The Half-True Lies of Cricket Cohen

by Catherine Lloyd Burns

  What would this jury of book-loving bears and thrill-seeking squirrels find more important? Factual truth or the ideas and the story? Couldn’t everyone involved just focus on the things that Cricket thought were important?

  “Mr. Ludgate,” she began, in her own defense. “You said the seed had to come from inside. Rocks excite me.”

  “You were doing great, Cricket. Until the part about Dr. T. And being the youngest geologist traveling with her. And the detailed description of standing in Iceland with one foot on either plate.”

  Cricket’s opinion of Mr. Ludgate plummeted. Those were the best parts of her memoir. Standing still while the very ground beneath her feet was moving, literally transforming—that was amazing. Cricket liked to imagine standing across the rift, one foot on each side. One day, the rift between the plates might get so deep, visitors would have to pick a plate to stand on. One slab or the other.

  “What I wrote is real. People have been there. Just not me,” Cricket said. “But I wish it was me. I wish I had stood there.”

  “Cricket, you could have written your memoir about your passion; that would have been absolutely appropriate. It’s that you wrote a memoir about a trip that you never went on. You made the whole thing up,” Mr. Ludgate said.

  “Cricket, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Why do you always take the twisted, convoluted, unpaved road?” Richard asked.

  Cricket bit her nail. She was going down. And so young. “So Much Promise: The Cricket Cohen Story.” Now that was a good title for a memoir.

  “It’s more scenic?” Cricket offered. She was seeing all those spinning newspapers used in black-and-white films to indicate events unfolding. When the papers stopped spinning, the headline was revealed: Cricket Cohen, Eleven-Year-Old Heroine, Rescued by Her Own Wit and Good Heart. Verdict: Innocent!

  “The purpose of memoir,” Mr. Ludgate said, “is to reveal, through stories of your own life, the larger truth about life for your readers.” He spoke very slowly so there was no chance of misunderstanding.

  “I wasn’t telling lies,” Cricket protested.

  “They are half-truths at best,” Bunny said.

  “Cricket, I admire your enthusiasm and imagination very much. You’ve been one of my most engaged, interesting students all year. So I kept your grade what it’s been the rest of the year. But I’d like you to redo the assignment. Try not to think of this as a punishment but as an opportunity.”

  Cricket stared at him in disbelief. He could call it whatever he liked. But homework over the summer was a punishment.

  “Write about a personal experience that somehow transformed your awareness. Just make sure you are the person who changes. Don’t mess with the facts. You’re an excellent writer. You don’t need to pretend to be someone you’re not. I know you can do this,” Mr. Ludgate said, looking deeply into Cricket’s eyes.

  “Wait, grades are already in?” If grades were in, why was he making her redo this? What was the motivation?

  “Yes, they are,” Mr. Ludgate said. “I gave you the grade you would have gotten if you’d followed the directions and done the work you usually do. But I’m letting you rewrite this assignment. Hand in your rewrite by Monday. I’ll be here, cleaning out the classroom and so forth. This is on the honor system. I’m trusting you.”

  “This is a big responsibility,” Richard said.

  “Don’t disappoint Mr. Ludgate,” Bunny said.

  Case closed. Court adjourned. Her parents shook hands with her teacher. Her teacher tried to hug her. The defendant, Cricket Cohen, was sentenced to rewriting her memoir following the same prompts and rules as everyone else. In other words: no made-up imagined stuff.

  She went home with the prosecutor and his wife.

  6

  ABBY’S THREAT

  Abby was waiting outside the front door of the Cohens’ apartment.

  “Your mother is hiding again,” she said.

  “From you?” Bunny asked, trying to feign amusement. But the way she manhandled the lock on the door, nearly breaking the key, spoke volumes.

  “Start at the beginning, Abby,” Richard said. Cricket put her backpack on the Cricket Backpack Peg that her mother had hung in the foyer next to the hat rack. There was a place for everything on the tight ship Bunny called home.

