Sing Them Home Page 4

  Larken felt as though she’d been hit in the chest with a thunderbolt.

  “Would any of you care to venture a guess as to why I’ve used the word radical in reference to this painting?” the professor continued.

  Larken’s hand shot up. Other hands went up as well, but she was the one who got Arthur’s notice. He made a show of squinting from beneath his famously wiry brows and then shielding his eyes, calling up to her as if from the playing field of a sunlit stadium. “Ah!” he cried. “A voice from the cheap seats! Miss … ?”

  “Jones,” Larken replied. “Larken Jones.”

  “Yes, Miss Jones?”

  “She’s not in a church,” Larken ventured. “She doesn’t have a halo or anything.”

  “‘She?’” Arthur prompted with the icy disdain that was his trademark, a tactic meant to condition the faint of heart. “‘She’ who?”

  “The Virgin,” Larken replied, ignoring the subsequent wave of giggles. “The one in the middle. She doesn’t look special or holy. She’s just sitting in a regular room, like a living room or something, reading a book.”

  “Why is that significant?”

  Larken paused, realizing that he did not expect her to simply fill in the blanks of some thought that was already in his head.

  “Maybe because—”

  Arthur winced theatrically, as if physically wounded. Holding up his hand like a crossing guard keeping traffic at bay, he said, “Never preface your responses with ‘maybe,’ Miss Jones,” he said. “Or use words such as kinda or like or something or sorta.” His imitation of a waffling student evoked more laughter. “Render your opinion with linguistic authority at the very least, and your listener will be far more likely to give you a hearing.”

  Larken took a breath. “If an angel can come to the Virgin Mary while she’s sitting in a living room, then miraculous things can happen anywhere.”

  “And why is that important? Why is that radical?”

  “Well …”

  Again, Arthur recoiled, mock-pained. “A well, Miss Jones, is a hole in the ground.”

  Larken persevered. “If God can be anywhere, then how can churches and priests and”—Larken faltered; she was about to say people like that—“How will clergymen be able to convince people to give them money? If there’s no need for churches, then there’s no need for collection plates.”

  Arthur nodded and stared at her for a moment—whatever test he’d put her to, she had passed—and then said, “Good, Miss Jones. Quite good.” He resumed his address to the class at large, pretending that she’d faded once again into back-row obscurity. But Larken wasn’t fooled; something special had passed between them. She’d been noticed.

  “Simply by presenting the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary in a commonplace setting,” Arthur continued, “an ordinary, middle-class home, and by portraying her as a real, robust young woman without a halo, the artist has done something that has far-reaching, political, and in that sense, radical implications.”

  And that was how it began: with Arthur requiring her to translate amorphous, sloppy feeling into formed language, training her from that moment on to use clear and specific words in the service of clear and specific ideas.

  Six characters inhabit the Mérode Annunciation: mother, angel, monk, nun, gatekeeper, carpenter. Larken has been studying them, weaving stories and asking questions about them for over half her life. On any given day, one of them will advance to the foreground of her mind and imagination, demanding scrutiny, while others recede from view.

  Today her attention is drawn to the center panel of the triptych, where the Virgin Mary—eternally luminous and young, her face smooth, almost plump—sits on the floor of a small, ordinary chamber in a middle-class Flemish house. She is reading. She wears a voluminous rose-colored robe—one senses that the body beneath is solid, well-fed, even roly-poly with residual baby fat—and a trick of divine light causes a star to appear within the complex folds of cloth. The angel has just arrived; in its wake, so tiny as to be inscrutable except in extreme close-up, is the spirit of the Christ child. Symbolized by a cherubic naked form no bigger than the Virgin’s forefinger, the Son of God shoulders a plain wooden cross and rides toward this unaware girl on golden threads of light that penetrate the room via an unshuttered, circular window.

  The candle has just been extinguished. The words of the annunciation are about to be uttered. The Virgin is about to become a mother.

  By the time Larken closes her grade book, she’s electrically charged with carbohydrates. She needs to ride this high while she can, using it to sustain her through her next (and final) set of obligations: getting her grades turned in to Chris, the art department secretary, whose office is in another building. Then, for the next two weeks, she’s free.

