Cheating Lessons: A Novel (20 page)

Doubt and triumph battled in Nadine’s face. “Fine.” She jumped up. “How about a ride home?”

“Sure.”

They started toward the parking lot. A few times Nadine seemed about to speak, but then she’d catch herself and give Bernadette a nervous little smile.

As they got in the car Bernadette caught a whiff of something foul. She checked her sneakers. In spite of her care she’d managed to tread in dog shit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another.

—Mark Twain,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

T
hat night after dinner Joe Terrell went to the hardware store before it closed, and Martha settled down to clip coupons at the coffee table.

Loneliness drove Bernadette down to the living room. “Mom?”

“Mmm?”

“What would you do if you found out someone you knew had done . . . something wrong?”

The scissors paused. “Is this someone a friend, or just someone you know of?”

“A friend.” A hero. A fake.

“
How
wrong?”

“Pretty bad. Something that would disappoint a lot of people.”

Martha laid down the scissors and folded her hands in her lap. She cleared her throat. “Which people, would you say? Parents?”

“Oh, yeah.” Mr. Malory charmed young and old. “People who trust this person. Who think this person is very trustworthy.”

“Did this person—is this a he or a she?”

“I can’t say.”

“Oh. Did they tell you about it?”

“No. They don’t know I know.”

“How
do
you know?”

“I heard something.” And saw something.

Martha leaned forward and put her hand to her chin, resting her elbow on her knee. She had the air of someone who has waited a long time for just such an occasion. “Well, now. Let’s think about this a minute. First of all, maybe you’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“Oh. Maybe you could . . . hmmm, you could . . . what
were
you thinking of doing?”

Bernadette picked up the scissors and cut the head off a man giving a seventy-five-cent discount on GLAD wrap. “I could tell some people. Who could stop this person from doing something worse.”

“Something worse?”

“Oh, yeah.
Much
worse.”

Martha’s expression of acceptant, tolerant mother-daughter bonding faded. She sat back grim-faced. “Abortion is murder, Bernadette. You know that. If I have to I’ll call Irene Walczak myself.”

Bernadette gaped at her mother for what felt like minutes. “Mom, for Pete’s sake! Nadine’s not pregnant!”

“She’s not? Oh, God bless us. Is it—you?”

“NO.
Nobody’s
pregnant. It’s not about sex!” Though Bernadette could not help wondering, somewhat hysterically, who Martha would have guessed as the father.

“Oh, thank heavens for that. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but it certainly sounded—”

But Bernadette couldn’t hear the rest for laughing. Suddenly it struck her as exquisitely funny. Nobody cared about honesty; they were too busy worrying whether you’d been screwing around. Her mother moved over closer to her on the couch, which was a good thing, because even though everything was very funny, she couldn’t stop breathing in shaky little gulps.

Martha hugged her. “Shhh, shhh,” she murmured. “It’s okay.” She stroked Bernadette’s hair. “Do you want to tell me about it?” She smelled warmly of soap and sense and safety.

Bernadette sniffled. She felt as fragile as tissue paper. “I guess,” she said. The cat, the bra, the folder—haltingly, with covert glances at her mother, she told the story again. For once her mother didn’t interrupt.

At the end, Martha pulled a Kleenex from her pocket and handed it to Bernadette. “I was in love once, too,” she said, smoothing Bernadette’s hair back from her forehead. “And I’m not talking about your father. Before him.”

Bernadette did not think she had been in love with Mr. Malory—but she’d been wrong so often lately, maybe she was wrong about that, too. She blew her nose with a honk and snuggled against her mother’s side.

“There was this boy who came into the café all the time.” Her mother, Bernadette knew, had been a waitress in South Boston as a young girl. “He was at Harvard. Roger Vesterman III, but everyone called him Vesty. Oh, he was gorgeous. To die for, you’d probably say. Black wavy hair . . . and the clothes! None of that sloppy tie-die stuff for Vesty. He was from New York.” Martha said “New York” in tones that left no doubt as to that city’s sophistication.

