The April Tree Page 8

  But she couldn’t think about any of those things, because she was thinking about April—not T. S. Eliot’s poem, but her April—and wondering how she was going to survive this English class without bursting into tears, which would be unbearably embarrassing.

  Maybe, if she stared very, very hard at her nails, her eyes would remain dry.

  “Mr. Palagos?” Mr. Schenk said. He was one of those teachers who thought calling students by their last names was a sign of respect. As far as Florie was concerned, it was a sign of pretentiousness, but as long as he didn’t say, “Ms. Closter,” obligating her to speak when she knew opening her mouth would allow her sobs to escape, she wouldn’t object.

  Dustin Palagos shifted in his seat. Tall and skinny, he barely fit into the chair, which was attached to the desk by a few glossy chrome bars. His legs bent at odd angles beneath the desk, reminding Florie of a stork’s. He slouched low in the chair, and from her perspective she could see his knees angled outward and jammed against the chrome bars, his large, sneakered feet poking out into the aisles on either side of him.

  She could see only the left half of Dustin’s face, a large nose, a long cheek pocked with acne, dark curls of hair bubbling around his ear. He gave Mr. Schenk an entreating, helpless smile.

  “Why did T. S. Eliot write that April is the cruelest month?” Mr. Schenk repeated.

  “’Cause it rains?” Dustin guessed. “‘April showers bring May flowers.’” He twisted in his chair, his knees slamming against the underside of his desk, and shared a goofy smile with his classmates.

  “April Showers is not the poem we are studying right now,” Mr. Schenk reminded him. “Someone else? Why is April the cruelest month?”

  “Midterms,” Alex McDermott shouted from the back row, provoking more snickers than Dustin’s stupid rhyme had.

  Florie studied her nails so intently her eyes stung. Stupid boys. If they kept providing asinine answers, Mr. Schenk was going to start questioning the girls instead, which would place her at grave risk of being called on.

  “April is a turning point,” Melissa Calendine called out.

  “A turning point.” Mr. Schenk appeared relieved that Melissa hadn’t made an idiotic comment like the boys. Florie shared his relief. If Melissa said something worthwhile about the poem, Florie might remain unnoticed, her head bowed in a pose of deep concentration.

  A tiny shadow skimmed across her desk, and she risked flickering her eyes upward. A fly zoomed past and alighted on the windowsill to her left, where it could bask in the afternoon sunlight.

  Becky sat by the window. She gazed straight ahead, not afraid to make eye contact with Mr. Schenk. She was the bravest person Florie knew, with the possible exception of April—who was technically no longer a person.

  Florie blinked, the threat of tears pressing into her sinuses and clogging her nose. She parted her lips slightly and hoped no one would realize she was breathing through her mouth.

  “Are turning points cruel?” Mr. Schenk goaded the class. “Can’t a turning point be good? Why does Eliot think it’s a bad thing?”

  As if she couldn’t stand the ignorance of her classmates any longer, Becky said, “The woman who’s talking in that part of the poem sees April as a bad thing because she prefers winter. In the winter, everything is covered up, so you don’t have to face the truth about everything. The poem says—” she read from the book spread open on her desk “—‘Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow.’ This woman prefers not to face the truth, and if something is buried in snow, she doesn’t have to see it. But then April comes along, the snow melts, and she’s forced to confront the truth that she hadn’t had to see all winter.” Done, Becky pursed her lips.

  She was so smart. Even though she swore English was her worst subject, she could pick apart a poem as easily as she could pick apart a trig problem. Didn’t one of her parents teach English? Florie couldn’t remember. They were both college professors, though, which probably meant they were both geniuses. Which, in turn, meant Becky had inherited her brilliance from both sides.

  What was that old saying Florie’s mother used to quote, about how a woman couldn’t be too thin or too smart? No, it was too thin or too rich. Becky wasn’t rich, but she was smart. And thin. She had a fine-boned skeleton that made her look like a ballet dancer. Her face was broad, though, wide at the cheekbones, her skin stretched taut over her jaw. Guys might like big boobs, but Florie would trade hers with Becky’s in an instant. If she were thin, she might be more coordinated. More delicate. More attractive. Maybe smarter, too.

