The Sharp Time

by Mary O'Connell

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Mary O’Connell

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Metin Demiralay

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to HarperCollins Publishers for permission to reprint “The Monk’s Insomnia” from The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems Collected and New by Denis Johnson, copyright © 1969, 1976, 1982, 1987, 1995 by Denis Johnson. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Connell, Mary.

  The sharp time / Mary O’Connell. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the week following her mother’s death in a freak accident, eighteen-year-old Sandanista Jones finds small measures of happiness even as she fantasizes about an act of revenge against an abusive teacher at her high school.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89929-4

  [1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Revenge—Fiction. 3. Teacher-student relationships—

  Fiction. 4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 5. Vintage clothing—Fiction.

  6. High schools—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.O2166Sh 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010044170

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  For Steve Hill, forever

  and

  Dedicated to the memory and spirit

  of Nick Givotovsky

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Monday: The Feast of the Epiphanies

  Tuesday: The Furnace of a Star

  Wednesday: Frog and Toad are Friends

  Thursday: Consider the Cakes

  Friday: Playing with the Cheetahs

  Saturday: God’s Guide to Gettin’ it On

  Sunday: This is the Day the Lord has Made

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  MONDAY

  THE FEAST OF THE EPIPHANIES

  Anybody can tell that the pretentious ass who runs the Pale Circus fancies himself an artiste of sorts: a purveyor of poplin and mohair, an architect of nostalgia. A man of his station can’t be bothered with the workaday minutiae of references and social security numbers, and so instead of a regular xeroxed job application, he gives me a Big Chief tablet and a handful of pastel-colored pencils.

  “I want to know who you are … your essence.… your, your thing …,” he says, his voice cryptic, trailing off. Mr. Mystical! His eyes are pale, green as celery; his breath is fruited with Altoids. He has the pomposity of a great beauty, which, to be fair, he most certainly is. “Tell me why you want to work here.” He strikes his hand to his heart when he says here, as if I’m a freelance cardiologist.

  I give him a smile of supplication and hug the tablet to my chest.

  He leans back in his chair and looks at me as if seeing me from some great distance, a squinting, owlish lover wondering: Who, who, who are you?

  He is seated behind the blond oak desk that holds an old-fashioned cash register, a foot tall and scrolled in bronze. I already know it will make the actual coin-clash kaching! sound when the Sale key is struck. Candy is on either side of the cash register: a mahogany box filled with delicate chocolates and a cut-glass bowl of circus peanuts, coral-colored and chewy and filling the shop with the candied dreamscape fragrance of Easter lilies and marshmallows. The Pale Circus is entirely without the usual ground-pepper-and-hair-oil scent of vintage clothing shops. Breaking up the sugary aesthetic is a postcard-sized print of Edvard Munch’s The Scream taped to the back of the cash register; above the howling figure’s open mouth there is a Magic-Markered word bubble that proclaims CREDIT CARDS NOT ACCEPTED. CASH AND CHECKS ONLY, PLEASE. The walls are painted the soft coral of the circus peanuts, so that the Pale Circus glows with the otherworldly sweetness of man-in-the-moon honeycomb.

  Mr. Pale Circus startles me by leaning forward in his chair. In an urgent tone more appropriate for alerting someone that her pants are on fire, he demands: “I want to know why! Tell me precisely why clothes are important to you!”

  This of course seems like a test, which it probably is. Probably everyone who likes to shop at the Pale Circus dreams of working here. I wish I’d gone home first to change out of my school clothes. School clothes. It makes me sound like I’m wearing a smock top and corduroys, when in fact I am wearing a vintage red swing coat over some basic black. Still, had I known what the morning held, I would have dressed more carefully.

