When Women Were Dragons(72)

He ignored this question. “I ran into your math teacher at the club,” he said, and I knew he meant “bar.”

“Did you, now?” I said, my voice neutral. “Did he tell you I shouldn’t even be in that class, and I’m just being used as free labor? Honestly, they should give me a salary.”

“It’s crass for young ladies to discuss money,” my father said. “Your mother should have taught you that.” He gave a humorless laugh that sounded more like a snort. “You’ve always been too sharp for your own good. Even when you were little. Your teacher informed me that he wrote you a recommendation to attend the university. Under duress, I’m assuming. You know how I feel about your continued education. Waste of time. Waste of resources. You’re ready to be a productive citizen right now, do your part in this great American economy. Also, this is how girls land good husbands, and isn’t that what you want? It’s foolish to wait too long, and miss your chance. I don’t know why you turn up your nose at that. Why you insist on getting above yourself. I told your mother not to fill your head with ridiculous notions, but she didn’t like to listen either.”

I bit my lower lip to keep myself from speaking. I took a long, slow breath through my nose. “Well, what a nice chat this has been. Anything else, Dad? Or maybe I should call you Mr. Green.”

“Cheeky,” my father said, his voice drowned by another wave of coughing. I waited a long time for it to pass. Finally, “I can’t make you change your mind, I’m assuming.”

“About school, Dad? No.” I had already submitted my applications. I had already applied for scholarships. All I could do now was wait. “Turns out, I love mathematics more than marriage.” Just like Mom, I wanted to add. But I didn’t.

My dad coughed again. “That librarian stopped by. At my office and everything. I never did like her.”

“Mrs. Gyzinska?”

“I suppose that’s her name. She has a tendency to stick her nose where it isn’t wanted. She always has. The first time your mother got sick, that insufferable woman showed up at the hospital and henpecked and harangued the nurses until they let her sit in the room every day, where she filled your poor mother’s head with nonsense. After a while, the nurses called me to complain that your mother wouldn’t stop reciting poetry, all thanks to that damn librarian. I had to call the administrator and he put a stop to it.”

“Poetry?” I asked. The room swam. I leaned against the wall. “The woods decay,” I recited. “The woods decay and fall.”

“She’s gotten to you too, I see.”

I could see my mother’s face in my mind’s eye, morphing from phase to phase. My mother before her illness, all rosy cheeks and smiles. My mother when she came home wrong. My mother sunburned and strong in the garden. My mother with her face twisted with anger, and that hard, sharp slap. My mother with grey clouds in her eyes and caves in her cheeks. My mother shrinking, hollowing out. The husk of a cricket, blowing away.

I recited:

Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold

Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet,

Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam

Floats up from those dim fields about the homes

Of happy men that have the power to die,

And grassy barrows of the happier dead.

Release me, and restore me to the ground.

“I hate that poem,” my father said.

“Mom loved it,” I said. I closed my eyes. “She asked me to recite it too. In the hospital, before she died. Every day, over and over and over again.”

I would never have admitted this to him—not at the time, and not ever—but I agreed with my father. I hated that poem too.

My dad was quiet for a long time. “Well, that was her all over.” Another swallow. Then another. “I’m calling because, contrary to what you likely believe, Alexandra, I do care about you. The whole country is starting to lose its mind. Protests at lunch counters and schools and chaos at the capitol and union goons mucking up profitable businesses and riots at those bars for . . . you know . . . those fellows, and nice young girls getting it in their heads start doing whatever the hell they want without a thought to their families or their futures. And other things. Worse things. Things I can’t even talk about, and you shouldn’t either. Our country is in danger of losing its head. The crazies here now, in this town, our town, with their flyers and their underground meetings and secret societies. And then marches, and riots, and total chaos. It’s happening now. And you need to protect yourself.”

“Dad, are you hearing yourself? This is insanity. There hasn’t been a single march anywhere near here. Not one. I would have seen it. Or riots. Whoever is telling you these things has no idea—”

“Look,” he said. His voice became sharp and desperate. “Some ideas are dangerous, okay? And some notions upend people’s lives. Families get ruined. We tried to keep it all away from you, your mother and I. We agreed that innocence is safer. I wish you had found yourself a nice man and were engaged already. It would be a huge relief, frankly, if I knew you were well in hand. I told your mother she should be molding you more appropriately for matrimony, but she never listened to me. I thought running a household would be good for you. Keep your eyes on the ground and give you some practice for a good, solid future. But no, you had that librarian filling your head with mathematics and college and other horseshit. And now here we are.”