Cheating Lessons: A Novel (25 page)

When Bernadette got home, she found a notice on the porch that said flowers had been delivered in care of the neighbors. “Huh,” she said, and went next door, where a woman with toddlers yelling in the background handed over the kind of long florist box roses came in.

“Enjoy them,” she told Bernadette. She had a smear of peanut butter on her cheek. “Those days don’t last long enough.”

Bernadette thanked her nicely, while her heartbeat raced. Back in the kitchen, giddiness mounted in her as she opened the box. It
was
roses, a dozen long-stemmed red ones, velvety and fresh. American Beauties.

What else? She should have known he would not leave without telling her good-bye.

She rubbed her thumb over her own name on the card. The black handwriting was hurried and not done with a felt-tip fine point, but she would know it anywhere.

She filled the biggest vase she could find with warm water and sprinkled in the little bag of chemicals that came in the box. Then she sat down and admired the vibrant red glow that made the rest of the kitchen look dim. Finally she opened the card.

The black pen had written, “You are a winner to us,
no matter what.
Love, Mom and Dad.”

Oh.

Bernadette stared at the flowers, then at the card, while chagrin as sharp as sand clogged her throat.

That was very sweet of her parents. Particularly of her mother, considering everything. And certainly no reason to feel like someone had just knocked the wind out of her.

Bernadette left the vase on the table. Moving as though carrying a brimming glass of something hot, she went to her room and shut the door behind her.

She would never see him again.

On her quote-board every sentence spoke to her in his voice. Couldn’t she read anymore without hearing that voice? That would be some legacy. If she couldn’t read, she might as well be dead.

Sleep deprivation from the last few weeks hit her then like a blow to the head. She yawned hugely. Then she crawled into bed, pulled the comforter to her chin, and dropped into instant oblivion.

Her mother’s knock woke her. For a moment Bernadette couldn’t think where she was. She peered at her watch. Four twenty-seven.
Jeopardy!
would be just coming on.

Two weeks later, Martha Terrell came down the stairs carrying a basket of dirty clothes. Bernadette was busy shoving the sleeper sofa against the wall of the living room.

“What do you call this when you write home?” Martha inquired.

“Lori and Nadine are coming over.” Bernadette shoved again, and grunted. The sofa weighed a ton.

“Really. And would that be the same Lori Besh who’s destined for cosmetology school?”

Bernadette sighed. “I was wrong, okay? A person does not have to like all the same books I do”—she gave another push, and the sofa scraped forward a foot—” to make a contribution.”

“Amen to that. And what contribution are we letting Lori make today?” Martha cast a chilly eye on the area rug rolled up against the wall.

“She’s giving me a dance lesson.”

“A what?”

“Dance. Lesson. That’s what they do at the junior prom.” Her mother’s mouth opened and stayed that way. “Anthony Cirillo,” Bernadette added.

“Anthony! Well! Anthony! He seems like a nice boy.”

“Eh. Just your usual clown.” Bernadette’s lifted shoulders suggested that Anthony Cirillo was no more remarkable than the dozens of boys always pestering her for dates, but what could you expect from Wickham High.

“When did all this happen?” Martha put down her basket and settled herself comfortably onto the couch.

“Last week. Vince told him about Kalamazoo, so he called to congratulate me.”

Anthony’s call had taken Bernadette by surprise. Yes, she told him, at the Kalamazoo Invitational Debate Tournament she and Nadine had finally defeated the Purple Peril. “After I realized we could have won the Classics Bowl, it was like I saw them in a different light. As humans,” she said on the phone. It was easier to say serious things over the phone. “It was a psychological breakthrough.” Glenn Kim’s sneer hadn’t bothered her, particularly since it turned to alarm as she and Nadine picked apart the Pinehurst plan in their most coordinated attack ever. Glenn and his partner lost by seven points. Courtesy of Twinkie and Friend.

Martha was beaming at her. Bernadette kept her voice flat and matter-of-fact. “So then he asked if I wanted to double with Nadine and Vince to the prom and I said, maybe. If there was nothing good on TV that night.”

“You didn’t say that.”

“No. I said I’d go if he promised not to show me how he chewed his food.”

Her mother’s eyes gleamed, and Bernadette could sense her hand twitching to call Joe Terrell at his office. “Is Anthony coming for dance lessons, too?”

