To appease her, I flipped Emma open and read a random passage.
Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you for ever.
“I give myself joy of this?” That’s not even a translation.
I glanced at Ms. Chu, at her desk checking out books, and thought about asking for her advice on Billy. Then I remembered that her only marriage lasted three days and decided against it.
Anders shuffled back to our table with his book of Christian fiction. He dropped noisily into a chair.
“Hello, ladies. Did you miss me?”
When we ignored him, he emitted a long series of farts arranged to the tune of “My Country ’Tis of Thee.”
He’s not without talent, but we stared at him in disgust.
“Ah, that felt good,” he said, grinning lecherously at our boobs.
“Developmentally disabled,” muttered Kate. “He can’t help it.”
“Hello, Anders,” I said sternly. “My face is up here.”
“You are just so intellectual, so artsy, so … developed,” he said. “How will I ever catch up?”
Until a year or so ago, I had never realized that the whole world revolves around sex. Then one day it hit me: toothpaste commercials I had seen on friends’ TVs, the random bumping of Diane’s bed against the wall when she was in dating mode, the lyrics to every single song on the radio that wasn’t a hymn—and even some of those! Sex, sex, sex. Now I understood why Diane made me wear my red sweater whenever we went to an airport. “So I can find you if you get lost,” she had explained. I never get lost. She meant, So you won’t get abducted into the sex-slave trade. It was an anti–human trafficking sweater.
“Why didn’t you tell me that sex is such a big deal?” I asked her then. “It’s everywhere! It’s everything to everybody!”
She smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “I sort of liked your point of view,” she said.
Well, here we are, and there’s no going back. Second period at the Lab: Algebra with Coach Bobby.
I settled into my desk, opened my laptop, and sent Billy a Facebook message.
I miss you. I long for your lingering gaze, your lips, your warm touch. Do you want to visit me? PS: What kind of pajamas should I wear?
While I waited for a response, I watched Coach Bobby attack the whiteboard with a marker. His arm swept up and down, always drawing the numbers too large so that he ran out of room and had to erase the first part of the equation to fit in the rest of it. He was actually not bad looking from the back. I’m just saying.
Rule #14 in Write a Novel in Thirty Days! states, Do not indulge in superfluous characters. I totally agree; there are enough superfluous characters in the world already. However, I’m sneaking Coach Bobby into my novel because we’re short on male characters. Don’t look now, but it’s a man. On the volleyball court, Coach Bobby is in his element. “Move your feet, Thibodeau!” he yells, with his chest all puffed out and his fist in the air. When the ball lands at my feet, he screams, “That was yours, Thibodeau! THAT BALL HAD YOUR NAME ON IT!” When he sits down in the classroom, his knees hit the desk, so he has to pull the chair out and straddle it. Most of the time, he paces around the room. Even with the collar of his shirt unbuttoned, his tie strangles him. He holds a book like a ball he is about to throw.
Anders, who had maneuvered to the desk beside mine, leaned over my shoulder and said, “Billy is online. I wonder why he hasn’t replied to your message.”
“Aris,” boomed Coach Bobby. “Why don’t you tell us the order of operations for number seven?”
I jerked my head up in surprise. Anders snickered.
“I haven’t quite finished seven,” I said softly, meeting Coach Bobby’s gaze with a limpid stare.
“Well,” he said, shuffling his feet. “Well, okay, who has finished number seven?”
I checked Billy’s page for new photos even though I had them all memorized in a slideshow that ran on repeat in my head: red-cheeked Billy making a snowman with his little sister, tight-pants Billy surrounded by cheering fans as he catches a baseball, slope-shredder Billy in a new North Face jacket, high-society Billy in a coat and tie, receiving honors in history, math, English, Spanish, and science. Billy playing the cello. Billy with his arm around Aris long, long ago in Kanuga, Georgia.
