All This Heavenly Glory (11 page)

Nicole came back and it was pretty obvious that she knew Jeff and Charlotte had this mutual crush, the worst part of the whole
thing being that she enthusiastically reported,
I’m so psyched you and Jeff have been hanging out, that’s all I hear now, Charlotte this and Charlotte that,
very exclamation pointily and clearly indicating a total lack of concern that Charlotte and Jeff were ever going to engage
in anything more than flirting, which she appeared to be aware of and entirely unworried about. Jeff broke out the Scrabble,
but early in the game when Nicole added the letters
TRIANGU
onto Charlotte’s
LATE
, Jeff said in an unmistakably condescending tone,
Just because you heard it on the news doesn’t mean it’s a word,
to which Nicole tried to explain what it meant. To which Jeff said,
I know what it means,
without any indication that his sense of humor was still available to him. Nicole flipped through the dictionary and read,
Triangulate, verb. One. To divide into triangles. Two…
Charlotte felt the beginning of a stomachache and decided to go home, after which no one called to ask her how she was feeling,
after which she thought there might be some entirely new permutations of the asshole category, and they all stopped hanging
out again.

C
HARLOTTE ANNE BYERS makes the transition from public to private school with relative ease, but the bump up from sixth grade to seventh proves
more difficult. A recent fifth-grade graduate from P.S. 166, Charlotte Anne had looked forward to enrolling at I.S. 44 middle
school with then—best friend Rachel Richmond (who would run away from home before the end of eighth grade anyway after a particularly
brutal belt-beating from her stepfather), but on a tour of the school with her mother, new stepfather, and other visiting
parents, rumors of stabbings and children flying out of windows went around and it was decided that Charlotte Anne would attend
private school. Initially, in spite of the rumored stabbings, after five years in public school, Charlotte Anne has strong
reservations about private school that focus largely on uniforms. In fact, the only dress code at Davis Academy is no clogs
or sneakers, which doesn’t sit well with her either but is a more tolerable concession than a short plaid skirt (she had given
up skirts and dresses entirely as of the end of third grade and at the urging of Rachel Richmond made a foray into hot pants
that lasted exactly one day). Charlotte Anne, somewhat shy, survives an interview with the surprisingly genial headmaster,
who, impressed by her almost entirely “excellent” elementary-school grades (non-numerical grades ranged from poor to excellent,
hers marred only by consistent “poors” in penmanship), as well as her perfect attendance record, admits her to the sixth-grade
class.

Challenges at Davis Academy, of an entirely different origin than those at P.S. 166, call for adjustments. Although she considers
herself a pacifist, Charlotte Anne has become accustomed to the ever-present possibility of having to beat someone up. (She’s
never actually seen or even heard about an actual beating-up incident, but there were always threats, and one had to assume,
however Midwestern and unthreatening one appeared, a badass posture, one Charlotte Anne would never entirely shake. Plus there
was that one time in fifth grade when defenseless Sue Ellen Smiley supposedly both talked smack
and
snapped on Yolanda Jones, a dubious allegation at best, since S.E.S. retained her southern manners throughout her five years
at P.S. 166, nevertheless Yolanda attempted to orchestrate a group beating-up after school, threatening to additionally beat
anyone up who didn’t take her side and getting several of the fifth-grade girls, including Charlotte Anne, to agree to participate
on the beat-up-or-be-beaten-up basis, the beating-up of Sue Ellen Smiley quickly aborted when their homeroom teacher discovered
the plan, much to Charlotte Anne’s combined embarrassment and relief, having no beating-up skills and considerably less interest.)
At eleven, her concerns are intellectual. Charlotte Anne Byers has a class called Current Events. A weekly project is to take
a front-page article from the
New York Times,
paste it into a scrapbook, and be prepared to discuss it in front of the class. The predominating news stories of the time
are Vietnam and Watergate, and Charlotte Anne Byers is both years away from an interest in politics and developing a considerable
fear of public speaking/raising her hand (a time will come in the future, long after most hand-raising opportunities have
passed, when she’ll have trouble not speaking publicly, even without being asked, but at present, being called on is becoming
an issue). Additionally, students are encouraged to mail away for a P.O.W. bracelet for ten dollars, the significance of which
is unclear to Charlotte Anne except that the popular kids all have them and most everyone else, including her, doesn’t. Her
mother and stepfather, not of a liberal bent, having unwittingly provided their daughter with a decidedly left-wing education
(which will, at a total cost of more than $14,000, transform said daughter into a confirmed liberal before she graduates high
school), will not exacerbate the damage by subsidizing the bracelet based on a show of solidarity for the war victims (“Sweetheart,
that ain’t gonna bring them back,” her stepfather said) nor on the “everyone has one” argument (at no time in the history
of her youth did this argument ever end in favorable results), finally forcing Charlotte Anne to stash three weeks’ allowance
in order to mail away for the bracelet herself, which would end up turning her wrist green in a matter of hours.

