Joy School (8 page)

I come inside, put the other mail on the kitchen table, go into my room and shut the door quietly. I use my scissors to open the envelope neatly. There are three pages!

Maybe later Diane will feel better and I will ask her to check all the things that Cherylanne said. One thing about Diane is that when she’s in the mood to talk, she always tells me the truth. Unlike me, who has now begun to lie like crazy. I don’t know when it started, but it’s beginning to get out of control. Like those cans you buy in the joke shop and you open the lid and
wham
.

I hear a knock on the door, look around for a place to hide the letter. That’s all I need is for him to see it. I slide it into my pillowcase, say, “Come in.”

It’s Diane, her face an apology.

“Hi,” I say.

“Come on, let’s walk the dog. Then we’ll come back and make some pies.”

Well, she has rallied, as they say. Maybe she is already starting to be a mother because she can’t help herself, her body is taking over, and so she is thinking about someone else’s feelings. That’s what mothers do, is always get in back of the line. “No,” they say, holding up their hand, “I’m fine.”

We go outside and I am hooking up Bridgette to her
leash when I see another note in the bushes. I’m not sure whether I should tell Diane. But she sees it herself, and she walks over to it, pulls it out, shows me. “Well, what’s
this?”
she says, smiling. “Have you been getting love notes?”

I shake my head, glance quickly across the street.

“What’s wrong?” She looks at the note again, then back at me. The fun has all evaporated. “Can I read it?”

I come up to her, say quietly, “It’s not a love note.”

“Yeah, all right. Can I read it?”

I shrug. I’ve wanted to tell her, but now I’m not so sure. For one thing, Diane is not quite Diane.

She reads the note, hands it to me. In the usual print is this: WE KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN AND WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING.

“What the hell is this?” Diane asks. “What are they talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “The kids across the street put notes there. I don’t know what it means.” Jimmy, I’m thinking. They saw me with him. They know just how I feel about him. I feel like my privacy is a white place where they’ve wiped their dirty hands.

Diane reads the note again, then crumples it and puts it in her pocket. We start walking, and she says, “What did the other notes say?”

“They’re all different. Just… stuff.”

“I wonder why they’re doing that.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t do anything.”

Diane looks back down the street. “Is that the house? The white one right across from ours?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to pay them a little visit?”

“No.” I say this too fast. She doesn’t like what a coward I am. She got the adventure genes in the family.

“Well, I think we should. Maybe a little later. Maybe around three
A.M.”

“I just ignore them.” Not true. I always feel really bad.

Diane takes Bridgette’s leash from my hand, reins her in closer. “Sometimes, Katie, you need to take a little control of your own life. When it’s time to say
stop
, you need to say
stop
. It can happen when you first move somewhere that people like to give you a little test.”

“Right.”

“So you need to let them know who you are, that you’ll stand up for yourself.”

“Okay.”

We are walking exactly together. I feel better just because now she knows about the notes too. It’s really all I needed.

“Diane?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know your baby can hear you?”

She looks over at me, and I see a glimmer of her old beauty in the line of her cheekbone, the blackness of her hair. “Is that right?”

“Yes.”

She looks away. “Well, I hope he doesn’t hear too well. There sure hasn’t been anything good for him to hear.”

I consider whether or not to tell her about the notebook of things about babies. I have given it a title:
Facts About the Team of You and Your Baby
. Probably there will be a better time later.

Still, “Your baby doesn’t care what you say,” I tell her. “Anything is fine. He just loves you already. Your voice. Even your body sounds. Like your heart. That
lub, dub
, sound. It sounds like that,
lub, dub
. He loves that.”

She sighs. “Oh, Katie.”

“What?” Her look is like she has said turn the light on and I have started lifting up rugs to find the switch. Like I don’t get anything.

“Forget it,” she says. “Nothing.”

We stop talking. It looks like this walk will cheer up only one of us: Bridgette is happy as could be. Stones are a whole show to her. She sniffs each one like it’s breaking her heart to leave it; like later, when no one is interfering, she’ll come back and visit it the right way.

B
efore I go to sleep, I think about making the pies and how it would have been different if my mother were here. Well, for one thing they would have turned out. And sometimes someone would have smiled. She would have had some music on, probably her Perry Como album. I like him, too. He seems like such a nice man and I understand he used to only be a barber.

I close my eyes and think of my mother in an outfit where I get to touch everything. I like to do this. I make up outfits of my choice. Last time it was a dance dress I made up, a filmy white thing with rhinestones on the bodice, and thin, thin straps that are called spaghetti. Tonight I make her wearing a blue fancy suit. A square, button jacket and a straight skirt. It’s a mohair suit. There is a scarf with it, tucked in rich at the neck. And a pin on her shoulder, a peacock pin with many jewels in the tail. “That’s a diamond,” she says, when I touch it. “That’s a ruby. That’s a sapphire.” When I ask are they real, she laughs and says yes of course, and that she is saving that pin for me when we meet up again.
She is wearing a little round hat. Nylons and blue matching high heels. She is happy.

