The Shadow of the Bear: A Fairy Tale Retold (5 page)

As she found page 103, Blanche thought about the images in the poem. The apple blossoms on the farm that was no longer theirs were dead now, though the promise of next year’s buds slumbered in the black frozen branches. Would she ever see them again?
There’s such a thing as hope,
she thought.
Mom has it. Rose has it. Just not me.

After class was over, she hesitantly went up to the old nun who sat at her desk, checking off items in her schedule.

 “Sister, I wondered … might I have a copy of that poem you read us?”

Sister Geraldine looked at her over her bifocals with sharp blue eyes. “Certainly. Take it to the School Office and ask Sister Maureen to make a photocopy of it for you, then bring it right back here.”

She handed Blanche the poem. Blanche did not dare disobey, though it would probably make her late for the next class. As she hurried down the hall, she scanned the poem again. It was signed “A. Denniston.” Blanche wondered if A. Denniston was a boy or a girl.

When she opened the office door, Mr. Edward Freet was talking to the nun who was the office manager, a formidable woman with a stylish haircut. Mr. Freet was a commonplace sight at the school, although Blanche had never been able to figure out if he held an official post there. A short, older man in his sixties with iron-grey hair and a red, wrinkled face, he seemed to be friends with all the teachers and secretaries, although he was more brusque to the students, at least to the girls. In his patterned vests and collared shirts, he was a peculiar and distinctive figure. Blanche had heard he was the principal’s brother and owned an art gallery in Greenwich Village.

“What do you want?” the nun said to Blanche as she approached them.

“A photocopy—for Sister Geraldine,” Blanche faltered.

Mr. Freet looked annoyed at the interruption, but the nun took the poem from her and went to the copier. He continued to talk in petulant tones about art and music.

“You can’t pretend that this trash they’re putting out today is really music,” he was saying. “It’s abysmally inferior to just about anything from the eighteenth century. Take Mozart, for instance. None of these contemporary composers can hold a candle to him!”

“Truth can be found in all times, in many forms, even ugly ones,” the nun intoned mildly.

“Art isn’t about truth, it’s about form,” Mr. Freet said indignantly, rapping on the Formica desktop with his fingernails. “That’s why the absence of a beautiful, structured form destroys music. Yes, and art, too. That’s why I don’t hold with your modern churches and their formless abstractions. Garbage and tripe, all of it.”

He shot a look over at Blanche, who couldn’t help following the conversation with interest, and glared at her.

Blanche swiftly dropped her eyes and pretended to read the fire drill procedure taped to the top of the counter.

“So you would have us remain frozen in admiration of Michelangelo’s nudes?” the nun said over the noise of the copier.

“Why not? Stay with the perfect. I agree with the Greeks.”

“There were a lot of flaws in the philosophies of the ancient Greeks.”

“Oh, I suppose you mean because they revered the male body over the female body as exemplifying perfection,” he said. “So what’s wrong with that? Here again, Michelangelo is a perfect example. Take his
David
for instance, over his grotesque female nudes.”

The nun crossed to Blanche and handed her the poem and its copy with a reassuring smile, then turned back to her conversation. “You see, that’s your view of the truth, Mr. Freet. It’s perhaps different from other people’s point of view.”

“Which is why I say art is about form and not truth!”

Blanche closed the door, thoughts whirling around her head. She would have to repeat the strange conversation to the family at home and try to make some sense of it, if there was any sense in it at all. It sounded terribly refined and reasonable, but somehow she found herself lost in the middle of it.

When she came back into the classroom, Sister Geraldine was standing at her desk, rearranging papers in her briefcase with delicate precision. Her cane was on her elbow.

Blanche gave the original poem back to her and asked hesitantly, “How did you know my sonnet was about dying?”

“I read between the lines,” Sister said cryptically. “It’s a difficult subject for a young person to handle.”