  “You know I am very good at my job,” Abby said. “You hired me based on my references. In my business all I have are my references and my gratuities.”

  “Yes, Abby. You had excellent references,” Bunny said, smoothing her blouse.

  “But normally you don’t lose your clients, do you?” Richard said with a smile.

  Cricket laughed.

  “Richard! You’re not helping. Neither are you, Cricket,” Bunny said. She led everyone into the living room. Abby sat on one sofa and Bunny and Richard and Cricket squished themselves onto the love seat opposite.

  “I’m needed but not wanted,” Abby said.

  “You are needed, and I want you,” Richard said, and immediately winced. “Bunny, help me.”

  “Abby, you are needed and you are wanted,” Bunny said. “My mother doesn’t know it yet, but she will.”

  “She is a very independent woman, your mother,” Abby said. “I’m not sure this is going to work out.”

  “Please, Abby. I know it hasn’t been the easiest transition … And I know that’s putting it mildly. But I am fund-raising the whole of August and planning for the gala every day before then. I don’t think I can do a single thing well if I’m worrying about my mother at the same time.”

  “My references are excellent. You know that the last family I worked for, they took very good care of me.”

  “Yes, Abby, you’re a treasure,” Bunny said.

  “If I may,” Richard said. “What about the location of Dodo right now? Is that not a concern?”

  “She’s probably in the basement,” Cricket said.

  “The basement?” Bunny asked.

  “She brings a book or the New Yorker. She doesn’t like the programs Abby watches on the TV and she doesn’t like the sound of the TV on all the time. She said it makes her feel like she’s in an institution.”

  “Cricket! That is not a nice thing to say,” Bunny said.

  It was true, however. Those were Dodo’s exact words.

  “I have impeccable references,” Abby reminded them.

  Cricket didn’t like Abby, but Abby was right. Dodo was an independent woman. This plan, someone checking up on Dodo, might not work out.

  7

  SHE’S LOSING IT

  Cricket was sent to the basement to retrieve Dodo, who was in fact sitting in the laundry room with the latest issue of Art Forum. Cricket brought Dodo to her apartment before returning home. In the Cohen kitchen, her father was trying to engage her mother in a conversation that Bunny was doing her best to prevent.

  “Bun, your mother.”

  “Richard, please,” Bunny said. “I don’t care to discuss it.”

  “She’s losing it.”

  “Richard. I assure you, my mother is not losing it. I just the other day had a lengthy conversation with her about the Matisse cutouts. You don’t know her. She’s never had patience for things that don’t interest her. And guess what? Old age doesn’t interest her. Leaving California and living in New York City doesn’t interest her. Going to the dentist doesn’t interest her. I do not interest her. That’s why she doesn’t show up for lunch with me. It’s why she doesn’t pay attention to the calendar. I love the calendar, so she thinks it is ridiculous. Fun times.” Bunny rewrote her mother’s dentist appointment very neatly on the calendar. But no one loved the calendar as much as Bunny did because Bunny was the only person in the world who felt truly free within the confines of a rigid schedule.

  “Cricket, did you find Dodo?”

  “Yes, she was reading downstairs.”

  “Good. Now let’s talk about your mother. I mean your memoir. Are you ready to start your memoir? I don’t want Mr
. Ludgate to regret his decision.”

  If the assignment were Bunny’s, she would have finished it in the elevator while bringing Dodo back upstairs. Bunny believed in running headfirst at things that needed to be done. Bunny liked to impale herself on the task at hand.

  That’s why Bunny Cohen was the best fund-raiser Cricket’s school had ever had. Aside from redoing the library, she’d started a program with the Whitney Museum, and one with the High Line park, just to name a few. But more important than just having the idea for these programs, Bunny had raised the money to pay for them. It is hard for anyone to say no to ideas that are ready to go and fully paid for. Bunny’s fund-raising and the programs she paid for with her fund-raising had made Cricket’s public school one of the most sought-after in the city.

