The Paper Palace(50)

15


   1982. November, New York.


Water sluices the windows. My room is tomb-like, sealed. I yawn, sit up in bed, stare down into the interior courtyard. The heavy rain has puddled to the middle, forming a square-shaped lake. A waxy Dixie cup skitters across the surface, dragging a piece of Saran wrap behind it like a jellyfish tail. I reach for my clock. I have a history test first period and I’ve set the alarm for six a.m. so I can finish memorizing. 7:45. A flash of panic sweeps me as I realize I’ve slept through my alarm. I rush around my room, throwing things into my backpack, drilling myself out loud: Stamp Act Congress, Taxation Without Representation, “the shot heard round the world.” I pull on whatever clothes I’ve left lying on the floor and am almost out the front door when I remember my birth control pills. I race back to my room, reach into the way-back of my closet, grab the nude oval container from inside the old ice skate where I keep it hidden, and swallow Tuesday.



* * *



—

    The week I started taking the pill, Conrad stopped coming to my room at night. At first I thought it was the timing. Six days after my visit to the clinic, Conrad had left to spend spring break in Memphis with his mother and weird Rosemary, whom I hadn’t seen in three years and, for all I knew, was probably a bride of Christ by now. The first few weeks after Conrad got back, I lay in bed at night, forcing myself to stay awake, waiting for a floorboard to creak, the whisper of his clothes, the unzipping. But nothing happened. It was as if I had taken a magic pill.

Conrad was different when he got home from Memphis. He was happy. The trip had been a big success. His mother had asked him to come again in June and stay for the whole summer.

“We’re gonna drive to New Mexico to visit my uncle,” he told us at dinner. “Rosemary figured out it’s exactly nine hundred and ninety-nine miles from Memphis to Santa Fe. We’re choosing a one-mile detour so it’ll be an even thousand.”

“Cool,” Leo said. “Uncle Jeff?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he still married to the stewardess?”

“Linda.”

“Right. With the big hair.”

“They’re separated,” Conrad said.

“Your mother could never stand her. Said she was a fortune hunter. Though marrying an orthopedist isn’t exactly hitting the jackpot.” Leo served himself a big glob of mashed potatoes. “Can someone pass me the butter?”

Conrad looked different, too. He stopped buttoning the top button of his shirt tight around his Adam’s apple, which always made him look like a serial killer, and finally started using the dandruff shampoo my mother kept putting in the bathroom. He had made the varsity wrestling team. There was even a girl he liked at school. Leslie. A sophomore who had transferred in midyear.

In June, right before he left for Tennessee for the summer, Conrad, Leslie, and I went to see E.T. together. As we sat in the dark movie theater eating popcorn and watching a small boy communing with a long finger, I realized that, for the first time in a long time, things felt almost normal.



* * *



—

It’s been over six months, and still no quiet tapping at the door, dark shadow next to my bed, whispered threats. I don’t know if it’s because spending the summer with his mom and Rosemary made him realize what a disgusting perv he was, or because he and Leslie are dry-humping all the time, or because the hormones I’m taking change the way I smell. But whatever it is, the pills are working.

I run the eight blocks to school, rain pelting down on my umbrella, dirty puddle water splashing my ankles. I’ll probably flunk the test. I can’t remember why Paul Revere is so important.





December


“There you are,” Mum says, pushing her way through the heavy velvet stage curtains and plonking herself down on a metal folding chair in the now-empty viola section.

“You’re not supposed to come back here,” I say.

“The concert was a great success,” she says, ignoring me completely. “Though that conductor has no sense of rhythm. At these prices, the school really should hire someone more musical.”

“Mom!” I give her a fierce look and mouth Shut up. Half of the school orchestra is still backstage, putting their instruments away. Mr. Semple, our conductor, stands nearby, chatting to the oboes.

“I should have a word with him. He may not know he’s off tempo.”

“If you speak to him, I’ll kill you.” I pull apart the pieces of my flute, thread a white handkerchief through the tip of my cleaning rod, and shove it into the hollow lengths of silver pipe. A thin stream of saliva drips from the head of my flute when I hold it upright.

“And why on earth do a movement from Brandenburg four when you could do five?” She takes a ChapStick out of her purse and applies wax all over her lips. “In any event, Eleanor, you stole the show. Your piccolo solo has always been my favorite part of The Nutcracker: that quicksilverish slide up the scale: Bada bada bada bah . . . blrump, ba ba badladladladl bloom-pah,” she sings, at the top of her lungs.

“Oh my god. Mom. Stop.” I pick up my flute and piccolo and shove them in my backpack.

“The bassoons sounded like curdled milk.”