  She should really take next summer off and do something besides teach. Travel, maybe. Drive to New York, spend some long days at the Cloisters, where she can see the Mérode firsthand. Get overseas, somehow. Rent a room in a Tuscan monastery—lots of academics do that kind of thing. Take a slow boat to the Netherlands.

  Larken methodically pushes the vending-machine wrappers deep into the plastic bag lining her wastepaper basket. She ties a knot at the top of the bag, gathers her things, turns out lights, and opens her door a crack. No one. She quickly closes and locks her door, then stuffs the evidence into the large anonymous metal trash can stationed out in the hall.

  She takes the elevator and begins her ascent.

  Larken always dresses in dark colors; today she wears loose black silk slacks and a maroon rayon shirt with its bottom three buttons undone. Her clothes are nice enough—she orders them online from Lane Bryant—but she spends most of her personal wardrobe and grooming budget on her head and feet: salon haircuts, designer makeup, jewelry and scarves, expensive shoes. She walks briskly, with resolve (even in this heat, no matter what it costs her) and she makes as little noise as possible—habits that have been developed consciously over time.

  Emerging from the elevator, Larken immediately starts to perspire; it’s at least thirty degrees hotter up here than it was downstairs. This is an old building, warmed in winter by steam heat, cooled in summer by wishful thinking and placebos: half-open windows, rotary fans. Larken starts down the shadowed hall that she must traverse to get to the door nearest her destination. Thankfully, it is a long hall, allowing her to stay indoors as long as possible.

  The air outside hits her like a boiler room blast. Instantly, she begins to sweat. Her thighs chafe together as she crosses the commons.

  Walking through the university’s sculpture garden, Larken passes two of its notable acquisitions: the zaftig Floating Woman and the trimmer but still paunchy Woman in a Box. She thinks of her parents, of a conversational exchange she heard numerous times when she was growing up:

  What a shame! Hope would say, sotto voce, as she often did when they passed a fat stranger. She has such a pretty face.

  Pretty face, my ass, Larken hears her father counter scornfully. Pretty is pretty, Hope. Fat is fat.

  It must be hard for Dad, Larken often thinks, knowing that, although the body habitus of his eldest daughter falls short of morbid obesity, it most definitely fits under the less precise heading of “blubber butt” and well within U.S. government parameters for “over-weight”: Professor Jones is five feet two and weighs one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. She doesn’t need Misty Ariel Kroger to tell her that she’s fat.

  Larken mounts the stairs, determined not to slow her pace. By the time she reaches the level of the entrance, she is drenched and panting. She has walked two hundred paces. Her sugar high is already starting to wane. But sustenance is not far away, just around the corner.

  She arrives—yes!—and there it is.

  Kris, the art department secretary, always has sugary treats on her desk; this week, it’s a glass canister of Hershey’s Kisses. When Larken sees that Kris has her back to her and is occupied in the copy room, she grabs a handful and drops them into a side p
ocket of her book bag.

  “Hi, Kris!” Larken calls out, adopting the shoplifter’s strategy of calling attention to herself. “TGIF!”

  “Hi, Larken,” Kris calls over her shoulder. “You got that right.”

  Kris has been the department secretary for eight years. She wears a gold crucifix, small enough to be tasteful, large enough to be noticeable. Larken likes Kris well enough—she’s tremendously efficient and courteous—but she prefers to keep their conversations brief. Larken has an abiding fear that Kris will one day look her in the eyes and ask earnestly: Are you saved?

  Larken grabs a few more kisses. “Where do you want these grades?” she asks.

  Kris comes out of the copy room; she has a high-stepping, energetic way of walking and a tirelessly chipper voice, as if she spends her off-hours as a drum majorette. “I’ll take them,” she says firmly, holding out her hand—and Larken’s heart jumps fearfully.

  But she is referring to the grades, of course.

  “I had to fail Misty Kroeger,” Larken remarks casually.

  “No big surprise there, was there?”

  “Not really, but still, I hate to do it.”