  Bunny had been very proud to support the New York City public school system until she heard a story on the radio that got her fired up about how New York’s supposedly diverse public schools were terribly segregated by race and family income, far more than Bunny had ever realized. This meant that as fabulous as Cricket’s school in her well-to-do neighborhood was, there was another public school in a nearby poor neighborhood providing very little for the children enrolled there. If you went to public school in a poor neighborhood, chances were the school was falling apart and needed teachers and resources as basic as chairs. The report said those schools offered advanced-placement classes composed of a single worksheet and then free time the rest of the period because the teacher lacked the materials to teach. Bunny had sat in her kitchen that day shaking her head, saddened and embarrassed to find out that public education was what she called “just another form of government-sponsored oppression.” When would the world stop letting her down? She was enraged. When would separate but equal actually end?

  She quit the PTA of Cricket’s school and Richard quit his job as partner of the law firm. The Enrichment for the Public Fund was born. They decided to level the playing field and they became champions for the New York City public school system in a way that had not been done before.

  They fund-raised money and they personally put music and dance programs, partnerships with museums, green roofs, food gardens, trips to Philadelphia, and art programs in every school in every neighborhood that needed them. Their motto was “Put the Public Back in Public Education.” Their plan was to make every school great and every neighborhood desirable. If the school board wouldn’t take on segregation, Bunny and Richard would give it a try. Cricket knew the whole spiel backward and forward. They’d drilled it into her since she was seven years old. This summer their goal was to raise five million dollars in a single night. Last summer they’d raised three million.

  Bunny always said the closer she was to the money the more money she could raise. That was why they lived a lifestyle they couldn’t afford. And that was why the Cohens always rented a summer house in the Hamptons after the season had started. People who hadn’t rented their houses yet were desperate and took a lot less money. Last summer the Cohens had rented a house that was featured in a home decor magazine. It was furnished entirely in white leather. They got it for next to nothing. But they’d had a horrible summer because Bunny wouldn’t let anyone eat or drink anything inside the house—God forbid something spilled and the owner kept their deposit.

  The telephone on the wall rang and Cricket ran to answer it.

  “Cohen Family, how may I direct your call?”

  Sometimes Cricket liked to answer the phone like she was an employee. It irritated her parents.

  “Hi, Milaya, hold on,” Cricket said. “Mom, it’s Milaya.”

  “Hello,” Bunny said. “Oh no! Milaya, I’m so sorry. Is there anything we can do? Milaya, stop. You have to take care of your mother. I understand,” Bunny said, and hung up.

  “Well, crisis number two has arrived. Milaya can’t babysit the night we go to the Hamptons to find a house. Her mother is in the hospital.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter,” Cricket said. “I don’t like Milaya babysitting.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bunny said, carefully erasing Milaya from the calendar. “You love Milaya.”

  “I did before. But not now. She stays in the room with me until I’m sleeping. I hate it. I can stay by myself. It’s one night. Dodo is down the hall. I used to have sleepovers with her all the time in California.”

  Bunny appeared to consider it and then seemed too overwhelmed to consider it at all. “Cricket, please go write that memoir. Two pages. Mr. Ludgate is counting on you. You gave him your word. Don’t let him down.”

  The Cohen family was at an impasse. Dodo didn’t want Abby. Cricket didn’t want to write her memoir or learn how to surf. She didn’t want Milaya to babysit, and Milaya couldn’t come anyway. Richard wanted his wife to admit her mother was crazy. And Bunny didn’t care what anyone wanted.

  8

  ESCAPE TO THE PARK

  Cricket got her report card the next day. As promised, Mr. Ludgate had given her an excellent grade in spite of her owing him a paper. She had written a memoir about things that never happened. That was called lying. But Mr. Ludgate had given her a grade based on work she hadn’t completed. That was called decency. Her parents wanted her to behave responsibly and not let him down. The pressure of life was too much.

