The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (9 page)

I sat through a lifetime of Sunday mornings, and in all that time I can remember only one of my father's sermons. I don't know if that is because it was so beautiful or because my father gave it to the congregation on the very day that changed my life. I was sitting in my usual seat in the front row, to Suky's right. She sat bolt upright, her eyes pinned to my father, eyebrows up, her small, weathered hands clamped together, one foot jiggling as my sleepy brothers slumped, inert, on the other side of her.

The sermon was about the cross, and how it is made up of both a vertical and a horizontal beam. Christ, my father posited in his growling voice, was those two things: vertical – godly – and horizontal – of the earth, a living creature. Christianity existed where the two lines met. He said that was what was so special about our God. He had been one of us, yet he was endless and almighty. Because I was actually listening to him for once, I truly saw Des at that moment. He was not a tall man. The way he held his short arms out as he described the cross, palms up, as if feeling for drops of rain in a drought, made him seem futile and precious – a man praying for order in a life governed by chaos. I felt so sorry for him. And then I turned, and it happened. I laid eyes on Mr Brown.

He was sitting across the aisle from me and one row back, beside the Oakley boys, boarders from the local boys' prep school, in their maroon blazers with light blue crests on the pockets and wrinkled navy slacks. The campus, with its white clapboard buildings and dark green shutters, was, in fact, only a stone's throw away from my house, across the green. From the first moment, I couldn't keep my eyes off Mr Brown. He was in his forties and
seemed ancient to me at that time. But there was something about his face – a bony, veined face – that seemed deeply
good
to me. I loved his rust-colored mustache, his balding pate, his ruddy cheeks. Every Sunday after that, I situated myself in a place where I could see him; I even sat right next to him for one thrilling service. All my life till then, Suky had sat to my left at church. Once I started moving around, she was puzzled, but she didn't stop me. She rarely disciplined me anymore; when she tried, I shrugged her off with a poisonous glare.

Mr Brown always looked straight ahead during the service, like a bird dog. His wife was an athletic-looking, serious woman. She seemed preoccupied all the time, never speaking to her husband, and acting as if he wasn't beside her at all. He compulsively stroked her shoulder with his thumb, his arm around her, and occasionally he would whisper something in her ear, which she would listen to, an opaque expression on her face, and nod. I became convinced that she didn't love him. I watched Mr Brown in church for ten months. He was my Unimpeachable Gentleman.

I got an after-school job at the Oakley Academy, working in the kitchen, just so I could be close to him. Every day at four o'clock, I would walk across the green to the enormous, steamy Oakley kitchen, reluctantly tuck my copper locks into the requisite paper bonnet, and start peeling carrots and potatoes, dicing celery, getting everything ready for the evening meal. Then it was showtime; I would serve the kids their grub. At first I was frustrated; all the contact I had with my beloved was saying hello as I spooned mashed potato and meat loaf onto his plate. But I shot him glances as I worked. He ate with his wife every night. Their conversations seemed strained yet civil. He always pulled her chair out for her. He talked more than she did; mostly she nodded, unsmiling, staring into her plate. Directly after she had finished her meal, she stood up, murmured a goodbye, and walked out. Mr Brown would then get himself a cup of coffee and circulate around the dining hall, chatting with the boys. He seemed to relax
when his wife was out of the room. He loosened his tie and sat at the edges of the refectory tables, joking with the students. He was reassuring with one, ruffled another's hair, spoke with stiff severity to another. I managed to catch his eye once or twice, but after several weeks I couldn't take it anymore. I had to speak to him.

One night, as he was walking down the hallway after dinner, I threw myself down a short flight of stairs and landed at his feet. I actually sprained my ankle doing this stunt, and he had to hold me up as I limped to the school infirmary. He smelled like talcum powder. At one point, my lip brushed his ear as I hobbled along. He blushed from his neck all the way up to his temples. That's when I knew I was getting somewhere. After that, he called me by my name and always asked how I was when I handed him his dinner. A couple of times I thought I noticed him lingering outside when I came out after my shift. But all he ever did was say ‘hello' in a cordial, distanced way. Mr Brown was unimpeachable.

