The Talented Miss Farwell Page 2

  Becky’s teacher, Mrs. Nagle, held her back after the bell. “Incomplete,” she’d written at the top of the front page.

  “Who is this man?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. No one.” Becky was annoyed; now she’d have to do it all over.

  “Did you use the research sources?” By this Mrs. Nagle meant the endless flapping loops of microfilm in the dim projector room of the local library.

  Becky admitted she had not.

  Mrs. Nagle paged through her report, pointing here and there at poor Mr. Sam Smith’s reminiscences of that awful day. Then she took a pen and wrote two more words at the top of Becky’s paper: Fiction. Fact. “What you wrote was this.” She tapped one word. “And the assignment was this.” Tapped the other.

  Becky redid the paper and never again did she stray outside the lines. In truth she was surprised that Mrs. Nagle had taken the time to challenge her. Most often Becky’s compositions received As and Bs with no more comments, no matter what she had written about. In a school where the graduation rate hovered around fifty percent and there was no funding to separate out advanced classes, being a high achiever just meant that you’d fly under the radar.

  Only Ms. Marner, in senior year math, pushed Becky. She never let up, this tall and bony taskmaster whose first name was Diana and always insisted on “Ms.” (“Say it with me, class, ‘Mzzzzzzzz Marner.’ Not so hard now, is it?”).

  Ms. Marner made Becky’s tests more difficult and wouldn’t listen to any complaints. She mimeographed pages of extra work and expected Becky to return them to her faculty mailbox within two days, no exception. She insisted that Becky join the Mathletes club (Becky was the only girl, and the only senior) and she brought her books from an out-of-state library, a videotape once even, that lurched ahead into the origin of numbers, the ideas behind the domains, vast overarching concepts.

  Becky loved the mimeographs, the challenge and puzzle of each one, but she couldn’t understand why Ms. Marner was so into theory—it was dense, barely comprehensible. Becky was into math for the calculations. A mental arrangement of digits, the slotting in of value and function, seeing the total in her mind’s eye as clearly as it would then be printed on the page. She couldn’t explain to anyone, even Ms. Marner, what that inner game felt like: how the symbols click-click-clicked into brain-place, like the sound and feel of the colored wooden pegs in Chinese checkers.

  One Saturday Ms. Marner drove Becky and two of the boys two hours each way to Peoria to compete in a round-robin state math tournament. She ran from corner to corner of the crowded gym to watch their various matches. When Becky won a prize there she heard a single hoot that rose above the rest of the polite applause. On the way home, Ms. Marner played show tunes on her tape deck, smoked Virginia Slims, and took them for burgers at a truck stop diner. Later, Becky realized that her teacher had most likely paid for all of it herself, the tournament registration, the gas, and the burgers.

  One Thursday afternoon Ms. Marner waved the freshman boys out early and made Becky do what she couldn’t bear to do: talk about colleges. “IIT, is what I’m thinking. Obviously, U. Chicago is your moon shot. But I don’t know what the counselors have told you about aid . . .” She glanced up at Becky over her readers; when Becky didn’t respond she went on, “Anyway, IIT has a phenomenal department. I know the chair, slightly, from way back and I thought I could give him a call.”

  Becky shrugged. “I mean, thanks, but . . . There’s a lot of stuff going on with my dad. It can’t happen.”

  “So maybe you do a year or two closer to home. And then you transfer. Your options go exponential then.”

  Becky bent to her backpack, fumbling with its zipper and straps. Talking about what you knew you could never have only made things worse. “I have to go.”

  “If this is about money, there are all sorts of scholarships and loans. You’re not the first student to need—”

  Becky hurried out of the classroom without saying goodbye. She couldn’t explain it to Ms. Marner. How much her father depended on her, how much the business did. Just breaking even took everything the two of them had. She couldn’t leave. When she got home, her father was sitting in his chair, TV on. Patient, happy to see her.

  “Little late tonight,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Becky went over to turn on the oven for their meal.

  Sometime after that interaction, Becky stopped attending Mathletes. She avoided Ms. Marner’s gaze in class and when her teacher tried to talk to her after class, she muttered excuses about being busy. She was busy, caught up in a shipping snafu that ended up costing several thousand they didn’t have.

