Mourning Becomes Cassandra (11 page)

“Joanie, no one likes wrestling with their foundational beliefs like you do,” I said. “You thought you were having an intellectual discussion, but I think Michelle thought you were trying to attack her. You make everything a contact sport.”

“Oh!” Joanie exclaimed, genuinely surprised. “Well, it’ll be a good opportunity for her to practice her compassion and tolerance for me, then. I mean her love for me. It’ll make for better stained glass in the atrium.”

“I wanted to hear more about the stained glass, like what on earth transcendence looks like,” Phyl mourned, “but now it’ll be such a touchy subject I can’t bring it up anymore.”

“We’ll just have to go see it when it’s done,” Joanie said unfeelingly, “A little transcendence field trip.”

I couldn’t resist. “A—a—secular spirituality spree.”

“An out-of-body outing,” threw in Roy, to our delight.

“Think of the upside,” Joanie said, when we stopped laughing. “Maybe I’ve irritated her so much that she’ll dump Daniel before he can dump her.”

A dog fell in our laps over the weekend.

When Phyl and her husband Jason divorced, there were no children to fight over, so they fought for custody of their apricot Labradoodle puppy, Benny. Like many a child of divorce, Benny shuttled back and forth, bewildered, alternate Saturdays, ears drooping as he listened to his “parents” argue over how best to raise him. Because Phyl and Jason wouldn’t bend to each other, Benny was faced with learning completely separate sets of commands, all of which he now obeyed imperfectly. With time their acrimony faded, however, and Phyl was willing to give up shared custody to move into the no-pets-allowed Palace, with the understanding that Benny could make the occasional brief visit.

Joanie and I cordially hated Jason for how he had treated Phyl, and I suspect the feeling was mutual, but we all managed polite small talk when he came by with the dog. Benny fell on the bigger, fleecier end of the Labradoodle spectrum, and he vaulted out of Jason’s sedan to leap up on each of us in turn, trying and mostly succeeding in getting in a good face lick.

“Down!” yelled Phyl. “Off!” barked Jason. Benny ignored both and wriggled and sniffed excitedly.

“You’re looking good, Philly,” said Jason, checking her out in a way that made me want to hit him. He turned to appraise the house while Benny capered about, tearing through Phyl’s flower beds. “Nice place you got here. You say this is Joanie’s brother’s?”

She nodded. Jason was the only person Phyl ever spoke to with any sharpness in her voice. “That’s right. So you’ll be back from New York on Thursday?”

“Yep. Jessica and I will take in a few shows between my meetings, maybe check out the Met. She’s the arty type.” Jason was always sure to mention his latest love whenever he saw Phyl. We half-expected to hear her measurements. “I’ll come by Friday for Benny. Glad this could work out.”

Phyl set up Benny’s bed in the utility room and his bowls in the kitchen. She had bought a couple new chew toys for the occasion, which Benny gnawed and growled over appreciatively, and things had calmed down somewhat by the time Daniel and Michelle made their appearance. Michelle had been a little cool toward us since Thursday night, and having Benny launch himself at her crotch for a sniff didn’t seem to help matters.

“Down! Off! Leave it!” commanded Phyl, grabbing Benny’s collar and hauling him off. “Sorry, sorry. He’s just here for a few days while my ex is out of town.”

“‘Leave it’ got Benny’s attention, I think,” said Joanie. “Leave it, Benny! Leave the crotch.”

That first walk was quite the adventure for Benny. He dashed after birds and squirrels, burrowed under neighbors’ hedges, engaged in long sniffing encounters with fellow canines. After a solid forty-five minutes we returned, but Benny was rewardingly mellow the rest of the day. For the sake of household peace, I walked Benny on Sunday and Monday as well, and even pre-walked him Tuesday before meeting Nadina, so he would be calmer.

At 2:40 I was on the bench outside the school, and at 2:45 the students began spilling out again. As I hoped, Kyle slouched over to see me, squatting down to get face-to-face with Benny. He had never answered my email but now said without preamble, “I had this lame-ass computer science teacher who didn’t know jack but thought he was seriously Bill Gates in disguise. If I tried to correct him, he got really pissed off, so he started always talking down to me in class, and I got pissed off too. One day I told him what he could do with himself, and then I broke into the classroom. I did some redecorating and hacked into his computer and gave the whole class A-pluses.”

