Little Black Lies

by Tish Cohen

  My mother wants a divorce.

  Through the phone receiver, I hear a faint, buzzing ring. Then a faraway voice, my mother’s voice, says, “Allo?”

  I don’t speak. Somehow I never imagined her speaking French.

  “Allo? Qui est-il?”

  She’s changed so much it takes my voice away. As quietly as I can, I lower the receiver and drop it into the cradle.

  chapter 17

  nobody

  It’s Friday morning and Mandy still hasn’t taken my calls or answered my messages. My slip-up was bad, but did it really warrant complete and total exclusion from her life? Seriously. And now I’m stuck with my mom’s smoky French accent running through my brain like the clunking pipes in the wall behind my bed. But instead of wanting an extra pillow to put over my head, I want someone to remind me that experimenting with foreign languages is good, nothing at all like a textbook mother who lives on a different page from her unborn baby.

  I try Mandy’s number one more time on the way to class. When she doesn’t pick up, again, I head inside.

  Mr. Curtis, we’re all quickly discovering, is a huge fan of pop quizzes. He strolls in cradling a stainless-steel Starbucks travel mug and waves a stack of light blue papers up in the air. “I hope you’ve all been following my advice and spending your spare time studying. Today’s quiz differs from our first in three ways.” He sets his things on his desk and removes his blazer. “It’s longer. It encompasses everything we’ve learned in the last two weeks, plus the material you’ll all remember fondly from our first quiz.” He rolls up his sleeves. “And it will comprise ten percent of your mark in my class.” He sets his hands on his hips and winks. “Enjoy. Saint Sarah, can I call upon you to pass out these tests?”

  I make my way to the front of the class, aware I’m one of the few in the room who isn’t wrecked with anxiety about the quiz. Carling leans forward like she might throw up, and Little Man Griff is flung back in his seat, looking as if he needs life support. Or maybe the comfort of his teddy. The joke of this being, he’ll ace it no matter what. Isabella isn’t concerned at all. She continues to pick at a muffin on her desk as if worried she might find a dead mouse inside.

  Up goes Sloane’s hand. “Mr. Curtis, will all of our quizzes be surprises? Because most of us do much better with a bit of warning.”

  “You’re meant to be learning as we go along, Miss Montauk. I thought I made that point clear after the last quiz. Life, I can assure you, will not come at you with an appropriate period of warning, so you might want to consider putting a little more effort into it.”

  Isabella and Carling burst into peals of laughter, and Mr. Curtis shushes them and turns back to Sloane. “The more time you spend preparing yourself now, the better you’ll do on my tests, it’s as simple as that. You could learn a thing or two from your friend Sara. I’m willing to bet she’s ready for this, am I right?”

  I look up from where I’m setting tests in front of Carling, Sloane, and Izzy. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  He leans on his desk and grins, twisting the lid off his coffee. “Perhaps you were able to see all this coming. There is a theory that Saint Sarah was entirely unrelated to Jesus, but that she was of noble birth and was chief of her tribe on the banks of the Rhone. Some say she had visions that the saints who’d been present at Jesus’s death would come to the shore where her tribe went every year to receive benediction. Sure enough, the Three Marys arrived by boat.”

  A few people snicker and I force a weak smile.

  To my horror, he continues. “Of course some have very opposite beliefs. In other accounts, Saint Sarah is a native of Upper Egypt and only appears in theological history as the Egyptian domestic of one of the Three Marys.”

  Griff snorts. “I don’t get it. Saint Sarah is an Egyptian domestic … a domestic what?”

  Carling rolls her eyes. “A domestic is a maid, you Neanderthal. He’s saying Saint Sarah was nothing more than a common maid.”

  My nervous system goes gummy, then melts and runs down my legs to where it pools in my feet, seeping out between my toes and into my shoes. Now that my feet are too heavy to move and my Lost and Found oxford shoes have glued themselves to the floor, I stumble. The tests slide out of my hands and flutter around the room, over to the blackboard, under Mr. Curtis’s desk, and beneath the feet of the kids in the front row. Mr. Curtis gets up to help, accidentally knocking his lidless travel mug across the floor. He stares at the spreading pool of brown liquid and shakes his head. “Five dollars’ worth of caffeine gone to waste.”

