Saul’s 5:30 A.M. wake-up call interrupts a dream in which he is making love to Miriam on the ballroom stage, naked except for a numbered placard around his neck. The suddenness of his awakening erases the vision. He will blush when he catches sight of the stage later that morning without knowing why.
Eliza is already awake, having requested a wake-up call for five so that in case she was having the nightmare she would have time to recover before starting the day. As she was not having the nightmare, the earlier wake-up call gains her thirty minutes of perfect stillness while watching the sunrise through the space in the curtains. She wonders if, back at home, her mother is awake as well. When she hears Saul get up, she closes her eyes.
Saul opens the door between their rooms slowly, creeps to his daughter’s bed on the balls of his feet, and eases himself down on her mattress. Eliza has to stifle a smile, does her best to look asleep. When Saul puts his face on the sheets covering her stomach, she knows she has fooled him.
“Elly-belly,” he says in his special voice, the one he uses for stuffed animals and characters in stories. “Elly-belly, the time has come. The time is now.”
Eliza pops up from the mattress. “Fooled you! I’ve been awake for half an hour.”
“I know. But did you think that on a day as important as today I would risk upsetting your delicate mental balance by tickling you? Like this?” he says, his fingers diving for Eliza’s armpits. With a shriek Eliza scrambles off the bed and into the bathroom, managing not to think about the bee for a full minute.
After his failed attempt at naked meditation, a severely chafed Aaron decides he might be better off going to the park where his attempts to meditate won’t face the same manner of distraction. The park is a patch of green five blocks square with a tennis court at one end, a playground at the other, and a communal lawn laced with unevenly paved asphalt paths in between. Aaron sits underneath one of the many trees dotting the grass and pretends he is about to sit for forty nine days to reach Supreme Enlightenment. He focuses on a dandelion. He pictures the world as interconnected — dandelion, insect, animal, and man all linked in karmic balance.
Aaron leans his back against the tree trunk and feels the bark press into his skin. If he puts his ear against the tree when the wind blows, he hears a rushing sound that reminds him of the ocean.
We are all water,
he tells himself. It seems like a very Buddhist thing to think. He wishes there were someone to appreciate it with him. But being a Buddhist is a lonely business in Montgomery County, where the yellow pages go from Buckets — Decorative to Builders with nothing in between.
Loneliness is not Buddhism’s only problem. For all its profundity, Buddhism lacks the immediacy of Aaron’s airplane wing experience. Even though Aaron knows it was only a flashing red light, he cannot forget the sense of absolute assurance that filled him with the idea that God was right there. The closer Aaron looks for God in Buddhism, the more he feels he’s gazing at a trick hidden picture, where the zebra you’re supposed to find isn’t actually there.
Aaron has left the tree and is sitting on a bench reading
Are You a Hindu?
when a man sits opposite him on the bench. The man, a little older than Aaron, is wearing a hat and a kind expression. The man has nothing to read and doesn’t seem to be waiting for anyone, but still manages to look completely at home. Aaron, who always feels he has to look as if he is doing something or at least preparing to do something to feel he belongs anywhere, is intrigued.
“So, are you?” the man suddenly says, making Aaron jump.
Aaron wonders if this is the kind of man he’s heard about on the news, the kind who goes to parks to find others like him to be homos with. Aaron briefly considers saying
I am,
just to see the spark of interest that might ignite in the man’s eyes. He blushes.
“No, no,” he mumbles. “I’m not … that way.”
The man nods knowingly. “Too many gods?”
Aaron stares.
The man smiles patiently, as if he has all day to explain. “In your book. Too many gods. It’s why you’re not a Hindu.”
Aaron lets out a breath and waves
Are You a Hindu?
weakly in his hand. “Oh … yeah. Too many gods.”
“And the caste system. To call anyone an untouchable, to say they are less worthy than anyone else … it’s an insult to humanity and to the God who created us all.”
Aaron finds himself nodding even though he’s pretty sure he hasn’t gotten to that chapter yet.
“My name is John, but my friends call me Chali. Are you studying religion in school?” Chali’s handshake is warm.
“Um, no. I’m just doing it … for myself.”
Chali nods gravely. “Something is missing.”
