Anne Tyler - A Patchwork Planet

What I sometimes told myself: I’ll be that way too, as soon as my real life begins.

But I can’t explain exactly what I meant by “real life.”

I slid behind the wheel, slammed my door shut, watched in my rearview mirror as Jeff backed toward the street. When I moved to start my engine, though, I heard a honk behind me. I checked in the mirror and found a sleek black Lexus just turning into the driveway and blocking Jeff’s exit.

Len Parrish, after all.

I opened my door and climbed out. Jeff was rolling forward again with the Lexus following, barely tucking its tail in off the street before it had to stop short behind our two cars. “Hold it!” I called, waving both arms, but Len went ahead and doused his lights. I walked over to the Lexus. “Don’t park! I have to leave!”

He lowered his window. “Nice to see you too, Gaitlin.”

“You’re blocking me in! I’m going. You’ll have to let me by.”

Instead he got out of his car. A good-looking guy, wide-shouldered and athletic, in a fitted black overcoat. He wore a broad, lazy grin, and he asked me, “How’s the birthday boy?”

“Fine, but—”

“Jeff!” he said, because my brother had come to join us.

“Hello, Len,” Jeff said. The two of them shook hands. (I just stood there.)

“Guess I’m a little late,” Len said.

“Well, Mom’s saved a piece of cake for you,” Jeff told him.

“Come back inside and help me eat it, Barnaby,” Len said.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to be going.”

“Aw, now. What’s the rush?”

Here’s what’s funny: Len Parrish went along with me on every teenage stunt I ever pulled. He was with me the night I got caught, in fact, but he wasn’t caught himself, and I never breathed a word to the police. After the helicopter buzzed us, I tried to jump from the Amberlys’ sunporch roof to the limb of a maple tree. Made a little error in judgment; I’d had a puff or two of pot. Landed in the pyracantha bush below. No injuries but a few scratches, thanks again to the pot, which kept me loose-limbed as a trained paratrooper all the way down. The police got so diverted, they failed to notice Len and the Muller boys slipping out the Amberlys’ back door.

I didn’t blame Len in the least. I’d have done the same, in his place. But it irked me that my mother thought he was such a winner. Him in his expensive coat and velvety suede gloves. He pulled off one of the gloves now to stroke the hood of my car. In the dark, my car looked black, although it was a shade called Riverside Red. “Grit,” he said. He withdrew his hand and rubbed his fingers together.

“You want to move your vehicle, Len?”

“What you need is a garage,” he said. “Rent one or something. Take better care of this baby.”

“I’ll go see to it this instant,” I told him. “Just let me out of the driveway.”

“At least you ought to wash her every now and then.”

I slid in behind the wheel and shut the door. Jeff returned to his car, and Len at last ambled toward the Lexus, while I watched in my mirror. The minute the driveway was clear, I shifted into reverse and backed out.

Len should try this himself, if he thought Corvettes were that great. It just so happened mine was made in 1963, the year they had a split rear window. Stupidest idea in automotive history.

I was happy enough to be leaving that I returned Len’s wave very cheerfully, before I took off toward home. Now he and Mom could have their little love feast together. Shake their heads about I-don’t-know-what-Barnaby-will-come-to. Cut themselves another slice of cake.

I thought of my rooftop fall again. It was possible I could have escaped, if the tippy toe of my sneaker hadn’t caught on some kind of metal bracket that was sticking up from the gutter. I remembered exactly how it felt — the barely perceptible hitch as my toe and the bracket connected. I recalled the physical sensation of something happening that couldn’t be reversed: that feeling, all the way down, of longing to take back my one single, simple misstep. But it was already too late, and I knew that, absolutely, even before I hit the pyracantha bush.

Eighty-seven hundred dollars. It never failed to come up at some point. Mom might say, for instance, that they planned to remodel the kitchen as soon as they could afford it; and while a stranger would find that an innocent remark, I knew better. Of course they could afford it — if they couldn’t, who could? — but she wanted to make it plain that they still felt the effects of that unforeseen drain on their finances. The waste of it, the fruitlessness. The niggling dribs and drabs handed out to neighbors. Sixty dollars for a ballerina music box, which I’d thrown down a storm drain in a moment of panic. Ninety-four fifty to mend the lock on a cabinet door. The most expensive item was an ivory carving of a tiny, naked Chinese man and woman getting extremely familiar with each other. I broke it when I stuffed it between my mattress and box spring. Mr. McLeod said it was priceless but settled for six hundred, grumbling. You’d have thought he’d be embarrassed to claim ownership.

I was heading up Charles Street now, slightly above the speed limit. Racing a traffic light that turned red before I reached it, but I hooked a right onto Northern Parkway without touching the brakes.

And it wasn’t only the reparation money. Get Mom wound up and she would toss in the tuition at Renascence, besides. A little harder to figure the precise amount, there. As Dad pointed out, they’d have paid for my schooling in any case. But Mom said, “Not a school like Renascence, though, with its four-to-one student-teacher ratio and its trained psychologists.”

I didn’t count the tuition myself; I reasoned that Renascence was their idea, not mine. First inkling I had of it was, Mom said to pack my clothes because the next day I was leaving for a special school that was perfect for me: roomy accommodations out in the country and a supervised environment. Except I heard “roomy” as “loony.” (“It’s perfect for you: loony accommodations.”) I flipped and said I wouldn’t go. Never did want to go, even after they cleared up the misunderstanding. So I couldn’t be held responsible for the Renascence bill, right?

Unfortunate name, Renascence. People were always correcting my pronunciation. “Uh, don’t you mean Renaissance?” And nobody got reborn there, believe me — nobody I ever heard of. The aim stated on the school’s letterhead was “Guiding the Gifted Young Tester of Limits,” but what they should have said was “Stashing Away Your Rich Juvenile Delinquent.” The only thing “special” about the place was, they kept us twelve months a year. No awkward summer vacations to inconvenience our families. Also, we had to wear suits to class. (Which explains why I favor pajama tops now.) And every time we cursed, we had to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet. Boy, that’ll clean up your language in a hurry! Not to mention instilling a permanent dislike of Shakespeare.

I remember this one sonnet I learned, the first week I was at Renascence. It started out, When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes … I thought it was me he was talking about. I swear it just about tore me apart the moment I saw those words on the page.

Well. As I said, it was my first week. And anyhow, the guy went on to say, Haply I think on thee , which was certainly not about me. I didn’t have any “thee” in my life; no way. The girls I hung out with in those days were more body mates than soul mates, and you couldn’t claim that anyone in my family was my “thee.”

I wondered how my family would react if I ever paid that eighty-seven hundred back. How my mother would react, to be specific. She’d probably fall over in a faint.