Azalea, Unschooled

by Liza Kleinman

  I remembered this well. Zenith was exaggerating, but not by much.

  “It was not every meal,” Mom pointed out, switching lanes. “It was two out of the three, and if we’d stuck with it, we all would’ve lived to be a hundred and seven.”

  “Not worth it,” said Zenith.

  “Definitely not,” I agreed.

  We rode in silence for a while until Zenith spoke again.

  “So kids who unschool don’t have to do anything all day? Like, they could just lie in the middle of the floor all day if they wanted to?”

  “Is that what you would do, Zenith?” Mom glanced over at her.

  “Maybe. Probably not.”

  “I would,” I said, partly to punish Mom for not telling us in advance about Nola’s uncle, and partly because maybe it was true. “I’d just lie there and look at the ceiling and think about stuff.”

  “Maybe you would for a while,” Mom suggested, “but I think that sooner or later you would think of something better to do.”

  “Anyway,” Zenith said, “it doesn’t matter. We’re homeschoolers. If Azalea and I tried to lie on the floor all day, you’d be standing over us, waving your activity log and your list of goals. You’d drop kale on our heads until we got up.”

  “Actually,” Mom said, “I was thinking we might give it a try.”

  “Dropping kale on our heads?” I asked. I tried to picture the wrinkly green leaves, dropping like rain.

  “Unschooling.”

  At first, I thought I must have misheard.

  “You want us to try unschooling? The thing where there’s no teacher, no plans, nothing?”

  Mom slowed to read a street sign, and swung the car into a U-turn.

  “I think it could be a very valuable step. You girls are both smart, curious, capable people. Maybe it’s time I stopped imposing my ideas of what you should know and do.”

  Zenith turned to face the backseat, and we exchanged a look. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was—that it would be great to decide, all by ourselves, what to do all day. It would also be a little scary. We were used to those lists of goals and activities. Like oatmeal and kale, they were good for us.

  “Don’t think you would be completely on your own,” Mom said. She stopped for a moment to consult her directions before making a right turn. “I’ll still be here to help you if you want it. But you’ll be in charge of your journey, not me.”

  She noticed a stop sign and slammed on the brakes. Everyone jerked forward, and Zenith said, “That’s probably a good thing.”

  Mom ignored that and guided the car to a stop in front of our building. I hadn’t even realized we were back on our street.

  Our apartment was in a narrow, three-story house, just like all the others on the block. It was close to the bay, and I could smell salt water when we got out of the car. Though it was the end of April, the air felt damp and chilly. The trees were still mostly bare. In Connecticut, everything had been green already.

  Mom dug through her pocketbook for her key and let us into the apartment.

  We lived on the first floor of the house. I had hoped there would be kids on the other two floors, but there weren’t. On the second floor there was a young man and woman who walked their cat outside on a leash. They would have been perfect customers for my parents’ pet boutique. On the third floor lived two older women who went everywhere on bicycles.

  Zenith and I had bicycles, too, but I hadn’t used mine yet. I pretended to myself that it was because I was too busy, but really it was because I was afraid to ride around in a strange city.

  Zenith was not. She had already gone by herself for long rides, not even asking me if I wanted to come. Sometimes she stayed out so long that I knew she had gotten lost, though she would never admit it. Mom and Dad didn’t mind, as long as she was back before dark. Mom said that she trusted us to know our boundaries and make good decisions.

  “So what do you girls think?” Mom asked, pulling off her jacket. “Do you want to give unschooling a try?”

  “I think it would be great,” I told her. “I can unschool with Gabby. She knows all about how to do it right.”

  “There’s no right or wrong,” Mom reminded me. “That’s part of what makes it so different.”

  She turned toward Zenith, who was preparing to vanish into the bedroom that we shared.

  “What about you?”

  Zenith paused, halfway through the door.

  “I guess so,” she said. “I’m willing to try it.” Then she was gone.

  Mom looked relieved. “Then it’s settled,” she told me. “We’ll try it and see how it goes.”

  I walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table. My father was already there, a map spread out in front of him. He did not look up.

  “Did you hear the news?” I asked. I never got to be the one with a breaking story. Usually Zenith whipped in ahead of me.

  “What news?”

  “We’re not homeschooling anymore.”

  He looked up. “So you and Zenith have decided to give unschooling a try?”

  I slumped down in an exaggerated show of disappointment. “You knew about this?”

  “Your mother and I do talk sometimes, you know,” Dad said.

  I sighed. There was no point trying to surprise anyone in this house. I changed the subject.

  “How is the bus business going?”

  “Ask me in a few weeks,” he said.

  Dad planned to start the tours sometime in May, when spring would arrive in full force, along with out-of-state visitors. Before we’d left Connecticut, he had explained to us that lots of people came to visit Portland when the weather got warm. They wanted to get away from the hot places where they lived, and feel the cool ocean breezes in Maine. They would pay good money to be driven around the city and shown the sights.

  By someone who knows what the sights are, Zenith had added pointedly.

  Now, Dad slid his chair back from the table.

  “How would you like to come along tomorrow for a test ride?” he asked.

  “You mean it?” I asked.

