Middlesex

  I worried at times that my crocus was too elaborate a bloom, not a common perennial but a hothouse flower, a hybrid named by its originator like a rose. Iridescent Hellene. Pale Olympus. Greek Fire. But no—that wasn’t right. My crocus wasn’t for show. It was in a state of becoming and might turn out fine if I waited patiently. Maybe it happened like this to everybody. In the meantime, it was best to keep everything under wraps. Which was what I was doing down in the basement.

  Another tradition at Baker & Inglis: every year the eighth graders put on a classical Greek play. Originally, these plays had been performed in the Middle School auditorium. But after Mr. da Silva took his trip to Greece, he got the idea of converting the hockey field into a theater. With its bleachers set into the slope and its natural acoustics, it was a perfect mini-Epidaurus. The custodial staff brought risers out and set up a stage on the grass.

  The year of my infatuation with the Obscure Object, the play Mr. da Silva selected was Antigone. There were no auditions. Mr. da Silva filled the major roles with his pets from Advanced English. Everyone else he stuck in the chorus. So the cast list read like this: Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio as Creon; Tina Kubek as Eurydice; Maxine Grossinger as Ismene. In the role of Antigone herself—the only real possibility from even a physical standpoint—was the Obscure Object. Her midterm grade had been only a C minus. Still, Mr. da Silva knew a star when he saw one.

  “We have to learn all these lines?” asked Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio at our first rehearsal. “In two weeks?”

  “Learn what you can,” said Mr. da Silva. “Everyone’s going to be wearing a robe. You can keep your script underneath. Miss Fagles will also be our prompter. She’ll be in the orchestra pit.”

  “We’re going to have an orchestra?” Maxine Grossinger wanted to know.

  “The orchestra,” Mr. da Silva said, pointing to his recorder, “is I.”

  “I hope it doesn’t rain,” said the Object.

  “Will it rain the Friday after next?” said Mr. da Silva. “Why don’t we ask our Tiresias?” And then he turned to me.

  You expected someone else? No, if the Obscure Object was perfect to play the avenging sister, I was a shoo-in to play the old, blind prophet. My wild hair suggested clairvoyance. My stoop made me appear brittle with age. My half-changed voice had a disembodied, inspired quality. Tiresias had also been a woman, of course. But I didn’t know that then. And it wasn’t mentioned in the script.

  I didn’t care what part I played. All that mattered, all I could think about, was that now I would be near the Obscure Object. Not near her as I was during class, when it was impossible to speak. Not near her as I was in the lunchroom, when she was spitting milk at another table. But near her in rehearsals for a school play, with all the waiting around that implied, all the backstage intimacy, all the intense, fraught, giddy, emotional abandon brought on by assuming identities not your own.

  “I don’t think we should use scripts,” the Obscure Object now declared. She had arrived for rehearsal looking professional, all her lines highlighted in yellow. Her sweater was tied around her shoulders like a cloak. “I think we should all memorize our lines.” She looked from face to face. “Otherwise it’ll be too fakey.”

  Mr. da Silva was smiling. Learning lines would require effort on the Object’s part. A novel undertaking. “Antigone has far and away the most lines,” he said. “So if Antigone wants to be off book, then I think the rest of you should be off book, too.”

  The other girls groaned. But Tiresias, already having a vision of the future, turned toward the Object. “I’ll go over your lines with you. If you want.”

  The future. It was already happening. The Object was looking at me. The nictitating membranes were lifting. “Okay,” she said, distantly.

  We agreed to meet the next day, a Tuesday evening. The Obscure Object wrote out her address and Tessie dropped me at the house. She was sitting on a green velvet sofa when I was shown into the library. Her oxfords were off but she still had her uniform on. Her long red hair was tied back, the better to do what she was doing, which was to light her cigarette. Sitting Indian style, the Object leaned forward, holding the cigarette in her mouth over a green ceramic lighter shaped like an artichoke. The lighter was low on fluid. She shook it and flicked the button with her thumb until at last a small flame shot out.

