No one said “don’t be ridiculous.”
“Aah. I didn’t hear any shots,” Anthony said, staying where he was. Finally, moving together, they edged up to the corner and peeked around.
In front of the sign that read MAIN OFFICE/VISITORS MUST SIGN IN, Wickham’s principal was hopping from one foot to the other and flapping her skirt so that it billowed out wildly.
She saw them and shouted, “Get away! It’s bees!”
Bees? Bernadette dropped her books and dashed across the lobby. Something zinged past her cheek. “Mrs. Standish, let’s get out of here.” Another zing made her smack her neck.
“I can’t! There’s one in here.” Mrs. Standish plucked at her neckline and tried to peer down at her chest.
Bernadette fumbled at the principal’s collar buttons and soon released a furiously buzzing honey bee. It zoomed out to join five dozen relatives zipping around the lobby like ricochets from a drunken sniper. Then she dragged Mrs. Standish out the door and into the sun. “You have two stings on your face, with the stingers still in them.”
“Is that bad?” Mrs. Standish was breathing fast, but she buttoned up her dress as though to partially disrobe in the school lobby was standard procedure.
Bernadette felt an unwilling flicker of respect. “It’s not good. They should come out.”
The principal stuck out her chin. The boys had followed them out onto the front steps, and now they drew closer to watch. Bernadette reveled in the heady sense of being in charge. This must be what doctors felt.
Spic ‘n’ Span had skin the texture of too-often washed satin that might tear any second. Bernadette scraped out the stingers and showed her the tiny black dots. “Got ’em. You should just put a little baking soda and water on your face and . . . wherever else they got you. It’ll help the itching.”
“Oh,” Spic ‘n’ Span said on a long note of pleased discovery. “Baking soda! That’s what my husband used once when he got stung up at our cottage. Baking soda. Hmmmph.” Her fingers patted the sting sites as though they were controls to a time machine into the past. Behind her glasses her eyes went soft and distant.
“Or meat tenderizer,” Bernadette added.
The principal’s faded eyes focused sharply on her. “Thank you, dear. You’ve been very helpful.” She straightened her shoulders. “Katherine, call an exterminator,” she ordered the still-sniffling secretary. “Tell them it’s bees.” She gave a little shudder. “Filthy things.”
To David and Anthony, still hovering nearby, she said, “I’ll need you boys to move the furniture out of my office. We’ll have the whole place sprayed immediately.”
“Wh-what about the bees?” David asked.
“Now don’t be nervous Nellies,” the principal said. “Take the screens out of the windows if you’re scared of a few stings.”
Bernadette hastily volunteered to hunt up some baking soda. She walked the silent halls and chuckled at the memory of the principal dancing with bees. Strange or not, Spic ‘n’ Span was one tough cookie. You had to feel sorry for the bees.
There had been a long, darned tear in the principal’s slip. Bernadette’s smile turned thoughtful. How much could a slip cost?
“It makes you think,” she told the rows of lockers. It really did.
If the school board did decide to give a bonus to the principal when she retired, Bernadette Terrell would not object.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
She got tired of thinking aright; but there was no serious
harm in it, as she got equally tired of thinking wrong.
In the midst of her mysterious perversities
she had admirable flashes of justice.
—Henry James, The American
The next day the Wizards had no practice. Four-thirty saw Bernadette stretched on the living room couch with a bowl of caramel popcorn on her stomach and the TV volume on high. All this Bowl cramming was cutting into her Jeopardy! time.
On the screen Alex said, “The seventeenth-century writer whose most famous work was composed in the dark, so to speak.”
The front door slammed. “I’m home!” Martha called.
“SHHHHH! Milton,” Bernadette said to the TV.
The returning champion’s light went on. “Who was Shakespeare?” she asked.
“Sorry,” Alex said.
“Milton!” Bernadette shouted.
“Who was John Donne?” a second contestant guessed.
Alex shook his head.
“ ‘In the dark,’ imbecile! He’s blind!”
