Cassius and I stand there, looking at Tableau II for a long, long time.
“How did he get it so perfect?” Cassius says. “It’s like a machine painted it.”
“Right—Mondrian’s probably like, ‘The hardest part was building the robot.’”
Cassius laughs, and adds, “‘Once I did that, the painting was easy! I just pushed a button and it took five minutes!’”
“Except a robot couldn’t paint this,” I say. “It could paint squares, but it couldn’t paint this. It really . . . it says something, you know?”
Cassius nods, and I nod, and we stand there, looking at the painting and bobbing our heads, like we’re hearing some kind of music until a security guard comes over and politely asks us to take a step back from the painting. I guess we are breathing on it too much.
We walk around the museum a bit more until my stomach lets out this loud, obnoxious gurgle, and I’m all embarrassed, but Cassius just says, “I brought my lunch—do you want to eat in the park?”
And I’m like sure why not because I have my lunch, too, and Central Park is right across the street.
We sit down, and he pulls out a sandwich. It’s, like, an old-school baloney sandwich, and he has an apple and a bag of chips and so I’m happy because most of the girls at my school usually have some kind of artfully designed bento box situation packed by their parents or personal chefs or whatever. And I—who pack my own lunch and do not have the time or ability to cut a cucumber into the shape of a koala—usually have a bagel with cream cheese and tomato and a bag of these weird dried fruit things that my mom bought that are actually really good.
“So—what school do you go to?” I ask.
“I don’t.” Cassius is wearing his dark sunglasses, and I can’t really tell if he is joking or not.
“You don’t go to school?”
“I’m unschooled.”
“Oh.” I don’t really know what to say to this. “I’m . . . sorry?”
He laughs, and he has this really silly laugh that’s like a little giggle, like heeheeheeheehee, and that makes me laugh, and I let out a snort, which makes him giggle again. “So—wait,” I say. “What do you mean you’re unschooled?”
“Unschooling is like homeschooling,” Cassius explains. “Except my parents don’t believe in making lesson plans. They just think I should follow my passions and interests.”
“Ohmygosh—is that legal?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now. Like, maybe I could be unschooled? And just wander around the city all day going to museums, like Cassius does? How can I convince my parents????
Cassius laughs. “Yes. They’re both college professors, so don’t worry—I’m learning. I have to read a book a week and write a report on it, and I have to write a paper every month summarizing what I’ve learned in whatever subject I’m studying. So.”
“A book a week?”
“Unless it’s really long. For Dickens, I get two weeks.”
Ugggh. Disappointment. That sounds like as much work as Haverton. I shift my legs a little and flick a piece of grass off of my knee. “I wouldn’t want my mom grading my papers.”
“Yeah. I don’t get grades, but I have to discuss the paper with them.”
“Oh, jeez, even worse.”
Cassius laughs. “So—where do you go to school?”
“Haverton.”
“Why aren’t you there right now?”
“It’s spring vacation.”
He tilts his head back and sort of scowls down at my clothes. “Isn’t that a uniform?”
“This is just how I dress.” Hm. Let me just clarify that the uniform includes a white button-down shirt, a blue plaid pleated skirt, and knee-high socks. Nobody dresses like this on purpose, but it’s like Anna used to say—sometimes a lie is as good as the truth, especially when you hardly know the person you’re talking to.
“Since you’re on vacation—what are you doing tomorrow? I was going to go to the Museum of Modern Art.”
I say yes so quickly that I surprise myself. And then, like a crazy person, I add, “Just don’t be surprised if I’m wearing the same clothes again tomorrow. I have intense personal style.”
Cassius sticks out his lower lip, like he’s thinking of calling me on it. Instead, he says, “I probably wouldn’t even notice.” Then he looks up at the sky.
“Look at that one cloud,” I say. “He’s all alone up there.” The sky is magnificently blue, and clear for miles. There is only one little cloud that looks like a Magritte cloud, if you know what that looks like—like a child’s painting of a cloud, puffy and perfectly white.
“I wonder if he’s lonely.”
“‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’” I say.
Cassius’s head does not move, but his eyes look at me out of the side of his sunglasses. Sidelong, that’s the word. “You know the poem?”
“We just read it two weeks ago—don’t get too impressed.” This is true. I liked it, so I remembered it. It’s not that hard.
Cassius turns toward me then, very carefully, very fully. Like he’s looking at one of the paintings in the museum. I see myself reflected in his sunglasses—distorted, with a giant forehead and yellow skin. I have to look away.
“You’re not going to whisper your secret thoughts into your smartphone? And write a report on me later?” I ask.
“You’re a lot smarter than you like to pretend.”
“I’m not pretending.” And his comment sort of irritates me because I’m like—what the heck? “This is just how I talk.”
“Hm,” he says. He pulls up a blade of grass, then chucks it away and stands up. He brushes grass off his khakis, then smiles apologetically. “Look, it’s been cool hanging with you. But I’d better get going.”
“How come?” Now I’m a little mad. You can’t just call a girl maybe possibly unsmart and then take off.