  If she was going to swap bodies with someone, of course, she’d rather swap with Elyse, who was beautiful. Unlike Becky, Elyse was lush, her lips full, her long dark hair sleek and smooth instead of lumpy like Florie’s. Her eyelashes were so black she didn’t need mascara or liner. And she had cool clothes, cooler than Becky’s.

  Becky dressed in loose-fitting jeans or cargo pants, canvas high-top sneakers, and T-shirts that usually had some quirky design on them, a picture of Einstein or computer code or a clever saying, like the one she had on today, black with white lettering that read: There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numbers and those who don’t. And Becky’s fair coloring made her eyelashes practically disappear into her pale skin. If anyone ought to wear eye make-up, she should. She had pretty eyes and her lashes were actually long, but you couldn’t see them unless you looked closely. Then, too, she wore eyeglasses, which made her look brainier but made her lashes even less visible.

  Florie sighed. She’d gladly trade identities with Becky or Elyse. Or April, who hadn’t been as smart as Becky or as gorgeous as Elyse, but she’d been so . . . nice. Friendly. Compassionate. She’d been like the sun, emanating rays of warmth, causing people to turn to her like flowers.

  A sob churned in Florie’s throat. If it escaped, she would die of humiliation. She swallowed hard and studied her fingernails as if they had the secret of life etched onto them.

  “Let’s talk about Marie, the woman in this first part of the poem,” Mr. Schenk said. “Yes, Mr. Klein?”

  “Is it true T. S. Eliot was an anti-Semite?” Adam Klein asked. “I mean, this Marie person keeps talking German. What’s that all about?”

  Florie let out a slow breath. The sob wasn’t going to emerge, at least not this time. As long as the discussion focused on the Marie character in the poem, or on T. S. Eliot, or on anything except April, she would probably be all right.

  The air around her vibrated with voices, words melting into a slop of sound, the way a Dixie cup of vanilla and chocolate ice cream melted together into something beige and boringly sweet. She concentrated on her breathing. If anything important was said about the poem, anything that would appear on a test, she’d be in trouble. However, it was better to fail a test than to burst into tears in class.

  “All right,” Mr. Schenk said as the bell rang. “Tomorrow we tackle the second section of the poem. Read it tonight. Shantih, shantih, shantih.”

  Florie had read the entire poem last night—she might not be a genius like Becky, but she compensated by studying hard and doing her homework on time—and she recalled reading those shantih words at the end of the poem. She had no idea what they meant. For that matter, she had no idea what any of The Waste Land meant, other than that it was sad and gloomy and the opening line made her cry.

  She wanted to bolt from the classroom, but that would make her too conspicuous. Instead, she took her time gathering her books, sliding them carefully into her backpack, easing the zipper shut, and smoothing out the hemmed edge of her blouse over her jeans. Her mother insisted on ironing her jeans. Florie had asked her not to, but her mother had said that jeans or no jeans, it was important to look neat in school.

  Becky’s clothing never appeared to have been ironed. Florie doubted that Becky’s parents even owned an iro
n. But she got straight A’s, and no one thought her wrinkled clothes were any sort of handicap.

  Becky materialized beside Florie as they waited their turn to leave the room. As always, the narrow door created a bottleneck because the entire class was trying to escape at once. Heaven help them if there was ever a fire and the students had to get out fast.

  Finally, they made it into the hall. “Are you okay?” Becky asked.

  The sob Florie had suppressed for the last fifty minutes surfaced again. Florie nodded, as if that would make her tears disappear, but they began to gush, a flash flood bursting past a dam and washing away her composure.