Coach Bobby, with a sweat stain under each armpit, was demonstrating the order of operations for number eight now, putting me at serious risk for a nap, so I decided to break another rule in Write a Novel in Thirty Days! Rule #27: Avoid flashbacks. They are usually a sign that the writer is avoiding conflict.
FLASHBACK!!!!!
Aris Thibodeau leaned back into her seat, lifted her water bottle, and looked deeply into its clear color. She took a sip and thought about Billy and their secret, steamy clandestine meeting in the sacristy at St. Michael’s on that stormy night last July. Billy wore the scarlet acolyte robe of the chalice bearer, which made his blue eyes even more blue. With both hands, he fumbled at the top button of her robe. His breath, smelling faintly of Eucharist wine, felt warm as he brushed his lips against hers.
After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, “Drink this, all of you.”
“Here, let me help you,” Aris whispered to Billy, because he was getting nowhere fast with the button. At any moment, Father James might open the door and discover them. She had the thing off in ten seconds.
“This is my Blood of the new Covenant—”
Aris and Billy laughed nervously as the crimson robe pooled around her feet. When she unfastened the top two buttons of her blouse, he pulled her tight against him and pressed his mouth against hers. With tender skill, finesse born of longing, he moved his braces away from her lips as he flicked his tongue over hers. When his hand slid over her breast, she undid another button, allowing his fingers to slip inside her bra. His finger rested on her bare nipple, which Her bare nipple stiffened at his touch.
“Whenever you drink it—”
Tentatively, he stroked her hip with his free hand. “Yes?” he asked breathlessly. She felt beautiful and powerful.
“No,” she said, but she didn’t push him away. Again, they kissed. Again, his hand glided across her narrow hip.
“Please?” he asked, in his sweet, gruff voice. She paused, considering.
Christ has died.
“Just for a minute,” he said. Aris touched his hair and looked deeply into his eyes, smiling. He smiled back. Were those footsteps coming down the hall?
Christ is risen.
They listened, but no one came into the vestibule.
“I think I could love you,” she whispered. When he held her close, she felt his hard, hot body pulsing with desire.
“You think?” he said. He held her even tighter, pressing his muscles into her soft curves as she sighed with pleasure. She felt just like Neferneferuaten-Nefertiti, Lady of All Women, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt in 1345 BC.10
He ran his finger over the outline of her hipbone. “Pretty please?”
She shook her head, just as Queen Nefertiti would have done, because that is the secret to power.
END FLASHBACK
At the whiteboard, Coach Bobby had loosened his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He was slamming out the order of operations for another number. Most of the class was on the Internet or fast asleep, but Anders had rested his sleepy gaze on me.
At last, Billy’s reply to my message flashed across my laptop screen.
Sry I would but it’s basketball season. Pajamas?
Oh. My. God. He rejected me? He did. Slam, bam, no, thank you, ma’am. My face grew hot all the way to the tips of my ears, and my flashback
withered. I read it again, in case I had misunderstood.
“That looks like a ‘no’ to me,” said Anders, snooping again.
It’s one thing to be rejected, and quite another for this rejection to be witnessed by the one you are rejecting. If I were a violent person, I would have slapped Anders into next week. Instead, I smiled at him, evilly. Then, with a permanent marker, I wrote “God Is” across the white rubber toe of my left Converse. While he watched me nervously, I wrote “God Isn’t” across the toe of the other shoe.
Poor reader, I’ve left you at the Lab too long! I went into zombie mode after I was scorned by Billy. Really? A spend-the-night with Aristotle Thibodeau is tossed aside for mute observation of a televised spectator sport? For the rest of the day, my ego dragged on the ground behind me like one of Max’s jackets.
Penn was supposed to pick Max and me up after school—Diane had sent a message to the office that she was “indisposed.” Penn was late; he is never late unless his truck is giving him a hard time.
“Where’s your nanny?” asked Anders, who has to wait forever for his ride. He watched my feet as I walked toward him, “God Is. God Isn’t. God Is.… ” It was driving him crazy.
