The Fainting Room (2 page)
Authors: Sarah Pemberton Strong
“How can I be suspended for six weeks when there’s only a few days left of school?” Ingrid asked.
“Because,” Ms. Luce said, with a gentleness that was lost on Ingrid, “you won’t be allowed to attend Summer Intensive this year.”
Ingrid sat back as if she’d been slapped. “But Summer Intensive is what I’m supposed to do this summer.” She leaned forward again, pressed her hands against the edge of Ms. Luce’s desk so hard her knuckles cracked. “I can’t go home—there’s no one there.”
Ms. Luce’s hands twirled the beads on her Tinker Toy necklace. “I’m sorry, Ingrid. The consequences are right there in the student handbook. You’d better call your father.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you—he’s not there, he left today for New Mexico.”
“I’m sure his company has a way of getting in touch with him.”
Ingrid gave a disgusted snort. “His ‘company’ is the Department of Defense. Go ahead, call them and see how far you get.”
Ms. Luce opened the file, saw that Ingrid was trying to read upside down, and closed it again. “Most parents prefer to hear about a suspension from their children,” she said, “but if you really don’t want to call him yourself, I’ll do it.”
“I was drinking one beer,” Ingrid said sulkily. “It’s not like I was shooting heroin.”
“The point, however, is that you know the rules and you broke them.”
“Can’t I miss fall term instead?”
“Of course not. This way you’ll be able to graduate with the rest of your class next year.”
“You smoke in the teachers’ lounge. I’ve seen you.”
“The teachers’ lounge is not your dorm room, and your suspension is for drinking.”
The bell rang, announcing the beginning of C-period.
“Well, now what?” Ingrid asked. “Do I just go to class?”
“You’re suspended. I suggest you go back to your room and start packing.”
“But then what? I mean, even if you can find him, I doubt my dad’s going to be able to get me a flight tonight.”
“Your suspension will officially start when you leave for the airport.”
“So can I go to class then? It’s physics, and Monday’s the final.”
Ms. Luce looked at Ingrid, slumped in the wooden chair, and sighed. “Physics is your best subject, isn’t it? All right, go. You won’t be here on Monday, you realize, but why don’t you speak to Mr. Carberg and see if he’ll let you take the exam early.”
“Thanks.” Ingrid stood up and started to go out, but at the door she hesitated. “Ms. Luce? If you can’t get my dad, I’ll have to stay here, right?” She pressed her lips together, and the dean realized Ingrid was trying not to cry. “I mean, you wouldn’t just send me home if no one’s there?”
“Don’t worry, Ingrid,” Ms. Luce said kindly. “I’m sure I can track down your dad. I’ll explain what happened, and wherever he is, we’ll arrange for you to meet him.”
“Good luck with that one,” Ingrid muttered. Ignoring Ms. Luce’s request to close the door after her, she started down the hall, filled it with the sound of combat boots running.
Just before dinner that evening, the pay phone on the second-floor hall of the girls’ dorm rang seven times, and then stopped. After a moment Natasha Berne’s voice came down the corridor.
“Ingrid! Ingrid, it’s for you.”
Ingrid sat up in bed and ground out her cigarette.
More bad news, Mister. My stomach twisted in more knots than a little kid ’s shoelaces. Then my gut tripped and fell on them.
More bad news, Mister. My stomach twisted in more knots than a little kid ’s shoelaces. Then my gut tripped and fell on them.
“INGRID.” Natasha Berne could really yell. “Ingrid Slade, goddamn it, I’m leaving the phone dangling here.”
Ingrid got up and went down the hall.
I could have stayed where I was, flat on my face. But I thought I’d roll over, just for the fun of seeing what was barreling down on me before I got clobbered.
I could have stayed where I was, flat on my face. But I thought I’d roll over, just for the fun of seeing what was barreling down on me before I got clobbered.
“Sweetie, what is this?” Her father’s voice was loud over some indistinct noise in the background. “The school says you’re suspended.”
“How’d they get hold of you?” Ingrid said. “I thought you were in New Mexico making bigger and better bombs.”
“I picked up the messages from the answering service en route,” he said, ignoring the gibe. “What happened, Ingrid?”
“They caught me drinking one beer, which you know everybody does, and now instead of doing Summer Intensive they want to send me home for six weeks. I told them you wouldn’t be there.”
