The Tutor (30 page)

She shivered again.

R
uby went to bed. She fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep, woke up. The Mystery of the Varsity Jacket was partially solved, but now there seemed to be a second anonymous caller mystery. The cases went round and round, and she got hotter and hotter. Ruby hated getting sick, hated how it messed with your mind, the real world getting less real, acting imaginary; the unreal one, the imaginary one, coming true. Her mind had to be normal right now: all she needed to know was already in there.

She had to sleep, had to get well. She tried the cave dream. Ruby the cavewoman sat in the mouth of her nice dry cave, safe from the blizzard outside. But snow led directly to Jeanette. Ruby knew without looking that Jeanette was deep inside the cave, also knew that loathsome serpents were writhing all over her. They were inside her too. After that, the real world started its routine, crossing over into the imaginary one, sending down soft little sounds from the ceiling above her, like the house was coming to life.

29

R
uby opened her eyes. Morning. She felt better, maybe a little light-headed, but not hot. The strange warping of the world that sickness caused was gone too. She was seeing clearly, very clearly, in fact: she noticed for the first time in all these years that a little patch of the white ceiling just above her head didn’t quite match the rest of the whiteness. That would have to be fixed before it drove her crazy.

A fat snowflake drifted past her window, gliding mostly sideways. Then another, and a few more. Every snowflake was different; true of people too, of course, excepting twins, but the differences in snowflakes were hard to spot, whereas you could never confuse one person with another. And the better you knew people, the more different from each other they got. Did everyone believe that? Certainly not advertising guys—they had to believe that huge bunches of people were pretty much the same. Take Gap, for example, all set up to appeal to millions of girls. She, Aruba Nicole Marx Gardner, despite that one-of-a-kind name, was just one of millions, maybe billions. Ruby didn’t want to push this any farther, didn’t want to back herself into a corner where she’d have to take some sort of stand against Gap. Gap was one of the foundations of her life.
So shoot me.

She glanced at the clock. Nine thirty-five. Nine thirty-five? What was this? Nine thirty-five on a Wed., said so right there. She’d overslept, missed the bus. Missed the bus, also missed math, where come to think of it there was a test she hadn’t studied for, and health, where there was also a test she hadn’t studied for, although you never had to in health as long as you stuck to the position that smoking, drinking, and drugging were bad.

Ruby got up. A little bit weak or something, and real real hungry. She went to the bathroom, then downstairs and into the kitchen. There was Julian, having breakfast at the table, gazing at the countertop TV. He’d slipped her mind.

“Good morning, Ruby,” he said, turning to her; on the screen those stock market numbers were streaming by. “Feeling any better?”

“Yeah.” And she was; seeing clearly—his soul patch, getting just a little scraggly, maybe time for a trim. Smelling clearly too: she caught a cigarette whiff, although he wasn’t smoking and there were no butts around.

“Your mom and dad decided not to wake you,” he said. “I’m holding the fort.”

“So I don’t have to go to school?”

“Free as a little bird,” Julian said. “Can I get you some breakfast?”

“Thanks,” said Ruby, glancing at what he was having—coffee and toast with strawberry jam, spread thick. “I’ll get it.”

Ruby checked the cupboard: a brand-new unopened box of Mango Almond Crunch. Mom: on top of things, this week. She poured a big bowl—no need to add sliced-up bananas or berries, this cereal had everything—brought it to the table, sat down at her place by the window, across from Julian.

“That looks good,” he said.

“Want some?”

“Thank you, no.”

Ruby had a big spoonful, then a few more real quick she was so hungry, milk dribbling down her chin. She wiped it off on her sleeve. Julian didn’t notice; his eyes were on the screen.

“Was there health class when you were a kid?” Ruby said.

“Health class? I suppose.”

“Was it the same stuff? Smoking is bad, that kind of thing?”

He turned to her. “I didn’t actually take health class. My education was a little different, as I mentioned to your parents.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Ruby. She took another spoonful, this the most mangoey one yet. A good taste, but nothing like those huge ripe mango fests at Atlantis. “You had tutors, right?”

“Correct.”

“Is that how come you went into tutoring?”

“No.”

She waited for more explanation. Maybe he was thinking about it while he spread more jam on his toast. After a while, she said, “But you like doing it—tutoring.”

“Certainly.”

“Working with kids, et cetera? Some of my teachers don’t like kids at all, which is kind of weird.”

