The Nix

by Nathan Hill

  At some point in the night—this is the truth—they found Faye in the basement.

  In some dead hour of the morning, they heard a scream. They found her downstairs. She was shaking and shivering, her head rattling on the concrete floor. Her parents didn’t know how she got there. She couldn’t talk, couldn’t see, her eyes rolled blindly into her head. At the hospital she eventually calmed down, and the doctors said she had a nervous fever, a nervous disposition, a case of hysteria, which is to say they had no diagnosis at all. Rest in bed, they said. Drink milk. Don’t get too excited.

  Faye didn’t remember a thing, but she knew what happened. She knew absolutely what happened. She had insulted the ghost, and the ghost had come for her. The ghost had followed her father all the way from the old country, and now it was haunting her. This was the moment that would forever divide her childhood, which would set her on a path that made everything that came after—the seizures, the disaster of Chicago, her failure at motherhood and marriage—feel inescapable.

  Every life has a moment like this, a trauma that breaks you into brand-new pieces. This was hers.

  4

  THE PINKEST CLASSROOM in Faye’s high school. The most ruffled and doilied. The cleanest, brightest. The most elaborate, with ovens and sewing stations, refrigerators, banks of saucepans and stockpots. By far the most aromatic, that warm chocolately air spilling into the hallway during their two-week unit on cake-making. The home economics classroom—electric, full of light, cleaning products bright and chemical, sharp knives, soup cans, blazing silver-white skillets made of aluminum, modern appliances of the atomic age. Not once has Faye seen a boy here, not even poking his head in for cupcakes or waffles. The boys stay away, their reasons cruel: “I’d never eat something you made!” they tell the girls, making choking sounds and grabbing their necks and wheezing and dying to howls of laughter. But really the boys are nervous about the posters.

  Word has reached them about the posters.

  Tacked onto the pink walls, posters of women looking lonely and ashamed, advertising products whose existence the boys deny—douches, pads, absorbent powders and carbolic sprays. Faye sits in her cushioned seat, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, reading them in quiet disgust.

  Unfortunately, the trickiest deodorant problem a girl has isn’t under her pretty little arms, says a poster for a can of something called Pristeen. The odor problem that men don’t have, says one for Bidette Towelettes. A woman sitting alone in her bedroom, headline above her in bold black letters: There’s something every husband expects from his wife. Or a mother talking to her daughter: Now that you’re married, I can tell you. There’s a womanly offense greater than bad breath or body odor, and the daughter—beautiful, young, face all eager and happy, as if they were talking about movies or memories and not antiseptic germicides—says, It’s so much easier to hear it from you, Mom!

  What a terrible thing, this world of married women. Faye imagines that funk from the kitchen sink when the water sits too long, or how the dishrags reek of something like gasoline when they’re crumpled and wet. The secret, envenomed married life—naked, moist, unperfumed—hiding away one’s stink. Women in despair as their husbands hurry madly out the door. Why does she spend evenings alone? She keeps her home immaculate, and looks as pretty as she can, but she neglects that one essential…personal feminine hygiene. That’s an ad for Lysol brand disinfectant, and Faye’s mother has never mentioned any of this. Faye is afraid to look through her mother’s bathroom, afraid of what she’ll find. The pink-and-white bottles and boxes with such awful names, they sound like what the boys study in chemistry class: Zonite, Koromex, Sterizol, Kotex. Words that sound vaguely scientific and smart and modern, but words that don’t really exist. Faye knows. She’s looked them up. There is no dictionary definition for Koromex, nor for any of the others. Words like empty balloons, all those useless Ks and Xs and Zs.

  A poster from their Kinney beauty consultant about controlling perspiration. A poster from Cover Girl about hiding blemishes. Another showing girdles and padded bras. No wonder the boys are afraid. The girls are afraid. Deodorizes so thoroughly you know you’re the woman your husband wants you to be. Their home ec teacher is on a crusade, stamping out all manner of bacteria and uncleanliness, making the girls tidy, sweet-smelling, preventing them from becoming, as she says, “dirty cheap people.” She doesn’t call the course “home ec.” She calls it “cotillion.”

