Expensive People (8 page)

JOHNS BEHEMOTH
FOUNDED 1880

That was impressive to both of us, and the cobbled streets that wound through Faculty Row (a quaint long building of one-story houses joined amid a surplus of evergreens and pines), and the large snow-dappled opening that promised a park or a green in warmer months, where bemused bright boys might read Latin verse, and the many elms (some of them dead, but in the winter no one could tell), and the enormous library, and a building with its own modern steel sculpture out front: an angular, emaciated human being, perhaps a man, holding erect a globe that has become skeletonized but evidently no less heavy. A symbol of Science, and that was the Science Building. The Humanities Building was the big one, with a surly, encrusted look, its windows like multiple eyes with thick, leafless vines over them like eyebrows. Nada and I liked this building best. Here there were no deceptions about the torment knowledge promised, the way there was in public schools where knowledge was shuffled in with dances and basketball games and camera clubs.

“We'll get you in here, Richard, the two of us,” Nada said. The exquisite, muted ostentation of this place had unnerved her a little, but her voice simply lowered itself and went on, grimly and confidentially. “When we go in for the interview, please remember to sit straight. But don't look rigid. And don't, for God's sake, look like your father, as if you're ready to fly out of the chair and slap someone on the back. Look reserved and a little abstracted. Look intelligent. How do you look today anyway?” And she turned to stare at me.

It was the first time that day she had bothered to look at me, and I
felt the anxiety of her solemn dark eyes though she tried to show nothing. Nada had fine clear skin, rather pale. Suburban style dictated her hair, which was “done” once and sometimes twice a week so that from behind or at a distance she looked like an ordinary resident of Fern-wood, a housewife who had no housewifely chores but wasn't “society” either and was terrified of seeming pretentious—short hair, set to rise above her elegant head in feathery sections that fascinated me, everything smooth and disciplined and rather familiar. Nada's hair was very dark, almost black. Suburban style dictated her entire face, actually, because she wore nothing on her eyes—no messy black goo, no blue or green eyeshadow of the kind up in her bedroom awaiting the minute she would tire of this life—and her mouth was a handsome, wholesome, unsurprising red. Her manner this morning was suburban and wholesomely nervous, American as the flag that rose above the frigid evergreens in the park at the center of enormous Johns Behemoth.

She said, “What's that on your face? Nothing? Fix your hair, push it back. Darling, you look fine. You look”—and she cast her mind about for the best word—”you look like a little scholar.”

We parked the car in an area designated for visitors. Walking up the cobbled path to what had once been the Behemoth mansion, we drew in the fresh air as if we expected strength from it. I had to hurry to keep up with her. If Nada and Father had nothing else in common, they both walked fast. They were always striding and rushing as if trying to break through crowds or anxious to see what was attracting a crowd up ahead.

“Remember, look intelligent. Don't fail me,” Nada whispered.

Like all mothers, she tended to whisper one last piece of advice that is given too late, too close to the zone all children know should be dignified by silence. We were inside the building when she told me this, and at once a middle-aged woman appeared in a doorway and cast upon us a bemused look. She glanced at me in a kindly way as if to assure me that I did look intelligent.

“Mrs. Everett?” she said. “Dean Nash will be with you in a minute.”

We were led into a curiously modern room, like a doctor's office where everything has been ordered from a catalogue, even the abstract paintings and the fake ferns, and there we both reached for the same copy of the
Scientific American,
scorning the
Reader's Digest.
“Come, sit by me, we can read it together,” Nada said. She might have thought the
magazines were set out as part of a test. I ignored her, my face still hot from the encounter with the kindly woman.

That woman returned to her desk and began typing something, paying no attention to us. She had the look of a hospital matron who had seen many mothers and sons come and go, wistful and rejected. As she rolled yellow forms of varying sizes into her electric typewriter, skillfully and with a long-fingered grace that reminded me of Nada, she raised her eyebrows and inquired of us politely, “Are you new to Fernwood?”

Yes, we were new, Nada said. We lived on Burning Bush Way. (She wanted to let the woman know we weren't wealthy but at least respectable.)

