Vinegar Girl (Hogarth Shakespeare)(12)

Mrs. Darling seemed uninterested in Mrs. Amherst. “Have a seat,” she told Kate, smoothing her skirt beneath her as she settled behind her desk.

Kate sat.

“Emma Gray,” Mrs. Darling said. She was certainly wasting no words today.

Emma Gray? Kate’s brain went racing through possibilities. There were none at all, as far as she knew. Emma Gray had never been a problem.

“Emma asked who you thought Room Four’s best drawer was,” Mrs. Darling said. She was consulting the notepad she kept beside her telephone. “You said”—and she read off the words—“?‘I think probably Jason.’?”

“Right,” Kate said.

She waited for the punch line, but Mrs. Darling put down her notepad as if she thought she’d already delivered it. She laced her fingers together and surveyed Kate with a “So there!” expression on her face.

“That’s exactly right,” Kate expanded.

“Emma’s mother is very upset,” Mrs. Darling told her. “She says you made Emma feel inferior.”

“She is inferior,” Kate said. “Emma G. can’t draw worth a damn. She asked my honest opinion and I gave her an honest answer.”

“Kate,” Mrs. Darling said, “there is so much to argue with in that, I don’t even know where to begin.”

“What’s wrong with it? I don’t get it.”

“Well, one thing you might have said is, ‘Oh, now, Emma, I’ve never looked at art as a competition. I’m just so thrilled that all of you are creative!’ you’d say. ‘All of you doing your best at whatever you’re trying to do.’?”

Kate tried to imagine herself speaking this way. She couldn’t. She said, “But Emma didn’t mind; I swear she didn’t. All she said was, ‘Oh, yeah, Jason,’ and then she went on about her business.”

“She minded enough to report it to her mother,” Mrs. Darling said.

“Maybe she was only making conversation.”

“Children don’t ‘make conversation,’ Kate.”

In Kate’s experience, making conversation was one of their favorite activities, but she said, “Well, anyhow, that happened way last week.”

“And your point is?”

Kate’s usual response to this question was, “Well, gee. Too bad you missed it.” But she stifled it this time. (The unsatisfying thing about practicing restraint was that nobody knew you were practicing it.) “So I didn’t just now do it, is my point,” she said. “It happened before that business with Jameesha’s father, even. Before I promised to mend my ways. I mean, I remember what I promised, and I’m working on it. I’m being very diplomatic and tactful.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Mrs. Darling said.

She didn’t look convinced. But neither did she tell Kate she was fired. She just shook her head and said that that would be all, she supposed.

—

When Kate arrived home, she found Bunny making a mess in the kitchen. She was frying a block of something white at way too high a temperature, and the whole house had the Chinese-restaurant smell of overheated oil and soy sauce. “What is that?” Kate demanded, swooping past her to lower the flame.

Bunny backed away. “Don’t get all in a snit, for God’s sake,” she said. She held up the spatula like a flyswatter. “It’s tofu?”

“Tofu!”

“I’m turning vegetarian?”

“You’re kidding,” Kate said.

“Every hour of every day in this country, six hundred and sixty thousand innocent animals die for us.”

“How do you know that?”

“Edward told me.”

“Edward Mintz?”

“He doesn’t eat things that have faces? So starting next week, I need you to make our meat mash without any beef.”

“You want meatless meat mash.”

“It would be healthier, too. You have no idea, the toxins we’re stuffing our bodies with.”

“Why not just join a cult?” Kate asked her.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand!”

“Oh, go set the table,” Kate said wearily. And she opened the fridge and took out the pot of meat mash.

Bunny hadn’t always been so silly. It seemed that starting around age twelve, she had turned into a flibbertigibbet. Even her hair reflected the change. Once bound in two sensible braids, now it was a mass of springy short golden ringlets through which you could see daylight, if you stood at the proper angle. She had a habit of keeping her lips slightly parted and her eyes wide and artless, and her clothes were oddly young for her, with waistbands up under her armpits and short, short skirts prinked out around her thighs. It was all to do with boys, Kate supposed—attracting boys; except why should childishness be considered alluring to adolescent boys? (Although evidently it was. Bunny was in great demand.) In public she walked pigeon-toed, most often nibbling that fingertip, which gave her an air of timidity that could not have been more misleading. In private, though, here in the kitchen, she still walked normally. She stomped off to the dining room with an armload of plates and she slammed them down on the table one-two-three.

Kate was collecting apples from the bowl on the counter when she heard her father in the front hall. “I’ll just let Kate know we’re here,” he was saying, and then, “Kate?” he called.