  “Your parents let you smoke?” I said.

  She looked up, surprised, then returned to the work at hand. She got the cigarette going, inhaled deeply, and let it out, slowly, satisfyingly. “They smoke,” she said. “They’d be pretty big hypocrites if they didn’t let me smoke.”

  “But they’re adults.”

  “Mummy and Daddy know I’m going to smoke if I want to. If they don’t let me do it, I’ll just sneak it.”

  By the looks of it, this dispensation had been in effect for some time. The Object was not new to smoking. She was already a professional. As she sized me up, her eyes narrowing, the cigarette hung aslant from her mouth. Smoke drifted close to her face. It was a strange opposition: the hard-bitten private-eye expression on the face of a girl wearing a uniform for private school. Finally she reached up and took the cigarette out of her mouth. Without looking for the ashtray, she flicked her ash. It fell in.

  “I doubt a kid like you smokes,” she said.

  “That would be a good guess.”

  “You interested in starting?” She held out her pack of Tareytons.

  “I don’t want to get cancer.”

  She tossed the pack down, shrugging. “I figure they’ll be able to cure it by the time I get it.”

  “I hope so. For your sake.”

  She inhaled again, even more deeply. She held the smoke in and then turned in cinematic profile and let it out.

  “You don’t have any bad habits, I bet,” she said.

  “I’ve got tons of bad habits.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I chew my hair.”

  “I bite my nails,” she said competitively. She lifted one hand to show me. “Mummy got me this stuff to put on them. It tastes like shit. It’s supposed to help you quit.”

  “Does it work?”

  “At first it did. But now I sort of like the taste.” She smiled. I smiled. Then, briefly, trying it out, we laughed together.

  “That’s not as bad as chewing your hair,” I resumed.

  “Why not?”

  “Because when you chew your hair it starts smelling like what you had for lunch.”

  She made a face and said, “Bogue.”

  At school we would have felt funny talking together, but here no one could see us. In the bigger scheme of things, out in the world, we were more alike than different. We were both teenagers. We were both from the suburbs. I set down my bag and came over to the sofa. The Object put her Tareyton in her mouth. Planting her palms on either side of her crossed legs, she lifted herself up, like a yogi levitating, and scooted over to make room for me.

  “I’ve got a history test tomorrow,” she said.

  “Who do you have for history?”

  “Miss Schuyler.”

  “Miss Schuyler has a vibrator in her desk.”

  “A what!”

  “A vibrator. Liz Clark saw it. It’s in her bottom drawer.”

  “I can’t believe it!” The Object was shocked, amused. But then she squinted, thinking. In a confidential voice she asked, “What are those for, anyway?”

  “Vibrators?”

  “Yeah.” She knew she was supposed to know. But she trusted I wouldn’t make fun of her. This was the form of the pact we made that day: I would handle the deep intellectual matters, like vibrators; she would handle the social sphere.

  “Most women can’t have orgasms by regular intercourse,” I said, quoting from the copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves Meg Zemka had given me. “They need clitoral stimulation.”

  Behind her freckles, a blush rose to the Object’s face. She was, of course, transfixed by such information. I was speaking into her
left ear. The blush spread across her face from that side, as if my words left a visible trace.

  “I can’t believe you know all this stuff.”

  “I’ll tell you who knows about it. Miss Schuyler, that’s who.”

  The laugh, the hoot, shot out of her mouth like a geyser, and then the Object was falling back on the couch. She screamed, with delight, with revulsion. She kicked her legs, knocking her cigarettes off the table. She was fourteen again, instead of twenty-four, and against all odds we were becoming friends.