  “You are so softhearted. Thanks for getting these in on time. I’m still waiting for half the faculty.”

  “Well, I’m out of here,” Larken says. “See you in a couple of weeks.”

  She is almost out the door, already unwrapping a kiss in her imagination, when Kris calls her back.

  “Hey! Aren’t you going to that thing this afternoon?”

  “What thing?”

  “The cocktail-thingy. You know, at the gallery? Say hello to the new dean, lah-dee-dah?

  “Shit,” Larken mutters. “I forgot.” She glances toward the current chairman’s office. “Is Richard going to be there?”

  “I imagine so.”

  Damn. She’ll have to go.

  “How about Professor and Mrs. Collins?” In spite of being nearly forty years older than Larken, Arthur and Eloise Collins are the only people in the academic community that Larken has a personal relationship with; their presence at any university function at least assures a safe conversational haven.

  “Well, Arthur hasn’t been in—he turned in his grades a couple of days ago—but I’m pretty sure, yeah. Didn’t you get your invitation?”

  “Yes, yes, I got it, I just …”

  Shit! She had plans for this afternoon. She wanted to get home, get ready for tonight, be done with this place.

  Larken glances at her watch. “What time does it start?”

  “Three-thirty. It goes until five-thirty, but I’m sure you don’t have to stay that long if you don’t want to. Do you have plans?” Kris speaks in a concertedly offhanded manner. Larken recognizes this tone; it’s meant to mask a rabid subtextual curiosity. No one in the department besides the Collinses know anything about Professor Jones’s personal life, and even with them Larken is not terribly forthcoming.

  Ignoring the question, Larken says, “Okay, then, I’ll see you there,” and starts making her way toward the exit.

  Just before she heads back out into the stifling heat, she gobbles a kiss; it is both a reward for her punctual compliance in submitting her grades and a consolation for having to go to this fucking bloody university thing. Food is wonderful that way; it accommodates all occasions.

  Larken has a coveted parking space close to the building where her office and classrooms are located. This is no small boon. Arthur, who held the art department chairmanship at the time, saw to the parking space several years ago, when Larken went from being a stellar, matriculated member of the student body to an eager member of the faculty—albeit an untenured one.

  Larken feels eternally indebted to Arthur for this, among many other things. Ever since that day in Art Appreciation 101, Arthur has been her mentor, her champion. His influence on her identity has been as formative as family. It’s difficult for Larken to think about what life might have been had he not taken an interest. In spite of Larken’s determined efforts, her own father didn’t notice her for years.

  That’s okay. She was fucked up. So was he, probably.

  But he’s proud of her now. At least professionally. He’ll be so happy once she’s awarded the chairmanship. Ecstatic. Over the moon.

  Larken hefts herself into her car, a 1986 maroon Chevy Nova. It is small. It is reliable. Once she closes the door, she is seized with panic: the interior atmosphere of the car feels dangerous, toxic with trapped heat—like the cabin of a jet with a malfunctioning air pressure system. Frantically, Larken cranks open a window and tries to quiet her breath.

  This damn party. Maybe she could beg off, call the dean’s office after she gets home and say she’s sick.

  But no, Kris saw her—sugary, crucifix-wearing Kris—and she’s the kind of person who’ll go around to everyone saying, Have you seen Dr. Jones? She was in the office at noon, turning in her grades, and she seemed just fine. She said she was coming. You don’t suppose she got the flu, do you? Or food poisoning? The road to department chairmanship is paved with publication and cocktail parties. Larken knows that she must attend; moreover, she must suck it up, doll up, make a good impression.

  Going home would be the logical solution for most people. Larken has fancier shirts in her closet. Her bureau drawers are filled with eye-catching accessories that are designed to draw focus up, up, and away.

  But going home sweet home is not an option. Home, there’s no place like home, beckons to Larken with insistence when she is away, holds her with tenaciousness when she is there. She is incapable of dropping by her apartment. “Dropping by” is something birds and insects do. It implies lightness, flow, ease—all qualities of which she is not possessed.

