Perfect Little World(75)
“But he’s kind,” Izzy offered, suddenly feeling the need to defend him.
“Is that all you need, kindness?” Carmen said. “Dr. Grind doesn’t look like he’s spent a single minute of his life thinking about sex.”
“I think kindness is sexy,” Izzy said quietly, now grasping at straws.
“You’d make a cute couple,” Carmen allowed, reaching for another cookie.
“It doesn’t matter,” Izzy said, thinking back to the kiss. “It couldn’t happen.”
“No, I guess not,” Carmen said. “Not while he’s running the show.”
“So there’s no point in talking about it.”
“You brought it up, Izzy.”
“Sorry.”
“I wonder if he dates,” Carmen said. “Do you think he has some Internet girlfriend that he talks to?”
“Let’s just finish the movie,” Izzy said, feeling sick at the possibility.
They watched Diana Ross on the TV, the lines almost memorized by this point. After ten minutes of quiet, so much time passing that Izzy assumed the conversation was over, Carmen rubbed her shoulder and said, “It’s okay to want somebody, Izzy. Dr. Grind’s a good guy.”
“Maybe someday,” Izzy said, just to end the conversation. She leaned against Carmen, suddenly tired, and Carmen snorted. “That tie,” she said. “Those sneakers.”
Izzy closed her eyes, unable to keep herself from smiling.
After Carmen went back to her own place, Izzy went upstairs and sat in her bed, suddenly unable to sleep. She reached into the drawer of her nightstand and retrieved a gray velvet box. She didn’t open it, merely held it in her open hand. It was one of the few objects she’d brought with her to the complex, something she couldn’t get rid of, and so here it was, in her hand again.
For her birthday, Hal had given her an antique emerald ring, the kind of jewelry that could not be mistaken for anything other than priceless, old world beauty. It fit her finger perfectly. “I can’t wear this,” she told him, immediately tamping down the joy she felt upon seeing the ring.
“Why not?” he asked, smiling, still proud of the perfection of his gift.
“Because someone like me, who doesn’t have five dollars in her purse and has to wear clothes from Goodwill, does not get to walk around school with this kind of ring on her finger. People will want to know who gave it to me.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to tell them the truth. Say it was your grandmother’s ring.”
“My grandmother, on both sides, married a farmer, sewed her own clothing, and died with the exact same amount of money she started with. Even if you go a dozen generations back, I don’t come from any kind of family that would own this ring.”
“Well,” he said, looking at her, Izzy felt flushed to understand, with the kind of affection that suggested she was made for beautiful things, “you can keep it here and wear it only when you visit me.”
“This is turning out to be less of a great gift, Mr. Jackson.”
Whenever she wanted to needle him, whenever she wanted to see his ears tint red, she called him by his teacher name. She did not like foolishness for the most part, but she thrilled at the wickedness of this small act.
Hal did not even register the needling; he was so focused on her, and she again felt the strange sensation of being witnessed, something she worked so hard to avoid in most cases. “Pretty soon, Izzy,” he then said, “if you still feel like it, you’ll have so many nice things like this that you’ll make up restrictions on them just to make them special again.”
She did not allow her emotions on the surface to change but she felt the swell of his consideration of the future. Their future. She could never figure out, and it felt childish to ask, what he expected from this relationship. She simply dug her nails into herself and hoped that the marks would remind her, years from now, of a time that was good.
“I don’t know how a person gets tired of this,” she said, and then carefully put the ring back in its box, placed it on the coffee table, and willed herself to forget that it existed.
Now, in bed, holding the box that she had still not opened since Hal died, she knew that she didn’t want to see what was inside. She wondered if it was even still in the box, or if it had disintegrated as soon as Hal left her. She could see the ring clearly in her mind, more defined than she could see Hal, who had grown hazy in her memories. If she put the ring on, would it bring Hal back to life? She considered the box for a few seconds and then placed it, unopened, in the drawer. She lay back in bed and dug her fingers into her arm, the sensation so pleasing, the slight pain, that she fell into a deep sleep.
On the night of the exhibition for her art class, nearly the entire Infinite Family came to the gallery, even the children, who had to be carefully shepherded around the precariously arranged works of art. As they sipped punch, the adults stared with polite but confounded expressions at a six-foot-long string of plaster molds of shrimp arranged like Christmas lights around a fake tree. Finally, Marnie pulled on Izzy’s arm, shocking her back into coherence, and asked her, “Where is yours, Izzy? I wanna see Izzy’s art.” Izzy pointed toward the second room of the gallery and said, “It’s in there.” Everyone in the family turned and, instead of observing all the artwork as it was set up, made a beeline for the next room.