Amy and Isabelle (16 page)

“Whenever my girls went to a party,” Bev was saying, “Bill and I always stayed up till they came in. One night I remember Roxanne went out with some friends and first thing she did when she came home was to go straight in the bathroom and piss like a bull.”

Isabelle tried to smile pleasantly.

“I smelled her breath, and sure enough. We didn’t let her out again for a month.”

Lenora Snibbens stood up and walked to the vending machine. “I think you were right, Bev,” she said, pushing the button for a chocolate bar. “Your girls all turned out good.”

“You reap what you sow,” Isabelle said. “I’ve always believed that.”

“Probably.” Bev nodded vaguely, watching Lenora unwrap her candy bar.

“It’s not that simple,” Arlene declared. “My cousin didn’t know about her son. His eyes were never red and he never smelled funny. He never smoked the stuff.”

“Well, obviously he smoked the stuff.” Fat Bev tapped her pink-painted fingernail on the table near Lenora. “That kind of chocolate is sixty percent paraffin wax. I read it somewhere.”

“No,” said Arlene, “he
sold
the stuff. He never smoked it at all. Just sold it.”

“Crazy,” Rosie said. “Crazy, crazy, crazy.”

“What happens to him now?” Lenora wanted to know. “Do they send a kid like that to jail?”

“The judge put him on probation for three years. Has to keep his nose clean for three years.” Arlene glanced at her watch and began to gather up the remains of her lunch, pressing down the top of her Tupperware container where the milky shapes of macaroni salad could be seen near the bottom. “And counseling. The judge said he wants him to have some counseling, so the kid goes off each week to talk to a priest.”

Isabelle looked at the cover of her book, where the dark-eyed Madame Bovary gazed back impassively. She was awfully curious about whether the greedy Emma was going to be rejected by her lover. (Isabelle hoped so.)

“Then the priest calls up the parents and tells them what the kid says. He’s lonely at school. His mother yells at him.” Arlene gave a shrug.

“Like all that hogwash means he can go out and sell marijuana,” Rosie said.

Lenora was frowning. “That doesn’t seem right,” she mused, moving the candy bar with her wrist across the table to Fat Bev.

“Of course it’s not right,” Arlene said. “What about a little responsibility? Your mother yells at you so you go out and commit a crime? What mother doesn’t yell at their kid?”

“Well,” said Isabelle, drawing her attention away from her book and considering this point of Arlene’s. “I doubt it’s because his mother yells, although that’s a handy thing to tell the priest. But there’s something more than that. Children learn things, I think, don’t you? He must have learned something that makes him think it’s acceptable to take that route. Selling drugs, I mean.”

Arlene stopped packing up her things and squinted at Isabelle. “What are you saying, Madame Ovary? That my cousin
taught
her son to go and sell marijuana on the streets?”

“Oh, heavens no.” Isabelle flushed furiously. “I only mean our values seem to be disintegrating these days. And that … well, when children see their parents cheat on income tax, and things like that …”

“My cousin doesn’t cheat on her income tax.”

“No, no, of course not.” Sweat broke out above Isabelle’s lip just as the lunch buzzer rang.

“What
I
was saying,” Lenora Snibbens said to no one in particular, standing up, “is that it doesn’t seem right for the priest to be repeating what the kid tells him. Aren’t those talks supposed to be private? Makes me nervous to go to confession. Bev, I think you’re right, there’s not much chocolate in that,” pointing to the candy bar as she passed by.

“I certainly didn’t mean to offend your cousin,” Isabelle said quietly to Arlene.

“Oh, it’s all right.” Arlene waved a hand tiredly as she left the room.

Isabelle, still a bit shaken from having suddenly found herself on the verge of an altercation, said to Bev, “I just believe you reap what you sow. As I said.”

“Oh, sure. I agree.”

“When you get home tonight,” Isabelle said, “try soaking that spot in hot water.”

IN THE EARLY morning it snowed. A sudden April snowstorm that dropped two inches of perfect white snow onto everything; cars, sidewalks, trees, steps—everything seemed rounded and white and edgeless. Just as suddenly the sky became completely blue, and the sun shone so brilliantly that when Stacy and Amy emerged from the back door of the school at lunchtime the brightness was blinding and they
both squinted, ducking their heads, holding their hands before their eyes as though to ward off blows.