“I won’t be. Hang on a minute.” He took the phone away from his ear and Ingrid heard the hollow crackle of an announcement being made over an intercom.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Las Vegas airport. And my flight is boarding—we’ll have to talk about this later.”
“So what do I tell the school? Do I come to the base with you?”
“Sweetie, there’s no way I could bring you on site with me. I’m sorry, but it’s all highly classified. You know that. When I get there I’ll call Linda and have her book you a flight to Irvine. You can stay with her for a month until I get back.”
Mister, it was worse than I’d expected.
“Dad, I am not staying with your girlfriend.”
There was a stiff silence on the other end of the line. “Linda is very fond of you,” her father said after a moment. “And if you would just make a minimum of effort—”
“I do make an effort, we just don’t get along. And besides—”
“My flight is boarding, Ingrid, I’ve got to go. Tell the school you’ll stay with Linda. I love you, sweetie.”
“Dad, please, I can’t spend the summer at Linda’s. I’ll be totally miserable.”
“You should have thought of that before you decided to break the rules,” her father said, and Ingrid hung up on him.
Now she was lying on her back on Swan Hill at one in the morning. She was half-drunk, she was lying beside Jessica Rosen, and she didn’t feel any better, not really. Maybe another cigarette would help. Ingrid sat up and fumbled in the pocket of her jacket.
“Here.” Jessica held out her own cigarettes.
Ingrid accepted an Old Gold and leaned in so Jessica could light it from the tip of her own. Cigarettes kissing. Ingrid liked to watch Jessica smoke—she had the long fingers of a pianist, which she was, and she had a way of unconsciously twirling the cigarette that reminded Ingrid of miniature conductor’s movements, as if Jessica were smoking in accompaniment to an orchestra only she could hear. Now she watched Jessica’s fingers tap ash into the damp grass, flip the cigarette back up to her mouth, inhale again.
“Your fingers are still stained black from my head,” Ingrid said.
“I know. When I was home last weekend, my mom asked me if I was worried I’d get blood poisoning. I go, ‘Mom, it’s hair dye.’” Jessica coughed. “So when are they kicking you out?”
“I dunno. My dad wants me to stay with his girlfriend Linda, but I haven’t told Ms. Luce that. I guess if Linda calls the office tomorrow, I’m screwed. But she might not call—Linda doesn’t like me any more than I like her.”
“But you have to go somewhere.”
“Too bad I can’t come with you for your au pair job, hunh?”
“Yeah. If only you’d taken French, I could have argued for a one-to-one kid-nanny ratio.” Jessica stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To get us more beer. Maybe four beers is the happiness number.”
Don’t leave me
, Ingrid wanted to say, though of course Jessica would be gone only a minute. But once she’d disappeared down the hill toward the keg, Ingrid had the urge to roll over into the crushed grass where Jessica had just been sitting, breathe in the smoky air of her exhalations before it dispersed. Which was ridiculous; she knew perfectly well that the dispersion of air molecules is such that soon the air from Jessica’s lungs would be everywhere forever. That every time she breathed in, she was inhaling air that had been breathed by everyone who had ever lived. Einstein, for example. Hitler, Amelia Earhart, Jesus. Her mother.
, Ingrid wanted to say, though of course Jessica would be gone only a minute. But once she’d disappeared down the hill toward the keg, Ingrid had the urge to roll over into the crushed grass where Jessica had just been sitting, breathe in the smoky air of her exhalations before it dispersed. Which was ridiculous; she knew perfectly well that the dispersion of air molecules is such that soon the air from Jessica’s lungs would be everywhere forever. That every time she breathed in, she was inhaling air that had been breathed by everyone who had ever lived. Einstein, for example. Hitler, Amelia Earhart, Jesus. Her mother.
But it didn’t feel like that. The air she breathed in felt lonely.
Ingrid stopped kicking her heels and stared up at the sky.
I’m alone here, Mister. 1:27 a.m. and I’m all alone.
3.
Why tonight, Evelyn said aloud. She was sitting in the car in the Star Market parking lot, the dial on the dashboard reading a green-lit 1:30. She switched off the engine and rested her head against the steering wheel. She knew the answer, of course: Why not tonight?
