She didn’t hear his query until the paragraph she was reading came to an end, at which point Mr. Priddles stood, arms folded, before her, saying, “The whole class will wait…. Earth to Matilda?… Paging Miss Zylberberg?”
When she looked up, a boy yawned at her, his mouth wide like a lion’s. “Brimstone,” she repeated.
Mr. Priddles snatched the book from under her desk. She watched it being led off by its front cover, which almost ripped under the weight of the hanging pages. He dumped the volume, Dombey and Son, in the trash can and — to his pupils’ uproarious joy — spent the rest of class pouring drips of his Pepsi over it.
She boarded the microbus home, realizing only in traffic that she’d forgotten her book bag in the classroom, which meant that she’d fall even further behind, and — worse — that Mr. Priddles had her private things, including her sketchbook of noses. She’d have to beg for it. Tomorrow fused in her mind with its successors, a chain as infinite as a mirror reflecting a mirror. She dreaded days and wanted no more of them.
That evening, Paul brought out another wrestling video. She asked permission to watch a bit of the Seoul Olympics, which kids had been talking about at school. But he was boycotting the Games because of the opening ceremony, during which the South Korean organizers had released doves that settled on the Olympic cauldron. Instead of chasing away the birds, the organizers just lit the flames, roasting the doves on live TV. This, he believed, said all that needed saying about the Olympic spirit. Consequently, as the world witnessed Ben Johnson beating Carl Lewis in the hundred-meter dash, Paul and Tooly watched a videotape of the Iron Sheik throttling “Rowdy” Roddy Piper.
“How was school?” he asked.
School was a country and home was a country, and the two sent each other letters but never met, Tooly the emissary shuttling between.
“In art,” she said, “we did paintings of a volcano. Everyone had to draw themselves on the side of it, having a picnic, and then we all died. But everyone had to die of something else, not from the volcano.”
“Hard to believe: during a volcanic eruption, dying of something else. Incredible bad luck, at a minimum.”
“It was just pretend.”
“I realize. But still. Or-or-or, what’s the point, really?”
“I got killed by a slingshot.”
“That’s not going to happen. If there’s magma and toxic gases, no one would have the presence of mind to fire a slingshot.” He cleared his throat. “It’s a reminder of how dangerous they are.”
“Volcanoes?”
“Slingshots. But, yes, volcanoes, too.” He returned his attention to the muted wrestling on TV.
As the roast chickens in tights bounced each other off the ropes, Tooly wandered into her bedroom. When the door closed, she flopped forward onto the mattress, remaining facedown for a minute. She sat on the floor before the air-conditioning unit, chilled teardrops blown across her cheeks. In the bathroom mirror, she studied herself, curious to see her face, the crumpled expression, dull bright eyes, these features so arbitrarily affixed to her nature.
She heard the television click off; a hiss sounded from Paul’s inhaler; he flipped noisily through a book on birds. “You coming to read with me?” He had so little to communicate, yet always wanted her beside him. She sat on her bed, resisting the force of his will. Air conditioners thrummed. Shelly’s mop slopped. Paul blew his nose.
“You’re really settling in at this school,” he said when she returned. “Better than the last one.”
On her way home the next day, the microbus idled under the sun, heating the metal chassis and broiling the children inside. They were two blocks from Gupta Mansions and, with this gridlock, it would have been quicker to walk. But they weren’t allowed out before their home addresses. She reached her arm through the open window, hand swiping torpid air as the bus shuddered in place, exhaust coughing from its tailpipe.
On the sidewalk was a tall Western woman who took a small hop with each step of her leather sandals, straps wound around her ankles. She wore genie pants and a shirt with a mandarin collar, her slender arms clinking with bangles. She drew both hands behind her head, twisting and winding her chestnut hair into a chignon, stabbing the pile with a pencil plucked from her lips, then approached Tooly’s window. “Hello, you.”
Tooly stared, unsure whether to reply.
The woman added, “You’re just the person I’ve been looking for.” She placed her hand on Tooly’s tanned forearm, ran her fingers down its length to the little hand, which she held.
Tooly knew she should pull back but did not, instead looking directly at the stranger, whose head was cocked with such fondness that Tooly could not look away. Neither could she hold the gaze, so glanced shyly down, then back up.
The microbus lurched forward, tires turning less than a rotation, leaving the woman a step behind in the road. A couple of other kids looked at Tooly for an explanation. She turned from them, searching for the woman, who approached again, her face softening in a smile. “So hot today,” she said. “But I love it like this. It’s our sort of weather.” She winked. “Want to come out and walk for a bit?”
“We’re not allowed.”
“No? Ah, well.” The bus pulled ahead again. “Goodbye,” the woman called out, and walked away.
“Okay,” Tooly replied softly. So empty that word sounded to her. A motorbike buzzed past. Pedestrians in flip-flops hurried through gaps in the traffic.
But the woman — her mother — was gone.
1999
TOOLY HAD PICTURED college life as wild and wanton. But Duncan and his roommates proved disappointingly straitlaced, notwithstanding the squalor of their apartment. They spent hours at classes and the library, toiling further once home. When darkness fell, they scarcely noticed, lit by the glow of their laptops, until someone walked into the room and flicked on a light.
Occasionally, Tooly passed a whole day alone there, perusing the bookshelves in their rooms, listening to music that Duncan had introduced her to. She ran the length of the parquet corridor in her socks and slid into the living room, where she browsed mail. In part, she lingered to avoid her home in Brooklyn, overwhelmed as it was by Sarah and her mercurial moods. In part, she lingered to find something of value. But there was another reason, of which she was a little ashamed: she liked this lifestyle — her version of college, which included neither examinations nor tuition fees, just people her age who had read books and had something to say about them. In the evenings, she lounged on Duncan’s bed and helped him decipher the findings in, say, Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball. Or she wandered into the common areas to watch TV with Xavi. She prepared meals for Duncan while he studied; sometimes she fed all of them.
But days passed before anything qualifying as “sexual relations” occurred between her and Duncan — not that it was entirely certain in these times of the Clinton-Lewinsky administration quite what constituted “sexual relations.” Anyway, he attempted nothing, as if unsure what was permitted and that he might be accused of criminally misinterpreting her signals. He lamented that, even in this age of gender equality, men still had to make the first move — guys were the ones who risked catastrophe. She disputed this, pretending to be unaware of any subtext, though she lay nude under the covers. Finally, she got fed up and took action.
“You’re quite good-looking,” he responded, as if in warning, “and I’m really not. You are aware of this?”
“I have a thing for ugly boys.”
“Wasn’t expecting that answer.”
“From now on, McGrory, I make it against the law for you to malign yourself. Only I get to.”