Aaron blanches, fleetingly wonders if this Chali person is some kind of religious truant officer who can tell he’s playing hooky from Judaism. Aaron pictures being escorted home and handed over to Saul.
We found your son studying unaffiliated religious books in the park.
“What do you mean?” Aaron replies, hoping his voice belies his imagination.
“You feel like something’s missing from your life and, rather than settle for that, you’ve decided to do something about it.”
Aaron shrugs, still wary. “I guess so.”
“And now you’re wondering why a total stranger would say these things. It’s because I recognize the look on your face. I used to feel the same way. I was raised Catholic, but it felt empty. I was about your age when I started reading about the Eastern religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism — and I was a Buddhist for a while, but it still didn’t feel quite right.”
“Yeah.” Aaron’s initial fear is overshadowed by the excitement of engaging an actual person in theological discussion. “I mean, the ideas are nice but — ”
Chali’s smile fills his face. “It feels more like a philosophy than a religion. It’s not direct enough.”
“Exactly!”
Aaron feels his entire body relax. Chali is looking straight into Aaron’s eyes, but for some reason it doesn’t make Aaron feel nervous. Aaron takes a deep breath, a breath that sends air to parts of him that have never gotten any, and tells Chali everything, starting with the airplane wing and ending with the park bench, skipping only the naked parts in between.
There are four Comfort Counselors. They appear at irregular intervals, the girl with the brown braid and the boy with no chin sometimes appearing twice before the boy with the bad skin or the girl with the disproportionately small nose. They hover at the edge of the stage like benevolent vultures, edging closer as the speller begins the descent into a word, waiting to swoop at the sound of the bell.
The counselors are college age and therefore ancient. Though it is understood by Eliza and the others that their comforters are all ex-bee participants, it is impossible to picture them seated on a stage. “The bee gets harder every year,” a three-year repeater near Eliza whispers when the Comfort Counselors are introduced. “I mean, in the seventies, you could win with a word like ‘incisor.’ These guys have, like, no idea.”
Brown Braid and Bad Skin hug. Tiny Nose and No Chin don’t. It is agreed that Tiny Nose and No Chin’s comfort is preferable. Nothing amplifies failure like the hug of a stranger.
The stage seethes with nervous energy. Hands grip and release seat bottoms, feet tap out frenetic rhythms, fingers tug at ears and noses, lips are chewed, foreheads scrunch, necks stretch, joints crack, teeth grind, and knees bounce. Eliza’s seat in the second to last row allows her to engage in her nervous habits with some degree of privacy. In addition to biting the insides of her cheeks, giving her the look of a heavy-jawed fish, her big toe rubs unconsciously against the inside of her shoe, resulting in a blister whose origins will remain mysterious to her.
Eliza’s obstructed view also saves her from the compulsion of finding and then staring at her father in the audience. Instead, she becomes fixated on the raised mole of a pale skinny girl a row ahead and three seats to the right. The mole is a nut-brown thing the size of a dime, with a surface like cream of wheat. Every time the girl’s turn approaches, Eliza watches her unconsciously rub the mole with the pad of her right pointer finger, a gentle but persistent prodding that makes Eliza uncomfortable.
Tics increase in intensity with approaching turns, a wave of ner-vous energy that crosses the stage as each round progresses. By the time the home-schooled girl is called to the mike, anxiety has turned her into a hunchback. Her slouch combines with nervous arm-flapping to transform her, as she walks, into a huge flightless bird, its terrified eyes silently pleading, just this once, to be allowed to fly.
The pronouncer, a Midwestern English professor with the eyes and jowls of a bulldog, is in his eleventh year of force-feeding spelling words to bee contestants. The home-schooled girl doesn’t look at him, focuses all her energy on the microphone stand. She hasn’t slept solidly for the past three days. Her numbered placard is dog-eared from her tendency to suck its corners.
“Number 36, your word is
TUBULAR
.”
“
TUBULAR
.” Slight arm flap.
“Number 36, could you please speak a little louder?”
“
TUBULAR
.”
“I’m sorry, Number 36 … .” The judge consults a list. “Rachel?” It’s the first time Eliza has heard the girl’s name. “Rachel, we need you to speak louder so that we can hear you. Right now, we can’t hear you at all. Your word is
TUBULAR
.”
