“She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon…” – The Beatles
By the time I drove up to the girl’s house, crisp dark night had covered a long white day. My tires crunched in the snow, and snow carefully everywhere descending flecked the beam of my headlights.
The house I was going to was a House With A Name, once called a castle, though it had long lost the tower that made it one. The driveway, laid out for carriages a hundred fifty years ago, stretched long, slender, and white as my car slid along it, stirring the sheet of snow with its humming.
I parked in the light streaming from the windows, cut the shuddering engine, and sat for a moment, watching the snowflakes cover the windshield. It was ten degrees below freezing, and my car heater had long stopped trying to catch up with the melting point. My hands ached in my gloves. My feet were numb.
When I stepped out into the blistering night, a woman I hadn’t seen before poked her head out the front door.
“You must be Jonathan,” she shouted, her words white vapor in the arctic air.
I smiled, removed my gloves, and shook her hand through the narrowing gap as she nearly closed the door again, shielding all but her face from the icy wind.
“I am,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
She introduced herself. I nodded. My eyes wandered to the little boy who had appeared at her hip, gazing up at me. The same wide eyes had greeted me last week, the first time I had come. And like then, the boy’s knuckles were white with effort from clenching the collar of a silver Great Dane puppy that was wriggling and whining, straining to get past and lope into the snowdrifts. I winked at the boy.
Last week, when fog had lain over the snow-covered town, the house had been dark. Hoping it was the right place, I had abandoned my car at the curb, walked up the long drive, and rung the doorbell.
I had waited.
Nothing happened. Through the glass panels of the door, I could see the blue flicker of an enormous television, cartoon figures chasing each other across the screen, but I could see no people.
I rang the doorbell again. Blinking away snowflakes, I counted to thirty, knocked, shrugged, and turned away. I was not ten meters down the driveway when a stifled click stopped me. Someone had opened the door.
A small voice said, “Hi.”
“Hullo,” I said, wheeling around. “I’m here to see… your sister.”
The door had opened full wide and a boy, knee-high and eyes enormous, was staring down at me from the top of the stairs.
“Do you want to talk to my dad?” the boy asked.
“Sure,” I said. “That would be fine.”
“He’s not here,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, and took a step backwards when a Great Dane pup, silver and all legs and pink tongue, brushed past the little boy. The boy squealed “No, Scooby!”, and the dog’s ecstatic romp out into the snowflakes was cut short when, a blank look of elation on its face, it crashed headfirst into my knees. Laughing, I shoved the dog back towards the boy. The boy clutched the dog’s collar and slid around the hardwood floor for what seemed like several hilarious minutes, hanging on for dear life.
When the dog finally held still, the boy looked at me with great gravitas and squeaked, “Do you want to talk to my mom?”
“That would be great,” I said.
The boy nodded.
“She’s not here, either,” he said, and promptly fell squarely on his backside, giggling as the dog lunged forwards. I caught the escaping beastie by its collar and shot it a look that let it know we weren’t going to be friends if it kept up the shenanigans. It wagged its tail, sat, and began to lick the snow off my pant leg.
“Your sister wants my help with something,” I’d said to the little boy. “She, I hope, is here?”
Which was when his sister’s voice announced from the intercom that she’d be right down. She’d forgotten she asked me to come. She was so sorry. I should please come in.
And I did.
But that was then.
Now, the mother gave no indication that she would budge to let me in before my frozen ears broke off. Smiling all the while, she explained through the gap in the door that, sorry, but the girl had forgotten that she was babysitting at the neighbors’ house that evening. Could I please go over there – and she waved vaguely at the snow – there was a path there, to the neighbors, somewhere between the bushes if I could find it, and only if I really didn’t mind. Then she smiled a little longer, saying nothing.
“I don’t mind,” I said. “Not at all.”
“Good,” she said. The girl, she said, was already waiting for me and oh yes, Jonathan, could you two keep it down, the neighbors’ kids are supposed to be in bed, and so sorry again about the mix-up.
I thanked her.
She nodded and closed the door.
The girl’s footprints were still where she left them in the snow. I followed them the short way to the neighbors’ house, which looked even larger than the first, if not quite as lit up. I knocked. The girl’s silhouette moved through the light and the shadows on the other side of the glass door, and then I stepped inside to her vaguely embarrassed smile, and slid out of my coat.