  “Sorry,” I say.

  Sloane pulls her book bag away and squeals. “Ugh! It’s headed right for me.”

  “Somebody call a Molly,” sings Carling.

  Thankful for any reason to delay the quiz, a few of the boys at the back of the class begin pounding their desks and chanting, “Mol-ly. Mol-ly. Mol-ly.”

  I’m hit by a revolting realization. Carling’s housekeeper isn’t named Molly at all. Carling just considers the woman so beneath her, such a lower form of humanity, that she’s tagged her with the generic label—Molly Maid.

  Isabella crumbles what’s left of her muffin into the mess. I must look shocked because she says, “What? It’s getting cleaned up anyway.”

  “Now who’s the pig?” squeaks Griff.

  “A bit disrespectful,” says Mr. Curtis, looking appalled. “Miss Latini, you can head down and request a custodian to come to the class. Walk back to class with him or her and try to imagine yourself in the janitor’s shoes, cleaning up after a student’s inconsiderate actions.”

  “Whatever.” Isabella heads out of the room as I reach under her desk and sort out the pile of fallen papers.

  In my haze of humiliation at having gone from the daughter of the most infamous icon in religious history, to a noblewoman who can see into the future, to a “common” maid; in my anxiousness to undo my giant fumble that has caused Mr. Curtis to lose his coffee and us to lose valuable test-taking time; in my disgust at Carling’s disrespect for her housekeeper; I didn’t anticipate right away what could happen next.

  The call for a custodian might bring my father.

  I don’t have to fret for long. Not five minutes later, Charlie strolls into the room.

  Spinning on my heel, I rush along the far row, passing out quizzes with my head lowered. At the back, I step behind the open door of a storage cupboard and tuck my hair behind my ears, hunching over and praying Mr. Curtis won’t call for death by social stoning by ordering me to my seat.

  I watch as my dad wheels his big red bucket closer to the mess, then pulls out the great, dripping string mop and wrings it out on the strainer attached to the pail. He glances up at the kids watching and laughs. “Feels like being onstage.”

  A few sympathetic giggles. Charlie mops up the coffee and muffin crumbs fairly quickly, rinsing the mop in the bucket. But he doesn’t stop there. He wrings, scrubs, and rinses two more times, seemingly unaware of the curious looks he’s getting from the class. Even Mr. Curtis, defender of the custodian, looks confused. As the class’s reaction grows, I, from my hidey-hole behind the cupboard door, die a thousand deaths for my father.

  Then it gets much, much worse.

  Charlie removes a plastic spray bottle from his belt. Then he lowers himself down on his knees and starts spraying the shit out of the floor, which is already spotless. He sprays and scrubs, sprays and scrubs, and soon the air is heavy with the overpowering smell of bleach.

  Kids in the front rows begin to cough, some of them getting up and joining me at the back. Groans and snorts pop up from all over the classroom and I hear murmurings, like, “Guy’s messed up!” and “Someone needs to call for help” and “One crazy Molly.”

  Willa stands up coughing a tight, high-pitched cough, holding her vest over her mouth. She pulls a puffer from her bag and mumbles through the woolen vest, “Mr. Curtis, I have asthma….”

  He guides her from the room, calls another girl over, and tells them
to go straight to the infirmary. The girls disappear.

  The scrubbing isn’t going to end anytime soon, so eventually Mr. Curtis lightens the mood by clapping his hands. “Well, now I understand why the school is so sparkling clean this term.” He pats Charlie’s back and pulls him to his feet. “It’s the work of our new custodian, Mr…. what is your name, sir?”

  No. Please, no. Please, Dad, don’t say “Black,” not to Mr. Curtis. He’ll haul me out of the cupboard and start making comparisons that will only end with the entire school knowing who I really am. A liar.

  But Dad just smiles, nods his head at the class, and points to his name tag. “You can address me as Charlie.”