Blanche stared at the nun’s gnarled hands, and thought,
That may be true, but young people still have to deal with it.
But, of course, she couldn’t say that to Sister, who might not know about her father’s death. So, she thanked her teacher quickly and went to her next class.

Rose hurried towards her sister as she saw Blanche leave Sister Geraldine’s room. “Hey! How are you doing?”

“The usual.” Blanche gave her a bleak smile.

“You don’t look too good.” Rose studied her sister’s white face anxiously.

“I was feeling a little dizzy after lunch. That’s all.”

“Was someone teasing you again?”

“We both know that’s the school’s second most popular sport.”

Rose felt an angry flush pass over her face. “Who? The boys or the girls?”

“Two guesses,” Blanche tried to smile and pushed back her hair from her face. “Don’t worry about me, Rose.”

“I do, though.” Rose bit her lip. “You know, the kids in your class must have awfully low self-esteem to get such a charge out of being bullies.”

“If we believe Bear, they’ll grow out of it someday,” Blanche said ironically.  Blanche already seemed less tense, being able to talk about it, just as Rose had hoped. Rose was heartened. She and Blanche had always been very different people, but since they had come to this new school together, Rose felt a closer kinship between them. She was Blanche’s sole ally in an environment neither of them felt a part of.

“Keep your chin up,” Rose urged. “I’ll find those boys and pound them.” Rose was not afraid of any kind of male creature. She had already made a reputation among the boys at school by bawling them out for harassing her sister. Some of them looked the other way when they saw her coming, but she couldn’t care less.

“Sister Geraldine gave me this neat poem,” Blanche said, changing the subject. “I’ll show it to you at home. It was written by one of her old students. Just our luck—the one student here who seems to have any grasp of the higher things graduated a long time ago. But it’s a cool poem.”

“We’ll read it together tonight,” Rose said, smiling at her sister. “Two more hours!” Blanche grinned back. She turned into the doorway of her next class.

Rose had the last lunch period of the school day, which was sarcastically nicknamed “the supper lunch” since it came so late in the day. As she walked down the stairs to the basement where the cafeteria was, she saw Rob Tirsch at his locker. She couldn’t help slowing down a bit. Rob was tall, black-haired, and terribly good-looking. Unfortunately, he seemed to know it. He was part of the popular crowd in the senior class, but he had been pretty friendly to Rose.

“Hey, Red,” he said to her as she passed him.

“Hi, Rob,” she said, smiling, and he turned around.

 “What you been up to?” He flashed a smile at her, indicating that he would like to talk.

“Oh, nothing much.” Despite herself, Rose leaned against the wall to talk to him, hoping that the three zits on her face weren’t too obvious.

“You don’t do much, do you?” He slammed his locker shut.  “Break’s over. Can you believe it? It went by so fast,” Rob ran his hands through his curly hair.

Rose, whose Christmas vacation had been lonely, if leisurely, simply nodded. “What did you do over break?”

“Went skiing a couple of times. You ever gone?”

Rose shook her head. “I’ve done cross-country a few times, but not downhill.”

“It’s the best. Man, this year is dragging by. I can’t wait till I’m out of here.”   He cast his blue eyes on her again.  “You going to the prom?”

“The senior prom?  I’m only a junior.  Why’d you ask?”

“Just taking a survey.”  Rob glanced behind him and winked at her. “Hey, bet you didn’t know this. See that iron door over there?” He indicated a much painted-over door beside the furnace room.

Rose nodded.

“D’you know there’s a tunnel there?” Rob asked.

“Really?” Rose was intrigued.

“Yeah,” Rob lowered his voice mysteriously. “It goes over to that abandoned church next door. A long time ago, the two buildings were connected.”

“Why was the church abandoned, anyway?”

“Ah, the floor was going to fall in or something. So they closed it down. They say there’s all sorts of treasure buried in the basement.”

“You’re kidding,” Rose said, not sure whether to believe him.

