The Full Cleveland (18 page)

She wrote me right back. The entire text of her correspondence consisted of one words:
SPOTS.

I have to say, that one was mysterious.

I just couldn't decode it. I spent weeks trying, but I just couldn't figure why a genius would answer a question about two twins with the one word Spots. Then, I was in the Dean's Lecture one day. The dean was standing up there in her red suit, with the fake gold buttons and chains she had such a miserable reputation for. She was giving a special, one-time-only lecture about teenage sex, which should have been quite interesting, but she was totally taking the circuitous route, slowly and painstakingly working up to what some girls later called the “money shot.” In fact, the dean was single-handedly turning teenage sex into about the most boring subject on earth. Like you didn't want anything to do with it after all. Or at least forget it for once and take a nap.

But the dean would kill you if you did that. You could tell. She had a stiff white face, and hair so highlighted and so pulled back tight you could see shiny bits of pink skull underneath. And her eyes were like a bird's, just not a pleasant one's. A raven's, I kept thinking. If you fell asleep, she'd probably peck your eyes out. So I was trying my best to stay alert, look lively, and I was doing it by making an enormous intellectual effort to figure out the word Spots.

And as a result of having the time and trying so hard, I actually did do it. I figured it out. See, when Mary Parker wrote Spots, she really was writing about The Twins. She was just doing it indirectly, by writing about the radio. Media ads, I now remembered because my father was in advertising, are called spots. So Mary Parker wasn't ignoring my questions about The Twins. She'd never been ignoring it. She was simply asking in her own special way if I
was buying
them because there were
more
of them. Because I'd been a victim of frequency.

Naturally, I grinned the very second I figured it all out. I even chuckled a little, in awe of Mary Parker. But unfortunately, that was the very moment that the dean was about to deliver the money shot. And I was caught. Grinning. During a lecture about teenage sex.

The dean and I locked eyes, and I immediately wiped the smile off my face. But that didn't stop her. She still stopped the money shot. “Miss Parkman,” she said, “you seemed amused by all this.”

Everyone looked to see if I was. “No, ma'am,” I stammered, “I'm not.”

“Stand up,” she snapped. “You're being directly addressed.”

I shot to my feet. “Excuse me, ma'am.”

But her raven's eyes were going mad on me. I couldn't focus back in them, and didn't want to, to tell you the truth. So I looked at the clock on the classroom wall.

The dean came a little closer to closely inspect me, I think. “We've all met Miss Parkman, haven't we? She's a transfer student this year. She's brought us a joke. From Cleveland.” As if that were joke enough.

And then she waited. My heart started pounding. I thought she was going to make me do it, make me explain why I'd been smiling, and if I even attempted to explain the infamous Twins in terms of radio frequency, then not only was I the new girl from Cleveland, I was the new girl from Cleveland who was clearly insane. And as further proof, she has no use for teenage sex.

But the dean didn't make me explain. She just stared at me for twelve seconds, according to the clock on the classroom wall. Then she said, Sit down and pay close attention, and I readily said, Yes, ma'am.

But I guess she wanted to make sure that I did it, because she wouldn't stop staring at me. She just wouldn't do it. I started wondering if she even could do it. You know when a bird gets interested, and can't take its eyes off of you. So everybody else started doing it too, because they didn't need to look at the dean, because the only thing the dean was looking at was me. So the entire room was staring at me when she finally delivered the money shot. “And the man takes his penis …”

Which I could have lived with. If only she hadn't pronounced it wrong. What she really said was, “And the man takes his penace.” Which made it sound like penance, the punishment they give you for sinning and confessing it in the Catholic Church. But even if you didn't know that, it was dead-on funny.

It was quiet as anything after she said it the first time, then, when she did it again, forget Cleveland, we had a legitimate joke. Everybody at the lecture knew how incredibly good it was. And everybody at the lecture knew that there was no way I could laugh. Other girls were coughing and choking and nudging me in the back, and here is the dean staring at me hard and cold like a raven each and every time she chirps “The man takes his penace” like that.

But the miraculous thing is, I didn't laugh. I nodded back at the dean like “The man takes his penace” information was the most useful thing I'd heard in my life. I nodded at the end of every sentence, so she'd know I'd absorbed. It took tremendous willpower. I was practically imploding or exploding or something when the lecture was over and the dean finally stopped staring at me, saying “The man take his penace” like that. All because of Mary Parker and the word
Spots
, and, of course, the source, the Spots themselves, who sat either side of me in class, looking worried as anything that I'd get kicked out. But the interesting thing is, I became quite popular after that.

I'm not saying I didn't come to appreciate my postcards from Mary Parker. At first I'd thought, you know, this is not a major effort to communicate on her part. But then I don't know, they came so often, so
frequently
, and they were so interesting in their own little post office postcardy way, and so mysterious, like something that had to be pondered and figured out. Treasured even, like a thought.

I kept them in a stack tied with black satin ribbon. And at night before lights out, I sorted through and made a selection of which ones to contemplate before sleep. One of the postcards even said:
Even in our sleep, pain comes drop by drop upon the heart until comes wisdom, almost against the will of God.
So while The Twins were brushing their hair and getting ready to bump their heads for the night, I went through my postcards.

There was one every night that always fell out of the stack. It was a different weight, which is why I guess it fell out. It had come inserted deep in the diary Mary Parker had given me, the one in which I wrote about turning thirty. The day I found it, I read it, and I put it in the stack. It was just a piece of paper, really, not even as substantial as a post office postcard. So it always ended up slipping out of the stack. As a result, I picked it up and reread it every night. Frequently, you might say. It said, simply,
Avoid restaurant scenes.

