“What was that?” Miss Gordon asked. She didn’t look happy to have been interrupted, so I didn’t speak up. The boy across the aisle, Randy Nairn, spoke for me.
“She said, ‘This old thing.’” He added a sneer to my tone that I swear wasn’t there, spoke in a high voice nothing like mine, screwed up his face in a prissy moue. The class laughed. Miss Gordon didn’t.
“Louise Brant? Is that your name?”
“Luisa, but I go by Lu.”
“Well, Luisa”-oh, the refusal to use my nickname was hurtful, a rejection of my friendship-“if you’re already bored, we can see if you’re ready to do second-grade class work. In fact, maybe I could take you to Mrs. Jackson’s class right now, just throw you in. Sink or swim.”
I sensed a setup. Although I could read, I understood there was more to school than reading. What I didn’t understand was Miss Gordon’s instinctive dislike, her hostility. Adults always took a shine to me. Adults liked me better than kids did. I was smart. I behaved. I could hold my own in a conversation. And when they found out I was the daughter of Andrew Brant, most adults beamed at me, even Republicans. There was talk, after the trial, that my father could be state’s attorney general if he wanted, maybe even a congressman or a senator. I wondered if Miss Gordon knew who my father was, if there was a way I could drop the information casually.
“I’m fine here, ma’am.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“What?”
“That ‘ma’am’ sounded very sarcastic, Luisa. You are to call me Miss Gordon.”
“Yes, ma-yes, Miss Gordon.” The ma’am was Teensy’s fault. It was as if everyone in my life had set me up to fail-AJ, by teaching me to read, my father for encouraging the habit, Teensy for insisting on manners. Didn’t anyone in my family know how the real world worked?
Things never got better that year. They didn’t get worse, but they never got better. Even my impeccable classwork did not endear me to Miss Gordon. And when it came to creative work-drawing pictures, using our new words to make simple poems-she was particularly harsh with me. My neat, bland drawings were never placed in the center of the blackboard display. She hated my brown cats and black dogs, my blue skies and yellow suns. She even seemed to dislike my precise rhymes, while she heaped praise on students whose words didn’t really go together, insisting they had imagination. She stretched out her arms as she stretched out the syllables of that word-EH-MAH-GI-NAY-SHUN! Miss Gordon valued creativity above everything.
Later that fall, when my father went to parent-teacher night, he came home and sat on the edge of my bed to report back, at my insistence. I had told him I wanted to know exactly what Miss Gordon thought of me, word for word. To my father’s credit, he agreed to honor this request, although he warned me it might hurt. I imagined a Band-Aid being ripped from my skin. I never cried when that happened. I could handle words.
“I’ll be okay,” I assured him.
He sighed and began his summation.
He had been told that Miss Gordon was frustrated by my hostility toward creative work. I lacked, yes, EH-MAH-GI-NAY-SHUN. Oh, I could do any task that was based on studying and having facts at hand. In the world of right answers, I was 100 percent. But asked to draw a picture or tell a story, I pestered Miss Gordon with endless questions about the “rules.” Did there have to be a person in the story? A tree? Must it have a happy ending? How many words? What do I need to get an A?
“Why is it so hard for you to imagine things, Lu? You read lots of stories.”
“I can imagine things fine,” I said. “But I want to make sure I get the best grades.”
“Why? I’ve never told you that I cared about your grades. All I ask is that you do your best.”
“Yes, being the best is important. Winning is important.”
“No, being a good person is important. Caring about others. Being warm and empathetic. Miss Gordon said you make fun of the kids who aren’t as smart as you.”
“That’s not true.” I wanted to cry at the unfairness of this accusation. “I try to help them. Some of them can barely print, and I’m the only one who can write cursive. And their rhymes are wrong. Danny put together ‘hard’ and ‘park’ and Miss Gordon said his poem was great, while I wrote ‘Once I saw a possum / Smelling a blossom,’ and she told me that possums don’t come out in the daytime, so why would they be smelling flowers. See-when I do have imagination, it doesn’t count, I’m making a mistake. But when Randy Nairn draws a dog with smoke coming out of its mouth, he’s told he’s wonderful.”
“Your classmates don’t want your help, Lu. That’s what Miss Gordon says. You finish your work early, then try to insert yourself in the work of others.”
I became frustrated, saw that I would never be able to explain the situation to my father. I was battling Miss Gordon for control of the classroom. Losing, but battling. She had rejected me, so I wanted the other kids to see I was as smart as she was. I was at war.
“I just want to win,” I said.
“Win what, Lu?”
I shook my head, out of words.
“You’re so competitive, Lu. If you make winning everything, you’ll never be happy.”
“You’re happy when you win. You were really happy when you won that case.”
“Because justice was done. Because a young woman whose body may never be found wasn’t forgotten. When I go to court, Lu, it’s never about winning.”
But that’s what competitive people always say. Have you noticed only another competitive person will ever call you competitive? Yes, I liked to win, but so did my father and my brother. And, oh Lord, how Gabe made everything a competition. Who’s playing the saxophone on this song? he would ask me when some jazz standard came on a restaurant’s sound system. Or, apropos of nothing, How many Triple Crown winners can you name? I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t want to win, but I definitely didn’t know a Brant who didn’t love victory. We played chess, checkers, Botticelli, Geography, “Jimmy has a ball of string.” We played Stratego, Life, Operation (and only I could remove that funny bone). Dominoes, gin rummy, a card game called Up the River, Down the River. I was given slight advantages when I was very young, but I was never patronized. When I won, it was real, a true achievement. Winning was everything in my household.
The thing I had gotten wrong was showing how desperately I wanted to win. That was what I had to learn to conceal, what my father and AJ knew from birth: disguise your desire.
JANUARY 9
Lu watches through the one-way glass as Mike and his partner, Terry Childs, interrogate Rudy Drysdale. Lu expected someone more obviously homeless-matted beard and hair, dirty clothes-but this Drysdale character is fairly neat and well groomed, considering his lifestyle. If one didn’t know which was which, he might appear to be the attorney. He has a quiet poise, while the young female public defender is almost aquiver with nerves.
The detectives are pushing for a confession. Seems unlikely with a guy who invoked his right to an attorney so quickly, but Lu is happy to let them try.
To her delight, the inexperienced public defender is allowing her client to speak, almost encouraging him to do so. The whole point of lawyering-up is to shut up, but the public defender seems to believe that Drysdale has an alibi or other information that will lead to his release.
Rudy whispers to his public defender, who then presents his story to the detectives. Lu is reminded of how Penelope and Justin used to confide “secrets” to her in tandem, a hot, damp mouth pressed to each ear, words tumbling out. When had that stopped? They are growing up so quickly and she fears she is missing too much. But then, being twins, they always have each other. Maybe it’s natural that they become self-contained at a much younger age than other children.