Saying Grace (34 page)

Let’s say it’s Bharatee’s prized possession, and it’s worth a million dollars.”

“If Michael Jackson owned it, you still wouldn’t be able to sell it because everyone would know where you got it.”

“Cut,” said Rue. “Time out. Stop. What I did was wrong because I took something that didn’t belong to me. It was stealing, and stealing is wrong whether you get caught or not. I didn’t have to get punished to know it was wrong. I have a conscience to tell me it was wrong. Now how does my conscience know?”

They all stared at her.

“Did I take a course that taught me right and wrong?”

They nodded. That must be it. It must be a class they hadn’t had yet.

“Who thinks that’s right?”

They all raised their hands. Rue thought, I wish I were running a church school. I think I’ll quit and become a nun.

“I didn’t take a course. I know a simple rule, and so do you. I know that what I did was wrong because I wouldn’t like someone to do it to me. That’s called the Golden Rule.” On the blackboard she wrote “Golden Rule: Treat Others as You Would Have Them Treat You.”

“Please take out your pencils and journals, and write at least a page on what you have just learned.”

They took out their notebooks and their pencils. There was silence and not much writing. After a while, Nicolette asked, “Mrs. Shaw?

What if you really needed a calculator, and you know Bharatee has another one?”

“That’s a good question. Why don’t you write about it?”

Kim Fat’s hand went up. “Mrs. Shaw? What if you knew for a fact that Bharatee would just think she had lost it?”

At ten o’clock Rue walked back into the office and said to Emily,

“I’ve just spent the most depressing hour of my life.”

“What happened?”

“You won’t believe it; I’ll tell you at lunch.”

Saying Grace / 251

Emily didn’t react to the tale of the maxim as Rue expected. She seemed instead distracted and upset. Mike claimed he didn’t feel an iota of surprise and suggested they have the school renamed Go For Yourself Academy.

As Rue was walking up the hill toward Home after lunch, she saw Kim Fat Snyder hanging around the water fountain.

“Hello, Kim,” she called. “Are you boycotting recess?”

“Mrs. Shaw, could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Of course.”

“You know that maxim?”

“Yes.”

“Well, remember when someone stole Bharatee’s locket?”

“Remind me.”

“It was right before Christmas? She took it off for PE and left it on a shelf in her locker, and when she came back it was gone. She told Miss Flower, and we all looked for it.”

Rue realized she had heard this much, but that nothing had been resolved.

“We played basketball that day, A’s against B’s. Lyndie Sale went back to the locker room in the middle—she was the only one who did.”

“Go on.”

“Bharatee was so upset…it was a present from her grandmother.

So after everyone left, I went back and looked in Lyndie’s locker. I thought if it was there, I’d say I found it on the ground, and give it back to Bharatee.”

“Did you find it?”

“Not the locket, but the chain was on the shelf in Lyndie’s locker.

It was all in pieces. It was all broken.”

“Boy. You’d have to be strong to do that.”

Kim nodded. Clearly the whole episode had disturbed her deeply.

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. Bharatee wouldn’t want it back like that.

And I didn’t want to be a narc. But when you told us the maxim, I thought maybe you knew.”

252 / Beth Gutcheon

“No, I didn’t know, Kim. But I’m glad you told me….”

She was interrupted by the shriek of a siren. She turned to see an entire hook and ladder, with five firepersons dressed in rubber coats with long-handled axes dangling from their belts, steaming up the drive past Home, heading for the Primary building.

Rue said, “Excuse me” and ran. Meanwhile, the firefighters all leaped off the truck and rushed toward the Primary playground, where the second grade stood watching as if gods had swarmed down from Mt. Olympus.

“What happened?” Mike asked, arriving on the run at the same time as Rue.

“Courtney Leavitt got her finger stuck in a Barbie doll,” said Charla Percy, staring at the fire truck. “She was very upset so we called nine-one-one.”

Some of the boys, excited by the sight of the dangling axes, believed the firemen would cut off Courtney’s hand.

Courtney, who seemed to fear the same thing, was trying to hide behind Charla’s leg. With a professional air, a large fireman knelt to examine the hand Courtney held out, its index finger vanished into the hole where the doll’s left arm used to be.

