Read Online Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page B

tray and still in her jacket and in a roaring sort of blur she was aware of her girlfriends at a nearby table—there was Keisha looking concerned calling, “Lisette, hey—what was it? You OK?” and Lisette laughed into the bright buzzing blur, “Sure I’m OK. Hell why not?”

Deceit
    N ot by e-mail but by phone which is so God-damned more intrusive the call comes from someone at Kimi’s school— Please call to make an appointment urgent need discuss your daughter.
    No explanation! Not even a hint.
    Candace has come to hate phone calls! Rarely answers phone calls! If she happens to be near the phone—the kitchen phone—quaint old soiled-plastic that has come to be called, in recent years, as by fiat, a “land phone”—she might squint at the I.D. window to see who the hell is intruding in her life, for instance the ex-husband, but rarely these months, could be years, does Candace pick up.
    Cell phones she keeps losing. Or breaking.
    Cell phones are useful for keeping in (one-way) contact with Kimi—c rummy substitute for an umbilical cord —and a pause, a beat, the signature wincing laugh that crinkles half her face like pleated paper, then— ha ha: joke —if the assholes don’t get Candace’s wit.
    And more it seems to be happening, assholes don’t get it.
    Well, the cell phone. Unless she has lost it, she has it—somewhere. Could be in a pocket of a coat or a jacket, could be on the floor of her car beneath the brake or gas pedal, or in the driveway; could be in a drawer, or atop a bureau; could be, as it was not long ago, fallen down inside one of Candace’s chic leather boots; the cell phone is a great invention but just too damned small, slight, impractical. Could be sitting on the God-damned thing and not have a clue until the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony come thundering out of your rear.
    Not that Kimi answers Mom’s calls all that readily—the docile-daughter reflex seems to have atrophied since Kimi’s thirteenth birthday—but the principle is, getting voice mail on her cell through the day at school, text messages from MOM, Kimi at least has to acknowledge that MOM exists even if MOM is no longer one of those desirable individuals for whom Kimi will eagerly pick up.
    Y our daughter.”
    “Y-yes? What about my daughter?”
    Cool-calm! Though Candace’s voice is hoarse like sandpaper and her heart gives a wicked lurch in her chest despite that morning’s thirty-milligram lorazepam.
    “Has Kimi spoken with you, Mrs. Waxman, about—yesterday?”
    “Y-yesterday?”
    “Kimi was to speak with you, Mrs. Waxman, about an issue—a sensitive issue—that has come up—she hadn’t wanted us to contact you first.”
    Weedle, Lee W.—“Doctor” Weedle since there’s a cheesy-looking psychology Ph.D. diploma from Rutgers University at Newark on the wall behind the woman’s desk—speaks in a grave voice fixing her visitor with prim moist blinking lashless bug-eyes.
    Why are freckled people so earnest, Candace wonders.
    “Your daughter has been reported by her teachers as—increasingly this semester—‘distracted.’ ”
    “Well—she’s fourteen.”
    “Yes. But even for fourteen, Kimi often seems distracted in class. You must know that there has been a dramatic decline in her academic performance this semester, especially in math . . .”
    “I was not a good math student, Dr. Wheezle. It might be simply—genetics.”
    “ ‘Weedle.’ ”
    “Excuse me?”
    “My name is ‘Weedle,’ not ‘Wheezle.’ ”
    “Is it! I’m sorry.”
    Candace smiles to suggest that she isn’t being sarcastic, sardonic—“witty.” Though Weedle is a name for which one might be reasonably sorry.
    “ . . . have seen your daughter’s most recent report card, haven’t you, Mrs. Waxman?”
    “Did I sign it?”
    “Your signature is on the card, yes.”
    Weedle fixes Kimi’s mother with suspicious eyes—as if Candace might have forged her own signature. The woman is toughly