind.”

Kevin’s fingers returned to the keys, and Bethesda returned to her investigation. The top drawer was no help either: a pile of ungraded sixth-grade music-theory quizzes, a stack of neatly folded handkerchiefs.
Yawn.

Then Bethesda opened the bottom drawer, and stopped cold.

“Huh,” murmured Bethesda quietly—too quietly for Kevin to hear over the gentle strains of the Goldberg Variations. She leaned in closer and said it again. “Huh.”

Her mind racing, Bethesda flipped open her SPDSTAMF notebook and copied down this intriguing new piece of evidence, checking and double-checking the strange jumble of letters to make sure that she got
the whole thing. Then she gently shut the drawer, stood up, and slipped out the door, leaving Kevin McKelvey to his Bach.

She was about to sprint down Hallway C when she paused, her hand still on the doorknob, the door not yet shut all the way. The music drifted out of the Band and Chorus room, and for the first time Bethesda really listened to what Kevin was playing.

Wow,
she thought enviously.
He is so good. I wish I was that good at something.

Clamfoodle,
Kevin thought meanwhile, as he sat at the piano, practicing, practicing, forever practicing.
Wow. I wish my dad was a total goof.

On Saturday
morning, Bethesda wolfed down a waffle and biked furiously back to school, standing up on the pedals and pumping her legs, her purple knit scarf whipping behind her in the late February wind. She banged on the front doors and told a scowling Janitor Steve that she had left her lunch bag in her locker. Bethesda actually
had
left her lunch bag in her locker so she wouldn’t have to lie to Janitor Steve to get back into the school. Bethesda secretly admired the hardworking Janitor Steve, pushing his mop up and down the empty hallways long after everyone else had gone home, his big belly straining against the elastic waistband of his sweatpants. He wasn’t particularly friendly, but he clearly believed in a job done right.

Now that she thought of it, Bethesda wondered where Janitor Steve came from.
Hmm. That might make
a good Special Project.

Bethesda!
she chastised herself, as she turned down Hallway D toward the school library.
Focus!

For the next hour and a half, her face firmly set in Mystery Solver mode, Bethesda worked her way through stacks of old yearbooks and archived school newspapers, looking for anything at all about Ms. Finkleman. What she found was … nothing. Not a jot, as Ms. Pinn-Darvish would say. Not a tittle. When she turned up in the paper at all, Ida Finkleman appeared only in classroom snapshots, baton in hand, performing her official school duties. There were no candid yearbook pics of, say, Ms. Finkleman and her three adorable kids on Family Day. There were no quotes from her in the
Gazetteer
comparing life at Mary Todd Lincoln to another school she had once worked at, long ago, back in Boise or Sacramento or Alberta.

By noon Bethesda was across town, at the Wilkersholm Memorial Public Library, where she scoured the archives of the local newspaper—week by week, day by day, month by month—in search of any mention of Ida Finkleman. Again, nothing. Eight years of town history, eight years of Laundromat openings, shopping-mall closings, Fourth of July parades, zoo escapes and recapturings, and no
Ms. Finkleman in sight. Hmm.

At last, Bethesda turned to the Internet (“the first refuge of the lazy,” as Mr. Melville sneeringly called it), where supposedly a person could find any and all information in the entire universe. And what did she find? Nothing.

Your search—“IDA FINKLEMAN”—did not match any results.

At four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Bethesda blinked in the bright afternoon sun of the Wilkersholm Memorial Public Library parking lot, tugged back on her purple scarf, and wondered what to do next.

“Bethesda! Hi!”

Oh, perfect,
Bethesda thought. “Hey, Pamela.”

Pamela Preston, wearing an elaborate pink winter hat and high-fashion snow boots, waved merrily as she turned her bike into the parking lot and pulled up next to Bethesda. “Working on Melville, I bet,” she chirped.

“Me, too!”

Bethesda muttered, “Yeah,” and tried to muster a smile. She and Pamela had been close from the ages of seven to nine, when they lived near each other and
were both stars of the L’il Otters swim team. They had drifted apart, however, for all the reasons that ten-year-old girls do: Pamela’s family moved to a different, bigger house, out of biking distance from Bethesda’s; Pamela had started hanging out a lot with Natasha Belinsky and Todd Spolin, neither of whom Bethesda was too crazy about; and once, during their last season together on the Otters, Suzie told Bethesda that Todd said that Pamela said the backstroke (Bethesda’s specialty) wasn’t really swimming—“it was more, like, impressive floating.”

Anyway, since they had gotten to Mary Todd Lincoln, Bethesda and Pamela didn’t hang out so much. And Pamela was the last person Bethesda felt like running into, just as she realized the SPDSTAMF was maybe going to be harder than she’d imagined.

“So? How’s it going with the
fascinating
Ms. Finkleman? ” Pamela replied, her eyes twinkling ever so slightly.

“Oh, you know,” Bethesda replied. “Fine, I guess.”

“Oh, great!” Pamela said warmly, as if Bethesda had said something totally different. “Well,
my
Special Project is going really well, too. Really,
really
well.” Talking very rapidly, and with a lot more hand gestures than Bethesda thought necessary, Pamela explained that
she had dropped the Jesse James theme this time, and instead was studying the mystery of those weird piles of small rocks that ringed the school athletic field.

“I mean, have you noticed those piles? ”

“Uh, yeah, I guess so,” Bethesda said, shading her eyes against the bright white sun and Pamela’s enthusiastic smile.

“Well. I’m still piecing together the evidence and all, but you know what I think? ” Pamela lowered her voice and leaned forward over her handlebars, giving Bethesda a rich noseful of her lilac perfume. “I think it’s
aliens.”

“Really?” Despite herself, Bethesda was intrigued. “Aliens?”

“Yes! Not the aliens themselves, just, like,
signs
of them. They’re preparing to land on our athletic field.”

“Wow.” Bethesda smiled weakly. “Aliens. Are you here to check the newspaper archives? ”

“What? No, I don’t need to. I’ve got it all pieced together. I’m just on the way to the art store to get some pink poster board. Won’t that be cute?”

Yeah. Cute. As she biked home, Bethesda’s mind raced with anxiety. The clock was counting down to Monday morning, when Special Projects were due, and Pamela Preston had aliens from outer space about to land on the
Mary Todd Lincoln athletic field. Bethesda, on the other hand, had (drum roll, please!) the world’s most boring music teacher!
Erf!

Bethesda’s purple scarf caught in her rear wheel; she braked too hard, jerked the bike to the right, and slammed into the red-and-white striped barber pole outside Sully’s Unisex Salon.

“Argle bargle,” Bethesda cried as she struggled to her feet and picked little bits of deicing salt out of her palms. Argle bargle was another favorite phrase of Bethesda’s father, for expressing intense emotional frustration or physical pain. When you were experiencing both, you said it twice. “Argle bargle!”

After dinner that night, Bethesda sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of Snapple open in front of her, considering the meager data she’d collected thus far. There was the intriguing information about the tattoo. That was good. There was the intriguing clue from Ms. Finkleman’s desk drawer. That was also good. And there was—what else? The bowl of clementine oranges? No help there.