The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant (13 page)

Definitely
not as amazing! I had assumed that the boy was as arrogant as they come, but talk about pompous! To assume his work is “good”—to
call
it that. No need to compliment Ben Zin; he does that all on his own. As he launches into this endless harangue on the qualities of his art that match contemporary and traditional standards of what commercially successful art should be, blah, blah, blah, I can’t help but think of how every single word he says conflicts 110 percent with what I believe art is meant to be, meant to do. Sure, he throws in fancy words to distract us—like
ontological perspective
and
Hegelian phenomenology
—but when you listen closely, you can almost hear his soul escaping through his mouth. He’s completely passionless about his art.

“So, with that,” Ben says, “tell me, who agrees that this is good art?”

Every hand in the room goes up—except mine. They’ve all been persuaded, and I wonder if maybe
Follow the Leader
isn’t the PT for a few of them. But, well, that ain’t my PT! Mine is to take nothing at face value, to get to the bottom of things. So I keep my hand down even as Harper scoffs at me like I must be the densest freak alive.

“Looks like all of you,” Ben says without glancing my way and sighs.

“Wait,” I call out as hands go down. Everybody grumbles like I’m holding them up. Gee, sorry, but if my dad mortgaged the family funeral home just to get me in here—which is all I can imagine he did—I’m going to milk every opportunity. He needs me to.

Ben looks at me. “Miss Merchant?”

“
I
disagree,” I say. My voice doesn’t even wobble, thank God. “Respectfully.”

Indifferently, Ben plucks a fallen hair off his sleeve. “Go on.”

“Because you referenced Hegel, you must know that Hegel said good art should express the essence of a culture. It’s supposed to be the impetus for progress.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Although you sound more like Danto than Hegel.”

I argue that Danto might agree, though he’s more of a pluralist—and we go back and forth on all this art history stuff, stuff I’ve read a million times. I know it inside out, know what he’s going to say before he even says it. Who’d have thought those lonely Saturdays spent in the library rather than watching funeral processions would actually pay off?

“So,” I conclude, “I’m at a loss as to how your sculpture is, as you said, good. It’s derivative.”

“By postmodern standards.”

“By any standards. The dance of Death has been done.”

At the front of the room, someone gasps. Harper scoffs. But I know I’m right, so screw ’em. And a quick glance at Weinchler shows me that he’s nodding along with me, that he’s agreeing. He’s even taking notes! Finally, a positive note about me. I can only hope Teddy’s on the other side of that mirror and that he caught this scene.

“Agree with me,” I finish, “and we’ll both be right.”

And then it’s Ben’s turn to surprise me: he laughs.

“Well done,” he says, running his hands through his fantastic hair. “I’ve actually hated this thing since the day Villicus commissioned it. Great argument, A.M.”

So that does it. Not only am I validated by Weinchler, but
Ben
has agreed with me.

“I guess they taught y’all something in that public school,” Harper hisses under her breath as Weinchler takes over the lecture. “Too bad it ain’t near enough to get you the Big V.”

“We’ll see,” I whisper back. And, for the first time, I actually believe it. I could be valedictorian next year. Brown, here I come!

seven

FIRE AND LIFE

I AWAKE WITH A JOLT FROM A VIVID, REPEATED NIGHT
mare. It’s the middle of the night. My blankets are knotted, cocooning me; I coiled them around my body like threads around a spool as I fought my way through long, tangled dreams that wouldn’t let go. Even as the details of my nightmare fade rapidly, the basics of it and, even worse, the sadness it stirred within me won’t let go, like claws digging into my breastplate.

I stare at the clock. Almost one in the morning.