  Their teacher, Mrs. Olga Schwingle, the wife of the local pharmacist, tries to teach these small-town girls manners and etiquette. She shows them how to be proper ladies, how to take up the habits necessary to join the faraway sophisticated world. To brush their hair each night one hundred times. To brush their teeth fifty times up and down. To chew each bite at least thirty-four times. To stand up straight, don’t lean, don’t hunch, make eye contact, smile when being spoken to. When she says “cotillion” she pronounces it with a French affect: co-ti-YO.

  “We must rinse that farm off you!” Mrs. Schwingle says, even to the girls who do not live on farms. “What we need is some elegance.” And she’ll put on a record—chamber music or a waltz—and say, “You girls are so lucky to have me here.”

  She teaches them things their mothers know nothing about. What kinds of glasses to serve wine in, or scotch. The difference between a dinner fork and a salad fork. Where all these things belong in a proper place setting. Which direction the blade of the knife should face. How to sit without putting your elbows on the table. How to approach a table, how to leave one. How to gracefully accept a compliment. How to sit when a man pushes the seat in behind you. How to make a good cup of coffee. How to serve it properly. How to set out sugar cubes in adorable little pyramids on fragile-looking painted china the likes of which Faye has never seen in her own home.

  Mrs. Schwingle teaches them how to host a dinner party, how to cook for a dinner party, how to make pleasing conversation with dinner guests, how to create the sophisticated dishes she insists the wives on the East Coast are right now making, mostly involving some kind of gelatin, some kind of lettuce trim, some kind of food-within-another-food conceit. Shrimp salad in an avocado ring mold. Pineapple in lime gelatin served with cream cheese. Cabbage suspended in jellied bouillon. Peaches split and filled with blueberries. Canned pear halves covered in shredded yellow cheese. Pineapple boats filled with cocktail sauce. Olive pimento mousse. Chicken salad molded into white warheads. Tuna squares. Lemon salmon towers. Ham-wrapped cantaloupe balls.

  These are the new and fabulous dishes that ladies of culture are serving. America has fallen in love with these foods: modern, exciting, unnatural.

  Mrs. Schwingle has been to New York City. She has been to Chicago’s Gold Coast. She goes all the way to Dubuque to get her hair done, and when she isn’t buying clothes from the catalogs of East Coast retailers, she shops the boutiques of Des Moines or Joliet or Peoria. When the weather is pleasant she announces “What a wonderful day” and throws open the classroom shutters so dramatically that Faye expects to see cheerful animated birds flying in from outside. She tells them to enjoy the breeze and the scent of lilacs. “They’re in bloom, you know.” They go collect the flowers and place them around the class in small vases. “A lady’s house will always have such touches.”

  Today she begins class with her usual exhortation regarding marriage.

  “When I was in college becoming a certified professional secretary,” she says, standing powerfully erect, her hands clasped in front of her, “I decided to take classes in biology and chemistry. All my teachers wondered why I would do that. Why go to all that trouble? Why not more typing?”

  She laughs and shakes her head like someone patiently tolerating a fool.

  “I had a plan,” she says. “I knew since I was a girl that I wanted to marry someone in the medical field. I knew I needed to expand my mind so that I could attract someone in the medical field. If all I could talk about was typing and filing, who in the medical field would be interested in m
e?”

  She looks at the girls solemnly and profoundly like she is delivering some awful adult truth.

  “Nobody,” Mrs. Schwingle says. “That’s the answer. Nobody. And when I met Harold, I knew my science electives really paid off.”

  She smoothes her dress.

  “What I’m trying to say is, set big goals. You do not have to settle for marrying a farmer or plumber. You might not be able to marry someone in the medical field, like me, but someone in the accounting field is not out of the question for any of you young ladies. Or perhaps business, banking, or finance. Figure out the kind of man you want to marry, and arrange your life to make it happen.”

  She asks the girls to think about the kind of husband they want. I want a man who can take me on trips to Acapulco, they say. I want a man who can buy me a convertible. I want a man who is a boss, so I never have to worry about impressing the boss when he drops in because I’m married to him! Mrs. Schwingle teaches them to dream in these terms. You can have a life that includes cruises in the Mediterranean, she says, or you can have a life of bass fishing on the Mississippi.