  She felt Becky’s hand on her elbow, her fingers short but strong. “Elyse,” she called out, then steered Florie toward the nearest girls’ room. Elyse must have been heading down the corridor from her art class. In order to fit in her drawing elective, Elyse had enrolled in Shakespeare instead of Modern American Lit this year, although The Waste Land seemed awfully British to Florie, and she didn’t know why they had to study it in American Lit. She’d enjoyed most of the class—Hemingway, Carson McCullers, John Updike, Sylvia Plath, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novels Becky insisted would have been marketed as women’s fiction if his name had been F. Susan Fitzgerald instead. Florie hadn’t liked Faulkner so much, but he was still better than poetry. She didn’t get poetry at all.

  How could a person read The Waste Land and not weep?

  Her vision blurry with tears, Florie could barely see the lemon-yellow tiles of the bathroom, the row of white sinks, the harsh silver of the long mirror fastened to the wall. Her nose stuffed, she could barely smell the faintly flowery, faintly medicinal scent of the industrial cleansers used to scrub the place down. Her ears popping as if she’d just driven up a mountain, she could barely hear the heavy door arc shut, muffling the din of hallway conversation.

  Elyse nudged the stall doors. Miraculously, all the stalls were empty.

  Becky turned on one of the faucets, yanked a paper towel from the dispenser, soaked it, and handed it to Florie, who pressed it to her face. It didn’t stop her tears, but it felt cool against her cheeks.

  “What the fuck happened?” Elyse asked.

  “We were discussing The Waste Land,” Becky told her. “The first word of the poem is ‘April.’”

  “Oh.” Elyse said nothing for a minute, then, “Get a grip, Florie.”

  “I can’t help it,” Florie said. Her eyes burned, as if grief had replaced her tears with something caustic.

  Elyse sidled up next to Florie, leaned forward, and examined her own reflection in the mirror. She meticulously used her pinky nail to separate her eyelashes.

  “Shantih, shantih, shantih,” Becky murmured. “The peace that passeth understanding.”

  “What does that mean?” Florie asked, exasperated. “It’s a stupid poem. I mean, what? Is it anti-war?”

  “Yes, but I think the peace that passeth understanding actually refers to death,” Becky said. “Eliot wrote the poem after the Great War, so he probably had both peace and death on his mind. So many people died in that war. They found peace, but not the easy way.”

  The word death was almost as bad as the word April. Florie labored mightily to halt her tears and breathe through her nose. Her throat felt raw and her respiration stuttered into hiccups. “You’re so smart,” she said, hoping Becky appreciated Florie’s admiration.

  “Beck the Brain,” Elyse said.

  Becky had been leaning into the mirror on Florie’s other side, arranging pale, limp strands of hair to fall on one or the other side of her part. “Huh?”

  “That’s what Tommy Crawford and those guys call you. Beck the Brain.”

  “You talked to Tommy Crawford?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think I can hate him anymore. I want to, but I can’t. But if you want me to—”

  “No. I kind of like that. Not the ‘Brain’ part, but ‘Beck.’” Satisfied with her hair, she spun around and rested her hips against the sink. “Succinct. Emphatic. Like the singer.”

  “Like the beer,” Elyse said.

  They both laughed. Florie forced herself to laugh a little, too. It felt good, much better than crying. It felt especially good to be laughing with Becky and Elyse. They were including her in their jokes, cheering her up. Wasn’t that what friendship was all about?

  “So, what’s the deal with Tommy Crawford?” Becky asked Elyse.

  “I don’t know. I just . . . ” All traces of humor drained from Elyse’s voice in a long sigh. “April had a crush on him. I didn’t get it. I thought if I talked to him, maybe I would. Maybe I’d feel closer to her or something.”

  “Did you?”

  Elyse shrugged. “I mean, he’s not my type or anything, but he was okay. Anyone who calls you Beck the Brain has to be okay.” She sounded as if she was trying to recapture their laughter, but it didn’t work. “I miss April. I want to feel close to her. I guess I thought I could channel her by talking to Tommy.”

  “Come to the tree,” Becky said.

  Florie’s eyes had dried enough that she could see Elyse’s dubious expression. “What’s with you and that tree? It’s weird, Beck.”