I’d dreamt of walking up the back steps to our apartment above the funeral home. It was a warm morning—spring-like, with flowers in bloom and birds perched nearby. There was a siren, an earthquake warning in the distance; they’d sent us home early from school just in case. I turned the doorknob and stepped inside, but it was dark, the shades drawn. I glimpsed my reflection—pale, wide-eyed, hollow—in the hall mirror and called in a voice that echoed, “Mom?” On a small table, towering stacks of bills wobbled, bills from specialists and from that unimaginably expensive hospital we’d been forced to pull Mom out of. I couldn’t shake the sense that our house would explode if those bills fell, so I raised my hands to catch them—but at exactly that moment, the table transformed into an oven door, open wide. I stepped toward it. I tripped over somebody—my mom—lying at my feet, and I began to fall in.

I woke just before my head hit the oven door.

The dream has left me bruised inside, my head pounding. As if it repeated for days, not two hours, like round after round of a boxing match that the ref wouldn’t call. Now, in a sweat, I stare into the black of my attic bedroom and sob quietly over the memory of my mother. Not just the mother who took her life that day. But the mother I used to have, the one who would repeat the stories she read during her breaks at the library, twirl my hair around her fingers, and teach me to dance in the kitchen when there were no funerals downstairs. The mother who grew up as I did; her father was a mortician—she and my dad met when he came to work for her dad. That’s the mother I knew. The mother I had before that unidentifiable switch went off in her head and the psychiatrists stepped in.

I bury my face in my pillow, chasing away gloom. But the pounding in my head won’t let up. I need an Advil, so I tiptoe down from the attic, slashing my hands through the dark corners where spirits could gather, just like I used to do back home to prove no ghosts stood there. Moving quietly to keep from waking my crackpot roomies, I rummage through the bathroom medicine cabinet until I realize that the pounding isn’t coming from inside my head at all. I tilt my ear toward the sound.

Distant drumbeats.

I drift down the stairs. Standing at the front room picture window, with Skippy snoring behind me on the couch, I stare into the blackness of the night and see, beyond the forest separating all things school from all things village, bright orange sparks flying through the distant sky, over the village. Ashes. Low, vibrating drumbeats. I’m awake now, and I have no interest in returning to endless rounds of the same draining nightmare.

Slipping on a coat and a pair of boots, I grab a flashlight before I make the walk to the village, to the source of the fire. Around me, leaves rustle with the wind or with something more sinister. I can’t be sure, don’t want to find out, keep my flashlight shining forward, wonder if I’m out of my mind for walking in the dark like this, walking toward a mystifying fire in a village I’m sworn to steer clear of on a kook-run island I’ve barely settled into. But I can’t help myself. I’m drawn onward.

Torches light the harbor, where villagers are sitting cross-legged in a circle near the water, a low stage set up in the middle of their ring. A dull hum. Bonfires on rafts float beyond the docks. Flames reflect off the water as if the ocean is on fire, as if Hell is rising up to consume Heaven. The crisp air reeks of smoke. The entire scene seems private, like some ancient tribal rite that will end in a human sacrifice—and who better to sacrifice than the disobedient girl from the prep-slash-reform school? I shake my head. Overactive imagination. But I keep to the shadows nonetheless; tiptoe to a bench far enough away to watch without drawing attention; sit. The street lamps are out up and down the street. Relative to the vibrant gold of the fires, everything dark is nearly black, black enough to hide me.

Drums thump slowly. Heavily.

In the dim glow of scattered dying fires, vibrantly painted men and women hold unlit torches; a tall man, illuminated and impossible to miss, inhales from a long pipe. Slowly, the drumbeat that pulled me here diminishes, and the pace of dozens of unseen rattles around the perimeter of the stage picks up quickly, then slows. One by one, the villager torches are lit, and a fire spreads through their circle until it blazes like an enormous bullion ring. A leggy woman with white face paint and a cloth sling around her bare chest creeps through the ring, onto the stage; she is followed by two barechested men twirling large batons lit at both ends. Each time the fiery batons pass their faces, their eyes widen, their lips curl. I squirm.

