The Life Before Her Eyes (23 page)

The man looked familiar, but she gave him a blank look.

She was growing concerned.

She'd already let the girls get away from her, and who knew which direction they'd go in after the monkey pit? It wasn't a large zoo, but it sprawled, and it could easily take a whole morning to track down the girls if they didn't stay in one place for long.

Diana started to sweat. She could feel it on the back of her neck like blood. She touched herself there, then looked at her fingertips, but there was no blood on them.

Diana exhaled in exasperation when she got to the top of the rise and saw that the girls weren't there.

The monkeys, however, were doing exactly what Diana knew they would be doing. For only a moment she paused to look into the eyes of the mother monkey, who pursed her lips and looked back.

It reminded her, absurdly, of Mrs. Mueler....

May I please look in your purse, young lady?

Or her mother...

Your friend Maureen called,
her mother might have said with that very expression.

Diana nodded.

"
I like Maureen," her mother said She had a sponge in her hand and began to wipe it in circles around the Formica-topped kitchen table.

"
We're going to the zoo," Diana told her.

"
Now there's a wholesome way to spend a Sunday afternoon," her mother said sarcastically. "I don't suppose that was
your
idea, was it?
"

"
No, it was Maureen's," Diana said.

"
You're not wearing that—" her mother said, nodding at Diana's T-shirt. It was black, tight, ripped.

"
I'm going to wear a sweater over it," she said.

"
Oh, great. Well, I hope it doesn't get hot and you have to take the
sweater off, because this hole here"—she put a finger in the ripped seam of the shirt and pulled it away from Diana's chest—"is an advertisement for something I hope you're not planning to sell.
"

The mother monkey smacked her lips, narrowed her eyes, shook her head...

"Emma!"

Diana yelled it loud enough that everyone within hearing range turned and looked at her—everyone except the blond girl in the pink windbreaker who might have been her daughter running far ahead up a hill toward the African safari.

Diana hurried after that flash of golden light as fast as she could without appearing, she hoped, to the other zoo goers to be a panicked woman, and as fast as she could in her flimsy sandals with their short but narrow heels.

Running, again, she had to pass the man who'd clicked his tongue at her. He was at another garbage can this time. He was fishing through it, lifting a magazine out of the debris. Diana could run only so fast, her heels catching in the sticky tar, and over his shoulder she could see what it was.

A dirty magazine. A glossy picture of a naked girl. She had blond hair, and she was leaning backward into a couch that had been draped with a black satin sheet.

"Don't I know you, baby?" he growled as she hurried past.

W
HEN SHE GOT TO THE PLACE WHERE SHE THOUGHT
she'd seen Emma, Diana was out of breath, and the little girl she'd thought was hers had disappeared again. "Shit!" she said to herself, but out loud, then looked around to see if anyone had heard.

Sister Beatrice was standing beside her, looking as if she, too, had been running. Perhaps all this time she'd been running right behind, or directly beside, Diana.

The idea made Diana's heart race even harder.

She tried to smile at Sister Beatrice. But Sister Beatrice looked angry. Her tight cheeks were red, and her chin trembled as she spoke. She was carrying an armload of manila folders full of papers, as if she hadn't been able to bear the idea of leaving schoolwork behind in the classroom even for an afternoon, even on the last day of school.

"Is there some problem?" Sister Beatrice asked impatiently, shifting the weight of the folders and papers in her arms. "We've been trying to stay together as a group, but we couldn't find you or your girls—"

"I thought," Diana said, pointing up the path toward the lion's den, "that I saw Emma running in this direction."

"You mean you don't know where the girls
are?
" Sister Beatrice said, making no effort whatsoever to hide her exasperation.

"I know they went in this direction," Diana said, suddenly and absurdly worried that she might begin to cry, "but they got ahead of me."

Sister Beatrice looked full of energy and rage. Her face was like those Diana had seen on medieval beings—gryphons, gargoyles. It was stone gray, frozen, full of meaning.