“Vesty was always teasing me, asking what I’d study in college, as though my mother hadn’t been a cleaning lady all those years after my dad died. Next thing you know he’s leaving five- and ten-dollar bills under his coffee cup. Showing off, of course, but I went out with him anyway. We went to little restaurants in Harvard Square I’d never been in before but they turned out to be fun, when you were with someone who knew his way around. One time he got us front-row tickets to an Elton John concert.”

“Didn’t he do ‘Rocket Man’?”

“Mm-huh.” Martha started to sing. “ ‘Rocket Man, doo de doo de something CARRY on—’ ’’

“And then what?” This was cozy. It had been years since her mother read her stories.

“And then I got to thinking that we’d get married and maybe I’d get to college after all—his family had money, I think they were in oil—until one night when he knocked his books off the table in the café and this picture falls out. It’s a wedding dress from a bride magazine, and someone—a girl, you could tell—had written on it, ‘What about this one?’ His fiancée, no less. His hometown honey.”

“
No.
” Bernadette gasped. “What’d you do?”

“I dumped the coffeepot all over his senior thesis.”

“You should have poured it in his lap.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Wow.” Certain things became clearer. Bernadette would bet this had something to do with why her mother always wanted her to apply to the prestigious eastern schools—to outdo her old flame.

Martha squeezed her shoulders. “It’s not impossible to be wrong about people you trust, is what I’m saying.”

“I guess not.” Bernadette took a breath. “You know, Mr. Malory never tried—he never made a move toward me, that way.”

Martha clucked consolingly. “I’ll bet he wanted to, sweetheart. A pretty girl like you, and so smart. But he’d be a fool to tamper with one of his students.”

Thoughts of what he
had
tampered with brought them back to the dilemma at hand.

“What should I do?” Bernadette asked.

Her mother stood, the same martial light in her eye that must have scared the bejesus out of Roger Vesterman III. She strode about the living room, one arm crossed under her bosom supporting the other arm, her thumb under her chin, her lips pursed into her thoughtful trout face.

For the first time in hours, Bernadette dared to hope.

“Do? We do nothing.”

Bernadette squinted. “Nothing?”

“You heard me. Nothing. Bernadette, I can’t let you start a big scandal based on something you heard in your teacher’s bedroom.”

“His closet!”

“Bedroom, closet, who cares, you were in his
apartment.
Snooping through his bathroom, rooting around in his papers—how do you think that sounds? All Mr. Malory has to say is you’re some lovesick girl who’s been pestering him. They’re not going to search his place, and even if they did, what do you think they’d find? You’d be a laughingstock.” She sat back down on the couch and put her hands on Bernadette’s shoulders, forcing Bernadette to look at her. “Sweetie, I can’t let that happen.”

“But that’s—I wasn’t—it would be a lie . . . .” 

“It won’t be
your
lie.”

Something in Bernadette’s conception of the world shifted.
Her mother was not honest.
It was as though scientists had announced that fresh air caused cancer. The betrayal by Nadine, who was her own age, after all, shrank to the minor blot of a venial sin.

She broke away from her mother’s hold and struggled to frame a convincing argument, knowing as she spoke that it was futile. “Mom—to not tell someone would be like having company for dinner and letting them eat a bad . . . a bad—crab!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Martha scoffed. “If someone had to get a bad crab I’d take it myself, and just pretend to eat it.”

“What if
all
the crabs were bad?”

“Then we’d call out for pizza. Shellfish is always risky this far from the ocean. Now pay attention.” Martha’s tone became brisk. “If Wickham wins this thing tomorrow, then it wins. Don’t ruin it for your team by telling them anything after the fact.”

Bernadette tried one last time. “Dad would want me to do something. He hates when people cheat.”

“Do
you
want to tell him? Because I just don’t have the heart. But go on, go tell him the contest he’s been bragging about all over the office is fixed.”