  After graduation in June, Ms. Marner found her in the gym, where parents and purple-gowned seniors milled around and drank punch. “I hear you’re a working stiff now, like the rest of us.”

  “It’s just an entry-level thing,” Becky said. “Mostly paperwork.” The truth was that her new job at Town Hall thrilled her. She’d applied on a whim after convincing her father that she could still do his books. What she didn’t tell him was how much they needed the paycheck.

  “I have something for you.” Ms. Marner handed her a small gift-wrapped package. “I’ve missed our extra assignments. Come visit me sometime. Since you’ll be around.”

  Becky’s eyes were hot but she pretended they weren’t. “Okay, yeah.”

  “Good luck, Becky. Congratulations.”

  Becky thanked her, and escaped.

  Later that night, she opened the gift, which turned out to be one of those little books of wisdom for graduates and a long typed letter. Becky read the letter as fast as she could, skimming it, unable to take in all that Ms. Marner had written: how much she valued Becky as a student and a person, and how gladdening it was to see her succeed. That she hadn’t meant to get pushy and was sorry if she had offended. That Becky reminded her of herself at that age, and perhaps seeing the potential in such a talented female math student had caused her to get overinvolved. She wished Becky all the success in the world.

  Becky folded up the letter, put it in the silly gift book, and tucked both in the bottom of a drawer under a pile of jeans. She didn’t throw either away until years later. But she only ever let herself read the letter that one time, on graduation night.

  3

  Pierson

  1983

  When she caught the discrepancy in a refund from Golden Fuel & Oil on a Friday afternoon in September, Becky paid attention. She was the sole female employee in Bookkeeping and the only one under twenty-five—she’d been technically seventeen when they’d hired her but a tacit silence on this was agreed by all—so mostly she strived to fit in, to hide her natural affinity for columns of numbers. Every once in a while, cued by a sudden pause in the droning chunk-chunk of Freddie’s machine on the desk facing hers, she would even waste several minutes tapping buttons with the eraser of her pencil, the way she’d noticed others doing it.

  $542. She knew instantly there was no need for this refund. Although occasionally a company would credit Town Hall a future month on the rare chance they paid ahead by accident, most preferred to refund, to keep the books even. She herself had filled out this particular amount on the oversized pale green watermarked check sheet for Accounting to sign off on, one of dozens of payments she and Freddie processed every day.

  Still, Becky pulled Golden’s accounts and paged back, comparing months of charges. Golden had had the town contract for years—not only the schools and library, but also Community Bank and the Historic Center. No doubled payment that she could find. So where was this $542, marked “Paid to City of Pierson,” supposed to go?

  Becky took the check and the current Golden book down the hall to Accounting. She hesitated outside her boss Jim Frantzen’s door, which was closed, emphatically closed and not balanced ajar on a half-latch, which meant technically here but for Christ’s sake don’t come in. Who else could she ask? No to Bob P., definitely no to Gary—last week he’d fingered the hem of her jacket and w
hispered that a tighter fit flattered a girl more—and no to nice white-haired Mr. Kaplan, unfortunately, who had apparently left early for the weekend.

  Becky completed a lap of the offices on floor three, painfully aware of the secretaries who eyed her uncertain progress and said nothing, stuck at their desks until five even if their bosses had already gone. Finally she turned into the break room. Dingy Formica counters, a wheezing fridge, the permanent odors of burnt coffee and tuna fish salad. To her surprise, one of the two HR reps—Mr. Fine, who had processed her hire—was at the single round table, turning newspaper pages. Becky hesitated a moment—Mr. Fine had been at the staff presentation last week and hadn’t seemed pleased with her after—but then she forged ahead.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Becky began. “Can you help me figure out who I should—” She fumbled to unfold the check sheet and to find the right page in the account book, but before she could finish Mr. Fine scowled and slapped his paper shut. Ropy strands of colorless hair stuck to his bulbous head.

  “Ask your supervisor.”