“Very,” said Julian, raising a piece of toast toward his lips.

“I bet I can guess something about you,” Ruby said.

“Oh?” he said, putting the toast back on the plate. She noticed it was one of those special Wedgwood plates from Gram, plates that were kept in the dining room cabinet and only came out at Christmas.

“You’re doing this while you work on being a writer.”

“What makes you say that?”

The beginning of that poem on his notepad, of course, the one about
negligent is to forsake
. But she’d had no business reading it, let alone adding to it, so instead of doing anything to remind him of that episode, she said: “You know all the words.”

“You think that makes a writer?”

“At least you’ve got something to choose from.”

He gave her a funny look, one of those looks where you could see inside to how smart he was. It made her a bit nervous, and out popped the next thing that came to mind: “And in Italian too, if you want.”

Julian picked up the toast, took a bite, savoring that strawberry jam; she could tell from the slow way his lips moved.
Sensual,
was that the word? Or was it
sensuous
? She didn’t want to ask him that kind of thing, could look it up later in the big dictionary on the—

Italian. Wait a minute. This and that collided in her mind. Kaboom. And out came a question mark: hadn’t he gotten
Where is the bargain shopping
all wrong? Wasn’t it possible that Julian’s Italian was actually a bit shaky?

“Where did you learn your Italian anyway?” Ruby said.

Julian took a sip of coffee, a delicate sip; sometimes he reminded her of a European aristocrat, the kind in movies since she’d never seen a real one. “Mostly in Cameroon,” Julian said.

“They speak Italian in Cameroon?” Ruby wasn’t clear on where Cameroon was, but knew that European languages were spoken in Africa, Nelson Mandela and the French Foreign Legion being two good examples. And the Italian spoken in Cameroon probably wouldn’t be the same as the original Roman kind spoken by the girl at the airport, so that could explain the bargain shopping problem.

“At the Italian embassy they do,” Julian said. “I had lessons with the ambassador’s children.”

Oh. “Were they from Rome?”

“Milan, I believe.”

“How’s the Italian in Milan?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Is it the authentic kind, like in Rome?”

Julian gazed up at the ceiling, maybe giving it careful thought. Then he looked at her. “Do you ever think before you speak?” he said. He took another sip of coffee.

At first, Ruby didn’t believe she’d heard right. Julian was always so nice and kind. But it had been a very simple question made up of very simple words, and her hearing today, like all her senses, was extra sharp. She’d heard right. Her face was telling her that by going red, and her dumb lower lip too, by quivering.

Julian’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Did I say that?” He put down his cup, put it down hard, coffee slopping into the saucer. “How awful. I’m so sorry, Ruby.” He put his hand to his forehead. “I’m not feeling too well myself today. Of course, I didn’t mean it at all. I think the world of you, really I do. My mind was back at that dreadful embassy, that dreadful town, Yaoundé. White man’s graveyard, as they say, where they—we—all end up snapping. Please forgive me.” He reached across the table, patted her on the arm.

“No big deal,” said Ruby. Adults did snap. Just about every adult she knew snapped at one time or another, some of them lots, like Ms. Freleng; and Mom, of course. The color of her face returned to normal; her lower lip shaped up.

“Thank you, Ruby. Erring human and forgiveness divine, as I’m sure you’ve heard.”

“I haven’t.”

“ ‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’ ”

Beautiful. So beautiful it took her breath away. “Did you make that up, Julian?”

“Pope,” said Julian. “ ‘Essay on Criticism.’ ”

Any particular pope? Ruby wondered. She’d forgiven him now—didn’t anyone who could come up with stuff like that deserve it?—but she didn’t want to risk a dumb question. Ruby went with a smarter one: “How would you say it in Italian?”

Julian smiled. “Now that’s a good one,” he said. “How about
’sbagliare è umano, il divino è perdonare’
?”

“Sounds good,” said Ruby.

“Interestingly enough, the Italians don’t say it. What they do say is
’sbagliare è umano, pefervorare è diabolico.’
”

“Meaning?”

“To err is human, to persist is devilish.”

Ruby thought that over. Julian knew so much. How many years would it take her to even get close? As for his Italian, it was obviously
perfetto
. So why did she even bother asking the next question? “What was ‘Where is the bargain shopping’ again?” To be devilish?

“Dove si può trovare i prezzi buoni?”
Julian said.