The snow was melting quickly, making the path in the woods difficult. Neither girl wore boots and they stepped cautiously through rivulets of melting snow and mud, while above them water fell off the trees so steadily that except for the dazzling sunshine it could have been raining instead.

“My father’s fucking someone,” Stacy said, as soon as they got to their spot. She put a chocolate-covered marshmallow into her mouth and chewed, her jaw working vigorously. “Shit,” she added, glancing down, “my feet are
so wet
.”

Their feet were muddy as well, dark edges of mud rising up the sides of their shoes. “Let them dry before you try and clean them,” Amy said, but she was worried. Her shoes were suede and Isabelle had made a big deal about how much money they cost.

“Yeah,” Stacy said, bringing out the cigarettes. “Well, I don’t really give a shit.”

Amy watched the melting snow as it ran down the darkened bark of a tree trunk, and then she asked, “How come you think that about your father?” turning back toward Stacy.

“Oh …” Stacy sounded like she had forgotten she’d said anything about him at all. “I could be wrong. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have. And I dreamt about it too. Yeah, that’s right.” She lit both cigarettes and handed one to Amy. “I forgot about that, but I dreamt it. Yeah.” She chewed her lip, gazing at her cigarette.

Amy inhaled deeply. “Weird.”

“I was in the water or something and my father was on shore with some woman or something.” Stacy smoked her cigarette. “Who knows.” She shrugged. “Fuck it.”

“Those are great.” Amy pointed with her cigarette at the half-empty box of chocolate-covered marshmallows balanced on the log. Stacy’s mother had bought them for Stacy’s little twin brothers’ birthday party, but Stacy stole them and brought them to school.

“Help yourself.” Stacy waved a hand. “You know, my father gets paid a lot of money to analyze dreams, but whenever I have a dream he couldn’t care less.”

“You didn’t tell him this one, did you?”

“No. But Jesus, what a great idea. I’ll wait until we’re all eating dinner, then I’ll say, Dad, I had a dream you’ve been fucking some woman other than Mom. Could you tell me what that means?”

Amy helped herself to another marshmallow. She was distracted, only partly interested in Stacy’s dream. What was most in her mind of course was the excruciatingly embarrassing memory of the day before, when she had kissed Mr. Robertson on his cheek. What a
stupid
thing to do. And he was married, he wore that wedding ring—so he’d probably gone home and told his wife and they’d had a chuckle. “Normal for girls to have crushes on their teachers,” the wife might say. Amy’s stomach tightened against the pleasure of the marshmallow. She did not think what she was going through in her feeling for Mr. Robertson was anything like “normal.” She swallowed the rest of the marshmallow, thinking the only reason he had smiled at her this morning during class was because he was embarrassed for her acting like a jerk.

A drop of water fell from a branch onto Amy’s head and dripped down her forehead. She wiped at it with the arm of her coat. “Where do you think you’ll go to college?” she asked Stacy. Mr. Robertson had talked to Amy about going to a good college when they sat in his car in her driveway.

“Nowhere. I’m too dumb. I’m going to New York to be a singer.” Stacy peered at the marshmallows and chose one that seemed to have more chocolate. “The trouble with being adopted,” Stacy explained, holding her cigarette in one hand and the chocolate-covered marshmallow in the other, “is your parents might be smart, and they’re hoping you’re going to be smart, but then you turn out dumb. Of course this disappoints them. They can’t
say
that, so they keep implying you should be really grateful they took you at all. You should be really fucking grateful they didn’t leave you in some gutter.”

“You weren’t going to be left in a gutter, were you?” This possibility was interesting to Amy.

“Of course not.” Stacy nibbled at the chocolate with tiny bites. “That’s the whole point. I wasn’t anywhere except in some clean hospital getting born and then my parents come in and adopt me and take me home and I’m supposed to act like they saved my fucking life.”

Amy smoked her cigarette and contemplated this. “Someone else would have taken you if they didn’t,” she finally remarked. “I bet a lot of people would have. I bet you were a really pretty baby.”

Stacy tossed the half-eaten marshmallow into the woods and then dropped her cigarette on the ground and stared at it for a long time, like behind her open eyes she’d gone to sleep. “Roses are red,” she finally said, still staring, “violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic and so am I.” She looked over at Amy. “My father thinks that’s funny,” she said. “He thinks that’s just a fucking scream.”