One night, as I left my job, my eyes dried up from exhaustion, my hands raw from chopping, I saw him walking up the stone steps to the dining hall, taking them two at a time with his long strides. He was about to pass me with a friendly greeting when I burst into tears. There was snot coming out of my nose, my knees went weak. I had to sit down. Mr Brown took out his handkerchief and sat down beside me. I wiped my nose and put my head between my knees. I was so embarrassed, but I was in heaven, too, because I could feel the palm of his hand on the small of my back.

‘What is it, Pippa?' he asked. ‘What's wrong?'

‘I think I'm just tired.'

‘You must be. It seems like a lot for a girl your age, a job after school. Are you sure it's necessary?'

‘It's necessary,' I said.

‘Can't you talk to your parents, maybe they can –'

‘It's not the money,' I said. ‘I mean, we don't have much money, but I don't have to have a job in the school year.'

‘Then quit,' said Mr Brown. ‘It's too much for you. Use the time to study, or be just a kid.'

‘I can't quit.'

‘Why not?' I shook my head then, looking around at the boys walking back to their dorms. One sped by us on his way down the stairs.

‘Come with me,' said Mr Brown firmly. He led me by the arm to a building a hundred yards away. There were pillars on the front of it. He opened the door and guided me down a short hallway, reached into an open doorway, flicked on the fluorescent lights. It was a classroom with math equations written on the chalkboard. I followed him in and sat down. He sat on the desk in front of me.

‘All right now. No one can hear you. Tell me what's wrong.' He was being the teacher now; he had done this countless times, led the troubled kid out of the herd for a few minutes of special time. I felt stupid to have thought it was anything else.

‘It's nothing,' I said, looking up at him. ‘I was just –' He was listening to me, but he looked so weary. I was about to give up on him, I really was, but then the tears came to my rescue. I felt them, hot and thick, trickling down my cheeks.

He hopped off the desk, squatted beside me and put his arm around the back of my chair. ‘It's just … what?' he asked softly. I tried to think of a lie. I could tell him any horror now and he would believe me to be a victim of it. My mind was blank. I told the truth.

‘If I quit my job, I wouldn't see you anymore.' There was a moment of silence. I looked right at him now. Telling the truth had made me powerful. I had nothing to lose. It couldn't get more embarrassing than this. He looked like the wind had been knocked out of him. And then his cheeks went all mottled. I loved the way his blood exposed him. That moment seemed to extend forever. I saw him hovering between falling toward me and retreat. I had to pull him in somehow. I had to take a risk. ‘I love you,' I said. I knew immediately I had made a mistake.

His brows furrowed for a moment, then he sat back on his haunches. ‘How old are you?' he asked.

‘Sixteen and a half.'

‘You can't love someone you don't know.'

‘But I do know you. I've known you for almost a year. I watch you in church. I see you in the dining room. I know you're unhappy and lonely and blue, and that you don't feel loved. You've gotten used to nobody understanding you, nobody being curious about you. You're just Mr Brown, the guy who fixes things, just like you're here to fix me.' He looked up at me, pain and surprise on his face. ‘You don't have to give me anything,' I said. ‘I just … wanted you to know that there's someone who … sees you.' I felt his gaze churning into me. And I cannot describe how close to him I felt. Andrew Brown, dedicated teacher and resigned husband, was in a state of acute longing and desperation, and had become inured to that condition. But all it took was one little girl who really saw him and –

Mr Brown stood up, straightened his corduroys, and sniffed.

‘You'd better go home now.' He smiled at me, a kind, sad, closed-lip smile.

‘I'm sorry,' I said.

‘Don't be, Pippa. Never be sorry for having feelings.' I walked out ahead of him and ran all the way home.

The next night, as I slid three slippery slices of turkey onto his plate and poured extra gravy over his mashed potatoes, I felt his eyes on me. I looked up, and there he was, his amber irises flecked with gold; the kindness radiated out of him. His wife came next. She looked right through me. The loose skin on her cheeks, her defeated, frowning mouth, seemed like an affront against the angelic Mr Brown. A week later, as I walked across the green at dusk after serving dinner at Oakley, I heard his voice. ‘Pippa.' I turned. He was standing a few feet away. His breath was labored, as though he had hurried to follow me.