  Becky accepted Elyse’s using her shortened musician-beer name without comment. “I feel her there. Her spirit is there.”

  Florie wasn’t sure whether she should call Becky “Beck,” too. Elyse could take liberties with Becky that Florie didn’t feel she’d earned. Maybe someday she would be as close to Becky as Elyse was, close enough to call her Beck or Brain or even Rebecca, which for some reason no one other than an occasional teacher ever called her. But not yet.

  She avoided the dilemma by not mentioning Becky’s name at all. “You don’t think her spirit is in heaven?” she asked. Her parents had insisted that April had gone to heaven, as had Reverend Jemmison at church. Sometimes heaven sounded about as ridiculous to Florie as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, but she wanted to believe in it. She wanted to imagine April relaxing on a cushion of cloud, surrounded by light and joy and harp music. It was such a pretty, tranquil image.

  Becky probably didn’t believe in heaven. To believe required that you set aside your intellect, something Becky wouldn’t do. Yet if she believed April had a spirit . . . And the spirit was at the tree where she died . . . Maybe she wasn’t totally intellectual, after all. Maybe she wasn’t Beck the Brain twenty-four hours a day.

  Or else maybe the possibility that April’s spirit lived on, whether in heaven or beside a tree, was something even a really, really smart person could believe.

  “What do you do there?” Elyse asked. “Just hang out? Look at the branches?”

  “Come, and I’ll show you.” She included Florie in her gaze, and Florie felt a surge of gratitude. “We can walk over after school on Friday. I’ve got stuff after school every other day.”

  Florie had a piano lesson after school on Friday. She would cancel it. And she would have to ask her mother to pick her up at the tree after she and Becky and Elyse were finished doing whatever they were going to do there. The tree was on Becky’s way home from the high school, and walking distance for her. She lived in a historical house in that part of town. Florie and Elyse lived in the other direction, and as best Florie could tell, Elyse couldn’t count on her mother picking them up. Florie would have to tell her mother she was canceling her piano lesson and ask to be picked up and driven home. Her mother would probably have to drive Elyse home, too.

  She’d figure something out. Going to the tree with Becky and Elyse was too important.

  Being their friend was the most important thing.

  Chapter Eleven

  ELYSE’S PARENTS were arguing.

  The house was too small. Even with her ear phones on and her iPod blasting, she could hear their voices in the kitchen below, rising and falling like waves in a choppy se
a.

  She could guess what they were fighting about. She wasn’t an idiot.

  She skimmed her essay on Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech one final time, then clicked the print icon on her laptop. May in US history meant the 1960s, which was actually a pretty interesting decade, a lot more exciting than the Manifest Destiny, which they’d studied in December, or the Depression, which had consumed a large chunk of March. She wondered how students in fifty years would manage to squeeze all of US history into one school term. As it was now, the curriculum plotted America’s time line so that September was the early settlers and colonial times, October was the Revolutionary War, and so on. Add another fifty years—assuming the world hadn’t ended by then—and how would the history department cram it all into nine and a half months? Maybe they’d have to skip the Depression. Lucky for them if they did. The Depression was so depressing.

  “Are you threatening me? Is that a threat?” her mother screamed.

  Elyse couldn’t make out her father’s words, but her mother’s voice was high and shrill, slicing through the floorboards that separated Elyse from her parents. If Elyse’s father was threatening her mother, it wasn’t a physical threat. He was out of shape and perpetually weary. He had trouble summoning the energy to swat a fly. He was also the most passive person she knew. The thought of him threatening to—what? Leave? Force her mother to leave?—would have made Elyse laugh if she weren’t trying so hard to ignore the fight.

  She ran her finger over her iPod, increasing the volume. Her ears vibrated with Regina Spektor’s bird-like voice, a song about someone dying of cancer.

  Shit. Screaming parents, cancer . . . Elyse might as well be studying the Depression right now.

  On the desk beside her laptop, her cell phone buzzed against the maple surface. She glanced at the screen, hoping to see Becky’s name. All she saw was an unfamiliar number.