Azalea, Unschooled

by Liza Kleinman

  Chapter 8

  Unschool Board

  That evening, Dad peeled potatoes in silence while Zenith and I sliced vegetables for salad. Gabby’s mother had picked us all up after the tour was over and dropped Zenith and me back at home. The two of us had been hiding out in our room for most of the afternoon, reading, while Mom met with a client.

  I waited for Dad or Zenith to be the first to say something about the tour. I pretended to need all of my concentration to work a sliver of peel from an avocado slice.

  Mom entered the room in a burst of cheerful energy, grabbing her apron and flinging cabinets open. The session with her client must have been a success.

  “So, how did the tour go? Did everyone have fun?” she asked.

  I slid a glance over to Dad, who said nothing. I couldn’t read his face. He tossed a potato into a pan of ice water to keep it from turning brown. Zenith sculpted a tomato into perfect sections.

  “It went well,” I said. My voice sounded high and fake.

  I began work on another section of avocado. It was too ripe. I licked some of the mush from my fingers and waited for someone else to say something, but no one did. I tried to catch Zenith’s eye, but she would not be diverted from her tomato.

  “There was a traffic accident blocking things up, but other than that, it went well,” I continued.

  “Pepper?” Mom asked Dad. He nodded, and she pulled the pepper mill from the cabinet.

  A flicker of a smile played across Zenith’s face.

  “Azalea,” she said, looking down at her cutting board, “I’m thirsty. Would you grab me some switchel from the fridge? Oh, wait . . . I forgot. There’s none left, since the New England Switchel Factory has gone out of business.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Mom asked.

  “Apparently, my livelihood is,” Dad replied, setting down his peeler. “It’s all one big joke to them.”

  Now Zenith and I were quiet again. Mom waited, trying to understand what was going on.

  “We were just trying to help, Dad,” I said. “I’m sorry it got out of hand.”

  “Is this the point of all this child-led education?”

  He pronounced education in an exaggerated, ironic way, like he didn’t think it was education at all. He wasn’t even addressing us; he was talking to Mom.

  “Children mock their parents and other adults, making things up, thinking that whatever they do is adorable?”

  “Of course not,” Mom said sternly. “That’s not the point at all. What’s this all about?”

  Zenith sighed and put her knife down in front of a pile of tomato wedges.

  “Dad didn’t bother to learn anything else about the city other than the notes that came with the bus,” she said, “so we tried to help him out when he had to drive down a different street. We did help him out. But then we got a little silly, that’s all. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “We’re sorry,” I added again.

  “Didn’t bother to learn?”

  Dad’s voice had risen. I wasn’t used to hearing him yell, and I didn’t like it.

  “How would you have the slightest idea what I have and have not bothered to learn? Do you think I just got behind the wheel of that bus with no preparation whatsoever? Just because I didn’t happen to have dozens of facts at hand when a fluke accident changed my route doesn’t mean I take this job lightly. I’ll thank you not to make a joke of it in front of the people riding the bus. In case you don’t realize it, we’re depending on those people to pay our bills.”

  Say you’re sorry, I willed Zenith. Just say it. You don’t even have to mean it. Just say it.

  “I’m sorry,” Zenith muttered. She turned to Mom. “How was your session with your client?”

  Mom stood frozen a moment, her hand on the pepper mill, debating whether to answer Zenith’s question or lecture us.

  “It went very well, thank you.” Mom’s lips formed a slight smile. “The client said I was tremendously helpful.”

  “Not, apparently, a trait inherited by your children,” Dad muttered.

  We finished preparing the meal in silence.

  It was a relief to all of us that Zenith and I were spending the next afternoon at Gabby’s. When Mom dropped us off, Gabby was waiting on her front lawn. She hugged us both, then led us around to the backyard, where we sat on the steps in a patch of sunlight. Gibran and Charlie were in front of the shed, their tarp spread out and littered with wood. If they’d made any progress since the last time I’d been there, I couldn’t see it.

