A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler Page B

the physical sensation of something happening that couldn’t be reversed: that feeling, all the way down, of longing to take back my one single, simple misstep. But it was already too late, and I knew that, absolutely, even before I hit the pyracantha bush.
    Eighty-seven hundred dollars. It never failed to come up at some point. Mom might say, for instance, that they planned to remodel the kitchen as soon as they could afford it; and while a stranger would find that an innocent remark, I knew better. Of course they could afford it—if they couldn’t, who could?—but she wanted to make it plain that they still felt the effects of that unforeseen drain on their finances. The waste of it, the fruitlessness. The niggling dribs and drabs handed out to neighbors. Sixty dollars for a ballerina music box, which I’d thrown down a storm drain in a moment of panic. Ninety-four fifty to mend the lock on a cabinet door. The most expensive item was an ivory carving of a tiny, naked Chinese man and woman getting extremely familiar with each other. I broke it when I stuffed it between my mattress and box spring. Mr. McLeod said it was priceless but settled for six hundred, grumbling. You’d have thought he’d be embarrassed to claim ownership.
    I was heading up Charles Street now, slightly above the speed limit. Racing a traffic light that turned red before I reached it, but I hooked a right onto Northern Parkway without touching the brakes.
    And it wasn’t only the reparation money. Get Mom wound up and she would toss in the tuition at Renascence, besides. A little harder to figure the precise amount, there. As Dad pointed out, they’d have paid for my schooling in any case. But Mom said, “Not a school like Renascence, though, with its four-to-one student-teacher ratio and its trained psychologists.”
    I didn’t count the tuition myself; I reasoned that Renascence was their idea, not mine. First inkling I had of it was, Mom said to pack my clothes because the next day I was leaving for a special school that was perfect for me: roomy accommodations out in the country and a supervised environment. Except I heard “roomy” as “loony.” (“It’s perfect for you: loony accommodations.”) I flipped and said I wouldn’t go. Never did want to go, even after they cleared up the misunderstanding. So I couldn’t be held responsible for the Renascence bill, right?
    Unfortunate name, Renascence. People were always correcting my pronunciation. “Uh, don’t you mean Renaissance?” And nobody got reborn there, believe me—nobody I ever heard of. The aim stated on the school’s letterhead was “Guiding the Gifted Young Tester of Limits,” but what they should have said was “Stashing Away Your Rich Juvenile Delinquent.” The only thing “special” about the place was, they kept us twelve months a year. No awkward summer vacations to inconvenience our families. Also, we had to wear suits to class. (Which explains why I favor pajama tops now.) And every time we cursed, we had to memorize a Shakespeare sonnet. Boy, that’ll clean up your language in a hurry! Not to mention instilling a permanent dislike of Shakespeare.
    I remember this one sonnet I learned, the first week I was at Renascence. It started out, When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes … I thought it was me he was talking about. I swear it just about tore me apart the moment I saw those words on the page.
    Well. As I said, it was my first week. And anyhow, the guy went on to say, Haply I think on thee , which was certainly not about me. I didn’t have any “thee” in my life; no way. The girls I hung out with in those days were more body mates than soul mates, and you couldn’t claim that anyone in my family was my “thee.”
    I wondered how my family would react if I ever paid that eighty-seven hundred back. How my mother would react, to be specific. She’d probably fall over in a faint.
    Sometimes I thought if I could just show her, just once and