Stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read…
—Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
That was Thursday night. Friday morning David came up behind Bernadette while she was putting her books in her locker. “Pssst.”
She jumped, and scraped her head against the top shelf. “Jeez Louise, David.” She rubbed her head and eyed him sourly. He looked like a cat who’d consumed an entire aviary.
He opened his binder cover an inch. “What do you think?”
“I can’t see a thing.”
He used the locker door as a shield from prying eyes. “Now do you see it?”
The comic book’s cover showed a dark, sinister man on a horse looming over a terrified girl whose bosom was about to spill out of her skintight, laced-up bodice. One breast sported a big red “A.”
“The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Classic Comix.”
Bernadette’s eyes widened, and a favorite saying of her mother’s ran through her mind: Even the great chefs use canned soup sometimes. She clutched David’s arm. “Is this the only one you have?”
“Nope.” He radiated smugness. “They only had five titles in stock. But they checked online, and it looks like we can get at least twenty more.” Modestly he added, “I’m one of their best customers.”
Bernadette pumped the hand of this short, handsome pervert she had clearly underestimated. “I’ve got to give you credit, David,” she said. “There’s Pinehurst up there translating Beowulf from Old English, and we’re reading it in comics! And people think they’re the geniuses!”
David’s fair skin reddened. Bernadette Terrell was not known for handing out compliments. “Thanks, Bernadette. Hey, wait’ll I show Anthony. He’s gonna croak.”
He strutted down the hall. Bernadette leaned against her locker and watched him. Well, well. See, she told the pesky voice of doom in her head. We do have a chance.
Other people agreed. The whole town had Wizard fever.
The Creighton Courier ran a front-page story with the headline “Wickham Wizards Out-Class Pinehurst Panthers.” Martha Terrell bought copies for all the relatives, and Bernadette pinned one to her quote-board.
At Farmer Jack’s seafood case a sign said, FISH IS BRAIN FOOD – ASK A WICKHAM WIZARD, with an arrow pointing to the Courier clipping. Bernadette felt like royalty until she found out the deli supervisor was David’s aunt.
The Creighton public library filled its glass display case with a history of the NCS Classics Bowl. Martha gave them a freshman year photo in which Bernadette still wore glasses and bangs and could pass for twelve. Ms. K. denied influencing the librarians, though the display quoted her calling all the Wizards “remarkably passionate readers.”
Still, support rolled in from so many places, it couldn’t all be a setup. Mr. Tony’s 10-Minute Oil Change on Grand River sent them coupons for free oil changes, and Mr. Tony wasn’t related to any of them. The hospital’s audiology clinic offered them free hearing tests (“the better to hear the questions”); The Book Nook sent ten-dollar gift certificates; a local cable station asked to interview them. After we win, Mr. Malory told them; his Wizards were busy.
Maybe parents wanted to prove that tax dollars could educate kids as well as any pricey private school. Bernadette couldn’t say. Her European History teacher claimed there was nothing like a common enemy to bring people together. Of course, Mr. Carlson had been speaking of the Allied Powers. But he could have been talking about Creighton.
Meanwhile, English class meant practice and more practice.
“What does the Ancient Mariner wear around his neck?” LaShonda asked.
Bernadette pressed one of the buzzers Mr. Malory had gotten the Technology Club to build. “An albatross.”
Two desks away, Mitchell quizzed Nadine. “What god was forced to bear the heavens on his shoulders for all eternity?”
“Atlas,” Nadine said as Bernadette’s lips shaped the answer.
Across the room the other Wizards paired off with their non-Bowl classmates. Uncorrected term papers and ungraded quizzes piled up on the front desk. Under Mr. Malory’s watchful eye, murmured answers to murmured questions floated in the air, punctuated by buzzes.
“Name the trilogy—”
“Who wrote the first—”
“From what country did the—”
“What miracle did Jesus—”
“Complete this stanza—”
After-school practices meant Scored Bowls. These were mock Classic Bowls with teams of two each, with the fifth person acting as scorekeeper. Mr. Malory made flip cards in ten-point increments just like in the Bowl tapes. From the red binder that grew fatter each week came questions and more questions. Within days they all had a thorough understanding of the scoring, when it paid to guess and when it was better to pass. Mr. Malory favored the guess. “We’ll not win this by playing it safe,” he said. “Don’t miss points to preserve the opinion of Pinehurst.”
