Bernadette didn’t expect it, but Nadine called back.
“Hi.” She sounded cool.
“Hi yourself. What’s up? How’s Vince?”
It was the magic question. “Oh, Bet! He’s great. We just got back from seeing Farewell My Concubine downtown. It’s Chinese.”
“That must have been fun.”
“It was. Not the movie, though, that was sad. Vince thinks I’ve been denying my heritage.”
“As a concubine?”
“As an Asian.”
“You’re not Asian,” Bernadette exclaimed. “You learned to talk from Sesame Street like everybody else.”
“I know, but I look Korean.”
Did Nadine look Korean? To Bernadette she just looked like . . . Nadine. “You know what Kipling says: ‘Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ You’d be the East,” she added.
“Thanks. Wasn’t Kipling the one who called Gunga Din a squidgy-nosed idol? I don’t care what he says. Vince thinks being Korean is something special.”
“Uh-huh. Does Vince speak Italian?”
“Just a few swear words.”
“That’s special.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
Her superior tone goaded Bernadette past endurance. “You want to know what I understand? That you’re so busy researching your damned heritage at McDonald’s that you’re not reading your list. We’re all worried sick.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
Uh-oh. “Lori said something.”
“Lori Besh is worried about me?”
“Yeah. And David. He’s worried.”
“David.” Nadine’s voice dripped skepticism.
“Yes. And—and Mrs. K. is concerned. She never sees you in the media center anymore, she says. Nobody ever sees you anymore.”
“Oh, Bet.” Nadine’s sigh was so adultly condescending that Bernadette considered stuffing the portable phone down the garbage disposal. “Tell them I’m reading my share and then some. And then tell them they should think about getting a life. I gotta go.” She hung up.
Bernadette stared unseeingly out the window over the sink. Nadine hadn’t asked why she’d called. Not that Bernadette had planned to worry her by telling about Malory being turned down by Pinehurst. But Nadine hadn’t even given her a chance to be tempted. She had just assumed Bernadette wanted to hear her go on and on about Vince Cirillo, when in fact it all made Bernadette slightly ill.
Asian movies! Nadine Elaine Walczak was about as Asian as a Baby Ruth bar.
Her parents came in from shopping before she could finish brooding in peace. Martha set down her bag of groceries with a loud thump, looked at the phone in Bernadette’s hand and the expression on Bernadette’s face, and said, “I told you this would happen.”
“Don’t start. I’m warning you.” Bernadette stood stiffly while her father came over and massaged her shoulders.
Martha said no one was starting anything but these things always happened when your best friend fell in love, and the wonder was that it hadn’t happened sooner and so on, and so on, until Bernadette escaped upstairs.
It was easy for her mother to talk. She had a husband who for some reason thought her wonderful. A block full of neighbors, the people at work, clients and their families who needed her . . .
Bernadette had only Nadine. Who’d never said a word about roses.
That night Bernadette came downstairs only when she was sure her mother had already gone to bed. At the kitchen table her father pored over papers from his job. She settled in a corner of the couch with The Grapes of Wrath. They read in companionable silence.
By 11:30 the Joads had another flat tire and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. “I’m going to bed.”
“Come here just a minute, would you?” Joe Terrell patted the chair next to him. “Pumpkin,” he began awkwardly.
“Hmmm?”
“I just wanted to say—don’t let your mother upset you. You know. That business about Nadine and her boyfriend.”
The phone call came stinging back. Bernadette’s mouth turned bitter. “It’s hard not to get upset, when I ask her to leave me alone and instead she gives me a lecture. Like it’s my fault.”
Her father took her hand in his. The lamp hanging over the table made his gray hair—how had it gotten so gray? Bernadette wondered—gleam silver. “That’s just her way. Your mother thinks talking things over is therapeutic—even if she’s the only one talking. I was glad you didn’t make a big scene about it.” He cleared his throat. “She’s going through the change, you know.”
Bernadette thought he’d caught Martha rifling through the box of quarters on his dresser.