“Is this your doll?” he asked. She nodded.

“Did you pull its arms off?”

Courtney nodded. Shannon Korfus, agitated, explained, “Well, she…she…well, it’s an old one so she pulled one and I pulled the other.”

“What happens if we pull now?” asked the fireman. Courtney gave a cry and snatched her hand back. “Hurts, huh? You already tried that?” Courtney nodded. A second fireman produced from his tool belt a needle-nosed wire cutter. The first one looked at the tool and nodded.

“Can you hold real still?” he asked Courtney. She wasn’t sure, but it had been a rhetorical question.

The fireman began to cut across the doll’s chest from the other armhole. Clearly Courtney thought he would come to her finger and snip right through it. But instead he deftly cut the finger free.

Courtney hopped up and down, half laughing, half crying, and holding the freed hand with her other. The fireman insisted on Saying Grace / 253

examining it to see that it wasn’t permanently injured. The class crowded around wanting to see the finger.

“Thank you so much…” said Mrs. Percy, greatly relieved.

“You’re welcome,” said the fireman. “But technically, it was a Ken doll.”

The day concluded with Hughie Bache’s mother in the office, completely hysterical, talking on Emily’s phone to Poison Control.

The day Pat Moredock broke her arm the hospital told her to make an ice pack of one-third rubbing alcohol and two-thirds water and apply it for fifteen minutes every hour. This she had done. She had one ice pack at home and another she’d been keeping in a baggie in the school kitchen’s freezer. Between classes and at lunch break she would come get it and apply it to her wrist for ten minutes, then put it back. Hughie Bache, quite illegally, had gone into the kitchen to steal a soft drink. Since none were cold, he had filled a cup with slush from Pat’s ice pack. That was easier than breaking out an ice tray. He poured a Seven-Up over the slush, and downed the whole thing.

“I know, but won’t it damage his kidneys? My husband’s a doctor,” shrilled Patty Bache. “Shouldn’t he take paragoric?”

A brief pause before she erupted again.

“There must be an antidote…what about milk? What about brain damage?” Finally she accepted that all she could do was give him liquids and let it pass through.

“They said he’ll have a horrible headache.” The patient was sitting looking frightened on the bench before Emily’s desk. A half cup of rubbing alcohol. He did
not
feel good.

When at last the office was quiet, Rue finished clearing her desk.

Leaving, she was surprised to find Emily still in the outer office, though it was nearly five and the office closed at four-thirty.

“What a day,” Rue said, stopping to say good night. “It must be the phase of the moon, or something. Where are your little ones?”

“They both had play dates. I thought I’d just finish some letters I had to print.”

“Did Mike tell you what Kim Fat Snyder told me?”

254 / Beth Gutcheon

Emily nodded.

“Has Malone seen Lyndie, or talked to her? I worry about her.”

“Malone does too. She’s tried to call her a couple of times, but Lyndie hasn’t called back.”

“Maybe I’ll call the principal over at Midvale and see how she’s doing….” Rue was thinking aloud when the phone rang.

Emily grabbed it. She listened.

“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “Not at the moment,” and hung up. As she reached for her coffee mug, which she had forgotten was empty, it seemed to Rue her hand shook.

“Em,” said Rue, “are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Emily tightly. “It was just some salesman.”

“I didn’t mean that. I mean, you seem…strained lately, at least to me. Is there anything wrong? That I can help you with?”

Emily looked at her. Rue’s face was full of concern.

“No,” said Emily finally. “I think you’re right, it’s just a star-crossed day.”

“Thank god it’s over,” said Rue. “Good night.”

B
ut it was not over.

The Coburn/Kleins were giving themselves a going-away party, and Rue and Henry were there. Bob had won a full-year sabbatical and a grant to write a paper on epidemiology. They were taking their hulking teenagers out of school and moving to Barcelona.

Rachel would take an intensive course of Spanish. They would go to bullfights. They had been reading stacks of guidebooks, and they served Sol y Sombres at the cocktail hour.

There were many toasts around the dinner table. The circle of friends that would be broken by the departure felt exhilarated and envious about this adventure. Halfway through the meal Rachel had to leave the table to get her calendar, as datebooks emerged from pockets and purses, and the friends got serious about when they would be over to visit.