Bernadette loved how he said it—as if to be concerned with Pinehurst was way, way beneath them.
During the second week of contest preparation, Bernadette opened The Red Badge of Courage at home—she was backup to Lori on Children’s Classics—and a paper fell out of Chapter One. It was a cell phone bill, in Lori’s own name. Bernadette paused an instant to envy Lori such luxury—catch Bernadette’s mother giving her daughter a phone Martha couldn’t listen in on—before beginning to read. Two pages later she stopped and unfolded the bill again. Three calls were to a phone number she recognized.
Mr. Malory’s.
Odd. She got out the phone book and double-checked his number, but it was the same. Curiosity ate at her. Each call had lasted more than ten minutes—one had been twenty-two minutes long. What could be so urgent Lori had to call their teacher at home and talk for twenty-two minutes? Bernadette’s imagination ran through scenarios that ranged from Lori being a secret stalker to Lori only returning calls Mr. Malory had made to her (this she dismissed as absurd—Lori was not his type), to the calls being made by someone else—Mrs. Besh, perhaps.
The likeliest answer was that Lori had questions about her Bowl assignments she was embarrassed to ask in class—yet even that seemed peculiar. Bernadette could think of no way to find out, short of asking her. (She did not even consider asking Mr. Malory.) For one thing, she’d have to admit she’d read the phone bill and recognized the number. But the real reason was, she was afraid to presume. Lori always treated her pleasantly and would probably tell her whatever she wanted to know, but that didn’t mean Bernadette had a right to ask. She and Lori Besh were teammates. Not friends.
After practice one day (Nadine left so quickly, Bernadette missed her chance for a ride home), Bernadette waited in the media center for her mother to finish work and come get her. Ms. Kestenberg casually mentioned that she would soon be helping Mr. Malory with the Wizard practices.
Bernadette cocked her head at that. “Help?” she asked. “How come?”
Ms. K. was sorting through old magazines. “Evidently a close friend of his has cancer. Frank will have to be out a lot these next few weeks, and he knows I’m familiar with the books you’ll be reading, so—”
“Out a lot? Out a lot? What about—”
“Just after school. He has to be in Ann Arbor in time for visiting hours, a few times a week.”
“Oh.” That must mean the U of M hospital. There certainly was a lot going on in Ann Arbor these days. Bernadette had lived seventeen years in Creighton and hardly noticed the place, yet suddenly the college town was popping up everywhere. “What friend?”
“Gene someone.”
“Gene like a man, or Jean like a girl?”
“Gene like a man, and that’s all I know, not that it’s any of our business,” Ms. K. said firmly.
Hmmm. “That’s a lot of extra work for you, isn’t it? What with debate, too?”
From a stack of back issues of Causal Link—The Debater’s Bible, Ms. K. regarded Bernadette wi
th misty surprise. Bernadette waved a hand in front of her face.
“Aren’t you sweet to think of that! You know, Bernadette Terrell, you’re a much nicer girl than you pretend to be. But I’m on to you.” Ms. K. beamed at her fondly. “All that aggression on Saturdays during the rounds—that’s just for show, isn’t it?”
Bernice wrinkled her nose in embarrassment. No, it wasn’t.
Ms. K. laughed and bustled away toward the ladder leaning against the Reference shelf. Rungs dipped beneath her weight as she climbed. “But don’t you worry about me. Quizzing students on classics will do me more good than water aerobics. Usually what they want are the shortest books with the biggest print, or worse,” she said with a disdainful sniff, “Cliff’s Notes.”
Bernadette trailed after her with guilty steps, an image of the study guides, cassette tapes, and children’s books on her bedroom desk taunting her. She held the ladder steady while Ms. K. shuffled books on the top shelf, and when the librarian thanked her for her help she mumbled something about having to meet her mother outside, and beat a rapid retreat. Their shortcuts were perfectly legal, of course. But for a moment there she’d felt like a fraud.