Diana turned from Sister Beatrice's terrible gaze to the direction of the African safari, and she said, "I'll go get the girls, and we'll join you—"

"Immediately," Sister Beatrice finished the sentence for her.

A breeze stirred the nun's black robes, and they flapped around her arms like wings, even making the sound of wings beating at still air. Diana walked away from her as quickly as she could, and when she turned at the entrance to the African safari and looked back, Sister Beatrice was gone.

The winter of their senior year passes like a strange white dream...

Snow falling on snow. The sky, like a heavy gray lid over Briar Hill. Their down jackets become so much a part of them, it's how they recognize each other ... one of the girls in her silver down jacket, the other in black, and Nate Witt in olive green.

The cafeteria smells like steam, pasta, boiled carrots. The three of them sit together at a table near the vending machines. One of the girls has her hand on his knee. He has his arm around her. Between bites of their lunches, they kiss.

Now it's always the three of them.

The three of them in Nate Witt's black Buick in the morning on the way to school, in the afternoon on the way home from school. The three of them in the cafeteria. The three of them on the weekends ... at a movie, or eating pizza, or watching MTV in the living room of Nate Witt's parents' house.

For Valentine's Day he gives them both boxes of candy, and he gives one of them, the one with whom he is in love, a silver ring and a card he's made himself with
Be mine, I love you
written on it in his own sloppy hand.

The floor of the cafeteria is muddy from melted slush.

One of the girls kisses Nate Witt, slipping her arms around his waist, then running her hand over the top of his head, smoothly shaved.

The other girl sits across from them, smiling. She eats an ice-cream sandwich, which leaves chocolate cake on her fingertips.

"Yuck," her friend says. "Here, you can have my napkin."

She reaches across the table and hands her friend the napkin.

"Thanks," she says, wiping the sticky sweetness off her fingertips with the napkin given to her. Her friend kisses Nate Witt deep and long.

Family...

The word floats through her slowly.

All around her the student body makes a mumbled roar. They, too, are a kind of family. And the teachers, and the janitors. She sees them every day and they see her. There's a something that rises from them and buzzes around the fluorescent
lights—although they've all been together so long they no longer hear the background noise of their strange love for one another. Just once in a while, when it surges, or when it's cut through with sudden hate....

A
FEW KITSCHY THINGS HAD BEEN ADDED TO THE
A
FRICAN
safari since Diana had last been there.

Some plaster palm trees with some plaster natives under them, painted a deep and shilling black and carrying spears...

An old jeep with two dummies in it—a white man and woman wearing khaki vests and shorts and big wide-brimmed hats.

Diana hurried past them, but not before she passed close enough to the jeep to see the man behind the wheel. He was staring straight ahead, hands on the steering wheel, with an expression of total absence. He must have been, once, a department store mannequin—he had the Ken-doll features for it—and been retired to the zoo. The sun was shining brightly through the windshield into his eyes, but he didn't blink.

"Diana."

She turned around fast, but there was no one.

It had been a man's voice ... a familiar voice.

Paul?

But behind her there was nothing except the path leading out of the African safari, past the jeep and the natives staring into the future blankly, their painted skin glistening as if with sweat. Ahead of her was a flight of stairs that led up a small hill, where Diana knew the lions were—but there was no one, either, on those stairs.

"Diana."

This time she jumped when she heard it. She turned around fast and put a hand to her forehead to block the sun from her eyes, which stung. Her heart was beating hard. She was scared, though she didn't know why...

Scared that the dummy would speak to her from the jeep?

Or one of the natives?

She considered, briefly, running in the direction of the lions, when she saw him standing in the shade of the plaster palm trees.

Could it be?

Diana took a step closer. She squinted and blinked and saw that it was.

"Mr. McCleod?" she said.

"Yes," he said, nodding.

Diana laughed out loud and took a few quick steps toward him.

"I can't believe it!" she said.

"Did you think I would be dead?" he asked. It had to have been a joke, but he sounded serious.

"No," Diana said, laughing and shaking her head. "Of course not. It's just ... been so long!"

Mr. McCleod took a step toward her and out of the shade, into the sun, where she could see him better. He looked old....

