Away for the Weekend

Two, possibly three, of those ironies for which life is famous

It is a beautiful day in Jeremiah. The sky is clear and blue, the sun is big and bright, and there is a breeze as gentle as Heaven’s breath. It’s a breeze that carries not just the chemical smells of civilization but the scents of forest, sea and desert as well; not just the electric noises of human occupation but also the timeless singing of the world. This is the kind of day that makes you want to climb a tree, run through a shower of blossoms, paddle in the breaking waves – or just sit on a hillside, listening to the planet going about its business. A day to make you glad to be alive. Yippee! Though it has to be said that there is no particular joie de vivre in room 07W of Jeremiah High on this particular afternoon. This is the last class on a Friday. Everyone wants the day to end.

No one wants the day to end more than Gabriela Menz. Gabriela glances at her watch and then looks back to the front of the room, where Mr Sturgess is finally finishing off a lesson so long and boring that even by his standards it should win a prize. Geesh. The bell’s going to go in about two minutes, and he’s still writing. (Gabriela is not writing, because she knows she can get one of the boys to photocopy his notes for her – as per usual.) Gabriela’s sigh is as soft as cashmere. Just because she doesn’t have to get to another class doesn’t mean she isn’t in a hurry. She happens to be in a really big hurry. Her mother’s picking her up to take her to the airport, and Gabriela has to change and reapply her make-up before she goes out to the car. Mrs Menz gets totally unreasonable about being kept waiting (just possibly because it happens so often), which means that if Gabriela wants to talk to Mr Sturgess she’d better do it now. Even though he has his back to her, Gabriela raises one slender arm, the gold rings and bracelets shining against her tanned skin. “Mr Sturgess?” she calls. “Mr Sturgess? Can I ask you something really quick? It’s really important.”

Edward Sturgess’ sigh is not as soft as cashmere, it’s as sharp as a snapping twig. He’s been teaching a long time. So long, in fact, that if it were any other voice interrupting him like this, he would ignore that voice and continue writing. If the voice persisted (as these voices always do) he would slowly swivel around with a sarcastic look on his face and ask what’s so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes. Isn’t it obvious that he’s trying to get this on the board before the bell rings and they all stampede for the door like a herd of frightened cattle? “This had better be good,” he’d say. “At the very least, I hope God’s just warned you that the world’s about to end.”

But it isn’t any other voice that’s interrupting him. It’s the voice of Gabriela Menz. Which, compared to the whining, whingeing and carping of most of his students, is like the sound made by tiny, hand-blown glass bells ringing across the secret mountain pass that leads to a hidden kingdom on an impossibly beautiful day.

“What is it, Gabriela?” He turns round, and she is gazing at him with her usual warm, open smile – her face radiant with youth and cosmetics. And confidence. Gabriela is a girl who always expects to be indulged, and is rarely disappointed. She was one of those babies everyone fussed over, and now she is well on her way to being one of those women for whom doors automatically open and seats instantly empty. She lowers her arm and her nails flash in the sunlight as if someone let loose a flutter of hot-pink butterflies. There is something almost angelic about Gabriela Menz – something that makes it nigh on impossible to be annoyed with her, even when she’s actually being incredibly annoying. When, for example, she’s late for class because she had to touch up her eyeliner or change her socks. Or, as another example, when she won’t wait till class is over to talk to him because she wants to touch up her eyeliner or change her socks before she goes home.

Good Lord, thinks Edward Sturgess. Listen to me! What if it’s something important? What if someone’s terminally ill… Or, God forbid, dead…

He frowns in concern. “I hope everything’s OK at home, Gabriela. If—”

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.” More brilliant butterflies shimmer in the air around her. “It’s not anything bad, Mr Sturgess. It’s something really good.”

“Oh, right … something really good…” Well, that’s a relief.

“See, the thing is, I’m a finalist in this really major fashion competition?”

Of course. He might have guessed. Fashion. Well, it wouldn’t be chess.

There’s a congratulatory rattle of applause from the girls (except for Beth Beeby who stares blankly ahead with the constipated look on her face that means she’s worrying about something). The boys whistle and cheer, and someone shouts out, “Way to go, Gab.”

Gabriela beams, pushing back a wayward strand of hair, pleased yet modest. When the display of support dies down, she picks up where she left off. “You know, to discover the designers of the future?” Given the way he dresses, Gabriela isn’t sure that this is something Mr Sturgess can understand, but she gives him a hopeful smile. “So anyway, this weekend they announce the winners at a big presentation. In LA. They’re putting us up at this totally fabulous hotel, The Xanadu? And there’s going to be a real fashion show where they model our clothes, and we’re meeting designers and retailers and all kinds of professionals, and we’re visiting this hot studio.” She pauses, briefly, for air. “It’s going to be awesome.”