He crinkles his lips in this sort of embarrassed way. “I’ve got to find a restroom,” he admits.
“Oh. That’s easy.” I stand up and sling my messenger bag over my shoulder. “There’s nothing in this part of the park. The closest thing is at my grandma’s place.”
And so that is how Cassius meets my grandmother.
CHAPTER NUMBER WHATEVER WE’RE UP TO NOW
In which Cassius makes my grandmother cry
BIDDY LIKES CASSIUS RIGHT away. The minute I open the door, the cat trots right up to him and starts winding around his legs and looking up at him and giving him the big-eyed sputtery meow.
Cassius bends down holds out his hand, and Biddy sniffs his fingertips delicately, then rubs her face against his palm.
“Hello?” I say to the cat. “I’m standing right here?”
She continues to ignore me. She keeps rubbing up against Cassius and purring, like, I love you, I love you, I love you! I am, truth be told, a little jealous, but to be fair, I have seen her do this same thing to a table leg.
“Cats are crazy about me,” Cassius says. “They can tell I’m allergic.” He pulls off his sunglasses, wincing a little.
Grandma Hildy is, once again, not home. I show Cassius where the bathroom is, and then flop down on the comfy couch. Something hard pokes me in the back, and I pull a book from behind the couch cushion. Iacocca, by Lee Iacocca. Who’s that? I flip open to the book description. It says that he turned around Chrysler, which is funny, because I did not even know that Chrysler was still making buildings, although I really like the one they have downtown. It’s shiny.
When I riffle through the pages, a note drops out.
Enjoy!
Love, Earl
Ooooooo. Love?
I tuck the note back into the book and stick it back between the couch cushions. I don’t want Grandma to know that I know her secret.
Cassius returns and stops by the buffet that sits right across from Gran’s front door. It’s crammed with silver-framed photos. He picks up the largest and holds it almost under his chin. “Is this your family?”
I go over and look. “Yes, that’s my dad. That’s my mom, and Desmond as a baby. That’s me.” I’m five in the photo, and standing on tiptoe to kiss Des’s head as he sleeps in my mother’s arms.
“Who’s that?” Cassius picks up a black-and-white picture of a stern-looking man with glasses.
“That’s my grandfather. Constantine.”
Cassius squints, and twists his head. “He looks pretty serious.”
“He was pretty serious.” I shake my head at my grandfather’s beak of a nose. He looks like an eagle, like a picture of him should be on the dollar bill or something. “He owned a plastic bag company.”
Cassius’s mouth dimples slightly. “That doesn’t sound serious.”
“Ever been grocery shopping?” My grandfather always said that when he arrived in New York City, he had three dollars in his pocket, and by the time he was thirty, he was a multimillionaire! He always said it like that, with an exclamation mark and everything, like he was hosting a game show and was also the winner. When he died, he left a big chunk of money to Grandma Hildy, and the rest to the Bookmobile Association. I’m not even kidding. At the time, there were all of these newspaper articles about what a great man my grandfather was and how amazing it was that he supported literacy and outreach to rural and underprivileged communities, and I’m sure all of that is true, but what I remember is that my dad spent, like, a week in bed. I was superworried that my dad was going to die of a broken heart because his father had passed away, so I started eavesdropping on my parents, and that is how I learned that my grandfather left my dad exactly zero dollars in his will. I guess he was afraid that money would spoil his son, or some such.
All of this is to say that my grandfather was a complicated guy. Complicated, and, yes, serious.
Cassius tilts his head back and studies the painting over the bookcase. “Is that your dad?”
“That’s my uncle Lawrence.”
Cassius’s eyes flick up to me. “The one who had your messenger bag?”
“Yeah.”
“He was handsome.”
“He painted that. He was an artist.”
“How did your serious grandfather like that?”
“I never really asked,” I confess. To tell you the truth, people don’t talk about my uncle very much, and I never asked many questions about him.
I don’t really sleep over at Grandma Hildy’s much anymore, since we live so close now, but when I did, I would sleep in my uncle’s old room. Grandma made it into a study with a pretty daybed, but she left up one of his old souvenirs—it’s an autographed photo of Cyndi Lauper. It’s signed with two Xs, and I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked her. My uncle liked her, too.
The door swings open and my grandmother walks in, looking flushed and happy, like maybe she has been running. When she sees me, she starts a little in surprise and says, “Oh!”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt, just as a paper flutters past my nose. The open door has created a cross breeze with the window, and now a pulse of air rushes through the apartment, sending a pile of open bills and medical forms and whatnot on the sideboard swirling into the air and around us like a flock of startled pigeons.
For a moment, we are distracted. I try to catch a flying paper, while Gran stops a few from escaping through the door. Once it’s closed, the breeze stops and the papers rain down on us, and Cassius drops to the floor and begins assembling envelopes, and for a moment we are completely distracted, gathering papers and other stuff to put them into some sort of proper order until we have them back on the sideboard in a jagged but somewhat pile-ishlooking pile.