  “It’s your choice, girls. But if you want a better life, you’ve got to work for it. Do you think your husband will want to talk about stenography?” The girls gravely shake their heads no.

  “Faye, this is especially important for you,” she says. “Chicago will be full of sophisticated men.”

  Faye feels the collective gaze of the class land on her, and she sinks into her chair.

  They move on to the day’s primary lesson: toilets. As in, where are the germs? (They are everywhere.) And how is it cleaned? (Thoroughly, with bleach and ammonia, on our hands and knees.) In groups of five they practice toilet-scrubbing in the bathroom. Faye waits her turn with the other girls, who stare out the classroom windows at the boys, who are currently in gym class.

  Today it’s baseball, the boys fielding grounders at shortstop—the thud of the bat, the ball skipping over the dirt as they charge and scoop it up and snap it to first base with that gratifying thwack. This is pleasing to watch. The boys—who act so aloof and nonchalant in real life, who try to be so cool in class, sitting slumped in their chairs, defiant—they perk up like puppies on the baseball field, their movements exaggerated and eager: Charge. Stop. Catch. Pivot. Throw.

  Henry is out there with them. He’s not quite quick enough for shortstop, a bit of a lumberer, but he tries nonetheless. He slaps his fist into his mitt, shouts encouraging things. The boys know the girls watch them during practice. They know, and they like it.

  Faye sits on a stool at one of the cooking stations, her elbows on the dark brown metal stovetop. Beneath her is a generation of culinary disasters—burned tomato sauces, burned pancake batters, roasted eggs and puddings, fossils now on the burners, black and carbonized. An old scorching that not even their teacher’s most penetrating potions can remedy. Faye runs her hand across the char, feels the roughness on her fingertips. She watches the boys. Watches the girls watch the boys. Watches, for example, Margaret Schwingle—the teacher’s daughter, with her fair, slightly plump face, expensive wool sweater, nylons, shiny black shoes, blond hair extravagantly curled—and the assembly that clings to Margaret, her disciples, who all wear the same silver clique bands on their fingers, who help arrange Margaret’s hairdo in the morning, fetch her Cokes and candy in the cafeteria, and spread hateful rumors about her enemies. Faye and Margaret don’t talk, not since elementary school. They’re not unfriendly; Faye has simply receded from her view. Faye has always been intimidated by Margaret and usually avoids making eye contact. She knows the Schwingles are wealthy, that their huge house sits on a bluff overlooking the river. Margaret is wearing a boy’s class ring around her neck, another on her right hand. On her left hand, a gold promise ring. (This on a girl who yawns during English-class discussions on symbolism.) Margaret’s quasi-fiancé—her steady since freshman year—is one of those impossible, intolerable boys who’s a star at everything: baseball, football, track and field. He pins his medals to his school jacket, then gives his jacket to Margaret, who walks around school clinking like a wind chime. His name is Jules, and Margaret has stripped him of all his tokens. She’s remarkably proud of him. She’s watching him right now, in fact, while he waits his turn on the baseball diamond. Meanwhile, she makes fun of the other boys, the clumsy ones, the ones who are not Jules. “Oops!” she says when a ball squirts under a glove and into the outfield. “You forgot something!” The few friends around her laugh. “It’s behind you, fella!” She’s speaking loud enough for the rest of the room to hear her but quiet enough that they’re not part of the conversation. This is a typical Margaret pose: extroverted, yet also exclusive.

  “A little faster next time, big boy!” she says when poor John Novotny—overweight, thickish ankles, a bumbling hippopotamus among the faster boys—doesn’t reach a ground ball to his right. “Really. Why is he even out there?” she says. Or when it’s Pauly Mellick’s turn—little Pauly Mellick, all of maybe five feet tall and a hundred pounds—she says, “Noodles! Go, Noodles!” because of how his arms look. She preys on the fat, the skinny, the short. She preys on the weak. She’s a carnivore, Faye thinks. A fangy wolf pup.

