Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

When the bell to start the day finally rang, Miss Ferenczi looked out at all of us and said, “Children, I have enjoyed your company in the past, and today I am going to reward you.” She held up the small box. “Do you know what this is?” She waited. “Of course you don’t. It is a Tarot pack.”

Edith Atwater raised her hand. “What’s a Tarot pack, Miss Ferenczi?”

“It is used to tell fortunes,” she said. “And that is what I shall do this morning. I shall tell your fortunes, as I have been taught to do.”

“What’s fortune?” Bobby Kryzanowicz asked.

“The future, young man. I shall tell you what your future will be. I can’t do your whole future, of course. I shall have to limit myself to the five-card system, the wands, cups, swords, pentacles, and the higher arcanes. Now who wants to be first?”

There was a long silence. Then Carol Peterson raised her hand.

“All right,” Miss Ferenczi said. She divided the pack into five smaller packs and walked back to Carol’s desk, in front of mine. “Pick one card from each one of these packs,” she said. I saw that Carol had a four of cups and a six of swords, but I couldn’t see the other cards. Miss Ferenczi studied the cards on Carol’s desk for a minute. “Not bad,” she said. “I do not see much higher education. Probably an early marriage. Many children. There’s something bleak and dreary here, but I can’t tell what. Perhaps just the tasks of a housewife life. I think you’ll do very well, for the most part.” She smiled at Carol, a smile with a certain lack of interest. “Who wants to be next?”

Carl Whiteside raised his hand slowly.

“Yes,” Miss Ferenczi said, “let’s do a boy.” She walked over to where Carl sat. After he picked his five cards, she gazed at them for a long time. “Travel,” she said. “Much distant travel. You might go into the army. Not too much romantic interest here. A late marriage, if at all. But the Sun in your major arcana, that’s a very good card.” She giggled. “You’ll have a happy life.”

Next I raised my hand. She told me my future. She did the same with Bobby Kryzanowicz, Kelly Munger, Edith Atwater, and Kim Foor. Then she came to Wayne Razmer. He picked his five cards, and I could see that the Death card was one of them.

“What’s your name?” Miss Ferenczi asked.

“Wayne.”

“Well, Wayne,” she said, “you will undergo a great metamorphosis, a change, before you become an adult. Your earthly element will no doubt leap higher, because you seem to be a sweet boy. This card, this nine of swords, tells me of suffering and desolation. And this ten of wands, well, that’s a heavy load.”

“What about this one?” Wayne pointed at the Death card.

“It means, my sweet, that you will die.” She gathered up the cards. We were all looking at Wayne. “But do not fear,” she said. “It is not really death. Just change. Out of your earthly shape.” She put the cards on Mr. Hibler’s desk. “And now, let’s do some arithmetic.”

At lunchtime Wayne went to Mr. Faegre, the principal, and informed him of what Miss Ferenczi had done. During the noon recess, we saw Miss Ferenczi drive out of the parking lot in her rusting green Rambler American. I stood under the slide, listening to the other kids coasting down and landing in the little depressive bowls at the bottom. I was kicking stones and tugging at my hair right up to the moment when I saw Wayne come out to the playground. He smiled, the dead fool, and with the fingers of his right hand he was showing everyone how he had told on Miss Ferenczi.

I made my way toward Wayne, pushing myself past two girls from another class. He was watching me with his little pinhead eyes.

“You told,” I shouted at him. “She was just kidding.”

“She shouldn’t have,” he shouted back. “We were supposed to be doing arithmetic.”

“She just scared you,” I said. “You’re a chicken. You’re a chicken, Wayne. You are. Scared of a little card,” I singsonged.

Wayne fell at me, his two fists hammering down on my nose. I gave him a good one in the stomach and then I tried for his head. Aiming my fist, I saw that he was crying. I slugged him.

“She was right,” I yelled. “She was always right! She told the truth!” Other kids were whooping. “You were just scared, that’s all!”

And then large hands pulled at us, and it was my turn to speak to Mr. Faegre.

In the afternoon Miss Ferenczi was gone, and my nose was stuffed with cotton clotted with blood, and my lip had swelled, and our class had been combined with Mrs. Mantei’s sixth-grade class for a crowded afternoon science unit on insect life in ditches and swamps. I knew where Mrs. Mantei lived: she had a new house trailer just down the road from us, at the Clearwater Park. She was no mystery. Somehow she and Mr. Bodine, the other fourth-grade teacher, had managed to fit forty-five desks into the room. Kelly Munger asked if Miss Ferenczi had been arrested, and Mrs. Mantei said no, of course not. All that afternoon, until the buses came to pick us up, we learned about field crickets and two-striped grasshoppers, water bugs, cicadas, mosquitoes, flies, and moths. We learned about insects’ hard outer shell, the exoskeleton, and the usual parts of the mouth, including the labrum, mandible, maxilla, and glossa. We learned about compound eyes, and the four-stage metamorphosis from egg to larva to pupa to adult. We learned something, but not much, about mating. Mrs. Mantei drew, very skillfully, the internal anatomy of the grasshopper on the blackboard. We learned about the dance of the honeybee, directing other bees in the hive to pollen. We found out about which insects were pests to man, and which were not. On lined white pieces of paper we made lists of insects we might actually see, then a list of insects too small to be clearly visible, such as fleas; Mrs. Mantei said that our assignment would be to memorize these lists for the next day, when Mr. Hibler would certainly return and test us on our knowledge.

ON SUNDAY MORNING after communion Fenstad drove across town to visit his mother. Behind the wheel, he exhaled with his hand flat in front of his mouth to determine whether the wine on his breath could be detected. He didn’t think so. Fenstad’s mother was a lifelong social progressive who was amused by her son’s churchgoing, and, wine or no wine, she could guess where he had been. She had spent her life in the company of rebels and deviationists, and she recognized all their styles.

Passing a frozen pond in the city park, Fenstad slowed down to watch the skaters, many of whom he knew by name and skating style. From a distance they were dots of color ready for flight, frictionless. To express grief on skates seemed almost impossible, and Fenstad liked that. He parked his car on a residential block and took out his skates from the backseat, where he kept them all winter. With his fingertips he touched the wooden blade guards, thinking of the time. He checked his watch; he had fifteen minutes.

Out on the ice, still wearing his churchy Sunday-morning suit, tie, and overcoat, but now circling the outside edge of the pond with his bare hands in his overcoat pockets, Fenstad admired the overcast sky and luxuriated in the brittle cold. He was active and alert in winter but felt sleepy throughout the summer. He passed a little girl in a pink jacket, pushing a tiny chair over the ice. He waved to his friend Ann, an off-duty cop, practicing her twirls. He waved to other friends. Without exception they waved back. As usual, he was impressed by the way skates improved human character.