Read Online Fiction Ruined My Family by Jeanne Darst - Free Book Online Page A

friends, the other Democrats in Bronxville, Bill and Suzanna Dean, to tutor me. Bill and Suzanna would come over and have drinks in the kitchen with my parents while April and I sat upstairs at my desk, directly above the kitchen, going over parabolas for the fiftieth time. I didn’t understand a thing April said but I responded with phrases like “Isn’t that interesting?” and “Ah! I see. I didn’t get that before,” as I was the host and didn’t want my guest to feel awkward. In addition to April I also had my algebra teacher, Mrs. Peterson, tutoring me a couple times a week after school. I just didn’t get the shit. When I came home after school one day and told them I had indeed failed algebra and would need to go to Scarsdale summer school, my mother asked me if I had been nice to Mrs. Peterson.
    â€œYou catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar,” my mother said as I cried on her bed. My mother had gone to Villa Duchesne, a Catholic school in St. Louis where the chaste young girls strolled the verdant campus wearing sweaters with “VD” emblazoned on the chest and where apparently a good shampoo would do just as well as a pencil in solving fractions. “Honestly, with that dirty hair the nuns wouldn’t have passed me, either,” she told me.
    From her point of view, math was a social problem that could be solved with a few well-placed compliments and clean hair. “We’re not mathematicians, dolly. But you can pass a class. You just don’t care.”
    I had timed it so I could tell my mom while Eleanor, Katharine and Julia were out. Failure had two parts: the part between you and your fuck-up and the part between your three sisters and your fuck-up. There would not be a scene of feminine compassion and empathy. (Don’t worry, Jean. You’ll make a good life for yourself somewhere where decent people can’t add or subtract.) No, there’d be a lot of “What? You FAILED algebra?” and “What’s wrong with you?” And then one of them would say, in John Merrick’s voice, “I am not an id-i-ote!” Eleanor was no Rhodes scholar but she wasn’t aiming to be, she was a theater person. Katharine was a very good student and cared about grades and getting into a good college, so she thought I was just a reckless individual. Academics weren’t the passion of Julia’s life—her two interests were “cruising” with her friends and cruising with her boyfriend J.J.—but she was a solid B student.
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    WITH THIS F, I was now officially on “double probation,” which meant that I could not participate in any sports after school, which was fine by me. If I was too lazy to open a book, why in the world would I want to spend my afternoons running down a field in a hideous tartan skirt with a supersized boomerang in my hand, trying to hit a small ball into another girl’s overdeveloped calves?
    By junior year, although I showed absolutely no interest, I was being prepped for college and I found myself on interviews at schools I would never get into.
    â€œWhat are three adjectives other people would use to describe you as a person?” the interviewer at the University of Vermont asked, looking up at me from a manila folder on the desk.
    Three seems awfully limited as far as seventeen years of living goes—can we really be expected to have accumulated only three self-describing adjectives? What about faults and weaknesses? Everyone has those, so should I include those in the three? I’m smart, attractive and gassy? I’m clear-complected, a good eater, and violent when drunk? Also, which people describing us are we talking about? Are we talking about my parents? Because they might say I’m a naturally good speller, articulate and don’t live up to my potential. Teachers, on the other hand, might say I’m foul-mouthed, lazy and