  For a moment, it looks like Dad is going to drop to the floor again to keep scrubbing, but Mr. Curtis leads him to the door. “You’ve done us a wonderful service, Charlie. I can assure you our floor has never been so hygienic.”

  Just before Dad disappears, he waves back to the kids. The moment the door clicks shut, the room explodes into animated whispers and giggles, and I make a run for my seat.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” says Mr. Curtis as I slip into my chair. “The excitement is over. Thank you for your assistance, Saint Sarah. Remind me never to call on you for help passing out tests again.”

  I’m safe. For now.

  “Pick up your pencils, people.” He settles himself in his chair, sets his feet on his desk, cracks open a math journal, and reaches for his reading glasses. “You now have only forty-one minutes to impress me.”

  I scratch my name at the top of the quiz and start on the first problem. The solution is obvious and after I’ve written down my calculations, I scrawl X = 37 and move to the next question. Beside me, a chair shifts. I look up to see Isabella has slid her desk slightly closer to Carling’s and moved her paper to the edge of her desktop, giving her friend easy access to her work. But Carling turns away from Isabella and turns to face me. She raises her eyebrows. I know what she wants. And I have no freaking choice but to give it to her.

  I slide my paper toward the edge of my desk and watch as she copies X = 37 onto her quiz.

  chapter 18

  private caller

  I have a test in pre-law coming up. It’s mid-October now; I’ve been at Ant long enough to see this class is going to be my toughest. Law is nebulous, floaty, and gray, completely unlike the dependable sturdiness of math or science. There is a solid certainty to polynomials—they simply are what they are and always will be. But a law is never just a law. If you’re in a fistfight and happen to knock over your opponent to the ground and he hits his head on a parking meter, you may or may not be charged with assault, depending upon how angry the guy rubbing his cranium might be. And if that person happens to have an eggshell for a skull and dies after the exact same scuffle, suddenly you’re facing a manslaughter charge even though you could never have known the man was born to a chicken. It’s called the Thin Skull rule.

  All of which means tonight will be a caffeine-and-chocolate-fueled, flashlight-under-the-covers, pray-Dad-doesn’t-wake-up, all-night cram session.

  We’ve been studying Vosburg v. Putney, a case where an eleven-year-old kicked a fourteen-year-old in the shin at school. The older kid was recovering from a previous injury and, as a result of his miniature assailant’s anger, lost the use of his leg permanently. No one could have predicted such a thing would happen, but the little boy was still held liable. The Thin Skull rule in action and good reason to keep your feet to yourself.

  Speaking of keeping body parts to oneself, Carling, Sloane, Isabella, and I all have a spare second period, and my plans to study are torpedoed by Carling dragging me back to the groper-infested tides of the Petting Pool. At least, without the encumbrance of my lunch bag, I’ll have both hands available to block the flesh-eaters.

  As I follow them into the stairwell, my cell phone vibrates from the bottom of my backpack. I dig it out to see a jumble of numbers I don’t recognize. Since the only two people in the world who know this phone number are Dad and Mandy, I figure Mandy must have a new phone. “Hey,” I say, shielding the phone from any teachers that might walk by.

  “Sara? Sweetheart, it’s Mom.”

  I say nothing, just stop dead and reach for the handrail to steady myself. I haven’t heard her say my name in months. I’d forgotten how smooth it sounds. How comforting. I think about hanging up.

  “I’ve been desperate to talk to you,” she says. “Are you at school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Darling, I miss you so much. How do you like it there? Have you made any friends?”

  Carling and the girls have stopped at the landing and are waving me to hurry up. “Sort of.”

  “That’s wonderful. Sweetie, I love you so much. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to fly out here and visit.”

  “I don’t know. School’s pretty tough.”

  “I’ve been a little worried about your dad. Is he managing okay?”

  No. He’s a total mess and so am I. You need to come back right this minute and erase what you’ve done, I don’t say. It might take away his need to pour bleach on the whole world. Might stop his downward spiral. But somehow I can’t give her the satisfaction of knowing she hurt us so badly we don’t recognize ourselves anymore. “Yeah.”