A rattle shakes to a languid larghetto tempo. The painted woman is singing quietly, under her breath, so softly I can barely hear. Laying my jacket over my chest like a blanket, I listen as the woman’s melancholy voice rises and falls, as the two men chant in a language I don’t know. The crowd gradually begins to chant, too. The pipe is passed unhurriedly from person to person; only the drummers, who likely wish to avoid the slowing effect of whatever they’re smoking, refuse it. The drumbeat intensifies, the sound of dozens of drums I can’t see joining it.

The woman screams suddenly.

Startled, I recoil against the back of the bench; those who’ve smoked the pipe barely react. Swiftly, the woman pulls something from the sling around her chest, something small, like a baby. But the baby is motionless. (It can’t be a baby. No way.) She lifts it over her head. The two men stop twirling their batons, and that tall man—gray-haired and huge, maybe six-five—enters the circle; he is carrying a large, flat rock. He places it at the woman’s feet and backs away until he’s absorbed by the blazing ring. Someone makes a crying sound, like a baby’s, and then another and another, filling the air, filling my ears. The painted woman inches into a crouch—I can’t tear my eyes away—in time with the drums, and the rattles quicken. She places the baby on the flat rock. Backs into the ring.

Only the shirtless men remain.

They circle the baby. I squint, praying that my eyes are tricking me, that what looks like a baby is actually just a dummy—because I will not be able to stop myself from charging through the fire and rescuing that child if it comes down to it.

The rattling accelerates. Becomes little more than quick sharp noises slapping one on top of the other—
chop shhick chop shhick.
A rising wall of sound.

“Free it!” someone roars.

Immediately, in unison, the men touch both ends of the baby with their flaming batons and set the thing on fire. It bursts into flames like it’s made of gas-drenched straw.

I start to scream—it’s just about howling from my lips—when someone clamps a hand over my mouth. That only makes me want to scream louder. I flail my arms, trying desperately to escape the hold of the stranger standing behind me. I finally free myself and fall off the bench, looking up with terror lighting my face to see
him
standing behind the bench, his mint-colored eyes glowing in the darkness.

“Ben?”

“You know, you actually seemed bright in class today. But I’m beginning to wonder if you aren’t the dumbest person alive,” he whispers, scowling. “What are you doing in the village?”

“You scared the hell out of me!” I say, panting, my heart beating an insane staccato. I throw my gaze at the men, who are tossing their batons at each other, back and forth over the burning body.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ben says, his wide eyes reflecting the ring of fire. “Your Guardian will notice you’re gone. He’ll come looking.”

“Did you follow me?”

“I saw you sneak out.”

As I focus on Ben, I try not to pay attention to the fact that the rattling has stopped, the crying from the crowd has stopped. I try not to look at the stage again, but I can’t help myself. The men grab the fiery body with their bare hands.

“Why did you follow me? To watch what I do and tell Teddy? I’m not even your competition. You’re a senior.”

“You think I’m telling you this because…I want to be valedictorian? Anne, you don’t know what you’re playing with here,” Ben warns quietly. “If Villicus were to find you, he would punish you. And his punishments are…they’re terrible.” Then he glances at the stage and pales.

I follow his gaze to see Molly creeping toward us, her face painted bright pink with green stripes. She has her finger to her lips, shushing me, and is smiling her metallic smile. Turning back to Ben, I’m about to tell him to relax, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Hey, you,” Molly says to me.

On the stage behind her, the men leap in this strange, awkward way through the circle and race to the ocean. “A-ya!” they scream while the crowd looks on. They drop what’s left of the baby on a floating bonfire, which finishes it off. As I sit on the bench again, she scoots up next to me.

“It’s freezing out. Let’s share some body heat.”

I need a second. I need to wrap my brain around what’s just happened. First, what I saw. Second, the arrival of Ben who was, to my surprise, following me.

At the center of the fiery ring, the huge man has returned, standing like an unshakable oak burst forth from the island. The harbor is silent save the crackling of fires.