“Well, congratulations, Gabriela. That’s—”

“So you see, Mr Sturgess, I’m like not going to be able to do the homework for Monday. You know, because I’m going to be so busy?”

“I see.” Gabriela is far from stupid, but she is pretty much the poster child for lazy. Mr Sturgess doubts that she’s ever read one of the assigned books from cover to cover. (Assuming, that is, that she’s ever read more than the cover.) She looks up plots and critiques on the Internet, and watches the movies. And she is possibly the least motivated student he has ever taught. Gabriela has less interest in her academic subjects than a leopard has in playing the harpsichord, and the only reason she does as well as she does is because she gets everybody else to help her. Especially the boys. There was a time when it was the Three Rs that were important, but all that Gabriela cares about are the Three Cs – Cosmetics, Clothes and Celebrity. He suspects that if coming to classes didn’t give her the opportunity to wear a different outfit every day, she would never show up. In this, however, Edward Sturgess is being slightly unfair. He would be surprised to learn that while it’s true that Gabriela has never read an entire assigned novel, she has read over a dozen books on the history of fashion. The simple fact is that Gabriela doesn’t want to clutter her mind with unnecessary information. She thinks of her brain as being like a closet – a large walk-in, floor-to-ceiling closet, but a closet nonetheless. To pack it with things she’ll never have any use for (things, for example, like calculus, the string theory, the works of William Faulkner) would be like filling your closet with bathing suits, sandals and sundresses when you live in Alaska. “Well … I certainly don’t want to appear churlish…”

Churlish is not a word found in Gabriela’s closet, but it doesn’t sound good. “Oh please, Mr Sturgess…” She doesn’t actually clasp her hands in prayer but she somehow gives the impression that she does. “All my other teachers are letting me have an extension.”

Of course they are. Mr Sturgess isn’t the only one who finds it hard to use the “N” word around Gabriela Menz.

“Well, if all your other teachers are giving you extra time—” He breaks off as, out of the corner of his eye, he sees another hand – this one pale and unadorned, the fingernails resembling not exotic butterflies but a field attacked by locusts – tentatively raised just above head level. “Yes, Beth?” Beth Beeby is more or less the anti-Gabriela Menz. If motivation were money, Beth would be a billionaire. She is not just the best student in his class, but the best student in every class she has. Hardworking, conscientious, punctual and diligent. If she were a railroad, every train would always be on time. Beth is the girl most likely to succeed – and, he thinks, cynically if automatically, drop dead by thirty-five. “Don’t tell me you want an extension, too?”

That’ll be the day they turn hell into an ice rink.

Everybody’s laughing too much for Edward Sturgess to hear the sound of skates hastily being strapped on to cloven hooves.

Until now, it had never occurred to Beth to ask any of her teachers to let her hand her homework in late, even though, remarkably enough, she, too, is going away for an extremely busy and very important weekend. Beth doesn’t make excuses. Excuses, she believes, are for losers and underachievers. Beth always gets her work in on time no matter what – even if she’s ill, even if the electricity has been turned off again – and is used to staying up half the night, finally falling asleep still fully dressed with her head on her desk. Why should this weekend be any different? Every minute of it has been planned by the organizers – from the welcome dinner tonight to the presentation on Sunday – but that should still leave plenty of time for homework. According to the letter she received, the nights are free for socializing and relaxing, neither of which Beth does. Of course she has friends and they do things together (go to a museum, a play, a movie, a classical concert or a special exhibit), and last summer she went to a camp for gifted teens for a very long month – but that’s not what most people mean by socializing or relaxing. They mean parties and barbecues and ball games and things like that. Beth hasn’t been to a party since she was five (she threw up on one of the house plants because of the stress of playing musical chairs and had to be sent home). She doesn’t even relax when she’s asleep.