  “I would, but he—”

  “Miss Farwell, I was under the impression that you were mature enough to handle the simple responsibilities of your job. Input the debit, input the credit. Calculate the difference. Balance the books. Are you saying that’s too difficult for you?”

  Becky tightened her hold on the check. “No.”

  “Well, then.”

  The gleam of ice in Mr. Fine’s widely stretched smile made Becky back away. She was almost at the door when he called her.

  “A word of advice, Miss Farwell? No one likes a Goody-Two-shoes. Think twice before proposing ‘A New Method.’” Becky flinched at the title of her failed presentation. “When the grownups have had things pretty well in hand since before you—”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Fine. I appreciate it.” Her arms tingled, but her back was straight and her voice was steady, reassuring, complicit. This was no different from her years of dealing with patronizing agribusiness suppliers on the phone. She knew what threatened looked like, how it smelled.

  She smoothly tucked the check away, out of sight, then pinned Albert Fine with a merciless smile, held the eye contact an extra beat. His bony ringless hand, his lingering in the break room at 4:45 on a Friday. The careful hopeless combing of his disappearing hair . . . Becky took it all in, so he could see, and let pity soak through her smile until she could feel his soul shrivel. Then she turned sharply and left.

  She could barely hear herself going through the “goodbye, nice weekend” routine with Freddie and a few other coworkers over the Klaxon fury in her head. Still, she managed to straighten her desk, cover her typewriter, replace the Golden ledger on its shelf. And tuck the mystery check under an extra sweater in her bottom drawer.

  The next morning, Becky woke before dawn, listening to the repeated four-note song of the mourning dove. Although she’d repainted in soft peach with cream accents, there was no disguising her childhood bedroom. Her books stood on the shelves where her dolls had once been propped, and her blouses and skirts hung on the splintery wood dowel that still held traces of her junior-high-era perfume. Through the gap in the curtains she watched the top branch of the front-yard cottonwood wave in the same motion and at the same cadence as it had the last eighteen years.

  A terrible thumping came from the stairs. Becky went cold, couldn’t move. But then she heard a strangled cry and raced from the room. Her father sprawled sideways, his robe askew and one arm twisted behind his back.

  “Holy god, Daddy. You gave me a heart attack.” She strained to right him, arms around his waist. They sat on the stairs, her father breathing hard. “You okay? Yeah?” She swiped a piece of his hair back, relieved to see his mild smile return. He was abashed, and so at least a little aware.

  The strokes had come in tiny rapid bursts, the first series last winter, undetected except for slightly increased confusion, forgetting—keys put through the dishwasher, the lost name of a church pastor. The next two events had been unmissable, bringing about as they did stumbling, a frozen right arm, and a loss of language that bordered on muteness. He did okay at home, for the most part, but Becky wondered for how much longer. And then what. When she pictured a fall like this morning’s on a weekday when she was gone—and him with a broken leg or back, in agony for hours, alone . . .

  They were due in Champaign-Urbana for an 11 am appointment. “So now we have something to tell the doctor. How about some eggs before we go?”

  The appointment itself was shockingly unhelpful. As far as Becky could tell, no one could give her any sort of guidance on what to expect or when to expect it. This time, for the first time, she took the brochure titled “Area Facilities for Long Term Care.”

  Now, in the west parking lot of UIUC’s campus, her father safely deposited at the barbershop in the hospital’s lobby where he’d get a shave and a nice long cut, Becky folded the pages in half and wedged them into her purse. The Datsun ticked for another minute, engine cooling, while she sat there casting into the future. There were savings to get her father through a year or maybe two at one of those places. That was if they sold the farmhouse and the business, which had dwindled steadily since his decline. If only one of those doctors would be straight about how long they expected him to live!

  Becky got out of the car and began to walk, fast, without a direction. The campus courtyard stretched wide from one tan cement building to another, paved pathways crisscrossing all over like a corn maze without the corn. She slowed to match the tempo of the enrolled students, wishing she had some books to carry.

  “Oh my goodness, Becky Farwell?”

  Becky froze. Sarah Meakins, wide-eyed with friendly delight. Shit. How could she not have guessed this would happen? There must be at least a dozen Pierson High grads at UIUC.

