A Taxonomy of Barnacles, page 26
“Trot,” said Bell. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry,” Trot muttered. He lurched from the sofa toward the door. “I’m…” He trailed off, then offered a helpless glance. “I was just going.”
“Trot, it’s okay,” Bell said.
Trot paused.
“But, if you’re looking for Bridget.” She looked down. “She’s out for the night.” That is, she was as far as Bell knew.
“Oh,” said Trot. He glanced away as he gathered Bell’s full import. Flustered, he turned to face the window. Then, suddenly feeling ridiculous, he turned one-eighty degrees and darted toward the front door as though he might skirt by undiscovered if he moved fast enough.
“Don’t go,” said Bell.
Trot paused in the doorway and surveyed the living room.
“I’ve had a bad night, too,” she said. “Why don’t you stay for a little while and we can commiserate.”
Trot regarded Bell dubiously, and glanced at the door again. But the longer he looked at Bell, the more confused he felt. “No, I should go anyway,” he mumbled. He moved toward the door.
“Wait,” Bell said. “Don’t go yet. I need to ask you something.”
Trot paused, one hand on the doorknob.
“What do you love about Bridget?” Bell asked.
Trot regarded Bell with genuine curiosity, realizing, for the first time since she’d arrived, that she, too, was in a disheveled state. What a selfish jerk he was for failing to notice. “What do I love about Bridget?” he repeated, as though making doubly sure that this was the question Bell wanted answered.
“Yes,” Bell said, nodding curtly. “I really need to know.”
Trot paused another moment then took a step toward the center of the room, stationing himself in a slightly less awkward position. He checked Bell’s eyes one last time to make sure of her alliance then, going forward on this assumption, he relaxed his stilted pose slightly and considered the question. “Her confidence,” he began. “At least, that’s what I used to think. There’s something irresistible about her conviction. You know that better than anyone.” Trot trailed off, suddenly concerned he’d overstepped his bounds.
Bell smiled and nodded, encouraging him to go on.
“But of course, that eventually wears off and you’re left with a real person and the question is … is that confidence real or is it just hiding something?” Trot paused again to ascertain whether Bell was still listening. Her eyes were sincere in their compassion, wide and unflinching. “Perhaps, it’s just plain foolishness,” Trot went on, “all this talk of your opposite. Would it not make more sense to find your twin, someone you understand perfectly, someone who understands you?” Trot stopped again. He could only assume that his feelings were apparent, that it was perfectly obvious to Bell that he was having a moment of crisis. Now, faced with the dizzying confusion of an honest conversation, Trot was confronted with new insight on his relationship with Bridget. Suddenly, he was hard-pressed to remember the last time they had felt connected. Suddenly, he was hard-pressed to answer the simple question: How on earth had he fallen for someone so … someone so unlike himself?
But Bell was too distracted at the moment with her own preoccupations, busy calculating how she might incorporate Trot’s advice to aid her efforts in Blaine’s seduction. Then, realizing that Trot had finished his passionate oration, she nodded thoughtfully, thanked him profusely for his advice, and sank further into the sofa.
Trot, now fully mortified, mistook Bell’s distance for disdain. And punctuating his statement with a pitiful whimper, he muttered an excuse for why he should go, then hurried out the front door, riding the elevator in silence as though he’d just seen a ghost.
Bridget was sleeping when Bell returned to their bedroom. Having slept very badly in the living room, Bell craved companionship of any kind and willfully ignored Bridget’s indifference. Even despite the rampant humiliation of her night, she desperately craved Bridget’s company and, as she got into her own bed, made every effort, short of yelling in Bridget’s ear, to disturb her sister’s slumber.
Bridget responded to Bell’s request with characteristic directness. She lifted one graceful arm from her side and extended her middle finger.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Bell.
“Nothing at all,” Bridget growled. She yanked her blankets over her head as though by yanking hard enough she might obscure Bell altogether.
Accepting Bridget’s sentiment, Bell turned to face the window.
“Fine,” said Bridget. “I’m up now. Tell me. How did it go?”
“Couldn’t have gone better,” Bell lied.
“Go on. Tell,” said Bridget.
“Let’s just say somewhere, very nearby, someone’s feeling very rejected.”
“Oh Bell, you are a master,” Bridget said. “I expected no less from you.”
Bell did her best to feign satisfaction then, anxious to avoid more questions, she cursed herself for waking Bridget and buried herself under her blankets.
Bridget, of course, was way too proud to permit Bell even this small lead. “Well,” she lied, “for now two nights straight, you and I have been on the same date.”
“Oh,” Bell said. “I didn’t realize … did Billy come over here?”
“Obviously,” Bridget sniffed. “Unless, the boys duped us again and sent Blaine undercover.” Bridget widened her eyes in mock terror to punctuate the absurdity of this notion.
“So it went well,” Bell pressed.
“Very.” Bridget smiled.
Bell regarded her sister with loveless detachment.
“I wish you had been here,” Bridget said, “just to see the look on his face.”