The next day she stopped at Mr. Malory’s desk after class. “Ms. Kestenberg told me about your sick friend, Mr. Malory. I wanted to tell you, I’m really sorry.”
His lips tightened. “Thank you, Ms. Terrell. I hadn’t realized Ms. Kestenberg would discuss my private matters with the students.”
He was angry! “Ms. K. is a friend of mine. I don’t think she knew it was a secret.”
“It isn’t, especially. But I dislike being the object of speculation. No matter how well-meaning.”
He smiled then, but for once it failed to charm her. Bernadette stammered out an apology and fled to the cafeteria. The object of speculation! She slapped her silverware down on the tray. As if every girl who passed him in the halls didn’t speculate about being trapped in an elevator with the divine Mr. Malory. What he’d say, what she’d wear, how his kisses would taste . . .
Oh. Maybe that’s what he meant.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He is an Englishman!
For he himself has said it,
And it’s greatly to his credit,
That he is an Englishman!
—Sir W. S. Gilbert, HMS Pinafore
That week and the next, Bernadette read. When she wasn’t reading she walked around with headphones on, listening to books on tape. She stuffed towels under her door so her parents wouldn’t see her light, and read so late that her eyes felt grainy and tight in the mornings.
During this period Martha Terrell championed any Bowl-related activity. She couldn’t do enough for her daughter, even though, Bernadette thought guiltily, no one was asking her to do anything. Meals which had previously been hit-or-miss became ruthlessly nourishing. Meat loaf appeared, made with oatmeal and wheat germ and something rubbery which neither Joe nor Bernadette, exchanging baffled glances while chewing, had the nerve to ask about; spaghetti from whole-wheat pasta with spinach sneaked in the sauce; homemade waffles on a plate instead of Pop Tarts in the car on the way to school. Martha bought horse-sized vitamins and waited while Bernadette choked one down each morning. If Bernadette Terrell blew the educational opportunity of a lifetime, it wouldn’t be from poor nutrition. Nor did Martha’s consideration stop at the kitchen. Whereas in former days Bernadette’s ability to lose herself in a book so that she didn’t hear ringing stove timers, doorbells, or parental summonses had driven Martha wild, now she tut-tutted and made Joe do chores instead. She kept the TV volume low so as not to disturb Bernadette’s reading. She filled the gas tank, paid off all outstanding library fines (which had been riding for months, though Bernadette did not tell her), and on the Saturday Bernadette was supposed to clean out the garage but slept late instead, Martha did it herself.
Even stuffed with stories and questioning her own sanity in attempting what she saw every day as an impossible task, Bernadette noticed. She was touched. And a little unnerved. This red-carpet treatment couldn’t last forever, and then what? Would Martha’s kindness vanish if Wickham lost the Bowl? Bernadette knew better than to ask. Her mother’s motives were like her meat loaf—best swallowed whole.
And at the after-school practices, more questions.
Bernadette discovered that she looked forward to these practices with an anticipation previously reserved for a new Sarah Sloan. From these sessions, more intimate than a class and lasting longer than a debate, she learned more than books. She’d always thought of David Minor as just a lecherous, though accomplished, cartoonist. Now she came to admire the quiet doggedness that meant he never missed the same question twice.
She couldn’t say the same about Lori Besh, who had a potentially fatal habit of only reading first chapters (though she could relate the plot of Hope Springs Eternal for the last seven years, so the problem was not with her memory). Yet Lori showed such a cheerful humility and, gradually, such an increase in her attention span, that Bernadette’s ire melted. She did hope, though, that the Classics Bowl judges took their questions from the beginnings of books.
She even liked Anthony’s terrible literary jokes. What American novel described St. Ursula’s new uniforms? A Farewell to Arms. Yuk, yuk. But as time passed and the sessions grew steadily more tense, any laughs were welcome.
As the Wizards’ exhaustion mounted, so did their resourcefulness. Inevitably, this showed.