At first I thought it was an odd thing for Mary Parker to write. Avoid restaurant scenes. It just wasn't the kind of thing Mary Parker seemed overly concerned with. Propriety and good manners and such. Don't get me wrong, she was very polite, even if her father hadn't, our school would have made sure of that. But I just didn't think decorum was one of her big talking points. It was more like something your mother would write. Avoid scenes in restaurants. Sure, Mom. No problem. I'm not so fond of food fights myself. It was only much later that I discovered that that wasn't even what Mary Parker was talking about.

First my mother, then my father, paid me surprise visits that fall. And, when you don't have a house to see your parents in anymore, I guess that's where you're destined to end up with them. In restaurants.

Mother's came first.

The dean's humble assistant, that's what he was called, he came and called me out from class. But he didn't say why. Maybe he said so to the teacher, just not to me. So I was worried as anything following the dean's humble assistant down the metal school stairs and then down the long hall to the dean's office. Worried mostly I was going to hear “The man takes his penace” again, and how was I going to handle that. Would I have to laugh?

But when we got to the office, I frowned. Because there was my mother, on the dean's love seat, looking beautiful but wearing black. She had a black suit, and a matching black band in her hair. That could worry you, all that black.

I looked nervously at the dean, who was wearing another rendition of the red suit with the fake gold buttons and chains. “We have a surprise for you, young lady.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” Mother said, whisking to her feet and coming at me. There was something funny about the way she did it, though. Not funny like she could when she was clowning around. More like funny like phony.

I backed up a step. “You mean you're the surprise?”

Mother stopped. “Yes, dear. Disappointed?”

“No.”

We stared at each other for a second, cautious. Then she came on again, tucking the side of my hair behind my ear. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by,” she said happily, like, What a whim.

It sounded so phony. The dean thought it was highly amusing, though. “Just drop by,” and from
Cleveland.
What a riot the dean thought that sidesplitter was. Turns out the dean could have quite a jovial sense of humor, when your rich mum was around, not to mention looking good and rich that day.

Mother started concentrating on re-rearranging the front of my hair. “So how would you like to have dinner with me tonight in the city?”

“And stay overnight?” That meant no twins tonight. No ward. I guess I still hadn't quite adjusted to that.

“Yes and stay overnight.” She beamed. She really did seem quite happy to see me. Maybe it didn't seem so phony now. She turned to the dean and promised to drop me back off in the morning.

“Should I pack?” I didn't want to. I didn't want to let her out of my sight, or she might change her mind and drive off in a Buick.

“Not if you don't feel like it, love.” She just couldn't resist rearranging my hair. Every time she tucked it back, I rolled my head to the side and tried to shake it out. After a while of doing this, I realized it probably looked as if I had developed a twitch, so then I started doing it on purpose, because I didn't mind having Mother think I had developed a twitch, because I knew the last thing she wanted was a kid with a twitch, in front of the boarding school dean.

“Honey? Why are you jerking around?” She tried looking at the dean for an explanation, but couldn't take her eyes off me. “What is it, love?”

I almost liked her calling me Love and Honey and all those other fairly phony things in front of the dean. It set a good example. Maybe soon the dean would be calling me phony things too. Maybe she'd pronounce my name correctly, and stop sniffing, “Good day, Boise” when we passed in the hall.

Mother watched me twitch, growing mesmerized, you could tell. Then she straightened up and shook it off. Nothing could kill her buzz. “Don't bother packing, dear. I've got things for you at the hotel.”

Things for me too? All in all, this was such a fine turn of events, I turned and twitched for the dean. A really big one. She sat on her desk and lit a cigarette. When the smoke came out, it looked like frost.

Outside, Mother said, “Fine, Boyce. Now you can stop moving around.” At least she sounded normal. She was pretty ticked off.

“I've developed a twitch because of this school.”

“You have not.”

“Have too.” I jerked.

“You are not the type of child to suddenly develop a twitch.”

“B-b-b-ut I-I am not a ch-ch-ch-child.” It took me about ten minutes to say it. I wanted her to think I'd developed a stutter because of school too.

In spite of herself, Mother smiled. It took all the fun out of it, so I stopped.

Predictably, a blue Buick was parked there, safely in front of the Administration Building. The convertible one. Her pet car.

The top was down, because it was an unusually warm, if just a little cool, early October afternoon. Once we got rolling, we drove straight down the road toward New York City. The leaves on the trees were all changed. It was an excellent day to drive around with your mother, not knowing exactly what to expect. You would think that would happen more with your friends, or your boyfriend. Personally, I think it happens more with your mother. Simply put, since day one, she holds your life in her hands. It makes it exciting and dangerous, driving around. Fear and love again, I guess.

“It's exhilarating, isn't it, Boyce?” she called, the ends of her silk scarf flying in the breeze.

“Uh-huh!” I answered over the wind and the radio.

She had already checked into a hotel on Fifth Avenue. A man in a white and gold uniform wrenched the Buick keys from her at the door. “No need to be extravagant,” she said in the elevator. “We'll share.” Then she opened the door to a palatial suite of rooms.

“Wow, this is sure a lot nicer than my room,” I said.

“Well, naturally. It's a good hotel.”

“I can't believe how much nicer it is.”

She glanced at me, annoyed. “I thought the rooms at school were cozy.”

“That's because you saw the model.”

“The model?” Mother laughed a little while simultaneously slipping out of her pumps. “Oh, Boyce, you can be so amusing. Really. You're just like your father.”