“Make up your mind, Oona.”
“I guess I... I’d like to go upstairs with you,” she said.
Arnueci turned off the equipment and took off his earphones.
“There’s another goddamn entrance!” he said.
Kirk Irving was telling them about a patient he’d had last week, a kid whose molar was growing out of his cheekbone. His wife, Rebecca, said she thought this was a particularly disgusting subject to be discussing while they were eating. Kirk said he didn’t think orthodontics was disgusting, and he reminded Rebecca that it was orthodontics that put the shoes on their daughter’s feet.
“One of her feet, anyway,” Rebecca said.
This by way of reminding him that she herself was a breadwinner, although in a more modest way; Rebecca worked as a publicist for a small publishing house in the Village. Kirk turned to Michael and began explaining the long and painstaking process of gradually moving the molar back down into the gum where it belonged. Seizing the opportunity, Rebecca caught Sarah’s attention and began telling her how frustrating it was to have budget limitations that prohibited hi-tech author promotion like satellite tours. Sarah much preferred hearing about the difficulties of touring unknown novelists who wrote everything in first person present, but Kirk’s deeper voice kept bullying through, and she found she was hearing more about orthodonture than she ever cared to learn in a lifetime.
When Kirk suddenly shifted the conversation to what Michael was working on, she turned to the men at once, hoping to hear something her husband had thus far been reluctant to reveal. But Michael simply shrugged and said, “Oh, the usual, good guys against the bad guys,” and changed the subject at once, telling them he was thinking about renting a small villa in France this year for their three-week summer vacation. This was the first Sarah had heard about it. Normally, she would have leaped at the prospect. But now...
“Sarah, how marvelous!” Rebecca said, and turned to her at once. “Where? And when are you...?”
“Not Provence, I hope,” Kirk said, and rolled his eyes. “That guy’s made a cottage industry of Provence, whatever his name is. I’ll bet it’s like Coney Island now.”
“I was thinking of the area around St.-Jean-de-Luz,” Michael said. “We went there on our honeymoon. I thought it might be fun taking Mollie there.”
“Dash over the border to Pamplona for the running of the bulls,” Kirk said, and held up his hands and shook them as if waving a cape.
“When would this be?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, I don’t really know,” Sarah said. “Actually, I was...”
“August sometime, I guess,” Michael said. “That’s when we usually...”
“I was planning...” Sarah said, and cut herself off when suddenly everyone seemed to turn to her. “I... I thought I might start on my doctorate this summer. This comes as a total...”
“Honey,” Rebecca said, “screw the doctorate. Take France instead.”
“It’s just I...”
“Do you remember Sunset Boulevard?” Kirk asked. “The scene where Gloria Swanson takes him to buy a coat?”
“You didn’t tell me you were going back to school,” Michael said, sounding somewhat puzzled.
“You didn’t tell me about France, either,” Sarah said, and belatedly realized how sharp her voice had sounded.
“Where William Holden is trying to decide whether to take the cashmere or the vicuna?” Kirk said. “And this smarmy salesman with a mustache leans into the shot and says, ‘If the lady’s paying, take the vicuna.’”
“Take France,” Rebecca said again, and nodded wisely.
“I suppose I can use the rest,” Sarah said, recovering quickly. “France sounds wonderful to me right now.”
“Quick study,” Rebecca said, and winked at Michael.
“She’s been working so hard,” Michael said, and took her hand in his. “Leaves the house at seven each morning...”
“Well, that’s the job,” she said.
“But you do have summers off,” Kirk said.
“... doesn’t get home till six most nights. That’s when she...”
“With pay, no less.”
“... isn’t at a teachers’ meeting,” Michael said.
“Well, that isn’t too often,” Sarah said.
“Every week,” Michael said.
“I’d go on strike,” Rebecca said.
“Not that often,” Sarah said.
“Almost,” Michael said.
“You’re sure she hasn’t got a boyfriend?” Kirk said, and winked.
“I wish,” Sarah said, and waggled her eyebrows.
“Has he got a friend for me?” Rebecca asked.
“Maybe we can take him to France with us,” Michael said, and everyone laughed.
“You bring the wine,” Kirk said in a thick French accent, “and I’ll bring Pierre.”
“Lucky Pierre,” Rebecca said, “always in the middle.”
“Can you get a villa for such a short while?” Kirk asked.
“I think so. I think you can get them for a week, in fact.”
“It’s not called a villa in France,” Rebecca said. “It’s called a chateau.”
“Un chateau,” Kirk said.
“I thought that was a castle,” Michael said.
“Same thing,” Rebecca said.
“Want to come live in a castle with me?” Michael asked, and squeezed Sarah’s hand again.
It was all she could do to keep from crying.
Luretta had to tell her. Couldn’t wait till class was over so she could grab Mrs. Welles’s ear and talk with her privately. Last-period class this Wednesday; the entire school running twenty minutes late because of the unexpected fire drill and assembly this morning, two things the kids at Greer could’ve done without on a nice sunny day like today, for a change.
“... no need to write the rest of the poem, am I right?” Sarah was saying. “It’s all there in that first line, ‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there.’ By the way, if you want to test anyone who’s ever studied English lit, just ask, ‘What are the words that come after “Oh, to be in England”?’ and nine times out of ten, you’ll get ‘Now that spring is there.’ But the words are ‘Now that April’s there,’ and all the longing, all the passion, all the sweet sorrow of that beautiful month, is right there in that first line. As a matter of fact, the rest of the poem is something of a letdown, isn’t it? Ab? Read us the first few lines aloud, would you?”
Abigail Simms, a lanky fourteen-year-old with straight blond hair trailing halfway down her back, cleared her throat and read, “‘Oh, to be in England now that April’s there, and whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf...’”
“Hold it right there, Ab, thank you. Now, to how many of you does that business about the lowest bough and the brushwood sheaf conjure any images of April at all? Browning should have quit while he was winning, right?”
The class watched her warily, suspecting a trap. She had a way of doing that, Luretta knew, leading them down the garden, letting them think one thing, while all the time she was teaching them something just the opposite. But no, this time she really did seem to be sharing her disappointment. She just hoped the class would hurry up and be over so she could tell her what was happening at home, Dusty hitting on her all the time, her mother looking the other way.