We Run the Tides(11)

Today Mr. London and I are meeting to discuss Franny and Zooey. He sits back in his desk chair and strokes his clean-shaven chin. Behind him, on three shelves, are books by Hemingway (The Sun Also Rises, A Moveable Feast), Fitzgerald (Tender Is the Night), and Robert Louis Stevenson (Kidnapped). There’s also an entire shelf devoted to the work of Jack London, which I personally believe he’s included in his “library” to subliminally propel the myth that he’s related to Jack London without having to prove it.

“So, what did you think of the book?” Mr. London says.

“What?” I say, still staring at the volumes on his shelves.

“Franny and Zooey?”

“Right,” I say. “I didn’t like it.”

“What do you mean you didn’t like it?” Mr. London asks.

“I mean that I liked Catcher in the Rye, but Franny and Zooey . . . well, it was okay.”

“It was okay?” he says. “Salinger is okay?”

“Yes,” I tell him. “I’d give the book a B minus.”

“Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a B minus,” Mr. London says.

“For extra credit?”

“Don’t you know that Salinger is an icon? That he’s a genius?” he says.

“It doesn’t mean I have to think this book is good,” I say.

“Yes, it does,” Mr. London says, clenching his youthful jaw.

“Why?” I ask.

“It’s a masterpiece,” Mr. London says, standing up.

“I thought it was boring,” I say. “I think I’m the ideal audience and I didn’t care for it. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”

“You wouldn’t recommend it to anyone,” he says. He starts pacing the narrow room. I know what’s about to happen. Any minute now he’s going to jump through a window. Mr. London has a well-documented temper problem. Well-documented by me at least. Every time he’s had a meltdown in the classroom I’ve reported it to Ms. Catanese, the upper school headmistress. She’s an uptight onetime beauty with long legs and short skirts and high-collared blouses, who was extremely interested in the information I shared with her. I don’t think Mr. London knows it was me who reported him. Others, I’ve been told, have complained about his temper as well. But it was Ms. Catanese who told me this so when she says others have complained about his temper, she could just be referring to herself. Rumor has it she was in love with him at one time and he, ultimately, was not in love with her.

Eventually Mr. London does exactly what I know he’ll do: he walks out the door. He does this in the classroom when he gets upset and doesn’t want people to see him upset. He knows he has an anger management problem and his way of controlling it is to leave. When he exits the classroom we all sit still and count to 120 aloud in unison because we know that he is counting two minutes before he comes back in. Two minutes must be the amount of time he was taught was both advisable and permissible to leave and calm down before reentering a room.

Now that Mr. London has left the teacher’s lounge, I know I have two minutes alone. I hadn’t planned on doing what I do. From my shorts pocket, I remove the three birth control pills I smuggled from sex ed class and crumble them in the palm of my left hand. Then I stand and approach the coffeepot and release the powder. I take a dirty spoon from the sink and stir the coffee. There’s no trace of the pills. I sit back down and think that already it smells a little less like testosterone. I imagine it smells more like the gym where my mother does aerobics with all her new friends. Mr. London returns to the lounge in exactly 120 seconds. I’m sitting where he left me.

“I have decided that you are entitled to your opinion about Franny and Zooey,” he says, and takes a sip of his coffee.

“Thank you,” I say, and stand.





7


Friday is a half day at school, thank god. I’m still getting the silent treatment from all my classmates. That afternoon my parents have to go to a cocktail reception and auction at my father’s art gallery. They’ve asked Petra, the daughter of my mom’s longtime supervisor at the hospital, to babysit. I don’t need a babysitter but given the events of the week and the fact that they will be out late at a post-auction dinner, they ask her to come keep me and Svea company. Petra is twenty and has wild pitch-black hair that she usually positions on top of her head with chopsticks. I once complimented her hairstyle and now she gives me chopsticks every year for my birthday. I have a pile of chopsticks on a shelf of my closet, next to the small safe where I keep money I’ve earned from babysitting.

My father has been getting ready for the auction all week. He’s going to be the auctioneer and he goes through a series of tongue twisters to prepare. It’s been a few months since the last auction and he says his tongue is “rusty.” He sits alone in the study with a gavel and rattles through numbers and then says, “going once, going twice.” Regardless of where I am in the house, I can hear the gavel hitting the table and my father’s voice yelling “Sold!”

Friday is officially hot—San Francisco’s summer has finally arrived in the fall. My mother gets off early from work and bikes home and washes and styles her hair and paints her nails. She dresses in all white and I have to admit she looks glamorous, and my father says so, too. “Wow,” he says when she comes downstairs. He stands at a distance, appraising her like art.