The third contestant didn’t even guess. Bernadette bounced popcorn all over the couch. “Who was John Milton! I can’t believe the idiots who get on this show!” Then, “Hey there,” she said more mildly.
Martha had come up beside her. Now she pressed “mute” on the remote control. “Did you forget that tomorrow is your father’s birthday?” she asked with ominous calm.
Bernadette sat up at once. Her mother must have had a bad day with a waiting room of behaviorally challenged teens. “How old is Daddy?” she asked brightly.
“Forty-six. You forgot, didn’t you? Like you forgot to practice the violin for the last two weeks, and to feed the fish, and where you parked at the mall. You with the photographic memory.”
“I told you, that’s just for printed stuff,” Bernadette said. So the honeymoon was over. In a way, this return of the normal Martha was reassuring. A person liked to know what to expect. “Can I use the car tomorrow?”
“If you pick up the cake.”
“Be glad to.” Bernadette longed to turn the sound back on, but her mother wasn’t finished.
“Honey, are you okay with all this studying?” Still in her coat, Martha sat down on the coffee table. “It isn’t too much for you?”
“It’s fine.”
Martha’s lips tightened knowingly.
“Mom, it’s only one more week. It’s ten thousand dollars! Isn’t that worth losing a little sleep over?”
Her mother picked up some stray kernels and dropped them in the bowl one by one. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll be glad when it’s finished, that’s all. Your team might lose, you know. And then won’t you feel silly.”
“Oh! Oh! And when one of your patients commits suicide,” Bernadette sputtered, “do the counselors feel silly for trying to save them?” This had happened the year before. Her mother had been devastated.
Martha’s look withered her. “The Classics Bowl is not life and death. It’s just a contest.”
She stood up and left before Bernadette could think of a suitable reply. Just a contest! “And Olympic gold is just metal,” Bernadette said to a mute Alex. Talk about blowing hot and cold! Who would screech the loudest if Wickham lost to Pinehurst? Martha Terrell, that’s who.
Bernadette’s spirits rose every time she entered Borders Books. It was as soothing as church. Classical music played in the background, good coffee and cocoa fragrances wafted from the little café, and thousands of vividly colored books whispered, Read me. Usually she wandered the aisles for an hour before realizing she’d forgotten what she came for, her head was spinning, and she desperately needed the bathroom.
But today she made straight for cookbooks. Her father loved the electric bread machine he’d gotten for Christmas. But three months of Basic White had his daughter hungering for a change.
A whole shelf on bread machines. Amazing what people would write entire books about. Bread Entrees, Bread for Left-Handers. She settled cross-legged on the carpeting and immersed herself in Miracles to Make in Your Bread Machine. She was wondering whether Chinese Black Bean and Garlic Rolls would be interesting or vile when a voice above her said, “Hi.” Giant sneakers appeared by her knee.
She raised her head. Anthony Cirillo looked different today. Ah. The smirk was missing.
“Hi,” she said.
“Your dad told me you’d be here.”
Luckily she was already on the floor. McAss had called her? “Here I am.”
“Uh—
you want something to drink?”
“If you’re buying.” She got to her feet. “I love hot chocolate.”
He grinned, and looked more like Anthony. “What, no coffee?”
“Gave it up for Lent,” Bernadette said. “Along with Brussels sprouts and milk of magnesia.”
Over tall mocha-caramel lattes (extra whipped cream for Bernadette), Anthony said, “I wanted to tell you something. You know how Spic ‘n’ Span had us moving furniture yesterday?”
Bernadette nodded. Who could forget The Sting?
“After we moved some file cabinets, she went somewhere—I think the bees shook her up more than she let on. Turns out they were in the bathroom drywall—the exterminator said the hot weather wakes them up. So anyway, David and I are moving everything out when I see this one cabinet with a drawer marked RECOMMENDATIONS.” He stopped.
“And?”