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving. In everyone’s oven will be one dead turkey. I used to like taking walks on Thanksgiving afternoon, thinking you could walk up any sidewalk to any door and knock on it and when it opened, turkey smell. Even if the people don’t speak English. But now I have to say I am not much looking forward to Thanksgiving. Our table will be small and quiet. I don’t think a single person but me will want the wishbone.

Friday afternoon, I am sitting in Father Compton’s church when I hear him coming up behind me. I can tell it’s him from the wheeze in his nose. I turn around and smile. I would like to have a word with him.

He is a good kind of priest because he sees that, without my saying anything. He sits in the pew opposite me, nods. “How are you, Katie?” I’ve got all the time in the world, he is saying.

“Okay.” Good, because I need to talk to you, I am saying.

“Paying us a visit today?”

“Yes, sir.”

He sits still, waits.

I clear my throat, smile again. “Could I ask you something?”

He nods, serious.

“Okay. So … okay, I’ll just say it. Did you ever have a time in your life when you lied a lot?” Well, now there is a jump of fear in me because what if I am wrong about his character?

But he just thinks for awhile, staring off over my shoulder. Then, looking back at me, “Yes.”

I wait.

He raises an eyebrow.

I clench one fist, keep my mouth shut.

“But you’re not here to talk about me, are you?” he finally says.

“No, sir.”

“Well, then.” He looks at his watch. “Would you like to come into my office and talk there for a little bit? It’s more private. And I have a box of chocolate-covered cherries someone gave me that I’ll never finish by myself.”

I shiver a little like a breeze has gone down my neck. It’s from the pure relief of him. I say yes, I would like to go to his office. While I’m following him there, it comes to me that nobody gave him those chocolates. He bought them for himself, but he’s going to share with me. What they ought to do is make him pope. I sigh loudly, happy. He turns toward me, checks my face, then turns away again, continues his slow, bent-over walk toward his office. Yes, his back is saying. Right this way. The language of the body can be such a gentle thing.

Riding my bike to Cynthia’s house, I think about what I told Father Compton. I don’t know if it was such a good idea. Although he was very nice all the way till the end, I wonder if after I left he didn’t close his door and lean against it, saying, “Boy!” Or maybe “Mother of God!” What he mostly said is that lying hurt people. Maybe not at first, but eventually it hurt people, especially the one telling the lie. He talked about a surface being eroded and how that changes the character of a thing and I looked into his eyes like I was listening really hard to all he was saying, and I was listening, but I also was thinking about how amazingly old he is and didn’t priests have a retirement rule? He said it really was true about oh what tangled webs we weave, that when you start lying, it just gets more and more complicated. I didn’t tell him exactly what I was lying about. I said I had exaggerated some things about a person I cared for. And that I had lied about my age. He said there was also a way of lying by
not
saying things, sins of omission. That was scary. I just nodded, didn’t say anything. I was thinking, what if he’s a mind reader. What if he knows
everything
, like when I imagined Frenching with Jimmy and how our looks at each other would be so soft when we were done kissing. One thing I need to find out is what do you do after the kiss, like does the girl put her head on his shoulder or what? And can you swallow?

I never did get to ask Diane anything. I didn’t show her Cherylanne’s letter and I didn’t tell her about Jimmy. She seemed so taken up the whole time, so complicated about herself there was not really any room in her for anyone else. I don’t think things are going so good with her and Dickie. He is like a puppy and she is like the one saying, “I
told
you no animals!” She said she would write more often and I said I would too. Maybe on paper we can say some things. My father sort of hugged her when she left, but it was too late, it was like they were only hurting each other, touching. During Thanksgiving dinner, she told him about the baby and the words were like a package laid on the table that no one was about to open. My father looked at Dickie, then at Diane; he asked when it would be born and that was that. She and Dickie left this morning earlier than they said they would and I’ll bet the inside of that truck is solid quiet.

When I left Father Compton’s office I said thank you and he asked did I feel better? I said yes. He said something they have in the Catholic religion is confession, where people can say all that they did in detail, and it is all forgiven. Cherylanne once warned me about this. She said Catholics try to capture you. I told Father Compton I knew about confession but that I didn’t exactly believe a man could forgive a person for all they did wrong, especially if it was not done to them. He said no, it was God doing the forgiving. I said Oh, but
what I was thinking was well then why not take the direct route? I wish God were realer and would come to town once in awhile. I wish I could see His face, which I understand shines so hard you can’t look at it, but I wish I could look at it and say, Well, not to be rude, but could you just tell me exactly why some things happen? I could have just a short list of questions. And probably He could give me a heavenly explanation that I would say OH! to, and then feel so much better for the rest of my life. It would be no sweat for Him and it would mean so much to me. He is stingy, when you think about it.