  “ ‘Unwept, unfriended, without marriage song, I am led forth in my horror—’ ”

  “ ‘—sorrow—’ ”

  “ ‘—in my sorrow on this journey that can be delayed no more. No longer . . .’ ”

  “ ‘. . . hapless one . . .’ ”

  “ ‘Hapless one!’ I hate that! ‘No longer, hapless one, may I behold yon day-star’s sacred eye; but for my fate no tear is shed, no . . . no . . .’ ”

  “ ‘No friend makes moan.’ ”

  “ ‘No friend makes moan.’ ”

  We were at the Object’s house again, going over our lines. We were in the sun room, sprawled on the Caribbean sofas. Parrots flocked behind the Object’s head as she squeezed her eyes shut, reciting. We’d been at it for two hours. The Object had gone through almost a full pack. Beulah, the maid, brought us sandwiches on a tray along with two sixty-four-ounce bottles of Tab. The sandwiches were white, crustless, but not cucumber or watercress. A salmon-colored spread caked the spongy bread.

  We took frequent breaks. The Object required constant refreshment. I still wasn’t comfortable in the house. I couldn’t get used to being waited on. I kept jumping up to serve myself. Beulah was black, too, which didn’t make it any easier.

  “I’m really glad we’re in this play together,” the Object said, munching. “I would’ve never talked to a kid like you.” She paused, realizing how this sounded. “I mean, I never knew you were such a cool kid.”

  Cool? Calliope cool? I had never dreamed of such a thing. But I was ready to accept the Object’s judgment.

  “Can I tell you something, though?” she asked. “About your part?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know how you’re supposed to be blind and everything? Well, where we go in Bermuda there’s this man who runs a hotel. And he’s blind. And the thing about him is, it’s like his ears are his eyes. Like if someone comes into the room, he turns one ear that way. The way you do it—” She stopped suddenly and seized my hand. “You’re not getting mad at me, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve got the worst expression on your face, Callie!”

  “I do?”

  She had my hand. She wasn’t letting go. “You sure you’re not mad?”

  “I’m not mad.”

  “Well, the way you pretend to be blind is you just, sort of, stumble around a lot. But the thing is, this blind man down in Bermuda, he never stumbles. He stands up really straight and he knows where everything is. And his ears are always focusing in on stuff.”

  I turned my face away.

  “See, you’re mad!”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m being blind,” I said. “I’m looking at you with my ear.”

  “Oh. That’s good. Yeah, like that. That’s really good.”

  Without letting go of my hand, she leaned closer and I heard, felt, very softly, her hot breath in my ear. “Hi, Tiresias,” she said, giggling. “It’s me. Antigone.”

  The day of the play arrived (“opening night” we called it, though there would be no others). In an improvised “dressing room” behind the stage we lead actors sat on folding chairs. The rest of the eighth graders were already onstage, standing in a big semicircle. The play was set to begin at seven o’clock and finish before sunset. It was 6:55. Beyond the flats we could hear the hockey field filling up. The low rumble got steadily louder—voices, footsteps, the creaking of bleachers, and the slamming of car doors up in the parking lot. We were each dressed in a floor-length robe, tie-dyed black, gray, and white. The Obscure Object, however, was wearing a white robe. Mr. da Silva’s concept was minimal: no makeup, no masks.

  “How many people are out there?” Tina Kubek asked.

  Maxine Grossinger peeked out. “Tons.”

  “You must be used to this, Maxine,” I said. “From all your recitals.”

  “I don’t get nervous when I’m playing the violin. This is way worse.”

  “I am sooo nervous,” the Object said.

  In her lap she had a jar of Rolaids, which she was eating like candy. I understood now why she had pounded her chest the first day of class. The Obscure Object suffered from a more or less constant case of heartburn. It was worse during times of stress. A few minutes earlier, she had wandered off to smoke her last cigarette before showtime. Now she was chewing on the antacid tablets. Part of coming from old money, apparently, was having old-person habits, those gross, adult needs and desperate palliatives. The Object was still too young for the effects to tell on her. She didn’t have eye bags yet or stained fingernails. But the appetite for sophisticated ruin was already there. She smelled like smoke, if you got close. Her stomach was a mess. But her face continued to give off its autumnal display. The cat eyes above the snub nose were alert, blinking and resetting their attention to the growing noise beyond the flats.

