Circles

by Marilyn Sachs

  “Great, great!” his father said. “Have a good time.”

  His father didn’t ask him where the girl lived, and didn’t say anything about a curfew.

  He arrived late at the party. A few kids, Jennifer told him, had already come and gone. Jennifer’s house had a big deck and a backyard. It was the clearest night he’d seen so far since moving to the city. He tried to point out some of the constellations to a cute girl named Wanda, but she asked him what his astrological sign was and whether or not he believed in astrology.

  “No,” he said, “no, I don’t. I think it’s silly.” He was sorry afterwards that he used the word silly. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. But she just shrugged her shoulders.

  “Neither does my best friend, Beebe,” she said. “Do you know her?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

  “Too bad she had to leave early. She and her mother had tickets to the theater.” Wanda waved to a couple of kids who had just come out on the deck. “Hey Frank, Robin, come on down here, and look at the stars with us. Anyway, she’s always yammering about how dumb astrology is, and she’s got this quote from Shakespeare. She’s always quoting Shakespeare—but I can’t remember what it is.”

  Chapter 5

  “What was that quote you had about how stupid astrology is?” Wanda asked Beebe on Monday.

  “Quote?”

  “Oh, you know, Beebe, you’re always throwing it at me. It’s from Shakespeare, and it says people are creeps because they’re creeps, not because of their astrological signs.”

  “Oh, you mean the one from Julius Caesar, the one that goes ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves that we are underlings.’ “

  “Right. That’s the one.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  Wanda smiled. “I met this really cute boy at Jennifer’s cookout Saturday. Really cute. Kind of tall with red hair—very shy. His name is Mark Driscoll. Do you know him?”

  “No.”

  “Well, he’s a new kid. Just moved into the neighborhood. Anyway, he’s a bug on the stars, but when I told him I was into astrology he reacted the same way you do. I think you’d like this guy. He’s kind of serious, like you.”

  “I’m not interested,” Beebe said.

  Wanda looked at her meaningfully and laughed a low, teasing laugh.

  “Why are you laughing at me like that?” Beebe asked.

  “Oh ... because I can guess why you’re not interested. Why you haven’t been interested in any guy for nearly a year. You can’t fool me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Beebe said stiffly.

  “I know a quote too,” Wanda said, “and it’s sort of from Lincoln. It goes, ‘You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool your old friend Wanda. Period.’ “

  “You’re crazy.” Beebe tried to laugh.

  “Listen, Sweetie.” Wanda draped an arm across Beebe’s shoulder. “I’ve been watching you at rehearsals. I mean, I’ve had my suspicions. But I’ve been watching you whenever he appears. You turn ail colors, and you drop things and stammer if the great god talks to you. Take my advice, Beebe, and f-o-r-g-e-t him. He’s all sewed up.”

  “Does it show?” Beebe asked nervously. “Does anybody else know?”

  “Probably,” Wanda said cheerfully. “You’ve got a real advanced case. But every other girl in the school has a crush on him too. Why not? He’s the cutest guy in the whole place. But Jennifer’s got him completely wrapped up. So if I were you ...”

  “Oh Wanda,” Beebe said, “he’s so great!” It was such a relief telling her best friend. Why had she kept it such a secret?

  “Yes, he is,” Wanda agreed. “But he’s taken. Now this new kid ...”

  “Did you hear him on Friday in the balcony scene?”

  “Sure—all of us had to come on Friday. But I thought Jennifer was wonderful. Didn’t you? She wants to go into acting professionally, and I think she’s already a smash.”

  “She was good,” Beebe agreed, “but I thought Dave was so ... so ...”

  “Well, he looked good, and when he can project his voice and stop mumbling, he sounds okay too.”

  Beebe thought about Dave’s lines in the balcony scene.

  “See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand:

  O! that I were a glove upon that hand,

  That I might touch that cheek.”

  She’d been whispering those lines over and over to herself all through the weekend, and daydreaming that Dave was saying them about her. She was also daydreaming about what could, what might, what never would in real life, happen to the two of them after he’d said those lines.