  “Oh! Okay!” I take a deep breath that hurts my ribs. Not the entire skeletal cave, just that one spot. “Um, clothes are important to me for so many reasons. God, about a million reasons—”

  He wags his finger, cutting me off. Tragic, as I was about to go all Marcel Proust on his ass, with varied tales of the poignancy of peacoats, of the chlorinated smell of swimsuits flung over the shower rail, which is pure August, pure aquamarine. I might have told him about my mother’s winter white angora sweater, worn to fluff and gossamer, the remaining grid of yarn at the elbows so full of memories that if it could, the sweater would certainly open its mother-of-pearl button mouth and rasp: Recherché, recherché.

  He puts his fingers to his lips and reaches out for my hand. He pulls my fingers back taut and with his thick forefinger writes on my palm. I try to smile casually—all righty then!—as if this is the most standard gesture between near strangers, but after a few seconds I fall into it and live in the creep-show ecstasy of this moment. He writes along each finger, a baroque cursive with deep curlicues; he wreathes my palm with—what?—ivy leaves, I think: soft, geometric, replicating. Oh, I am paying attention, yes I am. I am Helen Keller to his Annie Sullivan. The pad of his fingertip is full and beautiful and slowing the bang bang bang bang bang of my heart.

  I close my eyes. Valentine pinks and purples and wild navy blues swirl behind my lids: constellations of paisleys and polka dots.

  The tablet that I hold across my chest with my other hand is weightless, a mere paper shield over my heart. He moves his finger down my hand. He presses his thumb to the heart of my palm. Just sixty seconds ago I was terrified to walk into the Pale Circus, terrified of forming the question “Are you hiring at the moment?” The rehearsed, quasi-British at the moment sounding completely jackassy when said aloud to another human being. And yet I had gone and done it, hadn’t I?

  The shock of my morning at school gave me the courage that allowed me to pull open the door of the Pale Circus: O brave new world.

  “Write down why you want to work here,” he says. Then he drops my hand and says “Now, shoo, you” in a schoolmarmish voice that I guess is supposed to be funny or ironic or what have you, and I think Hey, shoo you too, pal, though of course my hand feels like the softest firecracker and my heart is all agog with sudden cuckoo bird love, but I shoo, people, yes I do.

  I walk through the maze of circular racks of clothes, a fabric kaleidoscope that I have perused many times as a mere
customer, not a potential employee. At the door I pause to give a little wave, but he doesn’t wave back. He is holding up a salmon-pink coat and frowning at the frayed triangular collar until he catches his reflection in the mirror and gives himself a lovelorn gaze.

  And then I’m in the cold again.

  Because I had wanted to gather my courage before I walked in and applied for a job, I parked a half block down from the Pale Circus on the opposite side of the street, in front of a pawnshop called Second Chance? The jaunty question mark at the end of Second Chance? seems to be a thematic joke that emphasizes both the inherent corniness and questionable promise of second chances: Second Chance? You think? And of course there’s the standard pawnshop vibe, the seedy sadness of the candy-apple-red drum set in the front window, a single drumstick sitting forlornly on a high hat—some sweet little rock and roller down on his/her luck. Next door to the pawnshop is Erika’s Erotic Confections. In the display window a white chocolate bust, a milk chocolate bust and a dark chocolate bust are demurely covered in bikini tops. I have shopped at Erika’s once, intending to buy a gag gift. However, when I walked in and found Erika—six feet, whacked-off hair bleached white, tattoos and a black tank top beneath her chef’s apron—glowering at me, offering up a tart and perfunctory “May I help you?”, I looked away from the marzipan handcuffs and organic edible underwear and bought one of her artisan chocolates displayed on a silver platter in the cooler. The only other row building that is not boarded up and plastered with handbills is the liquor store on the corner—a liquor store that pains me, pains me, pains me—and then, at the end of the street of deserted blocks, is St. Joseph’s Monastery, a towering redbrick beauty that sits on a hill like the gateway to some uneasy Oz: Uh, so, welcome to the Emerald City? I guess? We hope?