Ancient.

The skin on his face and hands was covered with dark spots, and he was stooped, leaning on a cane.

But of course. How old must he have been by now? And still he looked like Mr. McCleod. He was wearing a short-sleeved yellow shirt, and there were pens in his pockets. He'd grown sideburns, which struck Diana as odd. It seemed like the kind of thing a man would have had when he was young, then abandoned when he got older, instead of the other way around.
Diana reached out her hand, and he put his in hers. It felt light but warm. She squeezed it, and Mr. McCleod smiled, but he also pulled the hand away from hers quickly as if she'd been a bit too forward, as if he weren't merely shy but was trying to let her know that her squeeze had been inappropriate.

Diana felt herself blush.

Mr. McCleod said, "You're looking well."

"Thank you," she said. "So are you. I—I can't believe you would remember me, you had so many students."

"How could I forget you?" Mr. McCleod asked. "You were our Mayqueen."

"Oh," Diana said, touching her neck and feeling the blood beating faster under the thin skin there. Mayqueen...

She'd almost forgotten.

"Are you still teaching?" she asked him.

Mr. McCleod snorted. "Of course not. I retired years ago—"

"Oh," Diana said, embarrassed. "I wouldn't have guessed—"

"That I was so old?"

"No," Diana said quickly, perhaps too brightly. "You just seemed to love teaching so much that—"

Again Mr. McCleod snorted.

"Jim!" a voice called from behind Diana, who turned to see a large old woman hobbling down the steps from the lion's den. She was gesturing (angrily?) at Mr. McCleod. Diana had never known his name was Jim ... or if she had she'd long since forgotten.

"Jim!" the old woman shouted again and made a swooping gesture with her arm, calling Mr. McCleod to her.

"You'll have to excuse me," he said to Diana. "I have to go."

"Of course," Diana said. "I'm so glad I saw you. I always remember—"

Again Mr. McCleod snorted. It was dismissive and, Diana thought, full of contempt. She'd been about to tell him that she'd never forgotten his telling them that the brain contained more nerve cells than the universe contained stars. She'd always, after learning that simple fact in Mr. McCleod's biology class, thought of her mind as a darkness full of stars.

She'd been listening, she wanted him to know.

She'd understood what he was trying to impress them with—the enormity, the complexity, of
themselves.
Even today she could have mapped the parts of the brain if he'd given her the quiz:
Medulla, hypothalamus, corpus callosum, cerebellum...

Mr. McCleod didn't say good-bye. He and the old woman climbed the stairs to the lion's den together, and Diana watched them go. It had been the direction she'd planned to go in, but now she thought she'd wait until they were well ahead of her, until they had gone far enough that she wouldn't run into them again.

Nate Witt has left to visit his grandmother for the weekend.

So, even though it's Friday afternoon, the girls are alone together. They're eating microwave popcorn and drinking diet Coke. One of their mothers comes home and tosses her black shoulder bag onto the couch, kicks off her flat shoes.

"Hi, Deb," one of the girls says, the one who isn't her daughter.

There's nothing to call one another's mothers except their first names. Both of them had changed back to their maiden
names when they'd divorced, so they have different names than their daughters. It's impossible to remember those names, or to know whether to call someone's divorced mother
Mrs?...Miss?...Ms?

"Hi, Mom," the other girls says.

Her mother pulls out one of the kitchen table chairs and sits down with the girls. She takes a handful of popcorn out of the Tupperware bowl and inhales. She says, "I'm taking you two girls to a lecture tonight. It'll be good for you."

The girls look at each other, each one makes an expression of fake horror.

"A
lecture
?" one of them asks, leaving her mouth open for emphasis.

"
A
lecture," her mother says. "Like I said, it'll be good for you. Maybe you'll learn something."

"I don't want to learn something. It's Friday night. We're going—"

"Come on," her mother says. "Please? This professor in our department has been asked to give this lecture, and it's a big deal, and I have to go, and he's a nice man, who—He's brilliant, really. And cute."