  “No return of his problem? No signs of scrubbing or checking things over and over?”

  “Nope. Dad’s fine.”

  “Oh. I’m so relieved. I was going to ask Aunt Jodie to fly in from Chicago to check on you. Just to be sure you’re not struggling—”

  “Mom? I’ve got to go now. Talk to you later.”

  “Wait, honey. What about—?”

  I snap the phone shut. Then, when I’m certain the connection has been severed, I open the phone up, press a few buttons, and hit Block Caller.

  The sofa is already layered with bodies, in some spots two students deep. Carling and Sloane are happy to fling themselves on top of the heap, and I settle myself on the leather arm beside Griff and Leo. I’m shaking after my mother’s call and not sure it’s a good idea to be within verbal striking range of Leo Reiser—you never know what will come out of his mouth—but I’m not willing to plunk myself down on a pile of squirming half strangers in the name of sexual enlightenment.

  “That was brutal,” says Griff as we sit. “Curtis is such an A-hole with his pop quizzes.”

  “Agreed,” says Sloane, kicking off her worn shoes and closing her eyes. “I totally bombed that one.”

  Isabella looks at Carling and says, with a voice so thin and glassy it could shatter, “I think I did exceptionally well. How about you, Carling?”

  Carling lets herself fall backward across Leo and Griff’s laps. Then she grins at me. “Fantastic. Maybe even perfect.”

  “I hope so,” says Sloane, picking her teeth. “Or Brice and Gracie will implode.”

  Carling’s skirt is hiked up high enough for me to see today’s panties are yellow. I won’t be able to tell unless she rolls over, but I’m guessing these are Saturday’s. “True. It’s Harvard med school or death for me.”

  I can’t stand this anymore. Carling loves law, she’s the darling of our class. We did a mock trial the other day and not only did she win for our team, she made her points with such passion and humor. What judge, male or female, could resist her? This electricity that surrounds her isn’t always channeled into crazy, I can see that now. When Carling Burnack feels good about herself, she’s the most charming girl in the school. “I don’t get it,” I say. “Why don’t you tell your parents you want to be a lawyer?”

  She’s still for a moment, then says robotically, “Because law is for hiring. Medicine is for aspiring.”

  Mrs. Pelletier heads down the stairs, eyeing the Petting Pool with mock reproof. Anything that might have been going on beneath the surface stops as she pauses on the landing and leans down to adjust Carling’s errant skirt. “Are we keeping it clean here today?”


  “Just a bunch of honor students swapping biological theories,” says Carling. “It’s all very innocent.”

  “Hmm,” she says with a sarcastic nod. She starts to walk away. “I rather doubt that. Just remember where you are, people. You wouldn’t want to come to school next week and find your favorite sofa has been moved into the teachers’ lounge. Because that can be arranged.”

  “You’re the coolest, Mrs. P,” calls Griff. “If only I were a few years older, I’d give your husband a reason to step up his game.”

  She stops and looks back, dumbfounded that this randy suggestion came from Anton’s famed wunderkind, then hurries off as if it never happened.

  “I adore Mrs. Pelletier,” says Isabella.

  “Forget her,” says Sloane. “If something doesn’t change, Mr. Curtis is going to screw me for Yale.”

  “Don’t worry, princess.” Griff pulls a tissue from his pocket and stuffs a corner of it up his nose. “I’ll screw you either way.”

  Sloane stares at him. “Say it for me, Griff. I’m too tired.”

  He pinches up his face. “Griff, you’re such a pig.”

  “Got that right,” says Carling.

  “Hey, you guys know anyone who might want to buy the Aston?” asks Leo. “I need the down payment to buy something that actually—I don’t know—runs.”

  Carling pokes him. “A down payment—are you kidding me? You think none of us saw that Times article about Reiser Industries last week?”

  “Yeah, Reiser,” says Sloane. “You and your brother are inheriting practically the entire Eastern seaboard.”

  “What does Reiser Industries do?” I ask.