Isabel was already dressed when the clock radio clicked on and Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell burst into Ain’t No Mountain High Enough. She checked the mirror and rolled the waistband of her plaid uniform skirt up several times, shortening it a good six inches. Throwing on her blazer, she dashed to the bathroom, where, ablutions made, she examined the collection of diet and sleep aids in her parents’ medicine cabinet and popped a pill. She tossed a couple of Valiums in her pocket as an afterthought. Courage thus screwed to the sticking place, she entered the kitchen, where the family breakfast was underway and the wall clock announced that 17 minutes remained until the start of school.
Raf Hakim, her father, the Grand Master of Rice, sat at the far end of the breakfast table hidden behind the Times opened to its fullest extent. Elegant fingers and crisp French cuff glided out to retrieve coffee and retreat with it to the sanctuary of the financial pages. The lavender of his cologne mingled with coffee, toast, and maple syrup. Her mother, Daisy, chatted on the phone with either her sister in Paris or the one in Geneva, exchanging overnight gossip in French sprinkled with Italian, Arabic, Spanish and English depending on the degree of privacy certain bits required. Only the curly telephone cord tethered her to morning in New York.
Isabel took in the front page that faced out at her: 680 protesters arrested at weekend’s 100,000 strong Washington peace march; attempted levitation of the Pentagon by Allen Ginsberg unsuccessful; 83 American soldiers killed yesterday in Vietnam; Dow Jones Industrial Average to open at 700 something; a photograph of hippie chicks offering flowers to MPs pointing bayonets at them.
Isabel’s parents had refused to even discuss letting her go to the weekend peace march on Washington. Forced to act, she’d told a convincing lie about a Saturday school newspaper meeting, and went to the one in New York instead, despite being grounded. She’d gotten busted when a couple of sycophantic childless friends of her parents –Raf and Daisy preferred them that way-- came for cocktails the previous evening waving the Sunday Daily News with anticipatory relish. The picture on page one of a girl passing what looked like a joint to a long-haired guy in Central Park couldn’t possibly be anyone but their friends’ impetuous daughter, they declared. Raf and Daisy instantly agreed.
In point of fact, it wasn’t Isabel, just an inconvenient doppelganger, but the resemblance was so uncanny that it wasn’t worth arguing. She was screwed either way. The violation added another three months --not to be served concurrently-- to the grounding sentence that now stretched sixteen months ahead to winter of 1969 and what by then would be the second half of senior year and the start of Bobby Kennedy’s first term as President. Free at last. She yearned for that better time to come.
“Maman!” Edward grabbed his mother’s chin and used it as a rudder to steer Daisy’s attention to Isabel. It was his regular MO and his preferred target. He pointed to his sister’s hiked up skirt. “Regarde, Maman.” Exposure to the Babel of home had left Edward unable to speak English properly, and his classmates at PS 6 made fun of him. Fearing permanent psychic trauma, since he was already a crybaby and a liar, or what Daisy called sensitive, it was decided that Edward would focus on learning one language only and that it would be French. So Daisy --with Raf in agreement, of course-- yanked him out of public school and sent him to the Lycée Français where the teachers smoked Gitanes and so did a lot of the kids, although not that many in lower school.
Edward had ended Isabel’s run as an only child nine years earlier when she was seven. He was an avid nasal spelunker and trailed a faint whiff of canned peas. Since school had started the month before, he’d been decorating the wall shelf where the toaster sat with little snot balls he rolled between his thumb and forefinger. He glowered and flicked the work in progress at her, but it landed in the syrup pooled round their younger brother’s waffle.
Charles was four and profoundly deaf. He wore hearing aids the size of Penguin Classics fore and aft in a leather harness buckled over his shirt. Thick wires connected them to large beige knobs twisted into his ears. Daisy wouldn’t hear of his going to a school for the deaf or talking with his hands. If Helen Keller had learned to speak, then so would Charles. He just needed his own Annie Sullivan. For this purpose, Ivy Sparrow, a tiny British Montessori governess who dressed only in royal blue and bore a striking resemblance to her avian namesake, was hired and charged with civilizing the wild child, from breakfast to bedtime, day in and day out.
