Schooling (2 page)

4

Mr. Brickman, I can tell, has made steady progress on the copper oxide experiment from last week. In fact something tells me it’s become an obsession,
What on earth could be the e fect of oxygen on a copper
wire
. . . Gilbert waist against his lab bench . . . That right Brick? Astounded by the possibilities of reactions when a catalyst is added? Lost your appetite, have you? Touch of insomnia? And the odyssey from Tea to Prep, undoubtedly for you it includes cogitating the differences between fluorocarbons and hydrocarbons.

Sir? . . . Brickie plays the fool, the boys laugh . . . Sorry sir?

But why is Gilbert paying all the attention to damn—her hair is clean. Mostly straight. She arrived early to claim a white lab smock not an ugly green one. Why won’t he notice.

In any case . . . Gilbert smiles with one side of his mouth . . . I’m certain that once again you will awe 3X . . . lab coat propped open . . . With your intellect . . . waist cocked between thumb and forefinger . . . Am I right, Mr. Brickman?

Sir.

A game between the two of them and she with washed and smooth hair bleached smock leaning as Gilbert does against a scarred wooden lab bench waiting. Next to her, Vanessa tapes her leaking fountain pen. On her other side, an empty space for Siobhan still smoking her morning cigarette behind the cricket pavilion. Next to Vanessa, Sophie with a finger dug in her ear. And on down the row. All of them waiting standing waiting for the lesson.

He is calling her name.

Yes, sir?

Was that a yawn?

Sir? I don’t think so.

You don’t know whether you were yawning?

I. I guess I was.

Guess. Yes Americans guess a lot don’t they? What is it Evans? Too much bed and not enough sleep, is that it?

And he has made a remark again like the ones about her hips and teeth. Everyone is laughing even Sophie even Vanessa arranging burettes. All of them.

I don’t know. Sir.

Dropping his coat and waist, Gilbert has turned away from her, from her foul yawning, from her too much bed, turned to the board with chalk, dismissing her disgusting hair, her useless smock.

Vanessa licks a finger to flip a page in her exercise book. Sophie steps back to wink but she was laughing only a moment ago.

Gilbert’s bleached collar defines the back of his neck. Hairline. Broad back right arm raised chalking out 2Cu+O
²
=To see you oh.

In the front row Brickie has turned his back to Gilbert. Elbows against the lab bench, he stares at her. She raises her eyebrows. Curls her lip. A catalyst but he won’t react. Won’t balance the equation. She stares. He stares. Stubborn both. Brickie with his black hair his bastard hair in his eyes leaning as he did at the Chemist’s. Upper lip up to no good.

Siobhan slides in past Nessa past Sophie dragging the last and too small lab coat shedding wrappers gold twix and old tests reeking of cigarette smoke ignoring Gilbert’s In your own time in your own time.

What did Brickie mean that he knew something on her. She hasn’t been in England long enough for trouble.

5

Skipping stones across the dirty pond after school. Sophie and Vanessa come to the other side their four legs casting shadows two and two across her and the water.

Brickie stares at you . . . Sophie. Hands in blazer pockets, thumbs out.

No he doesn’t.

He does Catrine, I’ve seen it as well . . . Nessa like a little bell ding ding as well as well.

Do you speak to him?

Sometimes . . . throwing a rock into the pond to see how quickly it will sink . . . He lent me money.

Money? What for?

Sophie . . . Vanessa pulls . . . Let’s go in.

Oh go on Nessa, I don’t want to.

Why not.

Go by yourself why can’t you? . . . Sophie watches her try to skip a stone one not flat enough then back to Nessa . . . I’ll be there in a moment.

Halfway to School House, Vanessa stops once and looks back. The sun low, she can’t see Nessa’s face. Just the pause.

Did you have friends in America?

Used to.

What did Brickie lend you money for? Brickie hates everyone.

They all seem to like him.

That’s not the same thing.

No.

They built this dirty hole when my brother was here . . . Sophie kneels down on the other side of the pond . . . People are always falling in trying to jump across.

It seems pretty wide to jump over.

Catrine . . . Sophie folds the hem of her skirt under, watching her fingers do it . . . Someone told me your mother’s dead.

Is she?

Raking the dirt for flatter stones . . . You laughed at me in Chemistry.