  I unlock my car and grab my cigarettes from the dashboard and see that a pamphlet has been tucked beneath my windshield wiper: a holly-green brochure with three stenciled kings proclaiming Happy Feast of the Epiphany! in bloated thought bubbles floating above their staffs and camels. I think about the events of this morning and let out a bitter little snort. No fucking kidding, wise men; epiphanies galore.

  I open the brochure and learn that this feast day is a kind of post-Christmas blowout: Now, after contemplating the staggering fact that God has become a human child, we turn to look at this mystery from the opposite angle and realize that this seemingly helpless child is, in fact, the omnipotent God, the king and ruler of the universe.

  I jam the brochure into my pocket, thinking, Omnipotent? Bang-up job, pal. I take a seat on a bench in front of Second Chance? and choose a melon-colored pencil. I stick the other pencils under my thigh, the sharpened ends poking at my ass like a little bundle of arrows. Why do I want to work at the Pale Circus?

  I love the clothes at the Pale Circus! I have no interest in new clothes. New is ever so dull; new can suck it hard. New clothes symbolize the exploitation of third-world children locked in the factory, the modern-day slavery of the Mariana Islands, the workaday misery of Walmart employees. So let’s try something else, please: meet me in St. Louis with a cardinal-red Judy Garland–ish cape and fur-trimmed muff! Help me to express my inner smiley-face decal of happiness in a Marcia Brady poly-blend minidress and stacked sandals. Make me a channel of your peace, if you will, in a rainbow maxidress, a strip of fabric saved for a red-yellow-blue-green headband, and, people, show me the woven hemp espadrilles. Hire me, please!

  Thanks a trillion,

  Sandinista Jones

  PS I am available anytime Monday through Friday, as well as any weekend hours.

  I put the tablet and the pencil on the bench next to me and light a cigarette. A low-riding green Buick rolls down the street, the circular slop-slop-slop of tires cutting through slush, a snippet of buzzy AM radio filtering out: Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day.

  Understatement.

  The air has that iced mineral smell that comes right before new snow falls. I look across the street at the Pale Circus. The awning is striped, a wash of coral and cream, the letters pastel and swollen. In the window, a headless mannequin wears a purple-red taffeta ball gown—I believe the color could be called mulberry, perhaps raspberry—cut to a low V in the front and bolstered by so many crinolines it looks like she might levitate: one hand is already raised and fanning out. Good-bye! So long! The carmine-red flats on her highly arched feet give me the rainbow-confetti feeling of a happy ending. But when I look at the liquor store on the corner, that sweetness vanishes.

  The liquor store was once a health-food store, the Sunshine Co-op, where my mother bought the natural peanut butter that all children despise for its grotesque texture of ground bones. But she also bought plenty of nice things: dusty raspberries and green beans, dark chocolate pastilles, pear-peach smoothies. The earnest hippie dude who ran the store had painted a mural on the side of the building, so that all who turned left on Thirty-Eighth Street would be greeted by a somber Cesar Chavez holding out a fistful of purple grapes. Painted over his head were the words WE’RE SOWING THE SEEDS OF CHANGE, which I suppose is true of both a health-food store and a liquor store. But then the organic superstores opened up in the suburbs, and people stopped driving downtown for organic milk and hemp lip balm, and that was that for the Sunshine Co-op. Except nothing ever snaps shut so neatly, there is no spick-and-span denouement, there is forever the image of my mother weighing root vegetables, standing on tiptoe in her espadrilles, peering at the scale’s needle, then turning and giving me a brightly exaggerated smile, as if to say, Rutabagas and parsnips and daikon! Oh my!

  I think of my mother and I can’t believe this morning, this year, this life. I close my eyes and a wild paisley pattern flits along the back of my eyelids: purple, valentine-pink and navy blue figures; oblong, sperm-shaped, kidney-shaped. When I take a sharp breath in, the sore spot on my rib vibrates up to the back of my throat.