Bernadette knew when she was beaten. Her mother would make a formidable debater. Opponents wouldn’t know what hit them.

Martha moved over and took Bernadette’s foot between her palms, massaging it with firm, steady pressure. “Honey, you’re exhausted. Look at you! First all that reading, then the excitement with Ms. K., and now this—anyone would be confused. But you’re my daughter. I can’t worry about Mr. Malory. My job is to look out for you.” She kneaded both feet. She had very strong thumbs. “You sleep on all this tonight, and see if it doesn’t make more sense in the morning.”

She stood then, pulling Bernadette up to hug her. Ferociously Bernadette hugged her back, clinging to her mother as though she could protect her from the judgment of strangers.

“Good night, Mom. Thanks.”

Martha kissed the top of her head. “That’s what I’m here for, sweetie. Now scoot. Tomorrow’s a big day.”

Sleep took its time coming. Bernadette lay in her bed between freshly washed sheets, under the powerful beam of the new gooseneck lamp her mother had hoped would put less strain on her eyes. Surrounded by love. Drowsily she thought,
Just because people are wrong doesn’t mean they don’t love you.
She mulled this over awhile, and then tried the reverse.
Just because people love you doesn’t mean they aren’t wrong.

The implications were terrifying.

Though Bernadette pretended it was not so, she knew there was a lot of Martha in her. If Bernadette was as tough-minded as, say, leather, it was because her mother was a stone wall. She had long ago rejected maternal taste in clothes, hair, books, and music. But notions of right and wrong—those were not questions of taste. She had learned right and wrong
from
her parents, and from the church they’d raised her in. No novel she’d read so far had shaken her faith in the Ten Commandments. Or, for the matter, in the Additional Commandments of Martha Terrell, retained more indelibly than anything Moses ever passed along. (Thou shalt not dawdle when told to do the dishes. Thou shalt realize that using the car is a privilege. Average-looking boys treat you better. Women can do anything men can do, but why would they want to?) One of the tenets of Bernadette’s life had been that, in a pinch, her parents would bail her out. Well, she was in a pinch, and her mother had just thrown her a life preserver of stone.

She turned out the light. It felt too dark. She got up and opened her door a crack. Downstairs someone was unloading the dishwasher. Back in bed she stared at the wall. When this whole business was over she would look at things differently. Her mother. Herself. What had happened tonight wasn’t the end of the world, she supposed. Or even the beginning of the end. But it was—Winston Churchill had known how to put things—the end of the beginning.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Great contest follows, and much learned dust

Involves the combatants.

—William Cowper,
The Task

T
he next morning saw the Terrells in their usual spot at St. Jerome’s ten-thirty mass. In a lusty voice Martha sang “What Does The Lord Require” and didn’t notice that Bernadette had maneuvered to have Joe sit between them in the pew. The Gospel was the one about Jesus making a blind man see. Bernadette listened closely, following along in the missalette. Maybe this was a sign. Until Friday
she
had been blind. Maybe the sermon would say what to do.

But no. The priest read a letter from the bishop about the importance of fund-raising for the new church addition. Her attention drifted. The Classics Bowl was five hours away.

Was there any way to get through it without cheating? Only one way she could see.
Do nothing.
Nadine had said it, and so had Martha. Though she doubted they meant what she did.

The Bowl was about memory. Anthony had been right. Without Bernadette’s memory the Wizards would certainly lose. Frank Malory would lose. That was good. Everyone else rooting for Wickham would lose, too. That was bad. The faces of Lori, Anthony, David, even Mrs. Standish, swam before her, but she pushed them away. She would not serve them a bad crab whether they wanted it or not.

You’re deciding for them,
the little voice in her head warned.

No, I’m deciding for myself,
she told it as she rose to go up for communion. Mr. Malory had made his decision, her mother and Nadine made theirs; she would make her own.

“Body of Christ,” said the priest.

“Amen,” said Bernadette.