‘Hi,' I said.

‘Would you like to take a little walk?'

We walked into the sparse wood that fringed the green. The moon had risen, and mist hovered between the young trees. I faltered, stepping on a rotten log; Mr Brown took my hand. We emerged at the Depot. He let go.

The place was deserted. Pharmacy, liquor store, ice cream parlor – they looked like strange buildings I had never seen before. I was forbidden to walk through my town after dark. We walked to the end of River Road, then along the bank of the river. The moon shed cold, blue light on the faint track worn away by fishermen and kids looking for a place to smoke after school. I had come here myself on occasion. We walked along for a few yards, then he sat down on a big rock covered, I happened to know, with obscene graffiti.

We sat side by side for a few minutes, listening to the high gurgling of the little river. Mr Brown slid his soft, warm hand over mine. I looked at him. His face was mostly in shadow, but I could see his eyes. He looked so sad. I put my palm up to his face and left it there. And then, swiftly, without warning, the unimpeachable Mr Brown kissed me. His mustache was soft. The secret tongue inside it felt so warm and new; it was like licking a little, wet animal.

*

We were busted eleven months later, in the narrow attic room that Andrew Brown used as a study and a place to meet his students. We were half-dressed (Mr Brown never allowed us to be completely naked), intertwined and sated on the couch, gazing at a spider as it glided through the air from the ceiling on its own glistening filament, when the door opened with a cursory knock, then swiftly shut. We couldn't see who had come in, but Mr Brown immediately clamped his hands to his head, remembering his appointment with Mademoiselle Martel, a frowsy teacher visiting from Toulouse. And we hadn't locked the door!
I climbed down the fire escape, ran across the green to my house, and waited.

It turned out that, though French, Mlle Martel took a dim view of statutory rape. She blew the whistle, and my beloved Mr Brown was fired. I'm sure I was, too; I never went back to find out. My parents were called, however. Suky went hysterical. I mean really out of her mind. She wouldn't stop shaking. Tears were flying out of her eyes. She kept saying, ‘How
could
you?' I leaned back on the wall and looked at her with false calm; behind my ribs, my heart was going berserk. Chester held her arms while my father popped a couple of sleeping pills into her mouth. I tried to laugh, but my throat was closing up.

I knew what was upsetting the pastor's wife. It wasn't her morals being tormented. It was jealousy, straight up. She was crazy with it. In fact, she was plain old crazy. They all were, really, my slow-moving, slow-talking brothers, with their laconic language and leaden eyes – they had all built their personalities up like bulwarks against her mania and neglect. Depressives, every last one of them. And my father – well, he had learned how to take care of himself. I had been eavesdropping on his phone conversations with Mrs Herbert Orschler for a year. The two of them met every Friday afternoon, like clockwork. Poor old Suky would have no lover now. Because I was leaving. I knew it the minute she heard the news; her face crumpled like a child who's lost her favorite teddy under the wheels of a bus. Gone forever, that little stuffed bear. I couldn't stay after that performance. I mean, I didn't need a degree in psychology to realize there was something wrong between me and my mother.

It came in handy that I was so pissed off. Not just by this one episode but by the pills, by her being so needy all the time – the whole thing. I had become like one of those men you see in the movies who wear aviator sunglasses and chew gum and never get ruffled. That's what I was trying to be: Clint Eastwood if he was a seventeen-year-old girl. I packed some clothes in a duffel
bag, took my savings from the job at Oakley, drove my mother's car to the bus station, and left it there with the keys in it. I never got to say goodbye to Mr Brown. He left Oakley, without his wife. I never heard from him again, but years later I found out he was teaching at a school in Canada. I guess I sort of ruined his life. Or maybe I didn't. Maybe I just freed him from a miserable marriage and a pathetic, colorless existence. Maybe he's happy. Maybe he's got grandkids by now.