When Gabriela asked Mr Sturgess for a special dispensation just to go to a fashion weekend, Beth could hardly believe what she was hearing. A fashion weekend? Was she serious? Yes, apparently she was. And Gabriela doesn’t think a fashion weekend’s frivolous? Good grief, it practically defines frivolity! Though Beth is fairly certain that Gabriela does nothing but talk about clothes every day of her life, the idea of going all the way to Los Angeles to do that for an entire weekend is nothing short of ludicrous. With all the problems there are in the world, it makes fiddling while Rome turns to charcoal seem like responsible behaviour. People are starving, wars are raging and the planet is dying – but Gabriela Menz’s greatest ambition is to make sure we don’t run out of handbags or shoes. It was then that Beth started feeling worried. Should she ask for an extension, too? She’s already close to vibrating with anxiety about the weekend. In case it doesn’t go well. In case she doesn’t win. In case the other contestants are more sophisticated and knowledgeable about popular culture than she is – like last summer’s gifted campers. She can already feel a migraine simmering like a brew of newts’ eyes, frogs’ toes and adders’ forks in a cauldron behind her forehead. It couldn’t hurt to take some of the pressure off, could it? She can still take her book bag, but if it turns out that she doesn’t have time or she gets one of her attacks and has to go to bed, then at least she’ll know that she won’t be penalized if her homework’s incomplete. Beth has been known to cry inconsolably over an A-. Though at the moment what she feels is that she may be sick. It’s all the tension and anticipation. She won’t be able to wait until everyone leaves to ask Mr Sturgess privately, as she normally would. She has to get to the girls’ room. Quickly.

And so Beth cautiously raises her hand.

“Yes, Beth?” Mr Sturgess looks over. He smiles. Kindly. “Don’t tell me you want an extension, too?”

“Well… I… Uh…” She can feel the blood racing to her face. She probably looks like a tomato. A tomato with glasses. And a pimple on its chin. “I… Uh… I’m really sorry, but I—”

“Excuse me?” He leans towards her. Even though Beth always sits in the front row so people can’t turn around to look at her if she says something, she speaks so softly that it’s never easy to hear her if there’s anybody else breathing in the room. “What did you say?”

“I just… I’m sorry it’s late notice, but I—”

Mr Sturgess sits down on the edge of his desk so that he’s almost in front of her. “Excuse me?” She seems to be apologizing. So, no change there. “What are you apologizing for, Beth?”

“I’m not, I just…” Even if she can’t see them, she knows that the whole class is looking at her now. “I… I’m sorry but I…” She takes a deep breath and rushes on. “I would like an extension. Please. If that’s all right. I’m a finalist and I’m going away for the weekend, too.” And then, for some stupid reason and illustrating the truth of the statement that life is famous for its ironic coincidences, she adds, “To Los Angeles. To The Xanadu.”

“You?” Mr Sturgess’ smile starts to slide from his face. He used to think Beth had an older brother whose clothes were handed down to her. He can’t remember ever seeing her in a skirt, let alone anything with a must-have label. “You’re a finalist in the fashion competition?”

The laughter is good-natured but still she couldn’t get any redder if the Queen of Hearts had her painted. Her cheeks feel as if they may pop.

“No, no… I’m sorry… No, I’m not… No. Not fashion.” As the racket in the room increases, Beth’s voice decreases. “Writing,” she whispers. “It’s the Tomorrow’s Writers Today National Competition.” Beth has been shortlisted for fiction. “It’s this—”

Edward Sturgess waves a hand at the rest of the class. “Simmer down, guys… Simmer down!” He can tell this is something he should be interested in, but he can’t hear what it is. “Let’s show—” Let’s show Beth a little respect here, was what he was going to say, but the end-of-period bell and the ensuing noisy bolt for freedom cuts him off. When he turns back to Beth she is already out of her chair and moving fast. “Beth?” he calls. “Beth! Yeah, sure. Of course you can have extra time.” He watches her charge through the door. He has no idea if she heard him or not.

A solitary figure, dressed in jungle combat trousers and a souvenir T-shirt from a rock concert that happened over fifty years ago, sits on one end of the bank of sinks in the first-floor girls’ room (west wing). Unusually for someone at Jeremiah High, her hair is not only peacock blue but woven into dozens of tiny braids. It is also unusual for a Jeremiah student to have no reflection in the wall of mirrors on either side of the room, of course, but it is normal for an angel in invisible mode. Which Remedios is. She’s having a break, enjoying the silence and reading the local paper she picked up in the staffroom. The Jeremiah Crier is unlikely to take any interest from the Dead Sea Scrolls, that’s for sure. This issue contains a long article about the town budget. Another about raising money to restore the bandstand in the park. A recipe for low-fat cheesecake. Advice on fitting a new window. A photo collage of the elementary school’s fair. An interview with 101-year-old Mrs Celeste Rubins who remembers when the trolley car ran between Jeremiah and East Jeremiah. A piece entitled: Youngsters Plant Trees. Advertisements for classes in tennis, golf, yoga, Pilates, kung fu, t’ai chi, scrapbooking, weaving, salsa, jewellery-making, a diet club, a walking group, Alcoholics Anonymous, baking and cooking. A photograph of three small children dressed as polar bears for the Earth Day celebration. The scores for the bridge club. The results of the county bowling tournament. Three birth announcements, two obituaries and a book review. Remedios sighs. The town of Jeremiah may be as exciting as cold mush, but next to the world of the high school it’s a two-day royal banquet with minstrels.