“This way,” the girl said and led the way to the room she had picked out. I watched her as we went, weaving around chairs and in and out of hallways. She had told me last time we met that she danced on a poms team, and it showed in the forgetful grace with which she walked.
“Did you find your way through the snow okay?” she asked, half-kidding, over her shoulder, and added that oh yes, we needed to keep it down, the neighbors’ kids were supposed to be in bed.
Like the week before, the girl was wearing comfortable athlete’s clothes, and if all else were to be the same as well, she would smile often, say straightforwardly what she thought, blush a bit when she was about to say something that put someone else down, parry dry remark with dry remark, and in every other way pull off very well the difficult act of being the kind of cute and utterly ordinary princess that the richer suburbs are rather cluttered with. And she would do so with a sparkle in her eye.
As we walked, the girl repeated the rest of what her mother had told me in a curiously raspy voice that probably made her self-conscious but that I found reminded me of Paris and also of Brazil. The memory instantly made me feel warmer.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked.
“I like this house,” I said, a little lamely. “It reminds me of the one I grew up in, in Europe, the high ceilings and all that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s gorgeous. Here you are.”
She handed me a glass. Then she looked up at me, her immense eyes expectant, waiting.
[This ends the first part of "Anything But Ordinary," first published 19 April, 2008. What follows is Part Two, first published on 12 May 2008.]
[Note: For all those West Coast producers who were waiting to get their hands on this piece, sorry. I optioned the movie rights already to SJB of NYC. Call him.]
The girl’s eyes were swirls of green and brown, vast and speckled with light. It was her eyes and her cheerful dry humor as she talked, and not the warm air of the house, that unclosed my shoulders stiff from the cold, that tingled the cold out of my fingertips.
I sat down at the head of the table. She slid into the chair next to me.
“Oh my God!” she said, “I’ve definitely got so much I want to ask you. I don’t even know where to start,” and I said, “Take your time.”
I propped my feet up and crossed my arms behind my head.
The girl ummed and aahd, pulled some papers out from between her books, and ruffled through them. She was watching me watching her out of the corner of her eye; I could tell from the way her mouth twitched back and forth between smiles and taut concentration.
“I’ve got it,” she said, “one sec.”
Spotting a band-aid on one of her fingers, I asked, “What did you do to your hand?”
“Oh, that,” she said dismissively. “I banged it up playing lacrosse.” She laughed and fiddled with the band-aid. It had pink flowers on it. “It wasn’t even like we played hard. Mainly we did sprints. Like, you know, fifty of them. Oh my god, excruciating. Then we did some drills with sticks, and I wasn’t paying attention. That’s all.”
“Is that where that scar comes from, too?” I asked and pointed at a faint rugged line on her tanned forearm.
“No, that’s from falling out of a willow when I was little,” she said. “I broke my arm, and I had to wear a cast for, like, forever. Yeah, I know – I’m special.”
“Sure are,” I said, “but that was years ago. I dropped my spare car key into the elevator shaft just the other day. I stood there laughing as I listened to it bounce nine stories down into the abyss.”
“That would suck,” she said. “Thanks for making me feel like I’m not the only klutz. Anyways, I got some more prep books.” She handed one of them to me. “I even read this one.”
“Ah,” I chuckled. “Did it say the exact same thing as the others?”
She laughed. “Yeah,” she said, “but you don’t understand. I need to do really, really well on this, and I don’t even have any idea where to start. Yikes. Not so enthused about this entire thing, to tell you the truth. So it’s good you’re here. I wanted to ask you…”
A rustle in the hallway cut her short.
“Sorry!” she mouthed. In the lilt older girls who are young women use with younger girls who aren’t, she called out, “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
The doorframe stood empty a little longer.
“I know you’re there,” the girl pointed out to the shadows.
A pale little girl in her PJs peeked out from behind the doorpost.
“I don’t have to be in bed til nine,” she declared.
“You sure about that?” the older girl asked. “‘Cause I’m pretty sure your mom said…”
“Yes,” the pale girl pronounced, exasperated, “I don’t have to be in bed til nine.”