  “Is this the famous boat?” Zenith asked, walking right over.

  Gabby and I remained on the steps, watching.

  “It’s gonna be,” mumbled Gibran. “We hope.”

  Zenith studied the blueprint, still spread out on the tarp. It was a little crinkly where I had spilled the switchel, but otherwise it was fine. Zenith nodded at the boards.

  “So these are the sides.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “But they came out wrong.”

  Zenith knelt down for a closer look at the plan.

  “What are these sets of numbers—like here: one, eight, two?”

  “That’s how you know where to mark your wood,” Gibran said. “That’s feet, inches, eighths of an inch.” He tapped one of the boards with a pencil. “We put a nail in at each of the marks and bend a thin piece of wood around them to give us the curve of the side.”

  Zenith nodded. She wasn’t acting silly around Gibran, like I’d thought she would. She was genuinely interested in the boat. The ones who had acted silly, I realized, were Nola and Gabby and me. Mostly me.

  “Here’s the trouble,” Charlie said. He showed Zenith the piece of wood he’d asked Nola to hold up the day I’d been there. “See how it doesn’t fit flush against the sides?”

  “Looks like you measured the angles wrong,” said Zenith. She peered at the blueprint again.

  “Yeah,” Gibran agreed. “We need to redo it.”

  “Hand me your protractor,” Zenith said. “Maybe you can just recut the one angle instead of starting the whole side over.”

  Gabby and I ambled over to the tarp to watch. If Nola had been with us instead of Zenith, we probably would have resumed our annoying little sister routine. Zenith wasn’t like that, though. I knew I didn’t want to be like Nola. But I was surprised to find that I wanted, at least right now, to be like Zenith.

  “I think I found the mistake,” Zenith said.

  She was on her knees on the tarp, comparing her measurement to the number on the plan. “Take a look.”

  The boys gathered closer to see, and Gabby leaned over Zenith’s shoulder. I waited for Zenith to swat her away, the way she would do to me if I got that close, but she didn’t.

  “Here,” she said to all of us. “See how the angle is too wide? It just needs to be cut again.”

  “We’ll need the jigsaw,” Gibran said, picking up the board.

  We all followed him to the woodworking shed.

  “You guys can come in,” he called over his shoulder. When he met my eye, his mouth formed a lazy smile. “As long as you don’t plan to spill anything in here.”

  I flushed for a second, remembering the soaked blueprint, and then I smiled back.

  Zenith’s head tilted the tiniest bit; she was curious. I had told her about the time we’d made switchel, but I’d left out the part about knocking the glass over. I hoped she had seen Gibran smile at me, without hearing what he’d said about spilling. I wanted Zenith, just for a moment, to wish she could be more like me.

  At the end of June, Nola made her triumphant return from camp. She showed up at Gabby’s one afternoon when Zenith and I were over there.

  The three of us were part of the boat project now, just as naturally as if it had been the plan all along. Zenith had taken to the whole thing immediately: the blueprint, the tools, the measurements. And her enthusiasm had swept Gabby and me in, as well. We learned how to
slice the end of a board with a block plane and how to mix epoxy, a strong glue. We learned that fiberglass is a kind of cloth, not a kind of glass.

  And now Nola had come to spoil it all.

  I spotted her first. We had all been crammed inside the shed, which was wired with electricity and housed an astonishing variety of woodworking tools. I stepped out to grab some sandpaper that I’d left on the tarp, and there she was, her sunburned skin as pink as her dress.

  “Where’s Gabby?” she called to me, not bothering to say hello.

  I jerked my thumb toward the shed, and Nola’s jaw dropped.

  “She’s in there? Do the boys know?”

  I shut my eyes to try to keep her voice from piercing into my brain, but it didn’t work.

  Nola flounced past me and flung herself inside the shed.

  “What’s going on in here? Did everyone miss me?”

  “Nola!” I heard Gabby say. She sounded glad, but I thought I detected just the tiniest bit of flatness in her voice. I stayed out for another second or two, enjoying the Nola-free air, and then went back into the shed.