  What if nothing in her life ever changed? What if after she left home and began college and lived her own life, she just kept disappointing new people for the same old reasons? What if her whole entire life turned out to be an epic story of wasted promise? That was a good title for a memoir. She’d better remember that.

  The last day of school always felt like a waste of time. Cricket was relieved when it was time to head home. Except she realized the first thing Bunny would ask her would be if she’d written her memoir. As though Cricket had been goofing off all day, procrastinating, instead of being at school, where she’d been forced to waste precious time.

  Cricket hugged the stone wall along Central Park West and let her backpack scrape against the soot-covered rocks. Her mother would be furious. The wall ran the entire length of the park: from Fifty-Ninth Street all the way up to 110th Street. It was the most unassuming wall imaginable. But behind it was relief from anything that ailed you. Cricket entered through a break between Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Streets. She wasn’t ready to deal with her mother. The Japanese tree lilacs were in full bloom. Cricket loved how Central Park had more than two hundred species of flora.

  In the olden days, if you were a city person who wanted to blow off steam in a natural setting, the only public places with flowers and trees in America were cemeteries. Public parks were only a reality in Europe. Last year Cricket had done a group project about Central Park. The group got an A even though Heidi Keefe and Sam Tremay were lazy. All they’d wanted to do was get images off the Internet and put them in a PowerPoint. That wasn’t interesting enough for Cricket, so she had done all the work.

  And she’d learned so much. For instance, the location of Central Park was chosen because the land between Fifty-Ninth Street and 110th Street was rocky and swampy and not good for building on. Too bad for the Irish pig farmers and the German gardeners and the free African Americans who lived in a thriving village on the same patch of land. Cricket felt guilty loving Central Park as much as she did, considering how many people had been displaced to make room for its construction. But as her parents liked to say, fund-raising and changing the world were complicated.

  Something else Cricket had learned was that Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the designers of the park, were more than just landscapers. They were engineers, too. Olmsted designed a series of hidden roadways and bridges for vehicles and separate walking paths and tunnels for people. One of the best things about being in the park was feeling like you’d escaped into the wilderness.

  The park had been created for all people, regardless of economic status, race, or background. But public transportation didn’t exist in 1876, when the park opened. So the only people with acc
ess to it were the rich citizens of Manhattan who lived nearby or could afford a carriage ride, and so the primary purpose of the park—to be a welcoming place for all people—was not achieved.

  The creators made another well-intentioned mistake. The enormous park began to decline almost immediately. They forgot to make plans for upkeep. By the 1970s Central Park was a dismal, run-down, drug- and crime-ridden shadow of its former self.

  Now, thanks in large part to Bunny’s friend Carolyn Petty, who was the president of the Central Park Conservancy, the park thrived. Cricket had spent her whole life sharing America’s first European-style park with bird-watchers, joggers, children, families, painters and their easels, tourists with maps and cameras, people reading, dogs, and many others. But her favorite park companions were the rocks. Central Park was a geological museum.

  Umpire Rock, in the southern end of the park, was a piece of Manhattan Schist with a set of man-made steps in the middle, but Cricket never used them. She liked climbing. The view at the top was great. Hotels to the south; apartment buildings, including hers, to the west. The zoo, the carousel, and Fifth Avenue, where Veronica Morgan lived, to the east. Looking north: the ball field, Belvedere Castle, and the Sheep Meadow.

  Those were the obvious things to look at from the top of Umpire Rock. But as a geologist, Cricket examined the rocks. That was what a geologist was, a rock doctor. And over time the rocks revealed so many secrets. They told you all their stories.

  Umpire Rock had been a patient of Cricket’s for years. The solid mass she was sitting on had started its life hundreds of millions of years ago as sand and sediment covered by water. During infancy, the sand was exposed to tremendous pressure. The pressure turned the sediment into shale. In childhood, more pressure and heat turned the shale into schist.

  Umpire Rock spent its adolescence being crushed, pulverized, pressurized, and heated even more. It buckled and folded. Crystals formed underground and became what we call Manhattan Schist, the bedrock of Manhattan.