  Are you coming to rehearsal today?’’ Wanda asked. “This is my big scene with Juliet.”

  Wanda was Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother. She had a much larger part than Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother. If Wanda hadn’t been Beebe’s best friend, Beebe could have hated her for landing a part, without hardly trying, that was so much better than her own.

  “I’m not in the rehearsal today,” Beebe said. “But I guess I’ll come anyway.”

  “I’m sure it’s because you don’t want to miss me,” Wanda said, and proceeded to tell Beebe about this boy in her geometry class who changed his seat three times, and was now sitting behind her and whispering funny things into the back of her head. She thought he was an Aquarius, but there was also Frank Jackson in the Drama Club who was a Libra....

  Dave spoke to Beebe in the auditorium. He actually paused on his way to the stage, grinned at her, and said, “Hi, Mom.”

  She laughed nervously and then, thinking it over after he had passed, realized that what she should have said was, “Hi, Son!” Well, maybe next time if he said, “Hi, Mom,” she could say, “Hi, Son.” He’d probably like that. He might even stop and talk to her for a while.

  Mrs. Kronberger was not in the auditorium on Monday in her accustomed place, complaining, arguing, lecturing. Most of the kids horsed around on stage while they waited for her. Beebe looked up at the clock in surprise. She couldn’t remember Mrs. Kronberger ever being late. Finally, a short, puffy woman hurried into the auditorium, and spoke to them in a breathless voice.

  “Mrs. Kronberger ... must catch my breath ... office forgot to get somebody ... Mrs. Kronberger had a heart attack ... very sorry ... had to go to the hospital ... very sudden ... won’t be back for six weeks or more.”

  All movement on the stage stopped. Beebe stood up from her seat at the back of the auditorium and hurried to the front, close to the messenger who sank into a seat and caught her breath while the others looked at her in horror.

  “Our play,” Wanda was the first to cry. “What’s going to happen to our play?”

  A chorus of questions were directed towards the small, puffy woman, who held up a comforting hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m going to fill in until Mrs. Kronberger can come back. I’m Ms. Drumm. This is my first term here, and I teach computer science and P.E. I’ll be your faculty advisor until she’s better. So don’t worry about a thing.”

  She smiled at them all, turning her head to include the kids on either side and behind her.

  “Is she ... is she ... all right?” Beebe asked.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  “Mrs. Kronberger? Is she all right?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s resting very comfortably. Nowadays, they can really make them very comfortable. But, of course, these things do take time, and I think it would be a very nice gesture if you sent her a card, and let her know you’re thinking of her.”

  “I’ll get it,” Beebe offered. Even though Mrs. Kronberger had never given her a decent part in any play Beebe had tried out for, she felt a real connection to the teacher. Both of them loved Shakespeare, and next year, when she would be a senior, she had been looking forward to taking Mrs. Kronberger’s honors English class.

  “Fine. That’s settled t
hen. You can bring the card in tomorrow, and everybody can sign it.”

  “I think we should send flowers,” Dave said. “Beebe, why don’t you collect some money from everybody, and send her some flowers?”

  He had called her by her name for the first time. He had singled her out. He had trusted her above all others to buy flowers for poor, sick Mrs. Kronberger.

  “Oh, yes,” Beebe said ardently. “I’ll do it. Right away. Today.”

  He smiled at her—such a warm, friendly, trusting smile—and handed her two dollars. A little bustle of activity followed as other kids handed her money too. Suddenly she was important, and it was Dave Mitchell who had made it all happen.

  “Now then,” Ms. Drumm said, leaning back in her seat, “what play is it that you’re doing?”

  “Romeo and Juliet,” Jennifer told her.

  “Romeo and Juliet? Isn’t that a little heavy for high school kids?”

  “We always do Shakespeare here,” Rebecca Chin explained, “because Mrs. Kronberger has kind of a reputation for doing Shakespeare. Last year, we did Twelfth Night, and the year before we did Julius Caesar. But that didn’t have enough girls’ parts so some of us had to be men.”

