A Taxonomy of Barnacles, page 12
By one o’clock, Bell had tired of her list and resorted to staring out the window. It was the same position from which she and her sisters had spied on the Finches as children and occasionally done cruel things to pedestrians on the street below. Every time someone passed, Bell leaned farther out the window. Every exhalation brought her closer to death, to a comprehensive view of the Finches’ apartment, and to knowledge of the nuances of Blaine Finch’s schedule. Blaine’s tennis racket leaned on a chair in the Finches’ living room. In an instant, Bell knew all she needed to know. Blaine’s schedule had not changed in years. In expectation of his return, Bell left her father’s office at exactly half-past one, rushed down the hall, and positioned herself in the foyer to appear as though she were casually checking her mail.
The elevator arrived, depositing Blaine just as Bell opened the door. She reached for the stack of letters usually resting on the doormat at this hour. But, finding nothing, she stood up and folded her hands into her pockets like a guilty child after stealing a forbidden sweet.
“Bell,” Blaine stammered. “Lovely to see you.”
“Yes,” Bell managed, “you, too.”
For a moment, both stood in excruciating silence but for a strange, loud background noise that both deduced simultaneously to be the gurgling of Bell’s stomach.
“It’s going to be a great season,” Blaine said. He smiled, Bell thought, condescendingly, and gestured at her head.
Bell blanched and swatted at her head to find a new source of mortification. In addition to her sagging sweatpants, she was still wearing Blaine’s Yankees hat. “Go Yanks,” she said, fumbling for something, anything to say. Then finding she had developed a spontaneous stutter, she blurted, “You know, if you’re not doing anything, next Thursday is opening day.”
“Oh,” said Blaine, his smile falling, “unfortunately, I work on weekdays.”
“Of course,” said Bell. “I totally forgot. It’s been so long since I…” She trailed off. Better to say nothing than go on like this.
“I’d tell you to ask my brother,” Blaine said, “but it would make a traitor of him.”
Bell looked at Blaine, confused.
Blaine paused then elaborated, “Billy’s a Sox fan, of course.”
Bell said nothing for a moment, waiting for inspiration.
“And everyone knows a Sox fan is a fool for life.”
Bell smiled appreciatively at Blaine’s joke.
Blaine stared at Bell intently as though debating whether she was mentally strong enough to handle his next query. “Bell, can I ask you a question?” he asked.
Bell nodded eagerly.
Blaine paused to torture her, or for effect, it was impossible to know. “Why do you hate me so much?” He asked this question of women often, usually with a smile on his face and at moments in conversation when it was totally apparent to both that he meant “love” not “hate.”
“Hmm. I don’t know,” Bell said, pretending to ponder Blaine’s question. Did he expect her to answer in earnest or with a witty remark? Bell considered her options. She could answer sincerely: “Because you broke my heart in a thousand pieces and now expect me to pretend we’re mere acquaintances.” Or with a joke: “Because of the way you dress.” Or with a snide comment: “Because of your obnoxious smirk.” Or she could take him by surprise: “The truth, Blaine Finch, is that I’ve hated you since the day we met. I was a toddler and you were an infant and I knew even then.” And, of course, it would be obvious to both that Bell meant “love” not “hate.”
But before Bell could decide on her response, Blaine tired of the suspense. “Well, I’d better go,” he said and ducked back into his apartment like a child terrified by a shadow.
Bell stood, paralyzed for a moment, replaying the conversation in her head. Then suddenly, the Finches’ door opened again and Blaine stuck his head out, smiling apologetically.
“Hey, Bell,” Blaine said, “if you don’t mind, can I get that hat back?”
“Of course,” Bell said and before she knew it, she reached up and returned her most cherished possession and relinquished the one proverbial thing she still had over Blaine’s head.
Blaine took the hat, smiled politely, and disappeared into his apartment.
Bell stood alone in the foyer for a moment, then remembered Jorge. He stood in the elevator, its doors wide open, listening shamelessly to Bell and Blaine’s conversation and wearing a pitying cringe. The building was one of the few remaining in New York equipped with a hand-operated elevator. As a result, Jorge had been privy to the high and low points of the Barnacle girls’ childhoods. Sometimes, Bell was struck by his complete omniscience. Jorge had met and, in many cases, escorted out every boy Bell had ever allowed to sneak into her house except for, of course, those who took the window route and those who lived next door. In short, Jorge had more intimate knowledge of Bell than anyone in the world; all Bell knew of Jorge was what he chose to disclose.
“Hi, Jorge,” Bell said, stepping into the elevator. Until that moment, she’d had no intention of going outside or riding the elevator down, but after her excruciating encounter with Blaine, it seemed like the right thing to do.
“Bell,” said Jorge. Jorge claimed, since Bell was first of the Barnacle girls, that she was his first love. Also, Bell was convinced (though she could never be completely sure) that Jorge stared at her backside whenever she left the building.
“I’m glad I don’t see you with that boy anymore.” Jorge took full advantage of the elevator’s forced confinement to make ominous comments like this and otherwise to intimidate his passengers into acquiescence.