  “No way!” Nola was shouting, looking at the boat, which by now really looked like a boat. We were getting ready to put the seats in.

  “I can’t believe you did all this without me! I know so much about boats from camp!”

  “Dial it back, Nola,” said Charlie.

  Nola gave him a dirty look.

  “Come on,” she said to Gabby, and, by extension, to me. “Let’s go in the house. This is boring.”

  This time, it was me who ignored Nola, not the other way around. I slid on a pair of safety glasses and began sanding the edge of the board that was to be one of the seats.

  “Come on,” Nola said impatiently to Gabby. “I want to show you videos of my camp friends.”

  “Actually,” Gabby said, picking up another pair of safety glasses, “I’m kind of busy in here. Maybe we could do that later.”

  She glanced at me and I smiled.

  Nola sighed heavily and sat on a pile of boards. Of course she wouldn’t leave by herself; she needed an audience. But no one listened as she chattered away. We were hard at work, and when Gibran carefully slid a piece of wood through the power jigsaw, the fierce noise of the metal blades silenced her. I had never seen such a useful tool in all my life.

  That evening at dinner, Dad seemed to be in a good mood. He smiled at Zenith and me when we came to the table and asked us about our day.

  “It was okay,” Zenith said. “We’re working on a boat.”

  “You mean, like, a job? Will you be at sea for many months?”

  “Like, a project,” Zenith clarified. “At Gabby’s house.”

  “Aha,” said Dad.

  “I told you about the boat,” I reminded him. “You know this already.”

  Mom ladled corn chowder into bowls and passed them around while Dad sawed a loaf of bread into slices. I reached for the salad tongs and loaded my plate.

  “Nola’s back,” I announced. “Her weeks at Annoying Camp have really paid off.”

  “Here’s something funny,” Dad said, resting his spoon in his bowl, leaning the handle against the edge. I watched to see if it would slip down under his soup.

  “Tell us,” said Mom.

  “I was just on the phone with my old friend Robert.” Dad looked at Mom. “You met him once, I think, back in Philadelphia.” Mom nodded.

  “Well, get this,” Dad said. “You know what he’s doing now?” He paused for effect. “Llama farming!”

  He bounced the sides of his hands comically against the table, and his spoon slid right under the surface of the chowder and disappeared.

  I glanced at Zenith to see if she’d noticed, but she was looking down at her own bowl, stirring and not eating.

  “In Philadelphia?” asked Mom.

  “Texas,” Dad told her triumphantly. “Isn’t that something? The guy’s got a hundred acres of land and he’s raising llamas, of all things. He sells their hair. People use it to make sweaters.”

  “Why would you need a llama-hair sweater in Texas?” I asked. “Isn’t it hot there?”

  “It’s never too hot for a downy-soft, top-quality garment composed of one hundred percent genu-wine llama hair!” Dad said in his game-show voice.

  Then he got more serious.

  “It’s not just their hair that makes them valuable. People use them to guard other animals, and carry packs up mountains, and all sorts of things.”

  “Sounds like a strange enterprise to me,” Mom commented. She pushed her empty bowl aside and started on her salad.

  “Well, there must be a market for it, because apparently old Robert is cleaning up.”

  “I’m sure he is,” Mom said, forking a chunk of tomato, “what with all those llamas on his land.”

  I snorted and looked again at Zenith, who was pretending not to hear.

  “You’re a riot,” Dad said. He looked at the table for his spoon, then at the floor. Then he stood up in some confusion to go get a new one.

  Later that night, in our room, Zenith was extra sulky. She sat on her bed, her math textbook open, scratching out problems in her notebook.

  I couldn’t figure her out. Just a few hours ago, at Gabby’s house, she’d been having a great time. We’d come home and had a nice family dinner. Then, wham!, Zenith was in a foul mood.

  “That’s my pencil,” I told her.

  I was sitting on my own bed in my pajamas, watching her.