“Mood swings, hot flashes,” he continued. “I read a thing in Reader’s Digest on it. That’s why she’s so cranky these days.”
Oh, that change. “I can’t tell the difference.”
He chuckled softly. “You’re your mother’s child, all right.”
Bernadette grabbed his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “No, I’m not. I’m yours.”
“You’ve got the best of both of us in you.” He hugged her. “I never worry about my pumpkin.”
“Oh, Daddy.” She hugged him back, then turned the letter he’d been reading toward her. Paper-clipped to it was a page from a store catalog. “Who’s sending you pictures of luggage?”
He snorted. “Some guy in Redford claims this set of brand-new suitcases, among other things, was in his basement when it flooded—wants us to give him the full replacement value.”
“Does he have the receipt?”
“What do you think? He doesn’t even have the suitcases. Says they smelled too bad, so he threw them out. And he forgot to take photos.”
“So what do you do?”
“I tell him very politely that the evidence won’t let us give him the amount he’s asking—you never call customers liars—and I pay him the fair market value on used suitcases. That’s all his policy covers. He’ll get more than he deserves, we’ll be slightly cheated, and it’ll be business as usual.” He patted a pile of paper beside the letter. “I got six more claims here, and what do you want to bet five of them overstate their loss. If there was a loss.”
“Wow. Does everyone cheat?”
“Oh, no. One time a client sent us a check—she found her diamond ring in the bathtub drain, so she was returning the insurance money. Now that was a day. The branch manager bought me lunch on that one.” He grinned, remembering. “But mostly it’s lies. Penny-ante stuff. My customers could never be politicians, they don’t steal big enough.” He massaged his neck tiredly.
“Do you like this job, Dad? Because it sounds awful to me.”
His smile was so full of love and pride, it made her throat ache. “I’ll tell you what I like. I like watching my daughter practicing up to be a Jeopardy! champion so she can win her parents a vacation to Europe.” He ruffled her hair. “Did I tell you Grandma wants me to tape the Classics Bowl for her? She’s going to show it to her euchre club. You’ll be the talk of Manistee.” He looked at the kitchen clock. “What are you doing up so late? You can’t win anything if you’re tired. Go to bed.”
Bernadette climbed the stairs through sudden tears that stung her eyes. That insurance job sounded like something even the Joads would turn down. And her father was so sweet. It wasn’t fair. While her mother—well, Bernadette was fast coming to believe there was no accounting for taste. Look at Nadine.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
If there were no girls like them in the world,
there would be no poetry.
—Willa Cather, My Antonia
The next day was Monday. At lunch, Bernadette and Nadine ate with Lori and pretended that everything was normal between them. At least Bernadette pretended. Maybe Nadine really thought things were fine, which just went to show how little attention she was paying these days.
Out the window they saw Mr. Malory get into his car and drive away. He wore sunglasses
.
“He’s gorgeous,” Nadine said dreamily.
Bernadette stiffened. “You’ve got a boyfriend, remember?” she said coldly. “You want to be careful or you’ll get your fantasies mixed up.”
“Who says they’re fantasies?” Nadine smiled mysteriously while Bernadette tried in vain to think of a scathing reply. “It’s like I just got a brand-new VW bug. Suddenly I see VW Bugs everywhere, and I have to compare them to mine. What do you think, Lori? Does that make sense?”
“I don’t think you should talk about Mr. Malory like that.”
Bernadette and Nadine looked at each other, surprised. Lori frowned at them. “You make him sound like some—some centerfold. If he hadn’t done all that research, we wouldn’t have a prayer against Pinehurst. It’s just not very—respectful.”
“I’m very respectful—especially when he wears that gray shirt with the button open. C’mon, Lori, I’m only kidding.” Nadine coaxed, but Lori wouldn’t smile.
She’d called him “drop-dead sexy” not three weeks ago. From force of habit Bernadette found herself exchanging glances with Nadine, who didn’t even know about the cell phone calls. What was happening here?
After practice that afternoon, Nadine couldn’t give Bernadette a ride home. Errands to run, favors for her mother, etc. The usual. She said this fast, gathering up her books, with little sidelong glances that dared Bernadette to object.