What? Oh, it wasn’t at you particularly. Gilbert’s like that to everyone, you’ll laugh when he does it to someone else.

Really? . . . he’s like that taking in Sophie’s earnest knees fingers to
everyone
worrying skirt boyish hair . . . To everyone?

At some point.

Another unrooted stone not flat enough to skip . . . I didn’t realize. Don’t take it personally.

I don’t . . . fingering off dirt off the stone.

Catrine.

Easter. She died last Easter.

Here I’ve found you flat ones.

You skip them.

I’m hopeless.

Hold it like this, like pinching . . . like a waist held between thumb and forefinger.

What did Brickie—

Why do you think he doesn’t like anyone?

I’ve never thought about it . . . Sophie searches for stones . . . He just doesn’t.

Out the back gate lanes switch down around the school fields. One leads to town the town where Brickie lent her money for a comb to straighten her hair for Chemistry for Gilbert for nothing. What are the names of these English plants in lanes banked by hedges hugging the neighboring farms and fields. Littered with horse droppings the frozen ruts trip them as they concentrate on where they are going which is nowhere. Sophie’s hands are big as a man’s big as Brickie’s father’s and as she talks she chops the air.

Boys from town pass yelling NUNS for their grey uniforms but whistling at them all the same. In one field grazing cows black and white like the watch shop where Brickie—what was it he had on her?

You seem to do as you’re told . . . Sophie pulls her down a hidden path . . . I’d never have thought you’d miss Tea.

I’ve skipped school before . . . and rolled a tire into traffic slinging a motorcycle . . . I’m not so good . . . a sudden red bird from the trees what kind why doesn’t she know the names of birds . . . Isn’t it funny that you thought that about me . . . watching the bird fly the man fly . . . That I was some kind of girl you thought you knew but you don’t at all.

You probably think you know things about me. That I’m a certain type.

I think you’re alright. You ask a lot of questions.

Do I?

See.

Well, you don’t ask any at all.

The light cold and orange edges down like it did that day she and Brickie were in the Chemist’s when he put on makeup and was rude to the woman. Behind a dairy covered with vines beyond the millhouse and a thatched barn past pencils of silos they ramble on with no ideas of destination only the idea that they should not return. Not straight-away. Sophie knows how to sneak into school. They will be alright.

6

The question remains must we all be forced to bear the shenanigans of a few idiotic pranksters . . . Mr. Betts strides the room, turning abruptly on his heel . . . Upon my arrival here this morning I found that someone had left a message for the Head Man informing him I was on my deathbed and would not be teaching 3X’s English lesson. Imagine my surprise . . . head to one side . . . To discover I was ill. Can you imagine, and your imagination will be tested this term, that one of your classmates might not be as inclined as the rest of you to study literature . . . another pause for their imaginations to chew on that horror . . . No, 3X, I am afraid this is not how it is to be. We will have our sonnets, we will have our Yeats our Leda our Hamlet with all attendant ghosts and killings and girls got up as boys. What we will not have is pranks or bad manners. So.

Sophie glances back at her. A sly wink.

Five sides each on the matter of poetry . . . Betts holds up a hand against their pain . . . Unless of course, our comedian steps forward.

The shifting stops. She shoves Sophie’s chairback. Weakly jointed, it slants into a rhombus.

Well?

A kick at Sophie’s seat. Nothing. Another kick. Useless. Sophie will not confess.

So that is how it will be. I’ll expect your essays next week. Choose your poison, Yeats, Shakespeare . . . Betts picks up a book.

Low unhappy mutter from the stalls.

Well, what am I to do. Brickman?

It wasn’t
me
, sir.

Methinks he doth— . . . Betts interrupts himself . . . I haven’t accused you of anything, son. It’s your recitation I’m after . . . motioning with a ruler . . . Up up.

Brickie stands. A baroque throat-clearing, then . . . I felt a funeralinmybrainandmourners—

Hold on, Mr. Sack of Potatoes . . . Betts waggles the ruler . . . Shoulders back, head high. Begin again. And when you speak of horses, convince us. You must see them printing their proud hoofs—

But I wasn’t, sir. Speaking of horses.

Brickman . . . Betts struggles to compose . . . The sign of mediocrity is a bending towards the literal.

Brickie overthinks that.

Now, continue. I Felt A Funeral.

