The Education of Bet (5 page)

– Walking

– Talking

– Handwriting

– Clothes

"You left out the part about the hair," he pointed out.

"I keep forgetting that part. I will add it later."

He looked up at me, a disturbing, scathing expression on his face. "It took you all night to come up with four words?" he asked me.

I felt a flush reddening my cheeks. "A lot of serious thinking and planning went on between those four words."

"Yes, so much thinking and planning you forgot about the hair."

"I will remember when the time comes."

"Being a boy involves more than items on a list." He thrust the sheet back at me in disgust. "And even if you do manage to make all these changes, even if you manage to turn yourself into a boy, you will never exactly be me. When you go to school—I laugh at the very idea!—you will not be Will Gardener."

"But why should that matter?" I countered.

"Excuse me?"

"You are to start, yet again, at a new school this fall. Will Gardener is just a name to the people there until a body comes to attach itself to that name. But no one will have any expectations of what Will Gardener should look like. So what does it matter if I can't exactly become you, so long as I can persuade people that I am you?"

"Huh." Will looked dumbfounded. "I hadn't thought of that."

"You see?" I was extraordinarily pleased with myself. "Already I am smarter than a boy."

"Very well." Will sighed. "Where shall we begin?"

***

"That suit doesn't look like that when I wear it, does it?" Will asked, scratching his head.

"No," I admitted ruefully, regarding my reflection in the looking glass. "It does not."

Everything about it was wrong: the way the shirt accentuated my breasts, the way the shoulders of the jacket were too broad for my slimmer frame, the way the waistband of the trousers hung too low on my hips, even the length of the sleeves and trousers. I had always thought I was the same size as Will, but clearly, I saw now, I had been deluding myself. The sleeves were so long only the tips of my fingers showed, while the hems of the trousers pooled around my naked feet.

We were in my bedroom. Will had loaned me one of his suits to try on, waiting outside while I changed, of course.

"I figured," Will said, the tone of his voice suggesting that he was still merely humoring me and did not share my wholehearted faith in my plan, "that once I'm in the military, I won't need my suits, so you could have a few of them to take off with you to school." He could not prevent a laugh from escaping at the sight of me in the looking glass, my body looking ridiculous in his clothes. "No," he went on, having regained control of himself, "this will never do. I suppose you'll just have to give up."

"Give up?"

"Of course. What else can you do? I can't very well take you to my tailor, can I, and have him make a man's suit for you?"

Even I could see the futility in such a course of action. If we tried doing that, no doubt the tailor would report the peculiarity to Will's great-uncle.

"No, of course not," I admitted.

"So that's it, then." Will looked so smug, I could almost see him mentally washing his hands of the whole affair as he made to leave the room.

"No, it is not," I said, my words stopping him as he put his hand on the doorknob.

"It isn't?" He looked puzzled.

What did he think, that I was going to give up so easily? That I was going to simply quit at the very first obstacle?

"Get me my sewing kit," I commanded him.

"Your—?"

"My sewing kit," I said impatiently. "You know, that thing with threads and needles?"

"I know what a sewing kit is."

"Well then?" I prodded him. "I can't very well traipse through the house looking like this, can I? You'll find it in the basket near the fireplace down in the drawing room."

Perhaps too stunned by my authoritarian manner to offer any rebuttal, Will obeyed.

"Thank you," I said imperiously when he returned with the requested item. I opened the kit and removed a box of straight pins. "Here." I placed the box in Will's hand. Then I dragged a chair to the center of the room and proceeded to climb up on top of it.

"What am I supposed to do with these?" Will asked, shaking the box of pins at me.

"I can't do everything myself! And I certainly can't pin up clothes properly when I'm wearing them. The hems would come out all uneven."

"You want me to pretend to be a dressmaker's assistant and pin up the hems for you?"

"
Nooo.
I want you to pretend to be a tailor's assistant and pin up the hems for me. Is that too much to ask? Once you accomplish that, I'll do all the rest."

"You're impossible," he muttered, but at least he got down on his knees and, squinting at the fabric, folded up the hems of the trousers so he could begin placing pins at regular intervals.

"Thank you," I said.

"I'm only doing this to shut you up."

"You shouldn't talk with pins in your mouth. And anyway, I wasn't thanking you for doing what I asked."

Will stopped for a moment, looked up at me. "What, then?"

"I was thanking you for calling me impossible." I smiled down at him. "I rather like the idea of being impossible."

"Girls."

"Boys. Now get back to work."

But when Will finished pinning the material at my wrists and ankles so that I could properly hem them later, my reflection still looked wrong. And not just because of my breasts.

"I still need to fix the waistband," I said, "so it doesn't hang so low on my hips. Here." I handed him a couple of pins. Then I took off the jacket and, turning away from him, lifted up the waistband of the trousers to a level that looked about right. "If you place a few of these in the back so that the whole is tighter, I can sew darts there later."

I was just beginning to think that Will was getting rather good at obeying instructions when I felt a pin stab me.

"Ouch!" I shouted, whirling on him. "You did that on purpose!"

"Would I do that to you?" His expression was innocent. Too innocent.

"Well, hurry up," I grumbled. "We have a lot more to do."

"More?"