  None of us had seen the bus yet except for Dad. It was kept in a garage at the outskirts of the city. Two months before we’d moved here, Dad’s friend had called to offer him the bus. Dad had driven up to look at it. He ended up buying it and signing the papers to rent an apartment. Then he’d driven back to Connecticut and told us to start packing.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s almost spring. If I’m going to be ready for those tourists, I’d better start learning my way around the city.”

  The next morning I was dressed and ready early. Dad pointed toward Zenith’s and my bedroom door.

  “See if your sister wants to come.”

  If Zenith came along, she would just be sulky and ruin everything. Still, I knocked on the door and went in. Zenith was lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling.

  “Looks like you’re already unschooling,” I told her, which made Zenith smile a little through her scowl. “Listen, Dad is going to take the tour bus for a practice run. You want to come? We can ride in it and everything.”

  Zenith continued to study the ceiling. “It’s like taking a little sail on the Titanic before it sets out for the open seas.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  We had studied the Titanic the year before, part of a unit Mom had thought up. The Titanic was an enormous ship that had sunk after hitting an iceberg. We also studied the Hindenburg, a gigantic airship that had blown up right while it was landing. Zenith said that in Mom’s mind, the unit was called “Great Disasters and How They Could Have Been Avoided with a Little More Planning.”

  “I think you know what it means,” Zenith replied quietly. She turned onto her side to look at me. “It means that this business of his has the same chance of success as his orchard, or his breakfast buffet, or his cat pants store.”

  “You have to have a little faith in things,” I scolded.

  “I have
to have faith in things? I’m not the one who decided to abandon the orchard because of one bad year. I’m not the one whose motto is, ‘If at first you don’t succeed, move the whole family to a new city so you can try a brand-new half-baked scheme.’”

  I needed to defend Dad.

  “Giving tours is a good business. People pay lots of money.”

  “If it’s such a great business,” Zenith asked, “why did his friend unload it for cheap?”

  I shrugged. “He probably retired. Mom did say he moved to Florida.”

  Zenith resumed her study of the ceiling. “Probably. He probably took his millions and moved someplace hot and sunny to enjoy his wealth, and out of the kindness of his heart, he’s giving Dad a crack at the good life.”

  I started for the door. It was best not to deal with Zenith when she was in one of these moods. “So do you want to come or not?”

  “Not,” said Zenith, and I closed the door firmly—not a slam, exactly—behind me.

  Dad grabbed the set of bus keys off his dresser. I scooped his map of the city from the kitchen table. He had outlined the path from our house to the garage with a yellow highlighter. In red pen he had traced the route he was planning for the tour.

  “Don’t forget this,” I said.

  Dad tucked it under his arm, and we were off.

  While we drove out to the garage, I asked him about the tours.

  “How will you know what to say?” I asked. “Do you know stuff about the sights around here?”

  Dad looked thoughtfully at the road.

  “Not yet. I figure the tourists don’t know any more than I do, though. Why not just make stuff up?”

  Dad was probably kidding, but it was hard to know for sure.

  “Dad. You can’t do that.”

  “Why not? Or, why not just tell all the passengers to figure out their own questions and then answer them? Why not tell them that their own natural curiosity is more important than me imposing my version of the truth on them?”

  “Dad.”

  “In fact, why perpetuate the whole outdated, driver-run model of bus tours? Why not free ourselves of convention and let the passengers take the wheel if they want?”

  I turned to look at Dad. “You don’t want us to unschool, do you?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He had, though. That was how Dad said things.

  Then he stopped the car in front of a long, gray building and we got out. Dad tried a couple of different keys and then opened up a door to the garage. I followed him inside, past rows of trucks, buses, and vans.

  “Is that it?” I asked excitedly. I pointed to a bus that had a giant red lobster attached to the top, along with a sign that said MAINE ATTRACTIONS.

  “No,” said Dad. “That’s someone else’s tour bus. This one is ours.”

  He pointed to a smaller bus, painted red and white. It had a roof, but the windows had no glass. The open sides made me think of an old-fashioned trolley car, like from a movie I’d seen where a girl stood in one and sang about how her heart was zinging around.

  Dad held an arm out like he was a lady presenting a prize on a TV game show we used to watch. That was years ago, before he and Mom had decided to get rid of the TV.

  “There you have it. A genuine Portland, Maine, tour bus. Good for the transportation of large groups of wealthy, fact-hungry tourists.”

  I clapped my hands and jumped up and down, like I was a person who had just won the tour bus. That’s what people on the show used to do, whenever they won something. It seemed they never already owned whatever it was they had just won.

  “When can I start driving it around the city?” I asked in an excited prizewinner’s voice.

  “Not so fast, madam,” Dad said, in a smooth game-show host voice. “First there is the small matter of cleaning it up.”

  He gestured for me to follow him back out to the car, where he popped open the trunk and took out a cardboard carton. It was full of rags and spray bottles.

  “We have some work to do,” Dad said in his normal voice.

  “You didn’t say anything about cleaning!” I pouted. I was just pretending to protest, though. I loved cleaning, and I couldn’t wait to brag to Zenith that I had been the one to get the bus all ready for business.