“He’s in jail,” I said. “For murder.”
Then I saw Penn’s green truck idling in the car line. The placard ARISTOTLE AND MAX THIBODEAU swung from his rearview mirror, so the teachers would know he wasn’t stealing us. Penn’s truck can’t idle for long without going kaput, so I grabbed Max by his backpack and ran. We almost got there in time.… The engine sputtered, made a knocking sound, and then went dead.
Penn hopped out, dug around in the backseat, and came up empty-handed. Then, while everyone in the car line watched, he leaned against the hood, rolled a cigarette, and smoked it as he considered the situation. All my friends at the Lab know that our nanny is an atheist and an anarchist; the cigarette that looked like a joint was a nice touch. Somebody’s blond mom with a recent boob job waved her fingers at him, but he must not have seen her.
“I need to borrow a pen from one of y’all,” he said.
Max still uses pencils, but I found a pen in my bag.
“Thank you kindly,” he said. He unscrewed the top of the pen, removed the spring, and handed it back to me. In five minutes, we were all back in the truck. “Fasten your seat belts,” he said as we drove out of the car line. None of the seat belts in the truck actually work, but Penn has rigged two up especially for us, using belts from one of his fat uncles. He never smokes in the car when we’re with him. Instead, he chews tobacco and spits into an empty Dr Pepper bottle that he wraps in masking tape because that’s what they made him do in the navy.
I’ve asked Diane if she could make Penn stop smoking if she married him. “What you walk down the aisle with is what you get,” she says. So it’s not like she’s never thought about it.
“Well, Lab rats,” Penn said as we cruised down the road. “What did y’all do today? Y’all break any government codes or figure out the situation in the Middle East?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Anybody write a sonnet that would break my heart?”
“Nope,” Max said.
“Well, then, your mama’s wasting her money.”
“They served us old milk again at lunch,” Max said. “I think it said 1973 on it.”
“Sounds like a government plot,” said Penn.
Max began to worry. “Why would they want to kill the children? That’s mean.” He was sitting in the middle and squirmed around in his seat belt, looking first at Penn, then at me, with a big furrow between his eyebrows.
“Chill, brother,” said Penn as he turned the truck into the Orchard. “The government ain’t killing anybody. That’s not their style. They want to control us. To do that, they have to keep us alive. It’s like marriage.”
“Life is so cruel,” said Max.
“You’ve had a hard day,” said Penn. “Open that glove compartment and see if you can find a Dum Dum in there. Get one for your sister too. If you see a blueberry one, don’t eat it. That flavor sucks. You can just leave it for me.”
While Max dug around for the screwdriver that opens the glove compartment, I tried to think of a noninvasive way to open the subject of Penn’s failed marriage. I had been able to glean a few facts from Diane, but Penn was closemouthed about his personal life. Here’s what we had on him:
• For seven years, he was married to a Japanese woman he met while in the navy and stationed in Okinawa.
• When they moved back to the US, Penn got a job building submarines. She was a housewife.
• One day Penn came home, and she said, “I lost my job.”
• Their house had been repossessed.
• Penn thought this was a clever way to put it.
“So,” I said, unwrapping my Dum Dum. “What do you think about marriage?”
“Are you asking me?” said Max.
“Of course not.” I stretched out as far as Penn’s uncle’s belt would allow me so I could lean around Max and catch Penn’s eye. “I’m asking Penn.”
“Oh, look, we’re almost home,” said Penn.
“I meant in a general way,” I said.
“Good. I thought you were going to ask me something personal. In which case, you know my response.”
“Not your bizness,” said Max. “That’s what you always say.”
“So smart,” said Penn as he pulled into our driveway. “Both of you. Makes me proud.”
As we were piling out of the truck, Diane came to the front door. She was still wearing her cleaning overalls and red bandana, and she had a big, satisfied grin on her face, which I took as a bad sign.
