I now had Teddy moored in front of a hanging display of games and toys, and not only did I show him everything, I presented each prospect as though it were a tiara on a velvet pillow. And he, like a potentate reviewing yet another slave girl, rejected everything. He kept looking back and mewing and, unable to point, threw open his palm with five fingers indicating five different directions. Somehow, and I’m not sure telepathy was not involved, he navigated us back to crackers. This was his choice, and I saw that it was a good one, because what was inside was textural, crushable, and finally, edible.
It was night by the time we left the drugstore. Teddy and I played motorboat and moved into the darkness. The gaily lit Rite Aid receded behind us like a lakeshore restaurant. We walked along the sidewalks and driveways, passing the apartments and parked cars, hearing the occasional helicopter. I held Teddy in one arm and the crackers in another. We came alongside a high hedge bearing waxy green leaves and extending the full length of a corner lot. It was a dewy night but not cold, and there was a silence that walked with us. Teddy held out one arm so that his hand could graze the hedge. He let the leaves brush his palm. He watched and listened, and would sometimes grab and hold a twig to feel it tugged out of his hand as I moved him forward. Soon he established a sequence of feeling, grabbing, and then losing the leaf. I reseated him on my arm so he could lean out farther, and then slowed my walk to accommodate his game and extend the rapture. I came to the end of the block and it was like coming out of a dream.
Clarissa arrived promptly at six to find Teddy and me at the kitchen table in front of two dozen dismembered saltines. The box was torn and bent, and the wrappers were strewn across table and floor. This would have been a mess of the highest order except that nothing wet was involved. We made the transfer and she offered to help me clean up, but I shooed her out, knowing she had better things to do. At the door she said, “By the way, he’s back in Boston and calmed down. He even sent me a support check.” This small comment made me think all night about atonement, about what could be made up for, what could be forgiven, about whether Mussolini’s obligatory check meant I should forget about the clobbering I’d received. I decided that the answer would be known only when I saw him again and would be able to witness my own reaction to an offer of contrition.
Speech day at Freedom College was drawing menacingly close and Philipa continued to rehearse me even though I did everything I could to indicate to her that I was sick of the sound of my own voice and weary of her relentless fine-tuning of me. I performed once for Brian-the first outsider to hear me-and he complimented me so profusely that I felt like a three-year-old who had just had his first drawing taped to the refrigerator. Brian then offered to drive me to Anaheim on the day of the award, and I accepted, happy to know I would have a familiar face in the audience. Later I realized I had made no plans to get to the event and Brian was my only real possibility. We would leave at 8:30 A.M., he said. It would take an hour and a half to get to Anaheim. The Freedom Walk begins at eleven, and the speeches start at noon, to be over by one. Brian had gotten all this information off the Internet and printed it out for me, which he proudly cited as a demonstration of his growing computer skills.
The night before my speech, I carefully set my alarm for 7 A.M. I double-checked it by advancing the time twelve hours just to be sure it went off. Then I puzzled for a dozen minutes over whether I had reset the clock correctly, and had to redo the entire operation to confirm an LED light was indicating P.M. and not A.M. I carefully selected my wardrobe, choosing my brown shoes, khaki slacks, a blue sports coat, and a freshly laundered white shirt that I was careful not to remove from its protective glassine bag, lest a hair or dark thread should land on it in the night. I put several inches between my choices and the rest of my clothes for speedy access. I showered in the evening, even though I fully intended to shower again in the morning. This was a precaution in the event something went wrong with the alarm and I had to rush, but it was also part of my need to be flawlessly clean for the reading. Two showers less than eight hours apart would make me sparkle and squeak to the touch. My sports coat, a fourteen-year-old polyester blue blazer, had never known a wrinkle and would stand in stark contrast to my khaki pants. My outfit would be smooth, blue and synthetic above, crinkly, brown and organic below. In a perfect fashion world, I knew above and below should be the same, either all smooth blue and synthetic or all crinkly brown and organic. I marveled that, like soy and talc, these two opposites would hang on the same body.
During these hours, I was making a transition from my imperfect everyday world where the unpredictable waited around every corner, into a single-minded existence where all contingencies are anticipated and prepared for. I laid out my hairbrush, toothpaste, socks, soap, and washcloth. I cleaned the mirror on the medicine chest so that I wouldn’t see something on it that I would think was on me. This was important, because I wanted absolutely nothing to intrude upon my single and direct line to the podium, and nothing to distract me during the four-and-one-half hours that there would be between waking and speaking.
Knowing I would probably be too nervous to fall asleep on time, I went to bed at eight-thirty instead of my usual ten-thirty, building in an extra two hours to fidget and calm down. I lay centered in the bed, intending to sleep facing the ceiling all night, without inelegant tossing and turning and scratching and noise-making.
I reached for my universal light switch, which was located just out of reach on my bedside table now that I was in the center of my bed. I had to hinge my body over to snap off the lights. Then, there I was, in perfect symmetry. The white sheets were crisp and freshly laundered. There were no body residues from the night before to contaminate me after my shower. I went over my speech in my head, and once I had done that, I allowed myself a moment for self-congratulations. I was, I said to myself, the Most Average American. Most Average, Most Ordinary. I had become this solely through my own efforts, and had succeeded not only once, but twice, with two different essays. I couldn’t wait to tell Granny and asked myself why I hadn’t already written her with the great news. Of course it was because I wanted to wait until I had the award in hand before bragging about it. It’s the Texas way.
In the morning I was only slightly askew. The top sheet and blanket had barely moved. I must have slept at a rigid, horizontal version of “ten-hut!” that would have made Patton proud. There was an empty moment before I remembered what today was, but when I did, my voltage cranked up and the ensuing adrenaline rush cleared my sinuses.
The first thing I did was to sit on the edge of the bed and go over my speech. Then I stood and delivered it again, this time adding in a few planned gestures. Satisfied, I stepped out of my pajamas and folded them into a drawer, and put on my robe for the seventy-two-inch walk to the bathroom. I took off the robe and hung it on the back of the door. I turned on the shower and waited the fifteen seconds for it to adjust. Stepping under the water, I let it engulf me and was overcome with pleasure. When my delirium abated, I soaped and scrubbed my already clean body.
Out of the shower, my every action was as deliberate as a chess move. Toweling off, folding, hanging, everything going smoothly until hair. I had determined not to comb it but to brush it once, then shake it so it would dry into a flopover. I had done this a thousand times, but today it resisted the casual look it had achieved after virtually every other head shake of my life. However, I had mentally prepared myself for this uncertainty. If I was to style my hair with a head shake, I had to accept the outcome of the head shake. And though I could have picked up my brush and teased it into perfection, I didn’t.