Jane Mendelsohn - Burning Down the House

Bravest little girl I have ever known. No one in this family has endured as much as you have. Your mother sick, then dying when you were so young. Ever since the day you were born I have considered myself your father. Did you know that?

Yes.

And it’s what your mother wanted. She fought and died in that hospital room and you were the most valiant little soldier. Through the tubes and machinery she told me to take care of you and I promised that I would. Forever.

Steve leaned forward even more. I fought for you. That nanny wanted you. Then that imbecile sister of mine in the Midwest can you imagine? Friends gossiped, said Patrizia didn’t love you. My God we kicked the shit out of them giving you everything. And those barbarians who ran your school, they did not always understand the difficulties you had and how you needed to be treated with special understanding. What a bunch of savages some of those kids were — remember that viral video three years ago — I had to pay a lot to get that taken down from the Internet. Did you know that? You are exceptional and eccentric and I have always protected you. Steve shook his head. He seemed reluctant to say what evidently he felt he was required to say to her. A moral obligation.

I didn’t know that, said Poppy. Thank you. But I still don’t want to go to college.

—

Steve leaned back. He inhaled and exhaled deeply.

He appeared to be changing his mind yet again, but he was simply changing his tactics.

—

What we are confronted with in today’s world are cruel degenerate people with no sensitivity or psychological awareness. Savages with no feelings. Maybe it’s always been this way, but it’s worse now. They are in charge. We are talking about people who are so numb to their fellow human beings that they think they know better how everybody should live. And do you know what happens to people who know what’s best for everybody? They destroy the world. That’s what they do. They dismember and disembowel the individual and boil her flesh and entrails down in a stew with everybody else.

It is bad enough in the universities but it is far more dangerous in the so-called real world. In the real world people will sell the idea of security but what they are really doing is stealing the most important thing you have: your freedom. This is true. I may be a crony capitalist myself but that is only because there is nothing left to be, do you see what I’m saying? The government, the elites, the billionaires, the trillionaires: what they don’t already own they are in the process of taking, under the guise of being caring and helpful, magnanimous and just. I don’t want to send you out to the front lines at the tender age of seventeen. How could I do that to the memory of your mother?

He paused. And then:

I don’t think there’s any question that higher education is a scam to indenture the middle class with the inflated price of tuition and an inside track for the children of the plutocracy to acquire ever more privilege or spread the gospel of globalization or both. But this is what we are left with. This is reality.

He was watching Poppy. She looked uncomfortable.

My princess, said Steve. I want you to be safe and I think the safest place right now for you to be is in school. I am being honest with you, sharing the ways of the world. I am not sugar-coating this with platitudes about the liberal arts or the life of the mind or the skills necessary for being a global citizen or what a long rave of pleasure and extended adolescence you will be missing out on if you do not attend college. I am speaking to you as an adult.

He leaned even farther forward and put his hands on his knees. And I promise I will let you work for me when you have finished school. We will conquer the world. There will be an office waiting for you with a big desk and two assistants. Teams working under you. You will ride up seventy stories on a construction site wearing a hardhat and high heels. But you’re still young. There is time. Am I wrong? Can’t this wait? Do you have to run before you can walk?

—

Steve’s voice had become mellow and intense at the same time. He inclined his head to one side and looked at Poppy with a sovereign benevolence, another swerve in strategy. Poppy pursed her lips and they twisted to the side and curled as if a balloonist were finishing off a birthday party poodle. She hugged her knees. She widened her eyes at him.

Why can’t I just come work for you when I finish high school?

Poppy, you’re breaking my heart.

Steve was beginning to look tired.

You don’t really care about school, she said.

I know but I care about you.

If you care about me you’ll let me live my life now.

I’ll think about it.

That means yes!

I’ll think about it.

Oh thank you, she said, leaping up from the chair and embracing him.

I love you so much, she said.

I know you do.

DURING THE CEREMONY Poppy experienced a flooding of inexplicable happiness. She was a member of the wedding party and the small visual, sensory, and communal joys of getting ready with Miranda’s friends, the first viewing of the bride in her impeccably elegant custom silk-and-chiffon gown with its simple lines, graceful profile, and radiating sense of purity and hope, the slow procession before the assembled guests, complete with adorably shy ring bearers and sassy flower girls, the vows and their declaration of dreams upheld, all of these elements came together to produce in Poppy a giddy tingling joy, a momentary mystical oneness that lifted her perspective high above the proceedings and enabled her to gaze upon the event with a tenderness that she rarely allowed herself. She felt warmth toward everyone. She felt that they would all take care of her and love her back. Oh, why don’t I always feel this way? she thought, floating far in her mind to observe the rows and rows of guests. We’re all just people. Why don’t we all always feel this way?

—

Already the wedding ceremony is over and it is time for the reception. Hundreds of colorful hats swim over the grounds and circle like exotic fish. The air is filled with the smell of cooking foods coming from a kitchen area hidden from view. Children, released from the children’s tent, run through the gardens and pluck flower petals and throw them and climb in the fruit trees until babysitters see them and call them down. Band music drifts across the lawns and people dance on the grand patio in staccato movements like figures on an old town clock. Poppy passes by a group of kids attempting to organize a game with the help of one adult, Neva, the new nanny. Neva directs the movements of her troops with a singular and beautiful authority that belies her position at the wedding.

—

Poppy had met Neva briefly but now she stops at a short distance and observes her: her black hair, her acute angles, her green eyes, her sharp shoulders. A punk-rock Russian strength to her unsmiling expression and asymmetrical demeanor. Neva is like a tree with no leaves, no embellishment, no distractions. Spiky branches and rigorous purity. Poppy feels sloppy and silly in her silky dress, however modern and edgy it claims to be. She sees that the children recognize a natural charm and command in Neva and they swarm around her and bump into her on purpose and call out to attract her attention. Poppy finds herself fascinated, intrigued, oddly envious, and somewhat in love with this poised slightly older woman, who is now laughing without smiling, the faintest most self-aware curl of her lip indicating pleasure, as she points and gives directions, surrounded by a little army of screaming and happy children.

—

Poppy arrives at the grand patio and steps around a lone dancing couple as she nears the back doors of the great house. The doors are open and guests are mingling inside and out but mostly out and she enters into a long library where all seems hushed and empty. She strolls around in her large-brimmed wedding hat with its silk bow past the book-lined walls with their elegant proportions and thin, carved Grecian columns and the low couches and chairs and tables where small porcelain lamps sit in the daylight waiting like contented Buddhas for somebody to realize that they are needed. She walks to the far end of the room toward a corner where a chair is positioned near the window.