Lydia Netzer - How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky

“It’s OK,” she croaked. “I didn’t die.”

“Where’s the teacher?” Sally barked at the crowd that was gathering around them. “Oh, for Pete’s sake!”

With that Sally slid her arms under Bernice’s legs and shoulders and lifted her. She cradled her tightly and said, “Don’t worry, purple bag. We’ll get you inside.”

Bernice closed her eyes and her brain went swimming away. She felt Sally holding her, threading her through the triangle shape of the jungle-gym openings, was aware of her jostling stride as Sally ran up to the school, banged through the door, and hollered, “NURSE!”

Bernice had a concussion and was out of school for three days. When she returned, Sally decreed, “No more playground club.”

“No,” said Bernice. “It’s OK. I can do it now. I knew that was going to happen. And I lived. It’s fine.”

“Are you kidding me? You knew that was going to happen? What are you, psychic?”

“No,” said Bernice. “I’m not.”

“Well, I don’t care,” Sally said. “Let the little kids break their necks on that shit. I’m done with it.”

That day Sally started a mystics club during recess with a smuggled-in Ouija board and some dice, with which she loudly stated she was going to nose out any psychic ability that Bernice might possess. They never went near the jungle gym again. The following year they went to middle school, and Sally was able to get her physical energy out of her system by playing basketball, softball, and field hockey. She was terrible at each and every sport, and spent at least a few minutes of every game laid out on the field. Bernice sat on the sidelines, feeling every trip, every slam, her body tense and shifting left and right as Sally ran from left to right in front of her, slapping her hand against her face when something went wrong. But Sally was always up again, laughing, smiling with all her crooked teeth, running again. And that made Bernice smile, too.

In seventh grade, both of the girls’ parents got divorced. Sally’s mother suspected her husband of cheating on her during his business trips, laid a trap, and caught him at it. Bernice’s mother, who had been in the Far East doing historical research, sent word that she would not be returning and that her husband was free to pursue other interests. Sally and Bernice were twelve.

It was during a meeting of the mystics club that they revealed the news about their parents to each other. The mystics club had been sustained by several minor moments that Sally claimed confirmed Bernice’s psychic powers, and now had seven members, four or five of whom were in attendance at any given meeting. Their usual pastime was to test each other for psychic abilities with playing cards, tell stories about the witches of the Toledo swamps, and talk about boys. They met before school, in a remote section of the gym, climbing up to perch atop a folded-up section of bleachers. On this day, there happened to be only one other girl sitting up there, some sixth grader hoping to be included, so they told her to get lost, and then it was just the two of them.

Bernice held a deck of tarot cards, shuffling them halfheartedly, looking at each one as it came to the top of the deck.

“What’s wrong?” asked Sally.

“My mother’s not coming back from Thailand,” Bernice said.

“Not coming back at all?”

“Right.”

“Well, is your father going over there? Are you moving?”

Bernice turned to look at her friend. “Nope,” she said. “They’re done. Quits. Finis. ”

Sally leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then began to smile.

“My parents are done, too,” she said. “Apparently Dad got his dick wet in Albuquerque, and this is the fallout.”

“Wow,” said Bernice. “You’re tough.”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the tears and the dissolution of your identity?”

“Where are yours?” said Sally. Bernice saw that Sally was actually crying and that made her cry, too.

“OK, I admit it, I’m actually sad,” she said.

For a few minutes they sat there, and Bernice continued to shuffle the cards.

“Maybe they weren’t meant for each other,” said Sally. “You know, maybe it wasn’t true love.”

“Come on.” Bernice rolled her eyes and banged her heels against the bleachers. Someone had turned the lights on in the gym. “Are you stupid?”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t!”

“You know that’s just bullshit, right?” Bernice asked.

“You’re the one with tarot cards in your hand,” said Sally.

“Yeah, bullshit tarot cards,” Bernice said.

“Yeah,” said Sally. She let out a sigh that made Bernice feel terrible. That small puff of air had such finality, as if something permanent was falling away.

“Screw them,” said Bernice. “It’ll be different for us, you know.”

“Different how? Sam Thomas asked me to the mixer, and then not only did he take Rachel Crumbley instead, he didn’t even have the balls to tell me.”

“I know,” said Bernice, who had refused to even consider attending.

“So I got ready, got dressed, for nothing!”

“I know,” Bernice repeated.

“My dad even took time out from running around on my mom to take a picture of me! Waiting and waiting for Sam Thomas, who was already at the dance with—”

“With Rachel, yes,” Bernice intoned.

“OK, maybe it won’t be different for us.”

“Fuck,” said Sally. “We need arranged marriages. You know, like they did in India. You pick your kid’s husband, wife, whatever, and that’s it. Their divorce rate is like nothing.”

“Who would arrange our marriages?” snorted Bernice. “Our parents are too busy divorcing each other.”

“Just imagine,” said Sally. “Say you knew, when your kid was born, who they were going to marry? Think what you could do for them, to make that marriage awesome.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like everything!” Sally spread her hands out in front of her. A clump of kids walked by under their feet, on the way to the band room. “You could just raise them to be together. Same ideas, same experiences, but enough different to make it interesting. Make them compatible, make them perfect for each other. This one plays the cello, that one plays the violin. This one loves mountain climbing, that one loves rappelling. You get it.”

“Science.”

“What?”

“It’s like science. It’s like what the swamp witches do.”

Sally frowned. “Swamp witches? That’s not science.”

“Sure it is,” said Bernice. “They’re shuffling the cards, but they’re reading the faces. They’re putting protractors to the constellations and then naming them after gods. Like your idea with the arranged marriages—it’s actually so Toledo. Soulmates in a test tube.”

“Exactly. It’s so Toledo.”

The girls sat silently for a while, each thinking. Then the first bell rang.

“Fuck our parents,” said Sally.

“Obviously.”

A boy walked past with a trombone in a case, letting it bang rhythmically into the bleachers with each step.

“We could do better,” said Sally.

Bernice gathered her things, put the tarot cards in her backpack.

“Our kids get married,” she went on. “It’s me and you at Christmas and Thanksgiving, how cool would that be?”

“Cool,” said Bernice, zipping her backpack shut.

“I mean, having in-laws that get along is probably half the battle of having a happy marriage,” said Sally.

“That and keeping your pants on when you travel on business.”

“But don’t you see?” Sally caught Bernice by the arm. “We can make them do that. We can train them to do that.”