It’s impossible for Eliza to see Rachel’s face, no way for her to observe the way Rachel’s mouth and eyes have tightened up, as if she needs to squeeze her voice from the very bottom of her throat. Rachel’s arms go stiff and still, her wings frozen. Then her voice explodes into the microphone and out the speakers, jolting most of the audience members from their seats.
“
TUBULAR
.
T-U-B-U-L-A-R
.
TUBULAR
.”
It is too fast, a blur of sudden sound, but Rachel knows she is right before she is told, returns to her seat in proud, hunchless strides with barely any arm-flapping. Eliza realizes she is frightened for the girl, finds herself half hoping Rachel will win just to spare everyone the horror of watching her lose.
They are all silently spelling together, a chorus of moving mouths stringing letters together in soundless prayer. Each silent spelling is a completed penance protecting against future failure at the microphone. Number 43 thanks the judge in a polite Texan drawl before being escorted offstage for misspelling
MONIKER
. Number 57 removes her placard as soon as she hears the ding. She holds it away from her like a dead thing that has begun to smell as
CORONET
is spelled back to her minus her extra R.
There is more applause for misspellings than for successes, a consolation most spellers miss at the time of their defeat, the ding absorbing all other sound. Her first turn at the mike, Eliza focuses exclusively on the pronouncer and the microphone, too intent upon ensuring her survival to locate her father. The microphone gives off a stale breath smell. There is something wedged in a section of its wind guard. It might be a piece of egg.
Between rounds, spellers are permitted to stand and stretch, but they may not leave the stage. Eliza wanders to the stage’s edge with a few others to look out over the rows of seats. She finds Saul midway back, flagging her with his arms, and gives a tentative wave. Saul beams and mouths something back to her, but Elly can’t tell what it is. She smiles and nods. Saul gives her a thumbs up. The judge calls for the spellers to reclaim their seats.
At a table abutting the front of the stage sits the official spelling bee recording technician. Eliza is unaware of this until Number 63, a ner-vous boy with tiny wrists, spells his word in a blur and, after sitting back down, is told that his word is being reviewed on tape to verify his spelling. The news causes him to start shivering uncontrollably. His teeth rattle so loudly Eliza can hear them three rows and half a stage away. After fifteen seconds that to those in chattering-teeth range seems much, much longer, the judge announces that Number 63’s spelling has been verified. The shivering stops. Number 64, who has been waiting at the mike this whole time, is given
HALCYON
which, making sure to spell at a comprehensible pace, she spells with an I. At the sound of the ding, she bursts into tears and runs offstage avoiding Brown Braid, who signals to No Chin for backup. The two corral Number 64 into the Quiet Room.
By college, Miriam’s interactions with her parents have been reduced to monthly phone calls and an annual December visit. While they are still living, this seems like a good arrangement. Mel and Ruth have come to realize they’ve created a child whom, in their attempt to give the best of everything, they have never gotten to know. Christmas break is generally all they can manage of this almost-stranger without being overcome by regret or guilt. Miriam, for her part, doesn’t miss something she’s never had. Her annual visit home is like a trip to a favorite reference library, her parents primary sources to be examined. Through them she confirms her roots, observing enough of herself in them to assuage her general sense of at-oddness with the world. She and her parents reflect each other like funhouse mirrors, one trait stretched, another shrunk. Home is a place where her eccentricities have a clear source.
Miriam delights in the meticulous way her father arranges and eats his food, the way her mother jumps from topic to topic as she speaks. From them she inherits her tendency to group things in threes and fives. She senses her parents’ discomfort around her but considers it a problem set they will eventually solve. The day they say, “But you’re just like us!” she will nod sagely, a pleased professor, and reveal that she has known this all along. Perhaps it is in subconscious revenge for their inattention that she hoards this information. Perhaps she merely assumes there will be time.
Miriam’s junior year roommate Martha answers the phone on the first ring. Martha has been expecting a call from her boyfriend Jerome and is reluctant to relinquish the receiver, afraid he will try to call while Miriam is talking to this stranger who isn’t Jerome and is holding up the line. But Martha should have known not to worry, Miriam is not a phone person and the call is short. When Martha hears the click of the phone being replaced she turns to make sure it’s completely hung up — Miriam has a tendency to leave it off the hook — and that’s when she notices Miriam’s face.