  Pleasantries gave way to Sarah’s recounting Becky’s high school career to her unimpressed friend. “We called her ‘Baby’—remember that, Becky? Because no one had ever taken pre-calc as a freshman before.”

  “Are you a transfer?” Sarah’s friend asked. She was pulling crumbs off a muffin wrapped in a paper napkin and eating them one by one.

  “No, I—”

  “Oh, Becky’s holding down the fort at home.” Sarah turned to Becky. “My mom told me you’re working in Town Hall!”

  “I deferred Notre Dame.” Becky blinked as a ray of sun bounced off a roof’s corner right at her eyes. “And Case Western.” This was true, and the offer of a full ride at Case had particularly stung. “I also got in to U. Michigan, Northwestern, U. Chicago, Carleton . . .”

  Sarah’s friend stopped picking at the muffin.

  “Well . . . that’s great, Becky.” Sarah spoke slowly, half-smiling.

  “Though I’ll probably go to Johns Hopkins. Quality-wise, it might as well be an Ivy, but with more scholarships. They said I’d probably qualify for the business school by next year, depending on how many credits they offer.”

  Now Sarah and her friend were silent. They exchanged a quick glance.

  But Becky couldn’t stop. “Johns Hopkins is in Baltimore, though. And when Georgetown brought me out they made a good case for why you’d want to be in a major city like DC, not plunked down in some farm town, ha, for college.” None of that was true, but Becky could have gone on for hours.

  Wow, Sarah’s friend mouthed. She took a real bite of muffin and stepped back on the path.

  Sarah reached out to touch Becky’s forearm, a light tap. “Say hello to your dad.”

  Then they were gone, bookbags jouncing, heads close together, moving into the massed line of other students.

  Becky burst into tears. First for her own stupidity and humiliation and then—so dumb, so hopeless—for the stupidity and humiliation of crying. Head down, she pushed into the nearest building, ignoring the die-cut school of art on its glass door.

  Becky spent several minutes in the ladies’ room, and when she reemerged her blouse was retucked, her red-blond hair reclipped in
to its tortoiseshell barrette, and a new slick frost of lip color drew attention to the set of her slight angry smile. As she marched toward the door, intent on getting back to her father and the hell out of UIUC, a tubby man with a crew cut materialized behind the desk in the cool rotunda and called out, “Brochures are up here.”

  Becky came forward and took one. “The Space of Place: Regional Artists on the Meaning of Home.”

  “Are you a first year? This is our gallery area, where—”

  “Yeah, okay, thanks.” Now she had to take a look around.

  At first, Becky made dutiful circles in the small white-walled rooms. Nodded occasionally, although she was the only visitor: very nice, yes, interesting. Would her father be done with the hot-towel shave? He loved to be tipped back in the chair and they’d let him stay that way, angled toward the TV, until she returned. She thought about whether they’d need gas for the ride back—$3.50 a gallon, Jesus—and how much deposit was required by the nursing homes listed on that folded sheet in her purse. Were fees like that negotiable? Was there a payment plan?

  And then a visceral urge to back up cut through her mental calculations. Becky reversed past the last three paintings until she came to a stop in front of a framed picture in oil, hung at her exact eye level. She inched closer.

  Hadn’t she seen a painting before? Well, of course. The junior year spring trip into Chicago, which had included a stop at the Art Institute, the still lifes rotating through Barner’s Restaurant on Second, where she and her father went regularly for meat-and-three on either Wednesday or Thursday, depending on when they had ham loaf. (Barner’s still lifes were sourced from the manager’s mother’s home for the elderly, which put out residents’ depictions of a bowl and fruit—same bowl, different fruit—each week on Visitor’s Day, priced to sell.)

  I’ve seen paintings before, Becky argued to herself. But it didn’t feel true, compared to being in the presence of this painting, the physical result of however many possible permutations of pigment and brushstroke and horsehair and vision and canvas and flaking nail-joined wood. Five minutes passed. Fifteen. Her arches ached, her purse was on the floor. She reached out and unhooked the piece from its hanger and for a brief moment studied it in her arms, the shortened plane of its image a whole new—