It had to happen sometime, that she would snap and screw up completely, and tonight was as good as any other. She’d been dreading the party since Ray first suggested it—insisted, really: We have to have people over, it’s so far beyond our turn it’s laughable, we’ve been over to the Yeagers’ more times than I can count. And the worst of all: Don’t worry, Evelyn, sweetheart, I’ll do everything.
He’d meant to be kind, to relieve her of the dread and inadequacy these events dumped over her like a tub of ice water. Since her marriage to Ray a year ago it had been a constant struggle to catch up: she didn’t know what prosciutto was, or how to make stuffed mushrooms for twenty, or choose wine, or play hostess in the manner to which his friends were accustomed. And Ray’s reassurances that he would handle it had the unintended effect of highlighting all her shortcomings. The morning of the party, she woke up drenched in sweat. Flop sweat, her sister would have said. As in, the performance you’re about to give is going to flop.
It was true—things were going badly even before noon. First, Ray didn’t take the afternoon off as promised; a mistake had been found in a set of drawings, and he’d stayed late to fix them. In his absence, Evelyn had ruined the vichyssoise by puréeing the cooked potatoes in the blender until they were the consistency of glue. No matter how much milk she added to try to fix it, the soup was like library paste. Don’t freak out, she lectured herself. Don’t even start—just do it over, you have enough potatoes.
The second batch of soup was better. Ray came home, tasted and pronounced it perfect, unaware of its predecessor now gurgling through the sewer pipes below the toilet. Evelyn started in on the salad while Ray went down to the basement to choose wine. She wasn’t sure about the green pepper—should it be diced, or cut in circles? Well, she would do the tomato first; anyone could do tomatoes, without even thinking.
But without thinking, she brought the knife down on her thumb. Ray always kept the knives well sharpened and the cut was deep. She knew it should probably have stitches, but by then it was five-thirty and time was running out. If she went to the emergency room, she was liable to be there for hours, and there was still too much to do. She bandaged her thumb herself, wrapping it in layers of gauze and surgical tape, and only then called Ray to come finish the salad. She just nicked her thumb, she said when he noticed, and no, it wasn’t too bad.
“Poor baby.” Ray kissed her cheek, then began kissing her neck, her hair. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
“No, I’m not.”
Ray put his arms around her waist. “Come upstairs.”
She half-wanted to; she was so tense, it would be good to be forced to stop thinking, forced to give herself over to her body. But it was almost six, and they were way behind schedule.
“I have to vacuum,” she said.
“There’s time. The smell of your skin is burning me up.”
“You mean I smell like sweat. Then I have to shower, too.”
He let her go, and then she wished she had given in. Instead she vacuumed while Ray maneuvered expertly among spices and shallots, making a salad dressing so good she felt again the sting of her own inadequacy. Her cut thumb throbbed.
After her shower Evelyn sat at the dressing table and tried to relax. After all, there was no sign that anything was wrong. She could hear Ray downstairs whistling some classical thing—he couldn’t be happier, so why was she so worried? She brushed her hair, checked to see if among the bright red any gray had appeared, put on foundation to hide her freckles, chose a lipstick.
As always, leaning into a mirror to do her makeup reminded her of how, as a child, she’d watched others perform the transformation: she used to peek around the canvas alley to watch the men get in makeup. Crouched on stools, close to the long mirrors so they could see in the bad light, their hands flew over their faces, transforming them with daubs of greasepaint from men into clowns. Evelyn considered the lipstick in her hand. If she made the line of her lips a good inch wider all the way around, she could be a clown too, and in one stroke of color return to where she had come from: down in the dirt with the clowns and the roustabouts, squinting up into the high reaches of the big top at three glittering blurs walking gracefully into the air—father, mother, sister. She put the lipstick away.
By seven-thirty, the Shepards’ living room had filled with people. Evelyn tried to stay close to Ray, but guests kept sweeping him away from her. Where was he now? In crowds Ray was unremarkable, neither tall nor loud. You might not notice him unless you met his eyes, which held a lightness of movement more suggestive of boyhood than a man approaching middle age. He looked his best in company: alone, his habitual expression was that of someone attempting to solve a crossword puzzle. But even then, if interrupted, he would look up, more startled than annoyed at the intrusion, and he would smile.
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