It was the longest speech from him yet, although he delivered it entirely to Benny’s left ear while he scratched him. By the end of it, Benny was snuffling Kyle’s long hair and whimpering ecstatically from all the attention.

“Oh, Kyle,” I said, “I’m sorry you thought you had to do that. But that’s all you did, right?”

His rare smile flashed. “Isn’t it enough?”

I saw Nadina and her friends emerging and waved. The dark-haired girl leaned close to whisper something to the others, and they erupted in laughter. “More than enough—don’t get me wrong. But did you know they have a nickname for you here?”

His stony face returned. “Yeah…‘Bandit’ or some dumb name like that. I ignore them.”

“But why ‘Bandit’?” I persisted.

Benny was licking Kyle’s face, so Kyle shoved him away and stood up. “I didn’t steal anything, if that’s what you mean. Maybe they couldn’t spell ‘Vandal’ or ‘Trespasser.’” He shrugged off my puzzlement. “So what’s your deal, Cass? Did you really sell out and switch to friggin’
High School Musical
?”

“Are you kidding? After mixing up Agen Kolar with Ki-Adi-Mundi, you think I’m going to risk losing even more of your respect?” I fumbled in my handbag. “Here. Here’s another chapter. Check out my Clone Wars research and techno-wizardry and let me know what you think.”

Taking it, he started to walk away, causing Benny to strain at the leash. I called after him, “Wait! Will I see you Saturday? Are you going to the mentor thing?”

Walking backward, he nodded once and headed off down the hill. I was still watching him when I felt the leash jerk again and found Nadina beside me, her friends moving away in the other direction. Like Kyle she bent down to love on that ridiculous dog.

“You like Bateman, don’t you?” Nadina asked, letting Benny lick her ear.

“I do,” I answered. “I like him a lot. More than this dog, for instance. But I brought Benny the Wonderdoodle for you. My friend’s ex-husband dropped him off for a few days.”

“He’s a beautiful boy—who’s a beautiful boy?” Nadina crooned at Benny, who rolled around on his back like a moron. She took the leash from me, and we started off toward the lake.

Nadina really did have a gift with animals, or dogs at least. She patiently ran through all the range of commands and variations and figured out which ones Benny responded to—Phyl would be irked to know most of them were Jason’s—and then worked with him on walking properly on a leash. First she would set off in one direction down the paved path, and the second Benny’s attention wavered, Nadina would whip around and go another direction, yanking Benny along with her. After a few minutes of this, he learned to keep an eye on Nadina and save himself some discomfort. It helped that she was so tall and strong; I doubted I would have the same success when I walked Benny home.

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked from my vantage point on the park bench. “Petco ought to have you teach some dog training classes.”

“Yeah, I’ve been kissing the dog trainer’s ass for a month now, and I think she’s going to let me assist her, next class,” Nadina replied. She stopped and rewarded Benny with scratching around his floppy ears. “I learned it from my grandpa. He got a King Charles spaniel puppy when I was little, and I watched him train her.”

“Did you spend a lot of time with your grandparents?”

“I lived with them till fifth grade. My mom was off finding herself or something like that, and I’ve never met my dad. But when Grandpa died, Mom had to come back and get me because Grandma was losing it.” Nadina sat down next to me on the bench, looping Benny’s leash around one of the slats. “I miss him.”

Coming fresh as I was off of our first mentors’ training (“Building trust”), I felt a thrill of eagerness that Nadina was already willing to show a little vulnerability. We were told that students typically were hesitant to trust, based on histories of hurt and abandonment, and we were not supposed to force their confidences. As casually as I could I asked, “What was he like?”

“Big guy—I’m built like him. And he smoked for fifty years, so he was always sounding like he was going to hack up a lung. He made me promise when I was nine that I would never, ever smoke.”

“And do you?”

She looked insulted. “No! I promised him!” Her zeal made me sorry he hadn’t also sworn her off of drugs, alcohol and loser boyfriends.