Remedios yawns, and leans her head against the hand dryer. This is only the end of her third week here and although she’s still, as it were, finding her wings, she couldn’t be more bored if she were walking across mudflats on crutches. Not that the teenagers of Jeremiah don’t have problems – they do have problems (to hear them talk, they have more problems than Noah) – but they are no more than petty worries and everyday anguish and despair. They should try living through the sacking of Rome or the Blitzkrieg if they want a real problem.

The last bell of the day rings and Remedios lets loose another sigh. Where, she wonders, are the innocent and lost souls who really need my help?

The door opens and Beth Beeby hurls herself into the girls’ room, miraculously managing to look both flushed and eerily green at the same time. Beth, of course, is no stranger to anxiety – it’s the most constant companion she has – but her nervousness about the weekend surpasses anything she’s experienced before. She desperately wants to win in the way that only a girl who is depressed by getting an A- rather than an A can; but at the same time winning means that she will have to do even better in the future – publish a novel before she’s twenty-five, be profiled in The New York Times, win the Pulitzer Prize. Great expectations, of course, open the door to great disappointments.

Remedios watches Beth clasp a hand to her mouth and run to the end stall. Because Remedios often comes in here to avoid the tedium of hearing the same lectures and conversations over and over, she has seen Beth before. Sometimes Beth simply hides in the end stall reading a book, but sometimes she comes here to vomit or weep. This afternoon, it seems, she’s come to do both.

The door opens again and Gabriela Menz glides in like an image on a screen, her book bag and handbag held over one shoulder and a suit bag in her other hand.

Gabriela is also a familiar face; the first-floor girls’ room (west wing) is practically her office.

Since Remedios isn’t visible at the moment, Gabriela is oblivious to her presence, but she’s equally oblivious to Beth’s retching and sobbing in the corner stall. She dumps her stuff on the counter opposite the sinks and hooks the suit bag over the door of the nearest stall. While she changes out of her school clothes into her going-away-for-the-weekend clothes, Gabriela is thinking not about her mother, out in the parking lot, tapping the steering wheel and checking the time every few minutes, but about the next two days.

There are three reasons why Remedios doesn’t normally bother listening to thoughts: it requires a lot of concentration; most of the time they’re way less interesting than you might imagine; and if there are more than a few people around it’s like listening to 97 TV channels at the same time. Now, however, she sits up, leaning forward, and tunes in. Gabriela doesn’t have to worry about homework … blahblahblah … she can’t wait to get to LA … blahblahblah … OMG that dikey girl, the brainy one, whatever her name is … she’s going to be in LA, too, in the same hotel … like, really, what are the chances? blahblahblah … shopping … shopping … blahblahblah…

Other girls come and go – hurrying in and hurrying out again, eager to be away from school until Monday – but not Beth or Gabriela. Beth stays in her stall, sick with stress and nerves. Gabriela dresses with even more care than usual – changing everything from her shoes to her accessories – and then stays planted in front of the mirrors, redoing her make-up. She examines every inch of her face, peering and pulling and pouting – touching up and then touching up again – until she’s finally satisfied that the only thing that could make her look better would be plastic surgery. They’ll both be lucky not to miss their flight.

But Remedios doesn’t leave, either. She stays on the counter, her arms around her legs and her chin on her knees. She closes her eyes. Remedios has enormous empathy for humans, but even she sometimes finds it hard to feel compassion for a species that makes so much misery for itself. Now would be a good example. Listening to the muffled sounds of Beth’s distress while watching Gabriela paint her face with the same care Leonardo took when painting Lisa del Giocondo in Florence that time, Remedios is struck anew by the strange ways humans find to occupy themselves – and how inventive they are when it comes to creating unhappiness. God gives them a miraculous planet of heartbreaking beauty – and what do they do? They do their best to destroy it. They pollute the air and land and oceans; they blow up mountains, dry up rivers and turn forests into deserts.