“So I figured maybe teachers filed recommendations of students there—a reference file so they don’t have to think up lines like ‘works to capacity’ and ‘shows good leadership skills.’ You know?”
“If you don’t hurry up I’m going to pour this on you.”
“Okay, okay.” He took a breath. “It was a file of recommendations Spic ‘n’ Span wrote, for teachers who had applied for other jobs.”
Bernadette stopped rushing him.
“She wrote one for Malory. To Pinehurst. Last August.”
“Impossible,” she said.
“It was a decent reference.”
“But he’s still here!”
Anthony stared into his cup. “I know.”
They sat there and thought the same thing. Mr. Malory got turned down by Pinehurst.
The whipped cream tasted cloying and thick in Bernadette’s throat. Anthony was watching her with something dangerously close to pity in his eyes. That would never do.
“Well, of course he’d want to teach somewhere else. Who wouldn’t? Wickham’s a dump.” Her voice rose. “Kids at Wickham think The Way of All Flesh is a dirty movie! The cafeteria smells like armpits, the art trailer’s from World War II for God’s sake, and they have bees in the bathrooms! Malory would have seen right off that the place is full of losers.”
Mr. Malory had wanted to teach at Pinehurst? Inconceivable.
Anthony sipped his drink in silence, which enraged her. She had plenty to say. “Who the hell does Pinehurst think they are? I bet they’d turn down Jesus Christ—tell him his Shinto background was weak.”
“Malory knows his stuff,” Anthony agreed.
Bernadette eyed him suspiciously. If he added, too bad he’s gay, or it’s a shame he talks like a wuss, she would punch him. Right here in Borders.
Watching her as though hoping she was armed only with a spoon, Anthony said, “Maybe that’s why he wants to beat them in the Classics Bowl.”
“Revenge? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t really think we can beat them.”
Bernadette worked that out. “But you think it does,” she said slowly. “Don’t you. You think he’s fooling himself, and us right along with him.”
Anthony raised his hands as if to say not so fast. “I want to hear what you think. You’re the Wizard with the memory.” His hand came across the tabletop to touch her own for a fleeting second. His skin was warm. “I’m not trying to pressure you. It’s just—man, we could use that ten thousand bucks.”
“Who couldn’t.” She thought furiously. So Mr. Malory had an excellent reason of his own to resent Pinehurst. How coincidental. How—surreal.
“No, I mean it. I don’t know if you know….”
Some awkwardness in Anthony’s voice made Bernadette stop pondering the implications of this news and look over at him.
“My brother’s my legal guardian. Our dad died when I was little, and our mom—she died two summers ago.” He addressed his knuckles. “That’s why Vince isn’t in college—he’s going to put me through, then I can put him through, if he doesn’t buy up a bunch of Mickey D’s before then. Ten grand that we don’t need to pay back would help a lot.”
“Oh, Anthony.” Bernadette set her cup down with a thump. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.” Why hadn’t she known? A person being an orphan was not a national secret. Some detective she would make.
“It’s all right. I thought maybe Nadine might have said something . . . .”
“I haven’t seen Nadine much lately.” He must know why. She felt off-balance, ashamed. And as though she should repay him for entrusting her with something so personal.
Abruptly she said, “I don’t care about the TV part.”
“What TV part?”
“Looking stupid on cable TV. That doesn’t bother me.” Bernadette had never confessed this even to Nadine. She kept her head down over her cup so that her hair formed a curtain between them. “What bothers me is that we could lose by some huge margin because we have such a horrible background in the classics. It’d be different if it was the Cartoon Bowl. But it’s not. We’re trying to cram years of reading into one month. Lori and David petrify me—they think I’m so smart. You know how you just said I’m the one with the memory? Well, that’s the thing. That’s all I have. But Pinehurst—” She shook her hair back and met his eyes across the table. “Anthony, you have no idea. They’ve got people who are truly smart. Who know what these books mean, why they’re worth reading. This one kid on their team? Nadine and I debated him once, and he quoted Voltaire—and I don’t mean as a first affirmative. I mean on the fly. Needless to say, they won.”