I knew Mylert Walgreen, the heavy, wheezing kid behind the counter at the bus station. He had graduated from my high school the year before. Mylert's curiosity was definitely piqued by my sudden, solitary trip to New York City in the middle of the school week. I had rarely spoken to Mylert in school; we traveled in different circles. He was one of the kids who shuffled through the halls, head down, knees rubbing together, hoping not to be noticed, not to be teased. I never bothered kids like that; I even defended them now and then against the other bullies. My prey was of a higher order: kids who thought they were cool but weren't. Mylert put on no such airs. Now that he'd graduated, however, he had a certain swagger, an air of adult authority that rankled me.

‘Are you running away?' he asked.

‘It's not your business what I'm doing, Mylert,' I said.

‘I'm not supposed to sell tickets to unaccompanied minors,' he said.

I sighed, looking up at the ceiling, trying to gather my thoughts.

‘So are you?' he asked. ‘I won't tell anyone.'

‘No, you dipshit, I'm going to visit my aunt Trish in New York. Now give me the ticket.'

‘On a Wednesday?' I just glared at him till, looking somewhat put out, he took my money and officiously handed me the bus ticket. I was sweating. Aunt Trish. So that's where I was going. And now I had confided in Mylert Walgreen, of all people! My parents would find out within an hour. Oh, well. What was so terrible about that? I wasn't running away, I was moving away. I had no legal obligation to stay in school anymore. I was starting my life, and that was that.

As the bus pulled away, I thought of Mr Brown, his flared, delicate nostrils, the bewildered look that came into his eyes when he looked at me. I missed him so much.

*

Aunt Trish lived on Thirtieth Street and First Avenue, above the Fresh Day deli. I rang the bell marked ‘Sarkissian'. The apartment was 45. I climbed five flights of wide brown metal stairs. The walls on the way up were lined with white ceramic tiles; the floors in the hallways were tiled with tiny, grimy black and white hexagons. The smell of cigarette smoke and fried onions mingled in the air.

After what seemed like half an hour, I found apartment 45. The door was ajar, and Aunt Trish was right behind it. A small woman, she was shorter than I was, but she gave me a bear hug that nearly cracked my ribs.

Aunt Trish was a kind, energetic, helpful woman. She wore round glasses, had short, dark hair; a constellation of black moles dotted her face. Her body was square, short, hunched forward, as though she were always getting ready to break out for a touchdown. I had called her from the bus station.

‘Your father called before you did,' she said, crouching into a brown, nubbly couch with a Navajo blanket slung over the back of it. I fell into an armchair beside her, my legs spread wide. The chair had a high back and wings on either side of my head. ‘Apparently, you told the boy at the bus station you were going to see your aunt Trish.' She grinned at this, showing the wide gap between her two front teeth.

‘What … did my dad say?' I asked.

‘He told me you got into trouble.'

‘Did he say what kind of trouble?'

‘Not exactly. Something about the prep school next door to you.'

‘I fell in love with the math teacher. And we got caught. And
my mom is a pill-head.' This last piece of news didn't seem to surprise Aunt Trish; it just made her go quiet, a sad smile on her face.

‘So what's the plan, Stan?' she asked.

‘I just don't want to live at home anymore.'

‘You've only got a few more months of school left, right?'

‘I'm dropping out.'

‘You're gonna regret that.'

‘All I know is, I'm not going home.'

Trish sighed and looked down at the mahogany coffee table for a long time. On it was a large book with a black-and-white photograph of a mountain on the cover. The scene looked cold and dreary. On the back wall of the living room was a colorful painting of mountains in a desert. There were cacti in the foreground; in the background, the sandy mountains were striped with pastel colors. I wondered what it was about mountains that Trish loved so much.

‘Apparently, your mother is pretty upset,' she said.

‘Oh, really?' Trish caught the ice in my gaze.

‘Look, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay in – um – Kat's room for as long as you need to. You're my favorite niece, you know that. But there's going to be a discussion with your parents later today, and it's not going to be pretty.' Dread pulsed through me.

‘They're coming?'

‘They should be here in about two hours.' I felt trapped. Maybe the best thing was to get out while there was still time. But where would I go?

‘Who's Kat?' I asked. Aunt Trish lit up a Marlboro from a pack in her shirt pocket.

‘She's my roommate,' she said, inhaling.

‘I didn't know you lived with someone.'