7

Midnight maybe at least a few hours since Lights Out. What has she woken to mourners the stories of hauntings white lady headless man breathing of the other eight a grunt here Mareka Holland talks in sleep the nine beds the blue bobbled bedspread pulled up so cold she wears wool socks hat beginning of November what awakened her? Moonlight through a slice in the curtains the windows reach up to the ceiling. What’s the book where a girl hides behind a curtain on a wide sill. Weary night. Pull your head under the covers to get it hot with breathing. Alone now. Not like in Maine because there was always Isabelle but there was never herself so much as here.

Sophie.

Face deep in her pillow blankets tossed hands folded under stomach Sophie shifts.

Wake up . . . kneeling next to the bed, working out a shoe wedged under her knee.

What are you doing? . . . Sophie quickly awake.

Shh.

Go back to bed, Catrine.

I have a question.

You’ll get caught.

Can we go somewhere.

Tell me here what is it.

I’m freezing.

Get in.

In your bed?

Yes. What is it?

I saw something.

A ghost? You saw the—

Something, a shape.

Your mother?

No.

What then?

A ghost of me or something.

Did it have a head? It was the white lady, the—

No. Shove over.

Sophie tries to give her room under a fat duvet brought from Hampstead not school blankets stitched in red
1922
.

Remember I was telling you about my friend in America my friend Isabelle?

Go on.

Once we skipped school . . . they had why had they had it been her idea she remembers it as her idea but maybe it was Isabelle now it seems more like something Isabelle would dream up but she was sure somewhere that it had been her idea . . . And took a bus to a different town any town it didn’t matter we wanted to get out . . . with just enough room in the bed that she can lie on her back dropping off the edge a bit and Sophie can lie on her side watching her as she stares straight up at what would be the ceiling if there were light enough to see it . . . We walked up this road . . . curved like an ear . . . It was curved like an ear we walked into the woods and we talked but as we were leaving we found a tire . . . details . . . A grisly tire lodged in the dirt . . . Sophie waits for her to tell it . . . We dug it out. We could see the road down below us.

You pushed it down the hill.

We rolled it into the traffic and we knocked a man off his motorcycle.

Is he dead?

He could be . . . it’s close and they can smell each other’s breathing . . . I don’t know.

You killed him.

Don’t tell.

A man.

They will never speak of it again.

A man . . . Sophie’s eyes can seem so big . . . It’s his ghost you’re seeing.

I told you. It’s mine.

8

So. Dropped in the middle of a boarding school plot. Pacing the sidelines of a football match. Monstead versus. Who. Something Saxon. Hamping or Felixston. Rounded up to cheer on the fearless Monstead players. Pasty-legged warriors. Pacing one way she passes Simon Puck nose ableed Brickie helping
Tilt your head back
Spenning and Mr. Betts in intellectual collaboration Devon of Art charcoaling ghastly trees Sophie frowning at the boys
What’s wrong with them
confused
Why are they running like that
Vanessa hypothesizing
I suppose
they want to win
Siobhan wincing
Thinking about it makes my lungs hurt
and across the pitch Gilbert applauding the save wreathed by fifth form girls Fi Hammond and the weird sisters. Pacing back she passes Siobhan braiding plaiting Nessa’s hair
Some stupid saturday this is
Sophie shouting
You always look so cold catrine
Devon’s trees resemble skeletons unrapt Spenning listening to Betts declare
How I loathe
mimetic renderings of natural
interrupting
Oh that’s good
himself
Pardon
to scribble the wisdom in his blue notebook Spenning nodding ignoring calling
Well passed, Haynes
Simon throwing his arms
GOAL
in the air forcing a new red trickle from his nose Brickie shoving Puck
Go to the San, Simon
Gilbert sending a wave before she looks away here’s Cyclops striding by to survey the troops Settling are you? Yes this is settling Cyclops disappears Brickie’s arrived and together they pass Devon dabbling in unlifelike landscapes relating to Betts
Well,
the grape got him
gossip à deux Betts sagely informing
A man will burn
himself in the same place over and over
. Brickie snorts at that. She stops. They face off. A glare, not without mystery. Behind him, deep in field, Paul Gredville stops to watch them speak. She turns to Brickie, They say you don’t like anyone. Is that true. Brickie smiles or could it be the shift of light. Abruptly he mimes smoking a cigarette, grabs Siobhan and disappears.