Chapter

9

SPRING CAME. FORSYTHIA bushes burst into yellow beside doorways and along stone walls; then daffodils opened, and hyacinths. Narcissus leaned on their stalks, tapping against the bottom shingles of houses as a light breeze moved by. Day after day the sky was blue; the sun fell across brick walls of buildings and baked them warm. By the banks of the river the birch trees stood tentative and skinny with the tender green of their new growth making them seem hesitant, like schoolgirls. The sun danced on the water and warm breezes blew along the banks and people ate their lunches on park benches, reaching out quickly for an empty potato-chip bag scuttling along in the wind.

The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God. God was here on her back steps, in the final patch of sunlight on her tulip bed, in the steady husky chirping from the marsh, in the fragrant damp earth surrounding right now the delicate roots of hepaticas and starflowers. She went back inside, locking the screen door, and felt the certainty again,
that her life, because of His love, was finally on the verge of something large and new.

And Amy, thank God (truly, thank Him), was more talkative than she used to be, much more interested in school. She had joined the English Club and the Student Council and often stayed for a meeting in the afternoon. She was good about calling Isabelle at work when this was the case. Sometimes also, Amy explained, she stayed after school to help the other kids from Spanish class. Miss Lanier, the Spanish teacher, had asked her to do this. Stacy Burrows, for example (“She’s really nice, we’re kind of friends,” Amy said), who apparently did not catch on to the conjugation of verbs quickly, stayed after school some days to get help from Amy. Except they spent a lot of time gossiping about Miss Lanier and the principal, Puddy. “We think they have a crush on each other,” Amy said, dropping a piece of butter the size of a walnut into the center of her baked potato. “Puddy came in with a note the other day for Miss Lanier, and she blushed and then he blushed.”

This all seemed normal to Isabelle: two girls speculating about their teachers’ romantic inclinations. And she was grateful for it, because Isabelle had worried that Amy was lonely at school. So now it was pleasant to be able to sit on these lovely spring evenings and listen to the chatter of this growing, happy girl.

“Is he nice? The principal?” Isabelle asked. “I don’t know that I’ve heard you say much about him.”

“Oh, he’s really nice,” Amy said, mashing up the baked potato and butter with her fork. “He’s not at all strict. You can tell he hates to yell at anyone.” Amy shoved an alarming amount of potato into her mouth. “Except he did suspend Alan Stewart for three days for vandalizing the boys’ room.”

“Good heavens, I should think so,” Isabelle responded. “And please don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Amy held up a finger of apology and swallowed vigorously, the tendons of her throat springing out. “Stacy thinks,” she continued in a moment, “that Mr. Mandel—that’s Puddy—still lives with his mother and that he’s too shy to ask out Miss Lanier.”

“Mandel,” Isabelle said. “Isn’t that a Jewish name? How old do you think he is?”

Amy shrugged. “Forty, maybe. Fifty. How can you tell he’s Jewish?” Amy’s head was bent over her plate; her eyes looked up at her mother.

“The name can clue you in. Does he have a big nose? For heavens sake, honey, sit
up
.”

“Yeah, he does have kind of a big nose.”

Isabelle nodded. “They’re apt to. Flat feet too, and maybe Stacy’s right about him living with his mother. Jewish mothers have trouble letting go. With their sons especially, I think.”

Amy burped, widening her eyes with apology. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry,” she said, but Isabelle was enjoying her company and she let it go.

“What does Miss Lanier look like?”

“Kind of plain, but really nice.” Amy didn’t mention that she wore her skirts quite short, but she did tell her mother about the problem Miss Lanier had with static cling.

“Oh, too bad,” Isabelle said, shaking some seasoning salt onto her chicken thigh. “She probably doesn’t have a full-length mirror, or she’d see it. Every woman should have a full-length mirror.”

Both Isabelle and Amy nodded. A breeze coming through the window over the sink brought with it a moist earthy smell that mingled with the seasoned chicken. “But you see,” Isabelle said, aiming her fork at Amy and poking it delicately a few times through the air, “Lanier. I think that’s French. Which means she’s probably Catholic. Which means Mr. Mandel’s mother isn’t going to like
that
.”