“Well, think of it this way,” Bell grumbled, “in some strange sense, I did.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” said Bridget. “I’m not interested in Billy anymore.”
“Why not?” asked Bell. “With a few minor changes, I’d say Billy’s the perfect guy.”
“What minor changes?” Bridget demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Bell sighed.
“What would you want to change?” Bridget pressed.
“I hadn’t given it much thought.”
“Oh,” said Bridget, “that’s a relief.” Her voice rose into a sneer. “For a second, I thought you were going to say you wished he looked more like Blaine.”
17
Fear of Mondays
Early on Monday morning, another disappearance wrought havoc in the building as Mrs. Finch looked out her bedroom window to find one of the red-tailed hawks missing. The nest outside her window was less one of its new chicks. Having spent substantial time and money lobbying for the birds’ safety, she was both heartbroken and irate. As many do when faced with these emotions, she immediately turned paranoid and arrived at a list of possible suspects for the crime of bird-napping. Since noticing the bird’s disappearance, she had been entirely frantic, spending the morning patrolling the park with binoculars, papering nearby lampposts with flyers, and subjecting those unfortunate enough to be trapped in the elevator with her to her wide array of snide looks.
Finally, hysteria compelled her to drastic measures, causing Mrs. Finch to call Bella and plainly accuse Benita of kidnapping the bird. Oddly, Benita was not guilty of the crime of which she was suspected. The chick had simply grown curious of its surroundings and, following in the footsteps of so many other residents, flown away unnoticed. Indeed, it seemed the youthful contingent of Seventy-first Street and Fifth were privy to all the same temptations. They heard and heeded the call of spring and rattled their respective cages.
This very sentiment consumed Benita as she woke for school on Monday morning. At breakfast, she stared past her sisters, reciting her lines to herself as though muttering sweet nothings. She was like a samurai warrior, her entire being trained on her goal. Contest. Contest. Talbot. Contest. The words were interchangeable. A half hour before the bus arrived, she was dressed and ready to go, and so made use of the spare time to remove and press her uniform. But even after stiffening the pleats of her skirt to resemble corrugated cardboard, she still had several minutes to spare and so retreated to her room to meditate in private. Chanting, she removed her costume from her backpack to examine it one last time and confirmed with relief that she had made the right decisions. The long brown robe and cotton-ball beard afforded Lear the perfect measures of distinction and disarray. Bridget’s miniskirt turned Regan into an appropriately impudent tart. Bell’s tank dress made Goneril the ultimate dizzy debutante. And the shimmering green taffeta strapless gown “borrowed” from Belinda elevated Cordelia from honor to sainthood.
The school bus was torture for Benita, the greetings of her friends an unwelcome interruption to her pointed focus. Counting the red awnings on Park Avenue, usually a claming morning ritual, today seemed a futile exercise. She resolved instead to close her eyes and visualize her performance and, when she tired of this image, to imagine Mary Talbot, post-defeat, sobbing in a corner. When she arrived at school, she registered her attendance then took a seat in the back of homeroom. As she sat, she did her best to ignore her forty classmates and the uniquely irritating mayhem of forty ten-year-olds crammed into such an empty space. Finally, the bell rang, bringing the buzz to a muffled hush and allowing the homeroom teacher to begin her list of daily announcements. Yet again, Benita tuned out the din. The school had changed its policy on tardiness; girls would be penalized after only ten instances as opposed to the previous twelve. Uniform bloomers were required for PE class; regular gym shorts would not be tolerated. Due to the date on which Easter fell this year, spring vacation would be one week instead of two. As the list of news items droned on and on, Benita struggled to focus. But the final announcement reached her conscious mind and ratcheted her to attention.
Due to a general concern on the part of parents and teachers, this year’s talent show would mark a departure from previous years. It was widely felt that the event promoted an unhealthy sense of competition and an unnecessary awareness of the real world’s inequitable distributions. Therefore, this afternoon’s auditions would proceed with a slight change of plans. The audition process would not require auditioning per se, but rather writing one’s name on a sign-up sheet. Nor would any prizes be awarded for the different categories. This year’s talent show would be renamed a “Talent Show and Tell.” Every member of the class would be entitled to perform. Every brave performer would be given a commemorative pin and photographed as a group. The photograph would hang in the hall behind the gym next to the athletic teams as a reminder that every Chapin School student was uniquely talented.
Indeed, the homeroom teacher concluded, she hoped this marked a new era for the Chapin School in which students would embrace the multiplicity of talents in the classroom as oppose to engaging in a misguided and dog-eat-dog battle to differentiate themselves. Benita gasped as she registered the full import of the announcement. Not only had she been robbed of the chance to put Mary Talbot in her place, but she now had to find an entirely new way to win the contest. Outraged, she spent the rest of the morning in a silent, angry funk until just after recess, when she could take it no longer, she went to see the school nurse and, feigning a stabbing headache, procured an excuse to go home and commence an emergency change of course.
