Two-Part Inventions by Lynne Sharon Schwartz Read Free Book Online Page B

interests, showing no unusual skills except for punch ball in the street and card tricks, their current passion. “Pick a card, Pop,” one or the other would say, and he would do so stiffly, grudgingly.
They would proceed to execute quite extraordinary and baffling feats with the deck for which Joseph could muster no interest, while Gerda, looking on, was suitably amazed. He even found something sinister in such antics, as if they verged on the disreputable.
    The boys presented a united front at all times, a separate unit within the family, spending hours together in their room doing God knows what—learning more card tricks, probably; certainly not studying—although if Suzanne wandered in they accepted her willingly, as they would a family pet. Or they would disappear for hours on end, playing ball in the schoolyard, they said if Joseph questioned them. He had given up on them as far as special was concerned. They were decent boys who stayed out of trouble, so he was leaving them to grow up as they would. Now it struck him that it was the girl, whose birth was unplanned and greeted, by him if not by Gerda, with mixed feelings (more responsibility, more expense), who might turn out to gratify his yearnings for something special.
    And so he invested his hopes in her, small as she was. Special came to mean more than playing the piano. Special meant school as well. What good was having a gift if you didn’t develop the brains to deploy it properly? Suzanne was bright enough, everyone found her charming—she had a natural ingenuous grace—but she didn’t put herself forward. Piano lessons were all very well, but she must learn to be more aggressive, to stand up for herself, to compete. Life was a battleground. She had the weapons, but she must train her will to use them.
    She did well in school. Her quarterly report cards gave him nothing to reproach her with. Until, in the fourth grade, she presented a report card to him as usual for his signature. Gerda
was cleaning up the remains of dinner, and the boys, by then sophomores at Brooklyn College, had gone upstairs ostensibly to study. Joseph was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the small desk in the dining room where he paid the bills. He gave the report card a cursory glance, a small folded four-sided document on stiff paper that attempted to look official. He was reaching for his fountain pen, when he noticed the B+ in geography.
    â€œWhy only a B+?” he asked, as if it were a joke, yet not entirely a joke.
    â€œI was absent the day she gave the test. It was when I had the earache.”
    â€œAnd so?”
    â€œAnd so she said that was a fair grade, considering I missed the test.”
    â€œIt’s not a fair grade. You don’t have to accept that. Go back to your teacher,” Joseph said, frowning at the world’s injustice, “and tell her your father said to give you a makeup test.”
    â€œI don’t want to. What does it matter? It’s not even a final grade, just the middle of the term.”
    â€œDo what I tell you,” he said firmly. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t have an A. You need to stand up for your rights. I’m sure you know your geography.” He handed the card back to her and turned away to uncap the pen and reach for the top bill on the pile, an envelope, Suzanne noticed as she was turning away, with a tiny picture of a telephone on it.
    She avoided arguing with him. His will was as ungainly and immobile as his body. She could be strong, too, in another way: She was able to withdraw and pretend that what was happening was not really happening, just a show she was enacting. In this way, she could do unpleasant things—like many of
the actions demanded by school—and get through them with aplomb. The following day she approached Mrs. Gutterman and told her what her father had said about the makeup test. The teacher hesitated, then nodded.
    Late in the afternoon,