  “But madam,” Dad said in his host voice, “that’s the most fantastic part of the prize! A trip for two to the fabulous interior of a dirty tour bus, complete with paper towels and cleaning fluid!”

  “Yaaaay!” I yelled, jumping up and down again like I couldn’t contain my delight.

  We walked back into the garage and Dad set the box down in front of the bus. He rooted through his keys again and worked the bus door open. Then he held his arm out in a gallant, ladies-first gesture.

  I climbed the steps and looked down the length of the aisle. I stopped short and felt my breath catch. I forgot all about joking around.

  “Dad,” I said. My voice shook. “You’d better come take a look at this.”

  Chapter 3

  Unschool Colors

  I heard Dad’s steps as he climbed up behind me. I didn’t turn around to face him. I couldn’t take my eyes off of what I was seeing.

  Someone had spray-painted angry words all across the side of the bus, just beneath the open space where the tourists would look out. GO HOME! LEAVE! STAY AWAY!, and some that were worse. For a second, I thought about the giant words hanging at Gabby’s house. I shook my head to clear the confusion. These words didn’t look anything like the ones Spirit had written. Spirit’s words were encouraging. These were cruel.

  Finally, I turned away. The red scrawl made my eyes hurt. I shut my lids and I saw cardboard boxes, piles of brown boxes filled with our stuff, waiting to move to a new town, a new business idea of Dad’s, a new set of museums to visit, a new group of homeschool kids we would know for a while. I could see Mom’s face, tense and resigned, and Zenith’s, bitter and a little triumphant.

  I opened my eyes and turned to Dad. He was shaking his head, his mouth drawn into line.

  “Real nice welcome,” he said. “Really, really nice.”

  “How did someone even get onto the bus?” I asked. “Aren’t you the only one with a key?”

  “As far as I know,” Dad said. “But look at the open windows. Someone could have climbed up there, or been given a boost, and slipped in.”

  I walked toward the back of the bus, half worried that I would find something else. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of, exactly, but I did know that the sick feeling in my stomach would get even sicker until I knew for sure that the writing was the worst of it.

  It was.

  “Should we call the police?” I asked, walking back toward Dad. He stood with one hand on the driver’s seat, surveying the damage.

  Dad shook his head. “There’s no point. This is a stupid prank someone pulled, probably some kids. The best thing for us to do is just clean it up.”

  He looked down at the box of paper towels and spray cleaner.

  “This isn’t going to do it,” he admitted. “We’re going to have to repaint.”

  “I don’t mind painting,” I said.

  I told myself that I shouldn’t feel so bad. Dad had said it was a stupid prank, and that was that. We would clean it up and Dad would start giving tours as planned.

  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that our time in Maine was ending rather than beginning—that the tour bus and unschooling were both about to join the list of experiments we’d tried, failed at, and left behind.

  “What would you say to a trip to the paint store?” Dad asked.

  I tried to summon the prizewinning lady of a few minutes ago.

  “Yay!” I said, but Dad had forgotten that lady; he mistook me for a child still young enough to get excited about paint.

  “That’s the spirit,” he said, and we spent the rest of the afternoon with brushes in hand, undoing the work of the vandals.

  In the car on the way home, we were quiet. My back ach
ed from the awkward angle I had held myself in, kneeling on a seat and reaching up with the brush. It felt like I’d spent half the time just moving tarps from seat to seat as I moved down my side of the bus. We didn’t want to make matters worse by dripping paint on the seats.

  “Do me a favor, Zale,” Dad said, driving.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let me be the one to tell Mom and Zenith about the bus.”

  “Okay.”

  Once again I had been robbed of delivering a big scoop, but that didn’t seem as important as it had the day before. I knew Dad wanted to say it in a way that sounded like it was no big deal. There were some lovely messages written in the bus, we could tell Mom, but we decided that it would be even more fun if we painted over them!

  When we got home, Mom and Zenith were sitting at the dinner table. Dad shot me a look, like I was going to forget and blurt out the news. Both of us went to wash our hands, and then we sat down to eat.

  “There you are!” said Mom. “How is the bus?”

  Before Dad could say anything, Mom set a bowl of broccoli in front of me and said, “Well, I had something exciting happen today. I’ve been waiting until you got back to say anything.”

  Dad and I glanced at each other; should we wait?

  Zenith hunched over her plate and ate steadily, as though none of us were there.

  “What happened?” Dad asked.

  “Well!” Mom said, leaning forward in her chair. Then she examined me more closely.

  “Azalea, what happened to your shirt?”

  I looked down. I hadn’t realized that I was flecked with paint. We’d decided that it would be best to cover the scrawl in its own shade of red. I looked guiltily at Dad, and Mom followed my eyes.

  “You, too!” she said. “Have you been painting? Or have you turned to a life of violent crime?”

  “When we got to the bus,” Dad said, “there was a little problem.”

  Mom’s face set.

  “I knew it. I knew that thing had to have problems. Why else did Jack sell it so cheap?”

  Clearly this was not a new conversation for her and Dad. It was the wrong one for right now, though.