I waited to see if she wanted to say anything else, maybe tell me about her own vices of choice, but she didn’t. We talked instead about incidentals: the movie she’d seen with Sonya and Carly from school, an irate woman at Petco, the book they were reading in English. Mike wasn’t happy with Nadina being so busy, apparently, but neither did she seem willing to go into more detail. True to teenage form, she didn’t ask me any questions about myself, apart from wondering what I kept giving Kyle. When I told her, she lost interest and didn’t pursue it further.

After we had been sitting and talking for some time, Benny spied some ducks and almost hung himself trying to chase them, forgetting his leash was tied up. Laughing, we released him to shoot across the grass and flounder a few feet into the lake, where the ducks took wing and escaped. He trotted back, dripping and pleased with himself, and we took that as our signal to walk back to the school.

“See you Saturday,” I reminded her at the bus stop. “I’ll be the one with the Dramamine.”

Because late September weather can be hit or miss, I was relieved to wake up to sunshine. Nadina could hardly dread sailing more than I did; I think the last non-ferry boat I had been on was the tourist barf-o-rama from Naples to Capri, a cruise that made top-five for Worst Memories Related to Physical Discomfort (only outscored by childbirth and late pregnancy). At least today would be no storm-whipped cruise. There was nothing to do but pop my Dramamine and put a brave face on it and hope the boat would be big enough to leave me nothing to do.

Nadina and I agreed I would pick her up in front of the school and we would carpool to the yacht-owners’ house on Hunt’s Point. When I pulled up I couldn’t help chuckling because her look of disgusted misery mirrored the one I was hiding. Wordlessly I handed her the Dramamine, and she choked it down with her smoothie. “I didn’t want to do a solid breakfast this morning, in case I puke later,” she said morosely.

The Hillards were major donors to Camden School, and they had graciously offered to skipper us on their cruising yacht and then host a barbecue lunch afterward in their spacious backyard. Troy had often teased me that I raised getting lost to an art form; sure enough, we were fifteen minutes late after having missed the camouflaged turn-off down to the water a couple times.

The rest of the group had already gathered on the back deck. I recognized Mark Henneman chatting up a middle-aged couple I took to be the Hillards, booming out in his cheerful voice, while everyone else stood around in loose pairs of ill-at-ease mentor and sullen student. Way off at the end of the dock I could see Kyle’s lanky form dwarfing James’. At least they seemed to be talking.

Catching sight of us, Mark exclaimed, “Cass and Nadina! Wonderful! We’re all here now. Let me introduce you to the Hillards and get you some life jackets.” I saw Nadina rolling her eyes as she fumbled into her purple-and-aqua number and slapped a dorky name tag on it.

Mark told me that not all students had mentors yet. For the time being it was mentor triage, with newer, less-established students getting them, to give them a firm foundation. Fortunately for Nadina’s happiness, her friend Sonya was also there, accompanied by the sweet old lady of the appliqué jacket whose bravery had put me to shame, and the girls quickly went to stand by each other. After chatting briefly with Sonya’s mentor Louella, I made my way down the dock to Kyle and James.

Somehow James managed to look jaunty in the ridiculously bright life jacket. He was saying something about Xbox versus Playstation, but when he saw me he broke off and reached out to shake my hand, grinning. “Hey there, Cass, good to see you again. Kyle was just telling me about how your book is coming.”

I gave Kyle an accusing look, and James added hastily, “No worries. Kyle specifically assured me that it’s
not crap.
”

“Coming from Kyle that’s almost like winning the Pulitzer Prize,” I joked. Kyle said nothing, only giving his characteristic shrug. “Well, thank you, Kyle. I appreciate you reading it for me. I’m getting faster now; I think chapters four and five are ready for your discerning eye.”

“And if you feel up to it, shoot me a chapter or two,” James said. “We lost one of our writers to Nintendo this past week—maybe you could do a little for us on a contract basis.” He fished in his wallet for a business card: James Kittredge, Producer, Free Universe. A little logo of the Milky Way floating above a hand.

“‘Producer,’” I murmured, impressed.

“A fancy word for Project Manager,” James said quickly. “I try to keep all the actual workers in line, on task and on time.”

“Well, with Kyle’s approval I certainly feel confident enough to let you see it. Maybe I’ll send two chapters, one technical and one not?”

“Perfect. Then give us a little while on our end to pass it around the office to some of the different development teams, and we’ll be in business.”