  The good news is, after she gets home tonight, she won’t have to move for two weeks. She probably will move, but she won’t have to. Nothing will be required of her until the first day of the fall semester.

  The thick humidity intensifies the smells in the car, vivid smells stimulating memories of fast-food past. Larken imagines festive red-and-white-striped buckets filled with fried chicken, an addicting textural masterpiece that is crunchy and peppery on the outside, smooth and viscous on the inside, pull-away moist next to the bone, and tinged with pink. She visualizes small Styrofoam containers; inside, smooth mounds of mashed potatoes are adorned with swirling islands of gravy. There is such bounty in these Styrofoam containers. They are stuffed so full that their contents are flattened against bulging translucent lids. Larken will peel off the lids and lick them clean, working her tongue into their minute, innermost surfaces, the areas that intersect with the Styrofoam, even though the edges of the lids are sharp enough to draw blood. She will be provided with sporks, and even their peculiar, petroleum-like sheen is tantalizing to contemplate. The back of Larken’s tongue curls reflexively, anticipating the arrival of vinegary ribbons of shredded coleslaw, held together by gobs of mayonnaise.

  There’s a KFC on the way to the mall.

  That’s it; problem solved. She’ll stop at the drive-through, get a late lunch, then hunt down a scarf, an expensive scarf, something colorful and flamboyant, or texturally rich—velour on rayon maybe, or a nubby silk—to offset her plain shirt and draw attention to her face, which she will freshen with a new shade of lipstick. She could look for some new earrings, too: they will be classy but glittering. They will catch the light. Burgundy-colored glass would be nice—ersatz rubies set in black filigree. A 1920s look. A Gertrude-Stein-hosting-one-of-her-Paris-salons look.

  Larken would bet good money that nobody ever called Gertrude Stein Thunder Thighs or Lard Ass. If they did, Pablo or Ernest or even big, gay Gertie herself would have hauled off and punched them in the mouth.

  Larken starts the car, cranks the window closed, and turns the air-conditioning on full blast. Between the Colonel’s chicken, the accessories department, and the cosmetics counter, she can see to all her immediate requirements. She’ll put in a brief appearance at this stupid party,
conduct herself like Miss Congeniality, and then she’ll get out of here.

  After that it will be home, home, home where the heart is, because Professor Larken Jones has a long-standing commitment on Friday evenings and nothing in this world could ever make her miss it.

  Across town at the KLAN-KHAM studios, Gaelan Jones is about to give the noon-hour forecast. He’s on in seven minutes, still wearing the makeup he applied himself at 3:30 this morning in preparation for the six A.M. forecast.

  Gaelan leads a calibrated life, on and off camera, one that revolves around numbers: units of time, weights, reps, pressures, precip, wind speed. He studies a fax of the most recent data supplied by the National Weather Service, taking notes. His composure is impressive considering the task at hand: In a very short time, he must stand in front of a live camera and translate multiple columns of numbers into a concise, comprehensive, friendly, and wholly extemporized summary, one that will help the good people of Lancaster and Hamilton counties, among others—farmers and nonfarmers alike—plan their upcoming weekend.

  Many people rely on Gaelan Jones. He does his best to never let them down, to earn their continuing faith in his forecasting abilities—even though he is only a weatherman.

  This word, weatherman, is a euphemism, and fast on its way to becoming obsolete. There was a time when the title carried no secret connotation, but now it is known by everyone in the television broadcasting industry to mean someone who is not equipped with a university-accredited background in hard science:

  “Gaelan Jones, with sixteen years of experience, is the hometown team’s favorite weatherman!” Translation: Gaelan Jones, Nebraska native, small-town boy, got this job because he’s naturally charming and the camera loves him.

  There is another reason Gaelan got this job, or so he suspects, a reason he is even more loathe to acknowledge. He came to the station right out of the UN’s journalism department, as qualified as any twenty-two-year-old with a 3.3 average could be to land a low-paying internship in TV reporting. He was hired, but not as an intern, not even as a rookie journalist. To Gaelan’s astonishment, the producers began grooming him to replace Nebraska’s much beloved, favorite weatherman since the 1950s, Joe Dinsdale.