There. It was out, her humiliating secret, and apparently all Anthony Cirillo could do was stare at her hair. When it dawned on him that she’d finished talking, he shook his head with a frown of disappointment. Bernadette’s stomach twisted inside.
“This isn’t about IQ!” he said. “This is about work. You think NCS wants us to prove the theory of relativity? Hell, no. We depend on you because of your memory. Debate logic won’t matter in this thing. What’ll count is how much we’ve managed to stuff in our brains for one hour. The rest’ll be luck. You want to worry about something, worry about how fast you can push a buzzer—not how smart you are. Or aren’t.” He had a grin like his brother’s, and Bernadette suddenly saw how a person could find that attractive. “If people want to give me prizes and money because I have a good memory, let ’em. I’m not stupid.”
“No, I—I never thought you were.”
“And if you’re worried that your memory will give out, don’t be. It never has before, has it?”
Only when certain people wore collarless shirts. “No . . . .”
“As for David and Lori—yeah, they do think you’re smart, but so what? It’s a common mistake. I’ve been known to think it myself.” He rolled his eyes in disbelief, but his smile held new assurance, as though her confession had pleased him in some way.
He must be using something different on his skin. It didn’t look as terrible as it used to. Flustered, Bernadette said, “Did you tell David about seeing the recommendation?”
“No. He was out in the hall.”
“Good. Don’t. If the other Wizards thought Mr. Malory was in some kind of grudge match, they could get all upset.”
“Not like us,” Anthony said blandly. “Whatever you say, Captain. I barely got the letter back before Spic ‘n’ Span came in. She gave us little packs of Lorna Doones for helping her.”
“Lorna Doones?”
“Yeah. She had a whole drawerful. I think she’s got a thing going with the vending machine guy.”
Bernadette giggled. Anthony had not so much as blown a straw wrapper across the table this whole time. He could have made a snide remark about Nadine and Vince, but he hadn’t. Her gaze fell on the bread book. “I should get going.”
“Me too. I gotta check out the Cliff’s Notes.”
“Don’t spend too much.”
Anthony was shocked. “I never buy them,” he said. “I read them here.”
/> “Oh. Well, thanks for the drink.”
Bernadette paid a teenaged clerk for the book, which he seemed to find very funny. Since when was bread funny? She wasn’t laughing at his nose stud. Back in the car she adjusted the rearview mirror and discovered that the ends of her hair wore a coating of whipped cream, as though they’d been dipped. She swore softly as she cleaned it off.
Still . . . Anthony hadn’t seemed to mind.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love . . .
—Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
Her father loved the bread book. Bernadette phoned Nadine after church on Sunday while munching a piece of warm Jalapeño Corn Loaf.
Nadine was out.
Bernadette scowled at the wall. Nadine was out a lot these days.
She should be back by dinner at the latest, Nadine’s mother told Bernadette, as Vince had to work the evening shift. “Which is a good thing if you ask me.”
“What is, Mrs. Walczak?”
“That he has to work sometime. I don’t trust this big rush—dinners out on school nights, sending her roses, the whole bit. He reminds me of a Robert DeNiro movie.”
“Taxi Driver?”
“No, I don’t think he’s insane.” But she sounded doubtful, as though Bernadette had suggested a new and plausible theory. “The ones where he plays those Mafia types.”
Bernadette considered this. On first impression, Vince did have a kind of underworld savvy, but thinking he might be a hood was like thinking Nadine should know how to plant rice. “You really think the mob runs McDonald’s, Mrs. Walczak? That would be some cover.”
“That’s what my husband says.” Nadine’s mother sighed. “Don’t have daughters, Bernadette. Have sons. They can’t get pregnant.”
Bernadette did not point out some of the things they could do. After she hung up she wondered what it was with mothers. All they thought about was sex. Nadine had known Vince for only two and a half weeks.
Parents watched too much TV.
Cheating Lessons: A Novel Page 9