When David was asked, “Name the three characters in The Hunchback of Notre Dame who represent good, evil, and temptation,” he replied, “Quasimodo, uh, Victor, and Hugo,” the last two being the gargoyles in the Disney movie.
Asked who defended Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird, Nadine said, “Gregory Peck.”
And when Anthony had to name the sister who died in Little Women, he smacked his forehead with his hand. “One of them died?” he asked, and Mr. Malory’s left eyebrow arched toward heaven. The tape had been on clearance and was only one cassette long, Anthony explained to Bernadette later. Naturally sacrifices had been made.
Ms. Kestenberg coached on, happily oblivious, but Mr. Malory had to know. Yet all he ever said was, “Get it right tomorrow.” Circles had appeared under the green-gray eyes, and on occasion a note of impatience marred the silken voice. Bernadette pictured him sitting up late with his kitten, Sheba, inventing new questions to test his Wizards. This always filled her with shame and a fierce resolve to work harder. The man was a Trojan, a demigod. He was willing them to win, and didn’t they want that, too?
At least twice a week he left the after-school practices early. Once, staring out the window and only half-listening to Ms. K., Bernadette saw the Porsche shoot out of the teachers’ lot and head west toward 275.
Gene must be getting worse.
Nine days before the Bowl, Mr. Malory disclosed that he’d investigated the academic background of every member of the Classics Contest research committee. Reconnoitering, he called it.
“They choose the questions.” At the front of the classroom he rubbed his palms together. “And this year’s lot are Anglophiles. Hardly a Hemingway or a Faulkner expert in the bunch. A stroke of luck for us, don’t you think?”
“What’s wrong with American literature?” Bernadette knew she sounded peevish. She’d been up till midnight reading things like “When the mist was on the rice-fields an’ the sun was droppin’ slow/She’d git ’er little banjo an’ she’d sing Kulla-lo-lo!” As far as she was concerned they could take Kipling and stick him where the sun dropped slow.
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Mr. Malory assured her. “Much of it’s quite readable. But in terms of world influence, well”—he gave a slight shrug, as though disclaiming responsibility for this well-known fact—“the English tradition dominates.”
He stood as he did in her dreams, leaning back against his desk with his hands grasping the desk edge, one polished slip-on propped on the toe of the other to reveal several inches of faultless
silk sock. The sun pouring in the windows was so strong, he’d rolled the sleeves of his white shirt to the elbow. With eyebrows arched in amusement he forced them, nicely, to acknowledge the superiority of English literature over any scribblings the New World had managed to produce. Only in this backwater Michigan school, his air implied, would one need to spell it out so bluntly.
Normally Bernadette enjoyed his urbane snobbery. But she was tired. “I like Emily Dickinson,” she said stubbornly. “And Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
He winced ever so slightly. “Of course. All young girls do.” He threw her a forgiving smile and moved on.
Bernadette steamed to herself. That smile said she was a silly, romantic girl. Or maybe it said only girls liked women’s poetry. Whatever it said, she didn’t like it. What about Yeats? Browning? Hopkins? She liked them fine. What about the war poets—their lines reeked of blood and bayonets and limbs knife-skewed—and she’d been as moved as anyone. Mr. Malory had given her an A on that report, or had he forgotten? She was not a silly young girl.
She saw what had happened. He no longer regarded them as individuals. For him they’d all melted together into The Wizards. The Team. His weapon in the upcoming War of Words.
“Hey, Bernadette. Wait.”
It was almost 4:30. The halls echoed emptily. Lori had vanished to pompon practice in the gym, and Nadine had just vanished.
Bernadette slowed to let Anthony and David catch up.
“Was Malory ragging you, or what?” Anthony asked. “All young girls like Emily Dickinson, didn’t you know? You’ll grow out of it.”
He did a wickedly good English accent. Bernadette gave him a reluctant smile.
David held up his hand. “Do you hear that?”
Someone was screaming. Ahead of them the school’s senior secretary ran shrieking across the hall.
“That was Mrs. Ivey!” David started toward the principal’s office.
“Stop!” Bernadette grabbed his sleeve. “What if there’s some nut with a gun up there?”
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