Cassius hands Gran the final envelope with an apologetic smile, and then she notices the framed photo of my grandfather out of its usual place. Her eyes get a little stuck on the picture and well up. “Oh,” she says, like she’s catching her breath. She looks over at me, as if she is having trouble sorting her thoughts.
“I’ll . . . I’ll put this back.” Cassius is awkward, but he manages to get the photo back into more or less the right spot.
“Thank you, young man,” Grandma Hildy says a little formally, and I say, “Gran, this is Cassius.” My grandmother gazes at me for a moment, and only then do I realize that it is maybe a little weird to have a strange boy in my grandmother’s apartment since she is a little bit old-school and I am thinking that maybe she will think this is very and highly improper and whatnot.
I am about to jump in and babble something, but Cassius reaches out his hand and says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am.”
Grandma Hildy’s eyebrows bounce up in approval at the word “ma’am,” and I am impressed that Cassius thought of it because I never, ever say sir or ma’am or anything. “Cassius,” my grandmother repeats. “What an elegant name.”
“It’s the greatest,” Cassius says, and his black eyes sparkle and my grandmother laughs as if this is a joke and a part of me wonders whether I am missing something and I have to just add that it is kind of a little bit annoying to think that maybe my grandmother is getting a joke that I am not.
Grandma Hildy turns to me with a knowing little smile, and I must tell you that it’s a so-this-is-your-boyfriend smile and I am suddenly seeing what my grandmother is seeing—a handsome boy with curly black hair—and those thoughts make my face hot, which only makes everything worse because nothing is more embarrassing than being embarrassed. And I can’t explain anything without looking like a lunatic, so I say, “Cassius just had to use the bathroom. We were about to leave.”
Then, of course, my grandmother says the most Grandma Hildy thing ever, the only thing possible in a situation like this. She turns to Cassius and asks, “Would you like some kourabiedes?”
Cassius looks over at me, and I give a little shrug. Because, of course, I want to leave. But I also want the cookies. So I am what Althea Orris calls internally conflicted.
“I don’t know what that is,” Cassius admits finally, “but I know that the answer is yes.”
And that is basically all it takes for my grandmother to be crazy about Cassius.
CHAPTER OKAY I WENT BACK AND COUNTED AND IT’S EIGHT
In which our heroine experiences a memory
HERE IS THE THING about Cassius: he is elegant. This is what I am realizing as he sits there, eating the kourabiedes and seriously and truly making small talk with my grandmother. He asked her if her table was from the arts and crafts period, and my grandmother has gone off on a superlong tale about finding it at a flea market and refinishing it and then authenticating it and so on, and Cassius is acting like she is a genius and this story is fascinating and it’s all just happening without me because I barely know what they are talking about. This table is just so basic. It’s a circle; who cares?
Anyway, the whole thing reminds me of my old best friend, Anna, and last Thanksgiving, and then I get a sick feeling in my stomach and I try to make it go away by shoveling more cookies on top of it, but that does not work.
The thing is, I didn’t like Haverton at first. When I met Zelda and Min last fall, I wasn’t too friendly, because I just assumed they were snobs. They looked like snobs, with their shiny hair and all. I avoided talking to them. And to everyone else, for that matter, and my first few months at Haverton were pretty lonely. So, at Thanksgiving, Dad suggested that I have Anna come and spend a few days “in the city” with us. People in New York and New Jersey call New York City just “the city,” which is kind of funny when you think about it, because even the people in Oz said “the Emerald City,” though there didn’t seem to be any other cities around, and there are at least three other cities that are right by Manhattan, including Jersey City. But whatever.
So my dad said, “Invite Anna!” because my parents were planning on having a few people over for after-Thanksgiving pie and coffee and the more you bite off, the more you can chew, as they say. So, okay.
Anna came over on Wednesday, and we had a superfun time making popcorn and watching Back to the Future (because she i
s also into retro stuff) and staying up late and all of that. But the next day, when it was time for Thanksgiving, Anna just put on her jeans and a sweatshirt, and my mom kinda had a minor flip-out.
The minute Anna went to the bathroom, Mom pulled me aside. “Callie, is Anna planning to wear jeans to our Pie Soiree?”
“I guess.”
“She’s not going to get dressed up?”
“Thanksgiving is pretty casual at her house, Mom.” I had been over to Anna’s house after Thanksgiving, and I can tell you that it is way casual, and involves football and bilingual yelling at the television set. It also involves “gobbleritos” for supper, which is something that Anna and her brother made up, which is a burrito made out of turkey leftovers and is scrumptious. “The only one who gets dressed up is her mom, and she’s always dressed up.”
“Look, I make soap for a living, and even I put on a dress. We want to make an impression. The people coming to our party are . . .” Mom couldn’t come up with the right word.
“Rich?”
“They will be dressed appropriately.”
“Appropriately for what?”
“For a Pie Soiree. Look, Callie, I need your help. This crowd is snobby, what can I say?”
“So?”
“Look, they hang out with Martha Stewart and Oprah, and we don’t want to look like a bunch of slobs!” She took my hand. “They are already living the life we are trying to manifest.”