“Everybody have a good day?” she asked. From the beatific shine in her eyes, one might assume that she was high from the cleaning fluids. It’s true—from the porch I could smell the ammonia—but her joy came from the heart. Diane loves to clean. She doesn’t do it often, but when she does, it’s a spiritual experience, and she takes it too far. In a standardized test analogy, it would look like this:
1. cleaning : Diane :: faith : ________
A. life
B. prayer
C. snake handling
D. train
The answer, of course, is C.
“Please wipe your feet on the mat before you go inside,” she said cheerfully. The aria death march was still playing.
“What’s that smell?” asked Max, wrinkling his nose.
Diane explained the process of simplifying to Max, who was too young to remember our last purge. I’d seen it all before. What begins with a few strokes of the broom ends up in a purification ritual that would shock Dr. Victoria Dhang. Diane actually belongs to an online Simple Living forum, where people count their possessions, bragging about who owns fewer spoons.
“Penn,” I said in my calm-but-determined intervention voice. “Diane has been on a cleaning binge. We need your help.”
He shook his head. “Y’all are on your own with this one. Watch closely as I demonstrate one of my best moves—the skedaddle.” Then he was gone.
“Did you get rid of my stuff?” called Max as he sprinted toward his room. “My Legos? My Dum Dum wrapper collection?” From his room, he cried, “Mom! You did!”
“I kept your platypus!” she yelled. “And a lot of the Legos.”
I allowed Max, dear child, the luxury of anger. The yowls of rage coming from his clean room were oddly comforting to me, driving me deeper into the requisite emotional freeze of Family Fixer. I can do postapocalypse. But then I opened a cabinet to find the beans—the beans!—arranged by type in a perfect pyramid. This was worse than I thought.
Before entering my room to assess my personal damage, I took a deep numbing breath of ammonia, bleach, and Murphy’s Oil Soap. The effect was brief but intense. Blood rushed to my head; my muscles relaxed. Hello, amyl nitrite! For a moment, I felt the clarity of God.
When I opened my eyes, I found a room decorated in Early Orphan: white curtai
ns, white sheets, white bedspread. Diane hadn’t had time to paint my purple walls (thank you, Jesus and Buddha), but she had replaced the Garden of Earthly Delights poster with a print of Van Gogh’s stark bedroom. “Simple,” Diane would call it. Yes, his bed was made.
My bulletin board had been cleared, and a blank to-do list was tacked to the center. On my desk, I found five sharpened pencils, three pens (two black and one blue), and one highlighter. Piles of my sketches and stories, dating back to preschool, had been culled. What Diane deemed worthy of posterity was put in a white scrapbook with my name printed on the cover in painfully neat letters.
Frantically, I searched for my books. Normally, I keep my favorites (Raising a Happy Child in an Unhappy World, Anne Frank’s diary, Write a Novel in Thirty Days!) within easy reach in my bed. When I’m not reading them, they make comforting lumps under the covers around me. Finally, I found them on a dust-free shelf, squeezed between new bookends.
Something was missing in my room—something big—but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
The dolls had taken a hard hit. A bustling metropolis of half-naked Barbies with one or two breeder males was reduced to a row of six well-groomed females with one Ken in an ill-fitting tuxedo. The American Girl dolls were arranged on a shelf wearing the clothes from their countries of origin. Kit Kittredge, an American doll from Grandma’s era, the Great Depression, was wearing the funeral dress Grandma had sewn, with a black taffeta bow that matched the one I wore to Joe’s funeral.
Through the wall, Max continued to yell. “A year’s worth of Dum Dum wrappers! Gone, just like that! Poof.” When Diane knocked lightly on my door, I didn’t answer. She was beginning to perceive that there were consequences to her behavior, and Max and I needed to drive this lesson home.
Diane kept knocking, lightly but firmly. “Aris? Honey? Please open the door.”
The Devereux clan had moved out, taking their broken car and their house with them. I sat in the corner where the dollhouse used to stand and sucked in all the loneliness of the place.
How to Write a Novel Page 6