“Very nice,” said the woman. “And Richard is … twelve?” She peered at me as if she thought this rather incredible.

“No,” Nada said carefully, “he is almost eleven. But he's been attending seventh-grade back in Brookfield.”

“Oh, I see. That's very interesting,” the woman said, her eyes turning a little watery as if she were in the presence of a crippled boy. “You know, Mrs. Everett, this is such a fine school, and so many fine boys want to attend it, but, of course as in everything else, there is so much pressure and only a limited number of openings.”

“I understand,” Nada said.

When we went into the Dean of Admission's office Nada poked her finger into the small of my back to indicate that I should stand straighter. I was already walking with my spine stretched so tight I thought I might faint with exhaustion. Was it my fault I was only ten, and small for ten? But never mind, on with my miserable story. I won't blame Nada for my inadequate height or for whatever else has come to pass.

Dean Nash was an interesting man: about fifty, stylish and dandyish, as if he'd just stepped out of a Hollywood movie filmed on the set of a prep school. He was someone's idea of an Anglicized American headmaster. He smiled a dazzling dentured smile at Nada and said, “We're very happy to hear of your interest in Johns Behemoth, Mrs. Everett. Our institution represents something of an experiment, as you may know if you read the literature I sent to you—yes? fine, Mrs. Everett— an experiment set up by the executor of the Johns Behemoth estate some years ago, with the specific recommendation that this school
start its program in the early grades. We did experiment with younger children, but this aspect of the venture was gradually phased out so that we could concentrate more intensely on individual, private work in the higher grades. I believe you know, Mrs. Everett, that Johns Behemoth provides one instructor for each five boys in certain classes, and for a senior desiring intensive study an adviser who will devote upward of six hours weekly to this student, and a faculty of several people constantly available to him. We have work-study clubs, foreign-language clubs and tables in the dining room, and a quite successful Overseas Year for our juniors.”

Nada glanced over at me, warmly and kindly, as if I had already been granted a year in Greece.

“Our record for scholarships, Mrs. Everett, is quite frankly the highest in the country with the exception of one school in New England, rather more heavily endowed than Johns Behemoth,” the good dean said. He was sitting on the edge of his glass-topped desk and smiling down into Nada's excited face. With a silver pen he tapped his knee and said, “I haven't yet had time to glance through Richard's application forms, and is his health report in?—it is?—and his recommendations are in, yes, one is right here on my desk I see. Fine, fine. Now today he will be taking the entrance examination, you know. You are all prepared, Richard, for our little tests?”

He squinted at me as if, after Nada's brilliance, I was a kind of dark, dim light.

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you brought pen, pencil, and eraser?”

“Yes, sir, and paper.”

“We provide the paper,” he said a little softly, as if I had said something foolish. “Mrs. Everett, I do sincerely wish you and your son the very best luck, but I must remind you that our openings are extremely limited, and it is rare, rare indeed, that we accept a boy in the middle of the year.”

“I understand perfectly, Dean Nash.”

“I thought you would, yes, yes,” he said, smiling vaguely.

Nada sat with her white-and-caramel coat open about her and her legs crossed, and for once I was glad of her being so beautiful; maybe it would help.

“Our examinations are in five parts, Mrs. Everett, each consisting of
an hour section, and so … Should I explain the examination to you, Mrs. Everett, while Richard begins it?”

I felt a sharp pang of disappointment. I wanted to hear about the exam myself.

“Yes, that's an excellent idea,” Nada said. “Richard is very anxious to begin, Dean Nash. He's a perfectionist—I mean, he's very happy when he's doing exams, writing papers, reading. He's a very dedicated child … boy.”

“I assume that you and your husband have provided him with the proper kind of cultural background, in that case,” Dean Nash said happily.

“I hope so.”

“You would be surprised, my dear Mrs. Everett, astonished at the irregularity of the cultural backgrounds of some of the boys who take our entrance exams! Boys from, need I say, homes in this immediate vicinity.” He stared at Nada for a moment in silence to let the profundity of this remark sink in. “But I must say, without keeping it back any longer, that I am not quite unfamiliar with you, Mrs. Everett, and … and here, so you see,” he said and reached around to pick off his cluttered desk Nada's first book, a novel published three years before. The blank white cover with its fluted red lettering startled me, as if it were a private, personal part of her suddenly given out to a stranger's hand.