  “But Romeo and Juliet?” Ms. Drumm persisted. “That’s kind of sad, isn’t it? And long?”

  “Mrs. Kronberger took out some of the speeches and shortened a few others,” Jennifer said, “but it is a tragedy so it’s supposed to be sad.”

  “Everybody dies, don’t they?” Ms. Drumm asked. “I think I saw it once or maybe I had to read it in school. Doesn’t everybody die?”

  Nobody said anything for a moment, and then Beebe tried. “Not everybody dies,” she said carefully. “Romeo and Juliet die, and so do Tybalt, Mercutio, and Paris. And Lady Montague dies, too, but ...”

  “That’s a lot of people,” Ms. Drumm said thoughtfully. “Does Mrs. Kronberger know that all those people die?”

  “Mrs. Kronberger picked the play,” Dave said, smiling. “It doesn’t bother us. Most of us are juniors and seniors. We know what’s going on in the real world, and it’s a lot worse than what’s happening in this play.”

  Ms. Drumm continued to appear thoughtful. Then she smiled, nodded, and said, “Well, let’s not worry about it now. What was supposed to happen today?”

  “We’re rehearsing act three, scene six,” Wanda told her. “That’s the scene with Lady Capulet—that’s me— Juliet, Romeo, the nurse, and Capulet. Mrs. Kronberger was going to cut a little more out of the nurse’s long speech and ...”

  “She was going to cut some out of your speech too,” Rebecca said. Rebecca was the nurse.

  “Why don’t we just get started, and let me hear what you’ve got so far,” Ms. Drumm suggested. “I’ll try to talk to Mrs. Kronberger in a few days, but in the meantime let’s just rehearse it the way you’ve been rehearsing it.”

  After the rehearsal, Beebe stopped at the big florist’s on Geary, and sent off a dozen red roses to Mrs. Kronberger with a small florist’s card on which she wrote, “With love from the kids in Drama.” Then she stopped at the stationery store and mulled over the get-well cards. She finally ended up with a blank Sierra Club card that showed a splendid sunrise over the Pacific Ocean. Inside she wrote:

  Dear Mrs. Kronberger,

  We’re all thinking about you and hoping you’re feeling better. Get well soon. We miss you!

  Then she added a quote from Romeo and Juliet:

  Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.

  She would bring it to school the next day and have all the kids in Drama sign it. She felt uncertain about Ms. Drumm. It was fortunate that somebody was willing to act as faculty advisor until Mrs. Kronberger recovered, but she didn’t like Ms. Drumm’s obvious disapproval of Romeo and Juliet as a school play.

  “She thinks it’s too heavy for a school play,” she told her mother that night.

  “I suppose it is heavy,” said her mother, looking at the two dresses that she had just finished pressing and had hung up on the kitchen door. One was a dark blue dress with white piping around the collar, sleeves, and belt. The other was a green floral Laura Ashley dress that she hardly ever wore.

  “I like the green better,” Beebe said, “but you never wear it. Anyway, I don’t think Ms. Drumm knows anything about Shakespeare. It doesn’t matter if Romeo and Juliet is tragic. What matters is that it’s so beautiful.”

  “Most people don’t understand Shakespeare,” her mother agreed, holding the green dress in front of her and moving out to stand in front of the long mirror in the hall. “Is this too long?”

  “No, it isn’t too long,” Beebe told her. “Especially if you wear it with boots. You never wear boots.”

  “They’re too warm to wear a whole day,” said her mother, frowning at herself in the mirror. “But I’m not sure I like the way I look in this. It’s kind of young.”

  “You’re not so old,” Beebe said kindly. “Anyway, I bought a get-well card for Mrs. Kronberger, and I put that line of Romeo’s in it from act two: ‘Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast.’ And I said we missed her and hoped she would get well soon.”

  Now Beebe’s mother had taken down the blue dress, and was holding that one up in front of the mirror. “I think I look better in this one.”

  Beebe shrugged. “It’s kind of dull, but ...”