“No, no, I’m not.” Rob was earnest. “The old priest over there—Fr. Raymond—he used to collect hundreds of chalices and gold stuff for the altar—all the stuff churches were throwing away when they got rid of the Latin in the Mass. He collected it all, and hid it in the church. Then one night, when he was polishing his collection, he was murdered.”

“Murdered?!”

“Yeah. Some crazy guy came and shot him in the back, right behind the altar. They say they’ve never gotten the bloodstains off the floor.” He grinned at Rose, who was shuddering. “You’re pretty gullible, you know that?”

“Did he really shoot him?” Rose flushed. She
was
gullible.

“Honest, he did. The guy who shot him stole everything. All the gold and stuff. My old man says most of it was junk. They’ve never found the guy who did it.”

“That’s horrible!” Rose was indignant.

“Yeah. It happens. They had to close down the church because they said they couldn’t raise money to fix it, but it was really because they couldn’t find a priest who would work in that church again. You see, it’s haunted now.”

He looked at Rose to gauge her reaction. She half-believed him.

“It’s the truth,” he said, cocking his head. “Just be careful when you pass the church after dark. The ax murderer who lives there will get you!”

“I thought you said the priest was shot,” Rose accused him. The bell rang.

“Yeah, by an ax murderer who mislaid his ax. Next best thing. Oh, and he strangled the priest, too.” Rob grinned, slapping his books out of his locker. “Must have been a real sicko.”

He punched Rose playfully on the shoulder. “That should put you to sleep at night. Did you know they took the word gullible out of the dictionary?”

Rose made a face at him as he bounced off down the hallway to class.

He was about the only boy at St. Catherine’s that Rose felt a more than passing interest in. It was a pity he acted like a jerk sometimes, usually when he was with his buddies. Blanche disliked him, but Rose found him appealing. He was almost always nice to her, and that was flattering. Just about every junior girl she knew had a crush on him. He had this fascinating charm that melted the hearts of even the most sensible teenage girls. His singling Rose out hadn’t made her terrifically popular among her classmates.

But unlike Blanche, who had resigned herself to occupying the lowest social strata in the school, Rose preferred to stand defiantly outside the structure. 

Going into the cafeteria, Rose found a place at a table with some girls from her biology class. Something cold touched the back of her neck right over her collar and she jumped. There was a burst of male laughter behind her, and she turned to see Manny sitting at the next table.

“Hi, Rose,” he grinned, tossing and catching the cold pack he was carrying around for his leg in one hand. He played on the basketball team with Rob and always seemed to be recovering from some kind of injury.

Rose allowed a deliberate look of disgust to come over her face, and cued her eyes. She had chameleon eyes—hazel eyes—and she believed that she could make them change color on command. So now she mentally cued herself. Show temper. Let him know he’s in trouble if he keeps this up. Eye color: stone grey.

With a toss of her red hair, she turned back to her sandwich, took a bite, and began to chew slowly. She rolled her eyes at the girl across from her, who grimaced back.

“Hey, Rose,” Manny leaned over beside her. “You going to the senior prom?”

“Of course not,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m a junior.”

“Would you go with Rob Tirsch if he asked you?”

Rose’s heart almost stopped beating for a minute.
Rob?
She gave a faint gesture. “Probably,” she said at last, with feigned lightness.

“Ooh,” Manny said, and moved back to say something to his friends, who all laughed.

Probably?
She had meant to say “maybe!” She moaned inwardly and crumpled her napkin.
Nothing like looking desperate.
She glanced around at the other girls, most of who hadn’t overheard Manny’s remarks, and shrugged.

Inwardly she debated about asking Manny what he meant. He was probably just teasing her. Guys thought it was terribly funny when girls had a crush on one of them (Rose, apart from her own situation, found it pretty funny too, considering). Manny was no doubt looking for ammunition to tease Rob with.

Her heart sank inside her. If Rob knew she liked him…how embarrassing!
But he probably has some inkling already,
Rose thought mournfully.