“Which one?” Bell asked, distracted.
“All of them,” said Jorge.
He had a point, Bell admitted. But the idea of Jorge passing judgment on her romantic history irked her more than usual today. “You shouldn’t be so happy,” Bell advised. “At this rate, I’m going to die a spinster.”
“No way,” said Jorge. “How old are you now?”
“Twenty-nine,” Bell said.
Jorge’s hand slipped from the lever, causing the elevator to stop abruptly. He turned suddenly to face Bell, his eyes bulging as though she’d just informed him she had a life-threatening disease.
“Why are you surprised?” Bell scolded. “You’ve known me since the day I was born.”
Jorge shook his head, befuddled, and applied pressure on the lever again. “I have,” he said, stupefied. “I guess I forgot I’d been working here thirty years.”
Their stance, Bell noted, two people trapped in a small space, both staring at the same wall, both waiting to make their escape, was an apt, if disturbing metaphor for her family. She decided to keep this to herself and to ignore Jorge’s curious stare when she informed him, on arrival in the lobby, that she actually had no intention of leaving the building and could she please ride back up.
When Bell returned to her father’s office, Barry was expecting her.
“Perfect timing,” he said. “I was just looking for you.”
“Don’t you mean,” Bell said, “you were just spying on me?” She tried to exit her father’s office, but he blocked the door and pushed it closed, effectively locking Bell in.
According to her sisters’ reports, Barry had finally crossed the line between eccentric and insane. Every day, at six o’clock, Barry walked into his office with the intention of doing an hour of work. Two hours later, he yelled down the hall, more irritated than apologetic, for Bunny to stop pestering him and please start dinner without him. Eight hours later, Barry could still be found refining a new contraption. It was as though his impressive work ethic relied on this feat of self-delusion; he must trick himself into thinking he only had an hour of work in order to sustain concentration for the rest of the night.
If asked to defend this new obsession, Barry drew on his heritage. He threw up his hands, raised his eyebrows, and pursed his lips in the traditional Yiddish gesture for indignation. If pressed, he made stock excuses. Business was no longer challenging, his mind was better utilized in the service of important problems. Among his solutions to these problems were a two-in-one pair of glasses meant to correct both myopia and far-sightedness, colored salt for those who desired a better indication of the amount present on one’s plate, a computer rig that allowed writers to type standing up, and a device for hygienic hugging that prevented the exchange of germs.
“A man doesn’t want to be pursued,” Barry said. “It’s in his evolutionary makeup to chase.”
Bell delivered a hateful glare and tried to push past again.
“Competition creates value,” Barry announced, “in every marketplace.” He said this with the volume and pomposity necessary to address a large lecture hall.
“God gave you daughters to punish you,” Bell said. “He knew you wanted a son.”
“Bell,” Barry said, ignoring the attack, “can I ask you a question?”
Bell neither nodded nor acknowledged his request.
“Why do you hate men?” Barry asked. He widened his eyes and tensed his shoulders as though to prepare for physical impact.
“It’s said that a woman’s relationship with men is a mirror of her relationship with her father.”
“Oh,” Barry paused to ponder this. “Have you ever considered dyeing your hair blond?”
“Belinda is right. You’re a sexist pig.”
“I’m simply telling you how men think,” said Barry. “It’s one thing I happen to know about.”
“You know how sexist male chauvinist pigs think.” Bell paused for another moment, still registering shock, then plumbed the doorknob violently.
“Oh,” Barry said, “one more thing. I want you to meet a friend of mine. I hope you’ll cancel your dinner plans.” Barry grinned devilishly. “That is, if you have any.”
Bell narrowed her eyes hatefully.
“You and Duncan have a lot in common. He’s very rich, he’s very handsome, and he’s an excellent dancer.”
“Dad,” Bell sighed, “I don’t dance anymore.”
For some reason, Barry could not be dissuaded of the notion that dancing was Bell’s greatest skill. He had been espoused of this belief since Bell’s fifth-grade talent show, the very same one in which Benita intended to compete. The event had made an indelible impression on both Barry and Bell. For Bell, who was rejected due, she was told, to the “eccentric” nature of her solo, it was a memory marked by shame. For Barry, who demanded a meeting with the school’s headmistress to discuss the meaning of the word “eccentric” and subsequently threatened the school with a lawsuit, it was a very proud day.
“Eccentric” was, in Bell’s opinion, a polite way of saying she was a bad dancer. In Barry’s opinion, it was overwhelming proof that the Chapin School hated Jews. “Eccentric,” Barry informed his daughters, was a disparaging word people use for nonconformists. “Nonconformist,” he hastened to add, was a disparaging word people used for individuals. “Individuals,” he wrapped up, was simply code for Jews. The world is full of destroyers, Barry would conclude, who wanted to squelch individuality.