  “See those hearts on it? That’s mine. Gabby gave it to me. She has all these pencils with stuff on them.”

  Zenith threw the pencil across the room at me without even looking up. It could have hit my eye. She would have been in a lot of trouble, if that had happened. Instead it hit the wall and fell down on my bed.

  “What did you do that for?” I yelled.

  Zenith slammed her books onto the little table by her bed.

  “You just don’t get it, do you, Azalea? You’re just so happy with your little projects and your new best friend and your perfect life, you don’t even see what’s right in front of your face.”

  I felt cold all of a sudden. I’d thought I was pretty good at seeing what was in front of my face.

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “Llamas.” Zenith spit the word out with a mix of loathing and triumph.

  “You mean, Dad’s story about the guy he knows? What has that got to do with anything?”

  Zenith glared at me.

  “Llamas, Azalea. Think about it. Do you remember, by any chance, a day in North Carolina, when we owned the breakfast place, when Dad told a funny little story about a guy he knew who owned an apple orchard in Connecticut? And do you remember a day in Connecticut when Dad told a funny little story about a guy he knew who drove a tour bus in Maine? Do you follow me?”

  “That’s stupid, Zenith. You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

  I hugged my knees to my chest. But I did remember. Now I remembered exactly.

  Maybe it didn’t mean anything this time. Maybe sometimes a story was just a story, not an ominous hint that our lives were about to change. After all, things had been going great. Or, at least, pretty well. Mom had clients; Dad had passengers.

  “Fine. Have it your way,” Zenith said.

  She switched off her light, got into bed, and faced the wall. She probably hadn’t even brushed her teeth. Good. If I was going to end up an eyeless victim of pencil attacks, she could end up toothless.

  I opened the bedroom door and went out into the hallway to say good night to Mom and Dad. I could hear them talking in the kitchen, so I headed that way. I mostly didn’t mean to sneak up and listen, but something made me stop before I went in.

  Mom was talking; I could hear from the rhythm of her voice that she was reciting a list.

  “I’m getting more clients; you’re giving tours like you planned; the girls are doing well. Can’t we just try to make this work?”

 
“Don’t you think I want to make it work? What do you think I’m out there doing every day? I’m on a razor-thin profit margin here, and if I don’t see some better numbers in July and August, I can’t see how this business is going to keep us afloat.”

  I heard Mom’s impatient sigh.

  “And you think Texas is the answer?”

  “I’m not saying it’s the answer. I’m saying it sounds like a viable option if this turns out to be a mistake.”

  Texas, then. Zenith had been right.

  My mother’s voice rose a little.

  “And I’m saying that I don’t think we should be looking at another move right now. Not to mention the fact that I imagine llamas are more difficult to raise than apples, and we didn’t do so well with the orchard, did we?”

  “That’s completely different, as I’m sure you’re well aware. Llamas, for starters, can survive a frost.”

  “How on earth do you know what llamas can survive? Since when are you an expert on llamas?”

  I gave up on saying good night and crept back to the bedroom.

  Zenith had put the light back on and was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She had opened her math textbook and notebook again. She had retrieved my pencil, also known as her assault weapon, and was working it busily on the paper.

  I got in bed and turned my face into the pillow so Zenith wouldn’t see my tears.

  I needn’t have worried. She was absorbed in her books, taking fierce enjoyment in figuring out the answers to the sort of problems that could be solved.

  Chapter 9

  Unschool Break

  A couple of days after the llama fight, the bus vandal struck again.

  The day had started out well.

  I’d been working on something for Dad. I presented it to him right after breakfast, as he was getting ready to leave for work.

  “Look,” I said, handing him a sheet of paper. “It’s for you.”

  Dad looked at the paper. Zenith pretended not to care what it was, but I saw her pause on her way to our room.

  “What’s this?” Dad asked. He read from the paper. “Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Portland. One: the first telephone system in the city was installed in 1878. One of the phones was in the office of a coal supply company. The other was in the company’s coal storage area.”