“Ha! He doesn’t need them. When Nadine went to their cousin’s wedding, she said Anthony was so good, he had girls standing in line to dance with him.”

Martha bounced off the couch as if yanked from above. “Get up, get up! Here, you take that end.”

When the room was as clear as they could get it without a moving van, they sat down on the couch to rest. Lori and Nadine were late. The faint hum of the fish tank filter sounded loud in the quiet, and the room felt strangely off-kilter, seen from this different perspective.

A cat appeared from nowhere and jumped onto Martha’s lap. She rubbed behind its cream-colored ears. “I wish you’d talk to me,” she said. She looked over at her daughter, and Bernadette realized her mother was not addressing the cat.

“I’ve
been
talking to you. I just told you all about the prom.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve been treating me politely for weeks. I’m your mother, for Pete’s sake.”

“I know that, believe me.”

“People make mistakes,” Martha said with dignity. “Even when they act for the best.”

Bernadette tried to coax Sheba to come to her, but the cat preferred her mother. “She likes you better,” she said. “Traitor.”

“I’m trying to tell you I’m sorry. About that advice I gave you.” Martha’s voice was tight with strain.

“It’s okay, Mom.”

“It’s not okay. I don’t apologize very often, so be still and listen. I didn’t want you hurt and I thought keeping quiet was the safest thing. But your way was better.” She gave Bernadette an exasperated yet admiring look. “It must’ve taken some nerve. Your father almost had a heart attack in his chair. He thought you were panicking. I said, oh no. That is the coolest kid you ever saw.” Martha rubbed Sheba’s ears and caused a rollover of feline ecstasy. “I was so mad I could’ve spit! But proud, too. I wanted to tell those Pinehurst parents not to act so cocky—that you threw it on purpose.” She snorted. “They’d have believed that, wouldn’t they?”

Bernadette kept still and listened and felt like Saul on the road to Damascus. Scales fell from her eyes with a clunk. So her mother had been wrong. So what? If love was a river, then Martha’s was the Nile: enormous, life-giving, and at regular intervals capable of drowning you in murk for reasons you didn’t understand. But you couldn’t do without it. And no one expected you to.

She couldn’t contain the wonder of it. “Just because people are wrong doesn’t mean you shouldn’t love them,” she said. Then froze, afraid of how her mother might take that.

Luckily Martha followed her gaze, which was on Sheba, and assumed Bernadette was referring to the cat’s owner. “I should hope not. You go ahead and remember him with love,” she said, with the generosity of a parent who knew the male in question was three thousand miles away. “He did you kids a lot of good and I’ll be the first to admit it. You
have
to love people even when they’re wrong, sweetheart. Mothers couldn’t manage any other way!”

Which put Bernadette in her place. But this time it was a place she wanted to be.

She scooted closer to pet Sheba’s fur. Her fingers bumped Martha’s. “Would you come to the mall with me? To pick out a dress?”

“Tonight?”

“Uh-huh. After dinner.”

“You want me to?” Her mother’s voice brightened. They had not shopped for clothes together since Bernadette had gotten her driver’s license.

“I do.” Bernadette amended that. “
If
you don’t tell me the dresses make me look like a starving refugee.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“Or say really loud that all we need here is a good padded bra.”

“Never.”

“
Or
tell the saleslady nothing ever hangs right on a girl who slumps?”

“But that’s tr—all right, all right, I promise. We’ll pretend you’re an orphan. I’ll be your guardian with the credit card.” Martha smiled happily.

Bernadette smiled back. “And in case I didn’t say so before—thanks for letting me keep Sheba.”

Her mother waved a hand. “Don’t mention it. She’ll give your father and me someone to talk to while we watch TV, now that you’re getting so busy.” She got up, and so did the cat. “Maybe I’ll just put a quick cake in the oven. Seeing how you girls can eat.”

Bernadette grinned to herself, then lay back among the cushions with an old Sarah Sloan paperback she’d read at least three times. She didn’t open it, however. When the doorbell rang she tossed the book behind the couch and jumped up to welcome her friends.

NAN WILLARD CAPPO
drew on her experience coaching school competitions to write her first novel,
Cheating Lessons
(2002). She has worked as a waitress, a college teacher, and in corporate sales, and knows temptation can occur in any field (even fiction writing). Her second novel is
Unaccounted For (
2011), also set in Michigan. She lives in Pittsburgh and is writing another book. Visit her at
www.nancappo.com
.

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