They don’t treat themselves any better. They murder, they rape, they lie, they cheat, they steal and they bomb each other to Kingdom Come. They waste their time accumulating possessions, as though they’re either planning to live for ever or take their golf carts and jewellery with them when they go. They worry about things that are a lot less important than a tree frog. Things like not having a certain handbag or a certain car; not being thin enough or pretty enough; not knowing more than anyone else about the history of Hungarian cinema or pop music; not having a big house; whether or not two celebrities they will never meet are really breaking up. Remedios stares at Gabriela’s reflection in the mirror. Different as Gabriela and Beth are, each believes that she has to be, in her own way, flawless; that happiness comes not from the miracle of life itself, but from how you look or how much you know.

What was that poet’s name? Remedios frowns. She can see him as clearly as she sees Gabriela fiddling with her eyebrows. They used to enjoy arguing about the meaning of life. He could get a little maudlin, especially after a couple of pints of ale, but he was clever and he wasn’t a bad writer. “What fools these mortals be…” – that was one of his. “What fools these mortals be…” Tell me about it, thinks Remedios. She couldn’t agree more. People should embrace life, not fear or hate it. God knows it’s over quickly enough.

Finished at last, Gabriela checks her clothes one last time for specks of dirt and fluff. Meanwhile, in the corner stall, Beth is getting herself together, too, and starting to worry that her mother, waiting to drive her to the airport, will be worried that something has happened to her.

If you two had seen half the things I’ve seen you’d really have something to worry about, thinks Remedios. And it is now that she gets her idea. It is technically against the rules, of course, and it certainly isn’t going to make the Earth a better place. But she was told to work on a micro, not a macro level. Those were the instructions – they were very clear – and this is as micro as you can get. There are no small problems, only small angels… Remedios smiles. Surely she can’t get into trouble for doing as she was told.

As satisfied with her appearance as she’s ever likely to be, Gabriela scoops up her things and sashays off to find her mother. A few seconds later, Beth emerges, splashes cold water on her face and also leaves. Remedios is right behind her.

Otto, of course, is waiting in the hallway. If Remedios had a shadow, it wouldn’t follow her more closely than Otto does. As always, the sight of Otto is one that, if she had a heart, would make it sink like a three-tonne block of steel thrown into a lake. Getting to know him over the last few weeks has done nothing to improve her opinion of him. In her opinion, Otto Wasserbach is a prime example of a person who doesn’t know how to enjoy himself. The fact that they are saddled with one another can be considered another of life’s famous ironies. As always, he is fussily and formally dressed, looking more like a trainee accountant than either a high school student or a divine messenger.

“I knew you had to be in there!” says Otto. Accusingly. “I’ve been waiting for over twenty minutes. You were supposed to be in world history.”

“I couldn’t take it. It was so inaccurate it was painful.”

“You’re not supposed to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it, you know. If you say you’re going to be somewhere, I expect you to be there.” Otto peers at her disapprovingly over the top of his glasses. “We’re working together. Partners? Remember?”

And how could she forget? “For now. Remember?” Just because a partnership is made in Heaven doesn’t mean you have to like it.

“For the foreseeable future,” Otto corrects.

“Right. Well, maybe you’d better keep your girdle on and just get used to waiting for me now and then,” says Remedios. “I mean, what’s a few minutes here and there? It’s not like we’re going to run out of time.”

“We have to make plans, Remedios. We haven’t decided what we’re doing for the next two days.”

“Well, I know what I’m doing.” The smile returns to Remedios’ face. “I’m going away for the weekend.”

“Away?” Otto likes Jeremiah. Tucked into the woods, it’s peaceful and homey and not a lot happens here. He has no desire to leave. “Away where?”

Remedios watches Beth go down the corridor. “LA.”

“LA?” Otto has never been to LA but he knows that it isn’t peaceful or homey and that a lot happens there – a good percentage of it bad. “Why LA?”

“It is the city of angels, you know.”

“Not literally. It was originally Nuestra Señora de los Angeles.” If you told Otto the sky is blue, he’d tell you the exact shade. “It was just another mission town. They didn’t name them because they were filled with angels and saints.” Seeing that Remedios has stopped listening, he adds, “Anyway, we’re supposed to stay here.”

“Where does it say that?” demands Remedios. “Nobody told me that. We go where they go…” The bowling alley … the pizza place … the mall … “Isn’t that the deal?”

“But I don’t want to go to LA,” bleats Otto.

“So stay here.” As if. It would take more than a miracle for her to be allowed to go to LA by herself.

“You know I can’t do that,” says Otto.

Remedios is already walking away. “So come.”