Henry looked at Rue. “Easter?” he asked.

“I’m only off for a week. How about right after graduation?” She took out her book. “June fourteen. Leave June fifteen?”

“Done.”

“Now, you may be overlapping with my parents…hold on….”

Rachel flipped to June. “Yes, they’ll be with us to the twentieth.”

“The next week?”

“Done,” said Rachel.

“Great!” said Bob.

“Bob, the only trouble I see with this plan is, when are you going to write your paper?” said Ted French.

“I have that figured out. If the end of the year comes and I still haven’t done it, I’m going to write to King Juan Carlos and apply for the job of court jester. I will pledge to legally change my name to Flan De La Casa.”

Everyone laughed.

256 / Beth Gutcheon

Henry reached for the sangría. “
We’ve
been thinking about running off to the Peace Corps,” he announced to the table.

“Have you!” “How Great!” “Since when?” “When would you go?” “Where would you go?” The table responded with excitement.

“I didn’t know you were thinking of that,” said Sylvia French to Rue.

“I didn’t either,” Rue said, smiling.

“I’d like to go to Africa or Thailand. Or to the Marshall Islands.”

“How about the Virgin Islands? Or Fiji?”

“No, I want to go someplace really horrible. Where we’ll have to eat poi, and the only books in English will be forty-year-old paperback Penguins. I was once stuck in a monsoon on the Costa Brava with nothing to read but the short stories of Bertrand Russell. I’ve never gotten over it.”

“Are you going to teach? Or farm? Or what?”

To Rue’s surprise, Henry said, “There’s an area in the Marshall Islands where whole families come down with a disease that looks like Alzheimer’s. When you open their brains, it looks like a melt-down in a power station. In certain parts of the brain, the wires are fused and rigid in a mass. Genetic disposition is in play, but it’s also environmental. Family members who move away from the area don’t get the disease in anything like the numbers of their relatives who stay behind.”

“Wow,” said Rachel Klein.

“I’ve read about that,” said Bob. “It’s something in the diet, isn’t it?”

“They think so. There’s a foul starchy root they eat, especially in hard times, that seems implicated. I can’t remember what it is. I want to get there and see for myself before I fuse any more ganglia and forget that I wanted to go.”

“Rue, what will you do?” asked Rachel.

Taken off guard, she answered, “Commute.” The table roared.

Driving home, they were quiet. Finally, Rue said, “Henry, are you serious?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to make a decision like this without you.”

A stunning thing to say, a stunning thing to hear. They reached home, and Henry turned off the engine. Neither moved.

Saying Grace / 257

“Are you making it without me?”

“I’m thinking about it without you.”

More silence. They watched a doe, confused to find herself so deep in the suburbs, come to the sidewalk, stand poised with a fore-hoof curled up, a tentative pose, then dart across the street. She disappeared into underbrush, bounding toward Marvin Schenker’s garden.

“I didn’t know you were so unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy. But I’d rather change my life at fifty than at sixty. I want to go while I’m young enough to take it, and while I still have something to offer.”

She nodded in the dark. Clearly, they could stay up all night discussing the implications of this, or they could let it hang there between them. Rue thought that in many ways, it would probably come out the same. She also knew she had the Primary report cards to proof before bed.

She opened her door, and he did the same. They left the car by the curb and walked inside.

Rue went to the answering machine and played back the tape.

“Anything?” Henry asked.

“Three hang-ups.” She took off her coat and took it to the closet.

Henry went to turn on the lights in the kitchen and then the living room.

“Rue, look at this,” he said from the living room. She went in. On the stone hearth in front of the fireplace lay the captain’s clock, facedown, that had stood for sixteen years on the mantelpiece. Henry turned it over. The crystal was smashed and the hands were stopped at three minutes before nine. Rue stood over him, as they both stared.

“Did we have an earthquake?” she asked.

“I didn’t feel one. Is anything else out of place?” Nothing seemed to be. They stared, puzzled.

“Well, that is truly weird,” said Rue.

The phone rang and she went to answer it. Henry came into the kitchen to get a broom and dustpan to clean up the clock. She was standing in silence. Then she hung up.