Bell knew her relationship with her father was the stuff of psychology textbooks. Freud would have enjoyed hours of amusement parsing out its contradictions. She was at once ashamed and in awe of her father, placing him in the awkward position of idol and idiot. When she was younger, their relationship seemed standard enough; most of her friends were mortified by their parents. And yet, the problem worsened as Bell grew older. Other fathers receded into the background, while Barry loomed larger. Her mortification was justified, Bell felt, despite her deep-seated respect. No one else’s father spoke with such a strange accent; no one else’s father wore mismatched shoes; no one else’s father ate at such fine restaurants and still managed to stain his lapel with soup.
And yet, this deep and abiding shame was accompanied by its polar opposite: Bell was deeply proud and protective of Barry. He was one of the few fathers she knew who had made his things for himself. He had earned, not inherited, the clutter in his house, read all the books on his shelves, could help Bell with her math homework without studying the textbook. Her friends’ fathers were, by contrast, wholly incompetent, a pasty race of lazy men who collected children as they did country homes, whose interest in their children matched their interest in their vacations. Even so, Bell couldn’t help longing Barry would dress a little more like these men. As Bell aged, these conflicting emotions evolved, morphing, even after years of therapy, into complicated pathologies.
“Bell,” Barry tried again, changing his tack. “Duncan Schoenfeld is a very successful doctor. If things don’t work out for you in the arts, he could take care of you…”
Bell stood still in indignant horror. She had not even mentioned her aspiration to write a novel in several years, wary of her father’s token response: She had a greater chance of getting married than getting published and, should she accomplish either goal, neither would afford the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. “Dad, you are all the ways feminism failed. The state should have taken your daughters from you.”
“I see,” said Barry, grinning slyly. “Do feminists accept monthly checks from their fathers?”
“That’s low,” Bell hissed.
“I’m genuinely curious,” Barry pressed. “Do the fathers of all feminists pay their daughters’ phone bills?”
“For your information,” Bell announced, “I’ve been supporting myself since college.”
“Since you dropped out of college,” Barry corrected. “‘Since college’ implies that you graduated.”
“Dropping out of Harvard,” Bell countered, “is like graduating from any other school.”
“Bell,” Barry said, with a condescending smile, “I just want you to be able to lead the life you are accustomed to.”
“To which you are accustomed,” Bell corrected with a supercilious smirk.
Barry bowed his head in concession.
“If this family is any indication,” Bell hissed, “wealth does not ensure happiness.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Barry said then, as though considering the accuracy of this statement, he added, “Besides, I know some poor people who are very happy.”
Bell shook her head, trading anger for despair. Her father was beyond reason.
“Anyway, you needn’t worry about these things if you take my advice. Just marry a man who’s at least fifteen years older than you. That way, relatively speaking, you’ll always seem young.”
“I am young,” sneered Bell.
Barry raised his eyebrows. Bell had to put her hands in her pockets to prevent herself from reaching out and ripping Barry’s eyebrows off. Then, as though to preempt such violence, Barry reached into his pocket and produced a wad of cash. “Buy yourself some new clothes,” he said. “How can you expect to attract a man when you dress like this?”
Bell was torn between spitting in her father’s face and responding intelligently. Garnering all the strength she could muster, she deigned to share what knowledge of women’s history she had retained from college. “Spinsters,” Bell declared, “were the first businesswomen. They spun cotton in the Middle Ages and, in the opinion of my professor, the chairwoman of the Women’s Studies department, they laid the groundwork for European society’s transformation from an agrarian to industrial economy. Their American counterparts, several hundred years later, whether manufacturing textiles or preaching temperance, were not only the ancestors of the suffrage movement, but the reason the American economy remained strong during World War II.” Satisfied, Bell nodded curtly and decided that she would make an excellent professor. She made a quick mental note: perhaps she should finish college.
“That’s amazing,” Barry said.
“Isn’t it,” Bell agreed.
“Women’s Studies,” he said, nodding. “No wonder your tuition cost so much. They have a department for everyone now.”
Bell sighed so forcefully as to exhale bile from her stomach. “Excuse me,” she said, reaching again for the door, “I would like to leave now.”
Barry stepped back, gesturing magnanimously. Bell inhaled haughtily and passed. But before she had fully departed, Barry voiced an afterthought. “He’s still married, you know…”
“He’s getting a divorce,” Bell snapped.
“Did he tell you that or did you hear that from Jorge?”
Bell started to respond then reconsidered. She would not be provoked again.
Barry put his hand on Bell’s shoulder with the mildness of a monk. “Trust me,” Barry said, “that’s not good news, considering your situation.” Barry paused and scrutinized Bell thoroughly, as though appraising jewels.
“What is my situation?” Bell asked, pronouncing the “h” in “what” for the first time ever.
Barry raised his eyebrows to new heights.
Bell awaited her father’s declaration.
Then, without allowing his eyebrows to drop, Barry pursed his lips and proceeded to whistle, with the musicality of a concert flutist, a tune from Fiddler on the Roof. The words, had he chosen to sing them out loud, would have gone as follows: “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch.”
Bell rolled her eyes in excruciating detail.
Barry tried to stifle laughter, but succeeded only in transforming his pursed lips from a flute to a trumpet.
“Thank you,” Bell said, “that’s very kind.”