Bernadette would eat worms first. After Nadine’s showing off at lunch, she’d be damned if she gave the Korean Kid another chance to tell her to get a life. “Don’t put yourself out,” she said. Lori glanced from her to Nadine. “I’ll call my mother.”
“I go right down Grand River, Bernadette,” Lori volunteered. “I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thanks, that’d be great.” Bernadette ignored Nadine’s wink and “how about that” face. Maybe Nadine wanted to pretend they shared some secret about Lori, but secrets were precisely what they did not share. Not lately.
Lori had parked on the far side of the track. The summery weather from the week before was still in evidence, and the March day had soared into a temperature range Michigan did not normally feel until June.
Bernadette ambled across the football field. With each breath of balmy air her worries about best friends, contests, and faculty members with perplexing secrets baked away in the physical joy of hot sun on her face.
Track season had not officially started, but a few members of the boy’s team were wrestling hurdles into place over by the far goalpost. More boys raked the long jump pit. Lori stopped to watch three girls practice the shot put.
These were seniors, serious-faced and solid as tree trunks in their dark green Wickham sweats. They went through an identical series of moves: warm-up stretches, a practice rotation, then the actual throw. Numbered markers in the field made it easy to gauge the distances.
What Bernadette knew about track and field she could put in her eye and not even blink, but even to her this crew didn’t look much of a threat. That last toss barely cleared twenty-five yards. It appeared to have given its thrower a cramp, because she fell to the ground swearing and clutching her side.
Lori went over and said something. The seniors exchanged looks. One of them snorted. Lori dropped her backpack and slipped off her pompon jacket. Her silver hoop earrings glinted in the light.
Sly grins passed between the shot-putters. Bernadette sat down on the track. This ought to be good.
Lori’s short pleated skirt and cap-sleeved sweater suggested Miss America being photographed at a construction site. Her hair flamed red-gold in the sun. Muscles Bernadette herself did not own flexed in Lori’s upper arms as without self-consciousness she did some elbow-behind-the-head stretches. Right, left, arms behind the back. The sweater grew taut. Over by the long jump pit all motion ceased.
The seniors’ grins turned thoughtful.
Lori took her stance and faced the back of the scuffed dirt circle. She tucked the shot snugly under her chin. She leaned backward on one bent leg, took two little hops in a turn, then exploded skyward like a released metal coil. Her shoulders twisted as she thrust the shot forward and grunted the “ooof” of a sumo wrestler.
The sequence imprinted itself on Bernadette’s brain: Lori frozen in time, her muscled arm stretched out before her, a vision of power and grace whose beauty caught at the throat.
The shot thudded down past the thirty-five-yard mark.
The seniors were as shocked as if it had landed on them.
“Thanks, guys.” Lori picked up her things and strolled back to Bernadette.
“That was awesome.” Bernadette scrambled upright and trotted behind her. “You smoked them. You blew them away! You are in the wrong sport, Lori Besh.”
Lori’s composure dissolved into flattered giggles. “I’ve tried it before, once or twice. I used to date a shot-putter.”
“Date one? You are one!” Bernadette tripped over her words. “With your SATs and a real sport like track and field, you could be Ivy League material. U of M, anyway. Scholarship City.”
Lori gave a crow of laughter. “Ivy League? You’re nuts. My SATs might get me into Michigan State.”
“What, a 720 on Verbal? That’s excellent.”
“I wish. I got 520 on each part. What’s the matter?” Bernadette had stopped. “It’s not that bad.”
“Of course not. 1040. It’s fine.” Bernadette resumed walking. “It’s just—you said once you were good at tests. I thought you might have aced them, that’s all.”
“I did ace them. I got 1040. Why’d you think I had a 720 on Verbal?”
“I must have been thinking of somebody else.”
“Yeah, like yourself.”
“780,” Bernadette said automatically. It wasn’t like Mr. Malory to get things wrong.