  “There’s my mom and dad!” Maxine Grossinger shouted. She turned back to us and broke into a big smile. I’d never seen Maxine smile before. Her teeth were jagged and gappy, like those of a Sendak creature. She had braces, too. Her unconcealed joy made me understand her. She had a whole other life apart from school. Maxine was happy in her house behind the cypresses. Meanwhile, curly hair gushed from her fragile, musical head.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Maxine was peeking out again. “They’re sitting right in the front row. They’re going to be staring right at me.”

  We all peeked out, each in our turn. Only the Obscure Object remained seated. I saw my parents arrive. Milton stopped at the crest of the slope to look down at the hockey field. His expression suggested that the spectacle before him, the emerald grass, the white wooden bleachers, the school in the distance with its blue slate roof and ivy, pleased him. In America, England is where you go to wash yourself of ethnicity. Milton had on a blue blazer and cream-colored trousers. He looked like the captain of a cruise ship. With one arm on her back, he was gently leading Tessie down the steps to get a good seat.

  We heard the audience grow quiet. Then a pan flute was heard—Mr. da Silva playing his recorder.

  I went over to the Object and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”

  She had been repeating her lines silently to herself but now stopped.

  “You’re a really good actress,” I continued.

  She turned away and lowered her head, moving her lips again.

  “You won’t forget your lines. We went over them a billion times. You had them down perfect yester—”

  “Will you stop bugging me for a minute?” the Object snapped. “I’m trying to get psyched up.” She glared at me. Then she turned and walked off.

  I stood watching her, crestfallen, hating myself. Cool? I was anything but. I’d already made the Obscure Object sick of me. Feeling as if I might cry, I grabbed one of the black curtains and wrapped myself up in it. I stood in the darkness, wishing I were dead.

  I hadn’t just been flattering her. She was good. Onstage, the Object’s fidgetiness stilled itself. Her posture improved. And of course there was the sheer physical fact of her, the blood-tinged blade that she was, the riot of color that caught everyone’s attention. The pan flute stopped and the hockey field got silent again. People coughed, getting it out of their systems. I peeked out from the curtains and saw the Object waiting to go on. She was standing just inside the middle arch, no more than ten feet from me. I had never seen her so serious before, so concentrated. Talent is a kind of intelligence. As she waited to
go on, the Obscure Object was coming into hers. Her lips moved as if she were speaking Sophocles’ lines to Sophocles himself, as if, contrary to all intellectual evidence, she understood the literary reasons for their endurance. So the Object stood, waiting to go on. Far away from her cigarettes and her snobbishness, her cliquish friends, her atrocious spelling. This was what she was good at: appearing before people. Stepping out and standing there and speaking. She was just beginning to realize it then. What I was witnessing was a self discovering the self it could be.

  On cue, our Antigone took a deep breath and walked onstage. Her white robe was cinched around her torso with silver braid. The robe fluttered as she stepped out in the warm breeze.

  “Wilt thou aid this hand to lift the dead?”

  Maxine-Ismene replied, “Thou wouldst bury him, when ’tis forbidden to Thebes?”

  “I will do my part, and thou wilt not, to a brother. False to him will I never be found.”

  I wasn’t on for a while. Tiresias wasn’t that big a part. So I closed the curtain around me again and waited. I had a staff in my hand. It was my only prop, a plastic stick painted to look like wood.

  It was then I heard a small, choking sound. Again the Object said, “False to him will I never be found.” Followed by silence. I peeked out the curtain. Through the central arch I could see them. The Object had her back to me. Farther downstage Maxine Grossinger stood with a blank look on her face. Her mouth was open, though no words were coming out. Beyond, just above the lip of the stage, was Miss Fagles’s florid face, whispering Maxine’s next line.