Isabel soon discovered that Miss Sparrow read the Christian Science Monitor naked in the kitchen late at night, and that she was, at that time, always eager to discuss the writings of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy. Isabel was nonplussed by these sightings. All she wanted at 2 a.m. was a soothing glass of milk and an uneventful trip to the kitchen. She had a pre-ulcer condition, which was not helped by this new concern about running into the bare, forked nanny. She already worried about everything, and the thought of developing satellite anxieties distressed her further.
Charles beamed at Isabel and held her eye as he ripped an ear knob out of his head and dropped it into his mother’s cup of the chicory blend that was sent up each month from New Orleans.
“Bad boy,” he enunciated, much more clearly than Helen ever could have.
Miss Sparrow’s relentless cheerfulness, combined with her unshakeable belief that anything could be a learning opportunity, exhausted Isabel. The woman never passed up a chance to educate. With alacrity, she snatched the earpiece by its cord from Daisy’s coffee. It arced brown drops across the marble kitchen table.
“Well, Charles, tell me, which one of your hearing aids is wet?”
He pointed to the one dripping in her hand.
“Yes, that’s right, but we want to speak, not point, don’t we?”
The boy nodded.
“Say ‘wet’, let me hear you. And let’s speak up, shall we?” She favored the forward momentum and implied threat of the hortatory subjunctive.
“Weh,” said the boy in his peculiar disembodied tone.
“Wet. With a T.” She exaggerated, articulating the words so he could lip-read better. Everybody was supposed to do it, but most of the time they didn’t bother and just bellowed at him.
“Wed.” He smiled and showed the gap between his front teeth that people used to say meant he was born lucky. Since he had started wearing hearing aids nobody said it anymore.
“Wed,” he offered again.
Daisy was oblivious to her deaf son’s act of defiance, and Isabel wanted to escape while she still was. Signing a conspiratorial I love you to Charles, and receiving the kiss he blew back, Isabel emerged from the shadow of the pantry into the kitchen. The fluorescent overhead fixture buzzed the high pitched whine of a distant dentist’s drill – a sound that agonized Isabel, but which no one else in the household admitted to even being able to hear -- and the too yellow wallpaper accosted her with bogus morning cheer.
“Good morning, everybody. Hope you all have a good day. Sorry, must run. Goodbye.” She flashed a peace sign at her assembled family, intending to convey a breezy teenage insouciance very foreign to what she felt, then zipped out the back door to wait for the elevator. Daisy came after her moments later, gold mules clacking on the granite landing. The phone cord stretched all the way to the elevator –twenty feet at least. Isabel concentrated on willing the doors open before her mother reached her.
“Good morning, Nelson,” she greeted the elevator man and slid in before it was fully open. Daisy was getting near, speaking Arabic, whatever she was saying top secret. Isabel checked her watch.
“Please hurry, Nelson, I can’t be late for school today.”
“You know I gotta open the gate all the way before I can shut it again, Izzy. I taught you how to operate this cab when you were ten. Hold your horses.”
“Buenos días, Nelson. Momentito, por favor.” Once Daisy ascertained your mother tongue, she addressed you in it forever. She stuck her Love That Red fingertips in the door to prevent him from shutting it. Isabel made herself small behind the elevator man.
“Get out of there right now, young lady. You do not leave this house that way. What do you think this is, a hotel?” The phone cord uncoiled as far as it would and seemed intent on pulling her back. Isabel’s little terrier, Hippie, flew out the kitchen door and ran into the elevator. He sat up and begged to be taken away; anxiety danced in his round brown eyes.
“Poor little beastie,” Isabel murmured, rubbing his strawberry blond head. Daisy yelled at the dog to come here now. Her voice echoed down the shaft.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hakim, people are waiting for the elevator.”
“This is not over, Isabel,” her mother hissed. “Come home straight after school. I needn’t remind you that you are grounded for the foreseeable future. And roll your skirt down immediately.”
Hippie’s nails scrabbled on the polished stone landing as he tore out of the elevator into the house. Daisy withdrew her hand and Nelson slid the brass gate closed.
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