Charlotte Anne survives her first year at private school by being pulled into a small group of friends vaguely proud to not
be the most popular. Clarisse Benjamin sits next to Charlotte Anne in the back row and bonds with her during a class trip
to the Metropolitan Museum of Art when they discover they both love
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
and think it would be fantastic to stow away like Claudia and her little brother, funded by coins from the fountain. (Charlotte
Anne hasn’t yet been to Clarisse’s house and wouldn’t know that her own romantic notion of sleeping in Marie Antoinette’s
lounge chair and enjoying the riches of the fountain wasn’t so much a dramatic improvement in lifestyle for Clarisse as it
was motivated by the desire for a place of her own without any parents pretending they actually lived there too.) In addition
to the
New York Times,
this year has the sixth graders reading Kurt Vonnegut’s
Cat’s Cradle,
a considerable literary leap up from the previous year, and which mostly befuddles Charlotte Anne except for the amusing
use of language. Having no idea what it’s actually about (she will read it again twenty-five years later and still not know),
she and Clarisse Benjamin think
Cat’s Cradle
is the funniest book ever, which results in the girls forming their own religion, the prime tenets of which involve the wearing
of a certain type of loafer and that their disciples curtsy before them and refer to them as “O Great [Whoever]”(that no one
ever joins is not in any way bothersome to either Clarisse or Charlotte Anne). An after-school study date at Clarisse’s Park
Avenue apartment makes an indelible impression on Charlotte Anne, with six bedrooms, marble floors, two kitchens (one with
a dumbwaiter), four bathrooms, a live-in maid, and a pantry stocked with every conceivable type of snack food available. She
is most impressed by two things, though:

1. Clarisse has her own bathroom that has a chrome toilet-paper dispenser operated by a push button that springs the door
   open, revealing the toilet paper (which Charlotte Anne did not previously understand to be so unsightly as to require a hidden
   dispenser).
   
2. Clarisse’s mother and father have separate bathrooms on either side of their bedroom, and her mother has a dressing “suite”
   that includes two walk-in closets, one just for shoes.
   

Charlotte Anne lives with her mother and stepfather in a prewar “two-bedroom” (Charlotte Anne’s bedroom technically being
the dining room, which is a source of torment for her during dinner parties, on which occasions C.A. gets the boot from her
own room, and also because of its location between her parents’ room and the kitchen, severely limiting her privacy; her mom
will say, “Knock knock,” and then walk through without waiting for an answer, and it should be noted that there is an alternate
route to the kitchen via the front hall that adds maybe an additional five seconds to the trip that Charlotte Anne’s mother
is rarely willing to take), and their entire apartment could probably fit into Clarisse’s parents’ bedroom suite, the apartment
not made any more comfortable for three people by a single bathroom (there is a toilet in a dark closet off the kitchen, but
a scratchy toilet seat and a claustrophobic feeling keep all of them away unless absolutely desperate). During their study
date (mostly Charlotte Anne is studying Clarisse’s lifestyle), the girls discover another common interest: making lists. After
making the list of rules for their religion, Charlotte Anne and Clarisse make a list of things they have in common:

1. making lists
   
2. like actor Wally Cox (who they know only from his appearances on Hollywood Squares)
   
3. like the word
   humble
   
4. same shoes
   
5. address begins with five
   
6. blue eyes
   
7. been to Rome
   
8. prefer fountain pens
   
9. founders of the Divine Order of Blue Loafers
   

Then a list of things they don’t have in common:

1. Clarisse’s parents are married
   
2. Clarisse has a brother
   
3. Charlotte Anne has been only at the Bangkok airport, Clarisse has seen the actual city
   
4. Charlotte Anne has read
   The Harrad Experiment
   (Charlotte Anne’s mother has an inexplicable habit of giving her daughter her books when she’s done with them, regardless
   of subject matter. By the time she’s twelve, Charlotte Anne will have read
   Portnoy Complaint,
   everything by Jacqueline Susann,
   Fear of Flying,
   and those sex books by “M” and “J,” as well as regularly taking the quizzes in
   Cosmopolitan
   [on which her scores were generally off-the-chart low for obvious reasons] several years later she’ll wonder if this was
   her mother’s way of avoiding “the talk,” which seems unlikely given that her mother and stepfather talk about their own sex
   life quite a bit more than any twelve-year-old would care for, and which dinner conversation/possible sex education is not
   enhanced at all by literature using terminology such as
   probe
   or various words related to the presence of a high temperature)
   
5. Clarisse prefers neither Keith nor Danny Partridge but rather Reuben Kincaid (a peculiar choice even for an adult, as well
   as an ill omen)
   

Charlotte Anne openly questions the existence of Clarisse’s parents, as she has never actually seen them; Clarisse claims
they do in fact exist, but although there is evidence of some upper-class life form, Charlotte Anne has seen only photos.
Clarisse hosts a sixth-grade graduation party while her parents are in Morocco; nearly the entire class attends and participates
in a kissing game called Teacher Teacher in which it’s theoretically better to fail (depending on who’s failing you) because
you have to continue kissing your “teacher” until you pass. Despite a lack of parental supervision, this party is inexplicably
attended by the two sixth-grade teachers (not in the game), Mr. Grady and Mr. Josephs, who seem entirely neutral about the
goings-on. Charlotte Anne and Clarisse, along with classmate Leslie Bacon, decline to participate (this is Charlotte Anne’s
second experience with kissing games and it doesn’t look any more enticing to her this time with the addition of several mouths
full of braces), and Jenna Ritter declines the invitation altogether with a note saying, “No, thank you,” which Clarisse felt
was sarcastic and joked that if Jenna couldn’t play Teacher Teacher with the actual teacher then she wasn’t going to play
at all (which was an unfortunate reversal of what was probably true; Mr. Josephs had on numerous occasions made it known to
the entire sixth grade that he thought Jenna was the prettiest girl in the class, which, in addition to being completely creepy,
was occasionally rumored to be the reason for Jenna’s extended absence).