The older girl smiled and rolled her eyes, “Okay, whatever. We’re kind of busy, though. Can you go back to your room?”
“No,” the little girl said and pattered barefoot towards the table where we sat. She waved a piece of paper. “I don’t get my homework. I need your help.”
The older girl glanced over at me. I shrugged, amused.
“Awesome,” she said under her breath, “I guess we’re definitely helping her.”
I laughed, “I’m sure we can handle a fourth grade worksheet of…”
“Riddles!” the little girl proclaimed.
“Riddles,” I said.
[This ends the second part of "Anything But Ordinary." What follows is Part Three, first published on 21 May 2008.]
One little girl beamed remorselessly, and two of us grinned sheepishly, and three of us solved them all, all the riddles except, of course, the riddles we were to ourselves. Row after row, like this:
Try
Stand
2
Or this:
ACCAUGHTT
Or this:
M CE
M CE
M CE
I know. Riveting. In fact, it’s
Funny Funny
Words Words
Words Words
Soon after, the little girl slinked off to her room and her bed, taking her riddles with her.
“You’re pretty good at solving those, huh?” the girl asked.
She took a sip from her glass and sucked on an ice cube, slowly turning it with her tongue.
“About as good as you are, yeah,” I said. “I think we went fifty-fifty.”
“No, we didn’t.” She grinned as she loosened her gold-and-hazel hair and retied it into a loose bun. “I won. That should be pretty embarrassing for a genius like you.”
“It is,” I said as stone-faced as I could.
She shot me a glance with a question in it. I ignored it.
“I was just joking,” she said a little quieter.
“I know,” I smirked. “I was laughing real hard on the inside.”
“Right,” she said, face perfectly straight. “Don’t fall off the chair.”
“The only thing that would make me fall off the chair,” I said, “is if you blow me away.”
“Haha,” she said.
I nodded at the papers in front of her.
“Oh, yeah, that,” she said. “We should probably get on that. Don’t expect to be too impressed, though.”
“I don’t,” I said. “That way I’ll be pleasantly surprised.”
“Hey,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to motivate me?”
“You’re the best,” I said. “The smartest. Amazing.”
“Thank you,” she said.
We spent the next forty minutes doing what we were supposed to.
Her part was to touch her pen to the corner of her mouth, tilt her head, raise an eyebrow, and gaze at the problem in front of her. After a few seconds, she’d tap her pen on her book once or twice, lean closer with a chirpy “okay” or a low “hmm,” scribble a few notes, shift in her chair, purse her lips, untie and retie her hair once again, then quickly, almost furtively circle an answer and glance over at me – triumphantly if she was sure she’d gotten the answer right, tentatively if she wasn’t. If she did not look at me at all, I knew she’d guessed. Eyes studiously downcast while I read the answers, she’d perform the finale to her meticulous choreography by punctuating each solution with a cheerful “Yes!” or with an “Oh my god, I so knew that” or with a half-whispered, round-lipped “Oh!”
My part was to know everything. And to talk about it as if it were utterly captivating and relevant to her life – not the easiest thing when what you’re talking about for a longer time than most people spend discussing their three favorite topics combined every day is actually a multiple choice exam about nothing that particularly matters.
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “It kind of matters. It’ll decide whether in ten years I’ll stand in line at the welfare office or the First Class queue to the Caribbean.”
“Not quite,” I said.
“Practically,” she said.
I did not say that if she was much like all the other princesses, ordinary or otherwise, that I talked to (and mostly talked at) in the evenings while we were licking ice cream off our respective silver spoons, the only real difference it was likely to make was whether it was daddy’s phone call that got her into where she wanted to spend the next four years partying and watching the sports team, or whether she wanted to view this as a personal challenge.
“Sports are important to me,” she said after I had not said as much loudly and often enough. “Partying, not so much.”
“Ah,” I said. I didn’t believe her. I grew up around kids with her background. I knew her classmates, some of her friends.
And I’d been watching her watching me. About of a third of the time that I spent explaining, she’d look me straight in the eye and nod and look interested. Another third of the time, she’d pretend she was listening by making affirming noises while doodling in the margins of her book. Flowers, mostly. The rest of the time, she’d actually stare past me into space, the look in her eyes as blank as the snow outside.