“780! Get out.” Lori’s admiration was pleasant, Bernadette could not deny. “If I ever scored that high on anything, my dad would fritz out but good. He think I’m a dumb blonde—without the blonde.”
This jolted Bernadette back to her companion. “But—I thought your father was dead.”
“That’s what I tell people,” Lori said. “It’s just that he should be dead.”
Bernadette couldn’t believe it. She waited, on the off chance that this was a bad joke, explained any second. But no. Lori met her eyes steadily. She wasn’t joking.
They had passed the wooden bleachers and come to the trip wire separating playing fields from the graveled parking lot. Lori stepped on the wire for Bernadette.
“Thanks.”
“I’m not a liar,” Lori said.
“Of course not.”
“I’m the daughter of a liar, but I don’t think those things are genetic, do you?”
“No,” said Bernadette, a parishioner in good sacramental standing at St. Jerome’s. “Lying is an act of free will. Otherwise it can’t be a sin.”
They reached the little red Miata, but Lori made no move to get in. “My mom divorced my dad two years ago. Turned out he had a girlfriend. You want to know the worst part?”
Bernadette wanted nothing less, but Lori needed to tell. Even she could see that much. “What?”
“He had her for five years before we found out. Since I was ten. She lived in Farmington.” Farmington bordered Creighton to the west.
“Really? We went to this great Thai place once in Farming—”
“We never caught on. He missed my dance recitals, and gymnastic meets, and one time three days of our vacation, and we just thought, oh, he’s snowed in in Denver again.”
“Did he ski a lot?”
“He’s a pilot. When he was home he slept half the time. My mom thought he was anemic. She couldn’t figure out how he could keep flying with such iron-poor blood.” Lori gave a twisted smile. “I get my brains from my mom, can’t you tell?”
The smile did it. Bernadette’s heart contracted at its bravery. If Mr. Besh had appeared at that moment she would have swung her backpack into his cheatin
g crotch with every ounce of her strength.
Lori went on. “He had these old albums from college he used to rave about—Spooky Tooth, Little Feat, groups you never heard of that he always swore were collectors’ items—and the day my mom told me about Glor—about the divorce, I went upstairs and sailed those albums out the window. My mom and I had a contest—who could get theirs the farthest. I won. She hated him more, she said, but I had the better arm.” Lori made a wry face.
“You have a great arm.” Bernadette couldn’t think of anything to say. Clumsily she patted Lori’s shoulder. “Your dad was some kind of sick.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s one screwed-up puppy.” She looked into Bernadette’s face and asked, as though she really thought Bernadette might know, “How can a person you think you love, who’s supposed to take care of you, look you right in the eye and lie? Year after year . . . and to my mother! I get so mad even now, I could—oh, I don’t know. It’s over.” She kicked at a patch of gravel, which hit the tires with impotent thuds.
“Poison him? A letter bomb?” Bernadette suggested. “Or wait, I’ve got it—acid. Blind him so he can’t fly.”
Lori gave a startled gasp of laughter. “I used to think about running away from home just so he’d feel guilty.”
“What! Lori, listen to me.” Lori obediently fastened her blue gaze on Bernadette. “He’s the bad guy. Not you. You want to do something, do it to him. Like the albums out the window—that’s the idea. I know Jesus says turn the other cheek, but then how can you be sure people get what’s coming to them?”
For a long moment Lori stared at her. Then she broke into a rippling laugh. Bernadette was pleased. “Now why couldn’t that dumb counselor have told me that? She just kept saying to ‘deal with my anger.’ I like your way better.”
Bernadette coughed. “You do realize, I’m not actually suggesting—”
“Don’t worry. You’re kidding, I know, but I appreciate that, too. I didn’t mean to go on and on.” Lori pressed the unlock button on her key ring. “Anyway, we did great in court. I think of this car as a present from Dad.” There was no anger in her voice, only a philosophical self-mockery. “The SAT scores made me think of him. He got the highest grade on the airline’s entrance exam of any pilot they ever had. I used to be so proud of that. But now—” she made a face—“he probably cheated.”
Cheating Lessons: A Novel Page 10