* * *
There is nothing that produces a more distinct feeling of isolation than waking in an empty apartment in which every other tenant has long ago left for work, school, or some equally pressing commitment. Even before Bell fully awoke, she knew it in her subconscious. Long gone was the solace of the weekend. It was officially Monday. The rest of the world had awakened hours ago and now was hard at work, enmeshed in exciting, unfolding plans for which Bell’s skills rendered her hopelessly obsolete and in which she was not included. The rest of the world was very busy doing important things. They were phoning, faxing, waiting for phone calls and faxes, or otherwise implicitly involved in the flow of business. They were issuing directives, tweaking mission statements, honing in on the brand. Publishers were deciding to print a book. Newspapers were breaking stories. Studios were signing deals with actors. Cases were being closed. Everywhere in the world, Bell decided—that is, other than where she now stood—people were implicitly involved in, if not personally responsible for, the steady rotation of the earth while she lay, in her bed, wishing it would stop spinning.
Monday brought a whole new set of obstacles, presenting the unsettling reminder that she was the only member of the family with nothing to do that day. She certainly couldn’t be seen starting her day now that it was nearing one o’clock. She might as well wear a badge that said PARIAH or stop the first stranger on the street and admit she was unemployed. It would be painfully obvious to the stranger that her life was in a state of hopeless disarray and she simply wasn’t up to the task of facing his scathing judgment. Sadly, staying in the apartment was not an option either. The noise of her thoughts was too deafening and the minutes passed too slowly. It was as though the Barnacle apartment inhabited its own pocket of the universe in which laws of physics were suspended and time took a little longer. After spending ten minutes staring at the familiar gap in the ceiling, Bell reconsidered her choice and resolved that, perhaps, it was time to leave the safety of her bedroom.
As she rose, she was accosted by the strong and alarming sensation that accosts many tardy risers: that one has slept through the entire day and missed a vital commitment. This feeling is compounded by the knowledge that there is no credible excuse for your absence, but rather, those to whom you are accountable will know that you overslept simply by looking at you. Unfortunately, Bell’s predicament was even more pathetic. It was, of course, impossible to “oversleep” when one had no commitments to miss. Moving very slowly, she stood and approached the bathroom. As she did, she was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of nausea so violent it propelled her down the hall at the speed of a far more energetic person. She entered the bathroom at a sprint, jabbing the door with her fist then nearly fell onto the toilet, clutching her stomach as though it held a stash of precious jewels. Of course, Bell could not be wholly sure whether pregnancy or anxiety had compelled this implosion. Either way, she felt slightly better afterward and hobbled to the mirror to ensure that her face had remained intact.
In the mirror, Bell addressed her face, depriving it the courtesy of silence. “You’re so fat already,” she informed her reflection, “pregnancy is redundant.” Her face, at this cruel proximity, looked old and wizened. Where was the hallowed pregnancy glow, the promised boost to her image? Her large blue eyes no longer shined as they had in younger years. The area directly underneath was creased by a perimeter of worry and shaded by dark circles that seemed to have been drawn there by a playful cartoonist. Her fair skin, once translucent and pink as though warmed by a nearby hearth, was now an odd, gray-green color that emphasized the wrinkles on her forehead with alarming contrast. Laugh lines, a development Bell had always imagined to be a mark of a long, happy life, appeared on her in extreme detail, suggesting not laughter but a recent crying spell.
The shape of her pleasingly circular face had lengthened in an unattractive way. Her hearty smile had flattened under the weight of her cynicism. What had she done, Bell now wondered, to speed her decline so drastically? Ten years ago she had been the kind of girl that strangers stopped on the street. And, as though this fall from grace were not enough of a hardship, she had become, she realized, one of those strange people doing the staring. Irked at the thought, Bell cursed her mother for condemning her to age so poorly and idly considered asking Bridget to share her beauty secrets. But this concept only infused her with a new wave of resentment, producing the unfortunate and ironic result of twisting her already homely grimace into new kinds of ugliness. Perhaps, Bell hoped, pregnancy took some time to work its aesthetic magic. Perhaps, pregnancy would solve so much. It certainly sanctioned, Bell decided, eating a hearty breakfast.
Cheered by this thought, she headed toward the kitchen for a healthy indulgence but as she passed the living room, she was distracted by a flurry of movement. She could not be wholly certain whether it was a hallucination. But based on a cursory glance in the room, it appeared that Benita was feeding the dog a twenty-dollar bill.
“What are you doing?” Bell demanded. She took another step into the room to aid her perception.
Benita either didn’t hear Bell or pretended that she had not. “Go on, Charles, you can do it,” she said. “Eat Daddy’s money.”
Bell stared at Benita for another moment to confirm that her first instinct was correct. When she did, she crossed the room to Charles and attempted to void the transaction, using one hand to pry his mouth open and the other to remove the cash. “Daddy would be so proud of you,” she sneered.
Benita chose to interpret Bell’s sarcasm as sincerity then, smiling as though she had just received praise for a venerable act, whistled her command over the dog, prompting him to hobble across the room and retrieve another twenty.
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Bell.
“It’s not what I’m doing,” she said. “Daddy’s the one who’s flushing it down the drain. I just think it’s better spent.”
