Part 13 (1/2)

”I think so. Definitely a lady, anyway.”

The transformation of Emily was so unexpected and disconcerting that perhaps it jolted something in my nervous system that subsequently made it possible for me to a.s.sume the Gila monster in the jar of water was alive. Perhaps.

At Hunter College the other day I asked my freshman students in Expository Writing to write an impromptu essay on a contention by Erich Fromm that education gives children a fict.i.tious picture of reality. I made quite sure to put ”fict.i.tious picture of reality” in quotes on the blackboard so there would be no doubt they were Erich Fromm's words and not mine. One learns caution when teaching freshmen. I suggested they support their a.s.sertions with examples from their personal experience. After a half hour of quiet writing, a boy with braces on his teeth came up to me and asked, ”How is the word 'fict.i.tious' used here?”

Surely the answer ”as an adjective” was not what he sought. ”What do you mean, how is it used?”

”I mean, well, what does it mean?”

One also learns, teaching freshmen, not to show surprise or any emotion that might discourage progress. ”It means made up, not true, like a story.”

”Oh. Thank you.” He smiled happily and returned to his writing. I discussed this incident with a psychotherapist friend, who said that for her the real interest of the story was not that the boy did not know what ”fict.i.tious” meant, but that he did not know how outrageous his not knowing would appear.

My own education, if more thorough, was equally unbalanced. As is the custom in schools, the teachers ignored connections and stressed facts, particularly facts regarding the Boxer Rebellion, Alexander Kerensky, the nature of scalene triangles, the names of the inns frequented or referred to by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dr. Johnson, the princ.i.p.al exports of Uruguay, and the names of cabinet departments (St. Dapiacl, an acronym now an anachronism). Up until the age of twenty-five I remembered it all, then slowly, like a sandy, weather-buffeted slope of land, it began to erode, except for the Tabard and the Mermaid. The Tabard and the Mermaid, like seeds luckily blown to more fertile meadows, took root elsewhere in my brain, where I watered and nurtured them because I cared.

When Rachel first went off to be educated I used to go to pick her up every day on the Riverside Drive bus, taking along Miranda, two years younger. Once in a while our trips were graced by the glorious double-decker bus, whose erratic schedule we could never master, unfortunately. But most days, silent and absent, Miranda would gape morosely out the ordinary-bus window, with a finger in her mouth. I naturally inferred boredom and resentment. When Rachel learned to come home by herself I said to Miranda, ”I bet you'll be glad not to take that bus ride every day.”

”But I won't get to see the statues.”

”What statues?”

She confided that she had a private story explaining the freestanding statues dispersed along the drive between 120th and 81st Streets, which she regaled herself with every day, going and coming.

The first statue, a man on a pedestal, is a king, she told me. Beneath him, a soldier with a flag is holding a woman who is on her knees. The woman is really a princess but she's in rags. She is going to be put in jail and she's crying, ”Let me go, let me go!” (113th Street, erected in 1928 ”by a Liberty Loving Race of Americans of Magyar Origin to Louis Kossuth the Great Champion of Liberty”; below Kossuth are a flag-bearing soldier and a longhaired old man in flowing robes; they are gripping hands).

The next statue, Miranda related, is a man who looks like Abraham Lincoln, with a pedestal next to him. He is the father of the prince, and he is going to get a drink of water (112th Street, Samuel J. Tilden, ”1814-1886, Patriot Statesman Lawyer Philanthropist Governor of New York Democratic Nominee for the Presidency 1876 I Trust the People”).

The third is a man on a horse. He is the prince. He has heard the news about the princess and is going through the forest to rescue her (106th Street, an equestrian labeled tersely, ”Franz Sigel”).

Last is a lady on a horse. She is the same princess as in the beginning and she got rescued and that is the end (Joan of Arc, 93rd Street, armed with a sword, mounted on a rearing horse, ”Burned at the Stake at Rouen France May 30, 1431, Erected by The Joan of Arc Statue Committee in the City of New York, 1915”).

I was disturbed by only one omission. ”Why didn't you use the Buddha at 105th Street?” (The ”Buddha” is s.h.i.+nran Shonin, 1173 to 1262, founder of the Jodo-s.h.i.+nshu sect and presently adorning the doorway of the New York Buddhist Church.) ”Oh, him. He was too big.” Seeing my dismay, she added, ”I did use him once. He was a magician. He was trying to stop the prince, who was going through the forest. He's wearing a frown because the prince got the princess.” She hesitated. ”But he's really too big for the story.”

”And I thought you were bored.”

”I was, sometimes.”

I asked Harry at dinner, the night he returned from Was.h.i.+ngton, if he had thought of going up to Liv Ullmann to tell her he enjoyed her performance in A Doll's House.

”Oh, no. They were looking for obscurity.”

”What's 'obscurity'?” asked Miranda.

He told her. ”Anyway, I eschew celebrities.”

We laughed.

”What is 'eschew'?” asked Rachel.

”An obscure word meaning avoid,” he said.

”I don't believe you.”

”It is.”

”That's ridiculous.” At twelve, her only pejorative adjectives are ”ridiculous,” ”gross,” ”disgusting,” and ”weird.” ”I don't believe there's such a word. It sounds weird.”

”Go look it up in the dictionary.” Harry spelled it for her.

”All right. But don't eat my dinner. I'm coming back.”

”She'll never forgive me,” he said. ”She's like the elephant.”

”Because you still do it,” said Miranda. ”You ate the M &M's I got from w.i.l.l.y's party.”

”They were out on the table. I a.s.sumed they were common property.”

”You should ask before you a.s.sume anything,” said Miranda.

Rachel was chagrined to find ”eschew” in the dictionary.

”While you're there,” I called in to her, ”please look up the Gila monster.”

”G.o.d,” she moaned, very put upon. She read me what it said about the Gila monster. Of course I have forgotten most of it. I do remember that it has a ”sluggish but ugly disposition,” because I found the phrase, with its a.s.sonance, extremely suggestive, and I was intrigued by the choice of the connective ”but.” I also remember that there exists a ”closely allied form” in Mexico named H. horridum. I shall doubtless remember H. horridum forever. These facts made me love it more.

After Rachel returned to the table I reached for my purse, which I had set down in the center of the kitchen floor when I returned from giving my cla.s.s the essay a.s.signment on Erich Fromm's educational theories. As I picked it up, somehow its entire contents spilled out. Harry glanced over at the array of objects scattered on the floor. ”Where is your eye of newt?” he asked.

Every now and then he says something that makes me recall with jubilation why I married him.

”Eye of newt!” I laughed, crouching on the floor. ”How do you know about eye of newt?” He reads mainly the New York Times and books on the structure of society and how it can be improved.

He shrugged.

”Come on, where do you know that from?” I challenged him. ”Tell me where that comes from.”

He paused, frowned, looked vaguely at the children for help not forthcoming. ”Shakespeare?” he asked finally. ”Macbeth?”

While I was putting my purse back together he said to Rachel, ”By the way, how did you make out with the report on Thomas Edison?”

”Okay. Did you know that Thomas Edison was deaf?”

”Yes,” said Harry, and ”No,” said I, simultaneously.

”Was he born deaf,” I asked, ”or did he get deaf?”

”He got deaf, when he was around twelve or fourteen.”