Exactly what the Italian girl had said, word for word. Just as Julian finished saying it, his eyes shifted slightly, like maybe he’d had a thought. Ruby had the feeling she’d just observed one of those trifles. That other phrase—
questo è l’inizo della fine
—had nothing to do with shopping, not in Venetian slang or anything else. So why, since he’d known the right way of saying it, had he led her astray? Was it some kind of joke? If so, she didn’t get it.

“Something on your mind, Ruby?”

“Italian,” she said, at the same time thinking, if not a joke, what? What was funny about ‘This is the beginning of the end’? Was it possible that this, the Italian Mix-Up, was in fact another case? “It sounds so beautiful.”

“So people say.”

And if it was a case, she needed to know more, a lot more. Holmes always enumerated the essential facts of a case to Watson early in the story, but you had to have them first. “What other languages do you speak, Julian?”

“French, Spanish, Portuguese, some Arabic, some Russian, a little German.”

“Mom said your family was in the oil business.”

“Correct.”

“That’s why you lived all over the place.”

“Not all over,” said Julian. “But various places.”

“What was your favorite?”

“London.”

“There’s oil in London?”

Pause. “We were based there.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ruby said.

“Why is that?”

“You talk a bit like you’re English, except you don’t have an accent.”

“Have you known many English people?”

“No.”

“But you’ve seen them in the movies.”

Ruby nodded.

“You’re considered rather creative, aren’t you?” Julian sounded thoughtful as he spoke, like he was observing a trifle or two himself. He held up both hands. “Innocent question,” he said, and smiled when he said it.

Ruby had never thought much about how she was considered. “I don’t know.”

He gazed at her for a moment, smile slowly vanishing, although his lips stayed pretty much in the same position. “My mother was English, in fact.”

“And your dad?”

“American.”

“From whereabouts?”

“He was a New Englander, just like you.”

“Mom says your parents are dead.” Oops. You were supposed to say
passed on
or something like that.

“Correct.”

“Were you still a kid when they died?”

“I was of age.”

Still, Julian looked pretty young to have dead parents. She made another guess. “Did they die in an accident or something?”

“A fiery explosion,” Julian said.

“Oh my God,” said Ruby. “I’m sorry. Like a big blowup in the oil fields?”

“A big blowup,” Julian said.

“That’s so terrible. I can’t imagine living without Mom and Dad.”

“No?” Julian said.

For a second or two, she actually tried to imagine it; and caught a glimpse of a gray emptiness, like an endless cloudbank. There’d be Brandon, of course, making it a little better. “Do you have brothers and sisters?” she said.

“I was an only child.”

“What were they like, your parents?”

Julian reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette that must have been lying loose in there. “Now that you know my big secret,” he said, “do you mind if I smoke?”

Ruby didn’t know what to say. No one had ever smoked in the house before.

“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll open a window and keep all the carcinogens at bay.” He raised the nearest window about a foot—a crow was at the feeder—lit his cigarette with a match, gazing for a moment at the blue-tipped flame, then tossed the match out the window, resting his arm on the sill so the cigarette burned outside. Ruby felt the cold air right away.

“That speech you made at Oxford—” Ruby began.

“Your mom and dad mentioned that?”

“Mom did.”

“Ah.”

“Something about hiking in Africa.”

“And animal collecting—did she mention that too?”

“No.”

He smiled. “Go on.”

“Were your parents there?”

“Where?”

“At the speech.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Just that if they were, they must have been proud.”

“They were, in fact.”

“What did they say after?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Something nice, I bet.”

Julian took a big drag, let the smoke out through his nose and mouth; Ruby thought of dragons. She was about to ask who Julian looked like, his mom or his dad, when Jeanette’s face appeared on the TV. Ruby jumped up, grabbed the remote off the counter, hit volume.

“. . . less and less likely after another subzero night here in the mountains. Ski patrollers from other resorts, both in Vermont and New—”

Julian shook his head. “Awful,” he said.

Ruby didn’t like the way he said that, no hope at all in his voice. “How long can someone survive up there, say they broke their leg and fell into a crevasse?” she said.

“There are no crevasses in the Green Mountains,” Julian said. He took another drag from his cigarette. “But in my brief encounters with her, Jeanette struck me as a very capable woman. There’s every reason to hope.”

Ruby felt a little better. Julian flicked ash out into the falling snow; more flakes now, the ash disappearing in their midst. Snow seemed to bring Jeanette nearer.