  Then it’s Henry’s turn. All the girls are waiting, watching, Margaret is watching, they all see him: Henry smacking his glove with his fist and getting into an approximation of an infielder’s crouch. Faye suddenly feels very protective of him. She senses that the class wants to be entertained, wants to hear more of Margaret’s intoxicating cruelty, like they’re rooting for Henry to fail. Faye can do nothing but watch and hope. And when she looks at Margaret again, she finds Margaret is looking right back at her, and Faye’s stomach does a loop, she blushes, her eyes grow wide, she feels somehow that she’s already lost at whatever kind of showdown this is, and Margaret’s cold scrutiny makes the hierarchy very clear: Margaret can say whatever she wants right now, and Faye cannot stop her.

  So they’re all watching Henry as the coach hits the ball. It bounces across the dirt field and Henry bounds to his left to retrieve it and Faye is angry. Not at Margaret but at Henry. Angry at his imminent public failure, that he put her in this position, in this stupid rivalry with Margaret Schwingle. Angry that she feels responsible for him, accountable for his weaknesses as if they were her own. He seems to be waddling like a toddler, and Faye hates him right now. She’s attended enough weddings to know that essential line from the liturgy: And the two shall become one. Everyone seems to think this is really romantic, but Faye has always been appalled by the thought. And this moment, right now, this is why. It’s like taking all your fallibility and doubling down.

  But this is Henry’s moment. He’s running to fetch a baseball.

  And wouldn’t you know it, he does so flawlessly. Snares the ball, plants his feet, and throws directly and precisely and quickly to first base. Perfect. The archetype of ground-ball fielding technique. And the coach claps and the boys clap and Margaret says nothing at all.

  Soon it’s their turn in the toilets, and Faye sits on the tile floor feeling miserable. Though the moment passed without incident, Faye was ready for an encounter with Margaret, and her body still registers that tenseness. She’s one big exposed nerve right now, her insides still squawking. She had been so ready for a fight that it seems as if she actually had the fight. And it does not help that Margaret is here with her, in the bathroom, is sitting in the neighboring toilet stall. Faye can feel her presence almost like an oven.

  The toilet in front of her is spotless and white and shiny and smells like bleach—the work of home ec girls in here moments before. The teacher paces behind them explaining the perils of an unclean toilet: scabies, salmonella, gonorrhea, various resident microorganisms.

  “There is no such thing as a too-clean toilet,” she says. She hands them new scrubbing brushes. They crouch on the floor—some of them sit—and they wash the bowl, jostling the water, foaming the water. They scour and cleanse and rinse.

  “
Remember the handle,” Mrs. Schwingle says. “The handle might be the dirtiest of all.”

  The teacher shows them how much bleach to use, how to contort their arms to most effectively clean under the lip of the bowl. She tells the girls how to keep their inevitable future children healthy, how to stop colds from spreading by keeping a clean bathroom, how to prevent toilet germs from infecting the rest of the house.

  “Germs,” she says, “can be propelled into the air when the toilet is flushed. So when you flush, close the cover and step away.”

  Faye is scrubbing when, from the next stall over, Margaret speaks. “He looked cute out there,” she says.

  And Faye doesn’t know who she’s talking to, finds it unlikely that Margaret would be talking to her, so she keeps scrubbing.

  “Hello?” Margaret says, and she knocks lightly on the wall. “Anybody home?”

  “What? Yes?” Faye says.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “Um, yeah?” Then Margaret’s face appears beneath the john wall—she’s leaning over, she’s almost upside down, her huge blond curls hang comically off the top of her head.

  “I was telling you,” she says, “that he looked cute out there.”

  “Who?”

  “Henry. Duh.”

  “Oh, right, sorry.”

  “I saw you watching him. You must have thought he looked cute.”

  “Of course,” Faye says. “Yes. That’s what I was thinking.”

  Margaret looks at Faye’s necklace, on which she’s wearing Henry’s ring. His big opal-stoned class ring. She says, “Are you going to put that ring on your left hand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you two were really serious, you’d wear it on your left hand. Or he could get another ring. And then you’d have one for your neck and one for your left hand. That’s what Jules did.”

  “Yes, right.”

  “Jules and I are very serious.”