  I heave myself off the bench and make my way down Thirty-Eighth Street, practicing for my upcoming conversation with Mr. Pale Circus. I make carefree hand gestures and mouth witty asides to the arctic Kansas City air, trying to perfect my confident girl-Friday vibe. Perhaps my aggressive cheerfulness is alarming, because when I walk back into the shop with my insane grin and my head held high, swinging my hair like a prancing Connemara pony on crack, Mr. Pale Circus looks at me and blanches: his shoulders shoot up; his mouth forms a fat, appalled oval. But when I hand him his colored pencils and the Big Chief tablet, he smiles.

  “You came back.”

  His voice is authentic and unflourished: nice.

  He looks at what I’ve written and smiles. “Miss Sandinista Jones. I would have hired you for your name alone,” he says tenderly, “even if you were a serial killer or a chronic shoplifter.”

  But then he gathers himself. “Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth,” he says, doffing an imaginary top hat.

  He hands me a Pale Circus business card:

  HENRY CHARBONNEAU

  RINGMASTER AT LARGE

  He tells me to come to the Pale Circus tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. He shakes my hand. When I walk out the door, the string of silver bells trembles along the safety glass.

  And then I’m back in the world, squinting up at the monastery and touching the middle of my hand again, the soft, meaty bull’s-eye of Christ’s agony.

  Across the street, a monk walks by in his brown robe, his hood up, so that in profile he looks like the grim reaper. I wonder if he is happy, if his life is all peaches and rainbows and pretty pretty God love; I wonder if he sleeps with frankincense, gold and myrrh dancing in his head. Or does he celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany by praying all night, only ceasing when the sky finally gives up the violets of dawn?

  When he looks over at me he doesn’t smile, but he does wave. He lifts his hand and his sleeve falls to his elbow, revealing his bony wrist, his pale forearm. And it seems that this is the very moment when the snow starts, fat, soft flakes that fall slowly and silver: fairy-tale stardust
.

  * * *

  But then there is getting though the rest of day, the aimless, creeping hours: smoking and drinking a latte at Buzz Café, thinking Right now I would be in American History and then taking the longest way home, not along the gray sweep of the interstate, but through the bisected heart of the city, where I slowly drive past St. Scholastica’s—a doll of a school, all pearl-colored brick and sweet girl-saint statuary—the school where my mother wore Doc Martens and ripped fishnet stockings with her black watch skirt, where she reapplied liquid eyeliner and smoked weed in the bathroom before religion class so that the saints would tiptoe out of the oil paintings and whisper epiphanies, their candied breath at her ear, their muslin robes brushing her bare knees, her white cotton socks. I say right out loud in the cold car: “Help me Help me Help me.”

  Of course, it’s a made-up prayer, nonfancy and pathetic, because I am not a Catholic, because my mother was no longer Catholic by the time I came along, and chose not to have me baptized. My grandparents were devout, but they lived in Florida, and I saw them only twice a year when I was a child. My cultural Catholicism is specific and spotty, highlighted by delicious ghost stories whispered by my grandmother while we roasted marshmallows over a beach bonfire: “St. Lucy gouged out her eyeballs for Christ!” My mother and I attended the Zen Center and many Christian churches, her favorite being the Unitarian church with the optimistic banners hanging in the sanctuary: FEELINGS ARE NEITHER GOOD OR BAD—THEY JUST ARE! I’M REAL SPECIAL CUZ GOD DOESN’T MAKE JUNK. My mother was mildly troubled by the poor grammar and corn-dog aesthetic, but mostly she was happy that I had “the opportunity to see Jesus as a brother, not as Big Daddy.”

  As St. Scholastica’s disappears in my rearview mirror, I’m thinking of my teenage mother—plaid-uniformed, Marlboro in hand, all her requisite madcap antics—and I’m not paying attention and there’s the blare of horns and squealing brakes behind me but in the next second I’m still completely alive.