  “Well, I could wear that bright red scarf, and maybe my coral beads.”

  Beebe stopped thinking about Romeo and Juliet and Mrs. Kronberger, and focused on her mother. “Why are you making such a fuss?” she asked. “You generally don’t anguish so much over what you’re going to wear to work.”

  “This isn’t for work,” said her mother, and looked embarrassed. “This is for next Saturday when I ... when I go out with Jim.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Beebe said. “You’re taking him to see Measure for Measure. “

  She and her mother had already seen the play on Saturday night, but they often saw the same Shakespeare play over again.

  Beebe’s mother shook her head, and turned to look at Beebe. “I wish they were doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Taming of the Shrew. Measure for Measure is complicated.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Beebe said.

  “I don’t mean complicated for people like you and me.”

  “It’s a wonderful play,” Beebe said. She loved plays where a beautiful and clever young woman is the heroine. “Isabella has such great lines like, ‘O, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant.’ “

  How wonderful it would be to play Isabella, pleading with the wicked Angelo (Dave Mitchell), who was trying to seduce her. But she guessed that play would be considered too sexy for a high school production.

  “I mean,” said her mother, “it’s a complicated play for a person who’s never seen Shakespeare before. But that’s the only one that’s playing next weekend.”

  “You mean this guy has actually never seen a Shakespeare play?” Beebe said disapprovingly.

  Her mother nodded and laughed. “It is incredible, isn’t it? But he thinks it’s just as incredible that I’ve never gone to a football game.”

  “I’ve never gone to a football game either,” Beebe said stubbornly, “and I don’t think I ever will.”

  Her mother unplugged the iron, hung the dress up again on the door, and said, “That’s what’s so strange. I never thought I’d ever go to one either, but you know it was kind of fun.”

  Beebe snorted.

  “No, really, it was exciting and colorful, and it had a kind of medieval quality to it. I bet the tournaments were like that with the knights bashing each other around and the colorful banners hanging everywhere.”

  “I can’t believe this, Mom.”

  “I had a good time, Beebe,” her mother said. “And Jim—well, he was really a lot of fun. He’s got such a boyish sense of humor, and he entered into the whole thing, cheering and jumping up and down and giving me w
hat he called ‘high fives’ every time his team did something good. Do you know what a high five is, Beebe? It’s—”

  “Of course I know what a high five is,” Beebe said loftily. “All the jocks around school are always giving each other high fives.”

  Her mother said carefully, “Sometimes I think we’re just a little bit too serious, Beebe. Sometimes I think maybe we don’t know how to have a good time.”

  “I know how to have a good time,” Beebe said, hurt. “You never thought we were too serious before.”

  “I think I’ll wear the blue dress,” her mother said, quickly changing the subject.

  There were other questions Beebe wanted to ask her mother. She wanted to know what they had talked about and if he had ... if he had kissed her, and, if he had, had she liked it? She followed her mother as she carried the dresses back to the closet in her bedroom. She wasn’t used to being left out of her mother’s life.

  “What’s his name?” she finally said. That wasn’t the question she wanted to ask.

  “Oh, Jim—-Jim Driscoll.”

  “That sounds kind of familiar.”

  “He owns a hardware store out on Anza. It’s called Capital Hardware. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into it, but it’s not too far away. Actually, I need some shower-curtain rings, so maybe I’ll just drop in one day after work. He stays open late on Wednesdays and ...”

  Her mother was chattering away, not telling her what she wanted to know. But she seemed pleased that Beebe had shown a little interest. “He’s had that store for years and he loves the work. He’s very mechanical. Did I tell you he has a son about your age who also goes to Washington?”

  “Yes, you told me.”

  “Actually, his son has just come to stay with him. He lived with his mother until now. Jim’s a little concerned about his son because he’s also kind of serious.”

  “What do you mean ‘also’?”

  “Now Beebe, don’t make a fuss over nothing. You know you’re serious. I’m serious too. There’s nothing wrong with being serious. Intelligent people often are. I wasn’t criticizing you.”