I stopped.
She looked at me.
“I was listening,” she said.
“You were staring at the wall,” I said.
“The chandelier in the other room, actually,” she said. “But I was so listening.”
“The trick is to look the other person in the eye all the time,” I said. “That way they feel like they’re interesting. And that’s what I’m here for, after all. So you can make me feel good about myself.”
“Of course,” she laughed. “I really was listening, though. I just get distracted so easily, you wouldn’t even believe. I think maybe I have ADD. Shiny things, you know. But I heard everything that you said.”
“I’m not sure I believe that,” I said.
She repeated what I’d said verbatim, surprising me for the first time.
“Okay,” I said. “I believe you. You win.”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
Finally, she put down her pencil.
“I’m getting tired,” she said. “And I think I’ll do just fine tomorrow, thanks to you. Also, I have to apologize.”
“What for?” I asked.
“I have a pretty weak memory,” she said. “Actually, very weak.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve been holding up pretty well,” I said. “I thought.”
“It’s not about that,” she said. “I forgot what you do.”
“I, um, tutor,” I said, a little confused.
“I mean in real life,” she said.
I laughed.
“I mean,” she said quickly, “not that this isn’t…”
“No, no,” I said. “I know what you mean.”
“I already know you’re a writer,” she said. “But aren’t you still in school?”
“Yes,” I said and pointed at the sweater I was wearing with the university’s name on it. “See?”
“Right,” she said. “Represent.”
I laughed. She glared, then smiled.
“That’s a pretty good school, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s a pretty good school,” I said. “Full of nerds.”
“Oh?” she said. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m not kidding, though. They sell t-shirts that say, ‘Where the fun comes to die.’ They sell t-shirts that say, ‘Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls.’”
“Yikes! Sounds awful,” she said. “But I bet you make tons of money when you graduate.”
“Depends on your major,” I said.
That was a mistake, of course. I must’ve been getting sleepy, too.
“And what’s your major?” she said, predictably enough.
“Literature, kind of,” I said, and closed my eyes briefly.
“So, you… read books?” she said. “That’s cool, I guess.”
“It’s not like English class; I don’t want to be a teacher,” I explained. “I’m at the Divinity School.”
“So you want to be a preacher?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I want to be a better writer. I read about things like mythology, how authors portray religion, or how it changes what they write, that kind of thing. I’m not there, like most students, to, you know, read the Bible and become a better person.”
What was I doing anyway, explaining myself to some girl I’d never see again after tonight, as if living my passions was the same thing as stealing a cookie from the cookie jar? I shot her a crisp dark look that covered a long pause, long and white and drifting in my mind like the snow outside the window, and as cold.
As she looked back at me her eyes became very still, sparkling with thought until any hint of blankness was erased and they were light-specked swirls of green and brown again, dancing very shy, as if they were undressing, as if she was going to say something she was not sure she should.
I waited, face blank again.
“Actually,” she said finally, “I’m a Christian. I read the Bible. It means a lot to me.”
And immediately a cock crowed.
At least in my head.
I wish there were more to this story. I wish I could say that I told her that she was the first person in more than a year I had heard those words from – “I am a Christian” – who had said it unflinchingly, without apology. I wish I could say I told her that I hadn’t prayed in months and that it was that evening, when I stepped back out into the drifting snow and felt the snowflakes melt on my face, that I thought for the first time that perhaps I should. I didn’t tell her that those four words had made me happier than anything else she might have said or done.
But I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, I told her I was one, too, and switched to the normal politenesses that go on between church-going people. Where did she go to church? (Close by.) How did she like the worship there? (Very.)
Then we dropped the subject, and I slipped back into my jacket and wriggled my fingers into my gloves. As I left, I agreed to help her with some essays she said she had coming up. We told each other how jealous we both were about where the other was going over Christmas (I to Europe, she to California). Then she said, “Thank you,” and I closed the door and disappeared into the night. And as I drove home along the freeway in a snowstorm between veering trucks, I thought about how sometimes people we think are quite ordinary can surprise us and turn out to be anything but.