"Of course, more! You don't expect me to go off to school with just one suit, do you?"

***

"Can you write out the alphabet for me, Will?" I asked one night, having followed Will out to the back garden after dinner.

"If you can't even make your letters," Will said with a snort, "how do you ever expect to go away to school?"

"I know how to make my letters, Will Gardener! And you know that I know. But my hand is a girl's hand. When you send me notes from school, your hand is less florid than mine. If I am to convince people that I am—"

"Fine." Will made no effort to hide his exasperation. "Get me paper and pen."

"Uppercase
and
lowercase," I directed as he began to write.

"You take this all so seriously," he muttered. "One would think you actually believe you're going to get your way."

Normally, I would have responded with heat to a remark like that. But I was too busy being shocked at what I was seeing.

"Do you always hold your hand like that when you make your letters?" I asked.

Will looked up. "How do you mean?"

"Like that." I gestured with my hand. "Your fingers are all cramped down tight together near the nib. It looks most uncomfortable." A thought occurred to me. "No wonder the writing in your notes always looks so crabbed!"

"My handwriting is not crabbed!"

I ignored him.

Without asking permission, I took the pen from his hand. Then, forcing my fingers into the impossible death grip I'd seen him use a moment ago, I put pen to paper. The result of my efforts was something that didn't look even remotely like my usual pretty hand.

"Huh," I said, pleased with myself. "Well, that was easy."

***

"It may be easy enough to imitate a boy's handwriting," Will pointed out the next day as we played croquet, "although I don't see why you seem to feel that girls write so much better than boys, but talking is different. It's a lot harder to fake what people hear than what they read."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. As a matter of fact, I will wager money on it."

"Too bad I haven't got any."

"No, of course not. I'm sorry." Will at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. But not for long. "Very well, then," he went on, brightening, "if I win, you give up your harebrained scheme and admit it can never work."

That would be a hard bet to make, I thought. If I wagered and lost, my sense of honor would force me to hold up my end of the bargain. But I hated seeing him look so cocky, and he would look even cockier if I did not accept the bet.

"Fine," I said. "But if
I
win, you need to throw your wholehearted support behind me
and
you have to read to your great-uncle at least once a week."

"Wait a second! Why do you get two things to my one?"

"Because I'm smart enough to ask for more? Because the old man might as well get something out of this too? Because if you're so sure you're going to win, it shouldn't matter to you how many things I ask for?"

His mouth tightened, but at last he put out his hand. "Fine," he said through clenched teeth.

I shook his hand, hard. "Fine," I returned with a smile.

***

That night after dinner, the master asked me to read to him for a little while, as was his habit. Perhaps obsessed with his advancing years and how little of life remained ahead of him, he wanted me to read from
King Lear
again.

"'Meantime we shall express our darker purpose.'" I began the passage where Lear talks about dividing his kingdom in three.

"Doesn't she read beautifully?" The old man turned toward Will.

"Yes, she does." Will was practically sputtering. "But whose voice was that? She sounded like ...
you!
"

"Isn't it marvelous? She can do all sorts of voices: male, female, old, young, rich, poor. I suppose it comes from years of reading to me. Why, there are times I feel as though I will never need to attend the theater again, since having Elizabeth here is like having a live performance every night!" His expression grew puzzled. "Have you never noticed what a talent she has for this?"

"No." Will was practically seething now. "I have not."

"With your permission, sir," I asked the old man, "might I be allowed to read a little from
Macbeth
instead?" Before he could question why I wanted to do this, I added, "I feel that that play might best show off to Will my range of voices."

"Of course, child."

"'When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?'"

"You see?" the old man said to his great-nephew. "That's the first of the three Witches. And listen to Elizabeth: she sounds just like a crone!"

"Yes," Will observed dryly. "She does."

I took the liberty of skipping ahead to the third scene and Macbeth's entrance.

"'So foul and fair a day I have not seen.'" I read the words of one of the most hated and misunderstood men in all of literature.

"And now she sounds like a young man!" the old man crowed proudly, as though he were responsible for my talent.

"Yes, she does." Will stared at me as something struck him. "She sounds like
me
."

"That's funny," the old man said. "I never noticed that before, but you are right. When Elizabeth does young men's voices, she does sound like you."

"Perhaps," I said, smiling at Will, "I am so good at it because I have spent so many years listening to you talk and talk and talk."

Will had never hit me, but I got the feeling he would have liked to do nothing more right then.

"Here you go," I said, rising from my seat and carrying the book over to Will. "Perhaps you would like to read to your great-uncle tonight? If you practice a bit, you can become equally adept at imitating other people's voices."

Before he could reply, I sauntered from the room.

***

"You walk like a girl!" Will shouted at me.

"That's probably because I
am
a girl!" I shouted right back at him.

"Yes, I do know that, Bet. But you sway too much when you walk."

"I sway?"

"Yes, sway! Those ...
hips
of yours. They swish back and forth. It is fine for a girl but—"

"Not for a boy. Very well." I gave a firm nod of my head. "Show me, then."

"Well, it's like this." Will demonstrated as we stood on the lawn. "You must walk—no, you must
stride
as though you have some great purpose in mind."

"You look ridiculous," I said, watching him walk back and forth. "You look like you're off to execute somebody."