‘She just moved in a couple of months ago,' said Aunt Trish. ‘So. You hungry?' I shook my head. I hadn't eaten all day, but
my stomach felt sealed. She was coming. Suky was coming. I had to hang on to this feeling of rage; I had to keep it going. If I let it collapse, if I let guilt creep in, I would end up in her arms; I would end up sucking on a baby bottle until I was twenty.

Eventually, the buzzer rang. My father's rasping voice sounded incomprehensible over the intercom. I worried about the two of them climbing all those stairs. Aunt Trish went into the hall and looked down the stairwell to be sure they found us. When they arrived, Suky looked wrung out, wan. She kept blinking really hard and smiling at Trish. Then she reached out to hug me and stopped her hands in midair. Des didn't bother taking his coat off. He sat down in Trish's wing-backed armchair and let out a long sigh. Suky and I were at either end of the couch. Trish stood leaning against the kitchen counter, a cigarette in the crook of her fingers, tilted forward, ready, as ever, for the big sprint. I couldn't believe Aunt Trish was even considering keeping me against the will of her older brother. She had always seemed so shy and easygoing to me. And in my experience, adults stuck together. But Trish was different. She rarely showed up for holidays or family gatherings. When she did, she always arrived alone and spent a lot of the time on our porch, on her own, smoking. She would call now and then, send cards and presents, but that was it.

‘It's time to come home, Pippa,' Des said quietly.

‘I'm not going home. I'm staying with Aunt Trish.'

Des looked at his sister darkly, then back at me. ‘You can't just run away from what you've done,' he said. ‘You can't do that in life.'

‘I'm not running away,' I said. ‘I'm just done, that's all.'

‘What do you mean, you're done?' he said.

‘I don't want to live … with you.' My eyes fell on Suky for a second, then away.

‘Oh, so it's all my fault,' she said. Her voice sounded shrill, taunting.

‘What's all your fault?'

‘What you did. That man has been fired. His wife is, she is … devastated.'

‘I didn't say it was your fault. Nothing is your fault, okay? I just don't want to be home anymore. I can't go back there, and that's that. You can force me to go back, but I'll leave again. I'm done, don't you get it?'

Suky's eyes were swollen and overflowing. ‘So you're not even coming home for Christmas anymore?'

‘Mom, I didn't say that. Please. I will. Of course I'll come home for Christmas, I just don't want to live at home.'

‘What did I do? What did I do to make you so secretive and unhappy?'

‘Nothing. Please, Mom. Please.'

Des growled at Suky. ‘Will you stop whipping her up? For mercy's sake.' Then, turning to me, he said, ‘Do you realize your mother was so upset she had to get an injection to calm her down?'

I looked over at her. She looked crushed; her whole body was slumped to the side of the couch, her face a mask of misery and confusion. A muscle spasm dimpled her cheek with an irregular, spastic beat. I so wanted to make her better.

‘Mommy –' I said. She brightened. A hopeful smile flickered on her face. ‘I'm sorry, I – I just can't.' And then I got up and grabbed my coat from the peg in the entryway, flung open the heavy door, and clattered down the metal steps of Trish's building, my mother's voice echoing through the stairwell – ‘Pippa come back – Pippa I promise –' I looked at her standing above me. Her stick-like body, that flame of hair: she was a lit match, burning herself right out. I don't remember what she promised. I ran away from her, down First Avenue, zigzagging thirty blocks downtown as the lights changed, all the way to Houston Street. I didn't know where I was going. I turned left and walked fast, head down, imagining her behind me, grabbing at my clothes. I passed Avenues
A, B, C, D, till I came to the East River. Then I just stood there on the side of the FDR Drive, cars whipping past behind me, and watched the boats go by, churning up water turned the color of fire by the setting sun's reflection. I was wearing a thin cotton peacoat, and the wind ripped through it. I turned up the collar, shoved my hands deep into my pockets.

‘This is where I live' – I dared think it. Intense, surprising happiness socked me in the gut. No one knew exactly where I was at that precise moment. I was just another person in this vast city. If a truck swerved from the highway and mowed me down, I would go to the city morgue, be buried with the bums. For these few seconds, I had escaped the radar of my mother, my father, even Aunt Trish. I was just myself, connected to no one. I was free.