“Oh,” Nada said, leaning forward in surprise, letting her coat fall farther open about her. She touched her mouth with one gloved hand in a neat and exquisite and not at all spontaneous gesture I had seen her make many times before. “But how did you know—I mean, I write under my maiden name—”

“I have always been interested in literature, passionately interested,” Dean Nash said with a grin. He called attention to his appearance by involuntarily glancing down at himself—impeccable heavy tweed suit, dark tie, polished dark shoes, everything perfect. For a big man he looked light on his feet. He smelled faintly of shaving cologne, as Nada did of perfume. “Eve made a few attempts at writing myself, but above all I am interested in contemporary American writers. I subscribe to four of the ‘little’ magazines, including
The Transamerican Review,
in which you've just had a story, right? And may I say I have quite a collection of our fellow contemporaries? A sizable collection you might be interested in seeing. I have your two books on the side of my
library devoted to living authors.” And he laughed with an embarrassment that seemed to be feigned. “Of course you are still alive, Mrs. Everett. I would like to show you my library and get your opinion, and I would hope that, if I'm not being too aggressive, I might have you autograph your books.”

I could see that they had forgotten about me, so I got to my feet. This brought Dean Nash's eyes reluctantly around to me. “I'm ready to begin the examination now,” I said. It didn't come out with any sound of authority or confidence, but Nada smiled to show me I had done right. Dean Nash rose from the edge of the desk, all six feet three inches of him, lean and knobbly wristed and handsome in a caricatured Englishy way. He drew in his breath slowly and thoughtfully, like an athlete, making an interesting facial expression—pursing his lips and pulling them down, as if to make room for the air to soar up into his nostrils. He contemplated me as if he did not quite remember who I was.

I took the examination in a classroom in the Humanities Building. Dean Nash and Nada took me over, herding me delicately before them. I heard Nada's vivacious, betraying laughter behind me as Dean Nash pointed out something droll or quaint or joked about me. Who knows what he was doing? Oh, that bastard, that lecherous son-of-a-bitch! My heart pounded with hatred and a strange, wistful admiration for him, and I wondered how I could ever be equal to those two demanding people, giant and giantess, who were striding so healthily behind me. If I failed the exam I would lose them forever.

“Farrel will glance in every now and then,” the good dean told me as I settled shakily into a desk.

Farrel was an instructor who wore a suit like the dean's, though smaller. His face was younger and less handsome, and Nada did not bother to glance at him. I don't think she really “saw” short men. Nada had taken off her lovely white gloves, and on one finger her diamond ring glittered enough to break my heart and on another finger an emerald glittered in such a way that stretched every bone in my body to the breaking point. At such moments of panic and disbelief I stared at her and wondered if she was my mother, if
she
was my mother, and how had it come to pass? How was it possible she made me undergo such torture and had nothing to offer me as consolation but the glitter of Father's jewels?

Farrel shook some papers out of a soiled manila envelope, quite a few papers, and began slapping things down on my desk. My pen and pencil rattled on the shallow groove in the desk, or perhaps my trembling fingers made them rattle. While Farrel talked into my face I tried to hear what they were saying by the door. Something about lunch? Lunch together? What?

“It is ten o'clock now, Mr. Everett,” Farrel said, checking a big watch on his wrist. “You will begin the first section now, and you will have it finished at eleven. I'll be right down the hall in the lounge, and I'll look in at you occasionally. Are you ready?”

I looked around and they were gone. An empty doorway, and outside an ordinary empty hall, the barest glimpse of the corner of a bulletin board at the left—and nothing else.

“I'm ready,” I said in a croaking voice.

With a professional flourish, like a magician performing a trick, he turned the papers over. My eyes leaped to the heading, but for a few seconds my sight was blotched, I couldn't see.

“Please read the instructions before you begin,” Farrel said. He walked backward to the door, his hands in his tweedy pockets. It was clear that he thought little of me.