i.
DEFINE: ‘ADULT’
This was the deceptively simple and slightly baffling demand put forth to us on Thursday afternoon in Mr. Brandolini’s English class. Jürgen, who had until then been feeding me bits of his leftover lunch cheese croissant, made an apprehensive noise in the back of his throat – as he was wont to do, considering he was German and their whole language is backthroaty noises. I, however, saw no cause for surprise, concern, or apprehension – all three indicate expectations that were surpassed, unmet, or met, but unexpectedly; our attitude towards Mr. Brandolini (or so I was given to believe) was one of a polite lack of expectation whatsoever. So his deviation from our reading of Lady Windermere’s Fan that Thursday was not something that raised my eyebrows.
He was leaning against the front of the table, pulling at the hem of his shirt and observing all of us as if he expected us to give him the answer he probably wanted, which, I was certain, none of us had.
‘Well?’
Some poor child in the front row thought they’d be smart.
‘An adult, sir, is someone who has attained full size and strength, grown up, or matured.’
‘Jenny, if I wanted that answer I could’ve logged onto dictionary.com.’
Jürgen resumed his supply of cold croissant bits. We were sitting in the back – plus, Mr. Brandolini didn’t mind food in the class.
‘This could be entertaining,’ Jürgen said in my ear. I nodded.
‘Already is.’
Gita Ramakrishnan tried to go next.
‘Sir, an adult is someone who has achieved some level of…emotional maturity?’
‘Ouch,’ Jürgen muttered. Mr. Brandolini looked like he was about to giggle.
‘I can assure you, Gita, that this definition does not apply to most adults I know.’
Everyone was silent. I brushed the crumbs off my lap.
‘An adult, Mr. Brandolini, is a myth.’
‘Leena Mathew into the attack,’ I heard Jürgen whisper next to me. ‘Right off the mark with a crippling blow to the offensive.’
Mr. Brandolini looked at me interestedly and I gave him what I hoped was a sufficiently self-deprecatory smile.
‘Please elaborate, Miss Mathew.’
He was humouring me. He knew exactly what I meant.
‘A playful feint by the opposition,’ the running commentary went on. ‘The audience eagerly awaits Leena Mathew’s next move.’
‘I mean, sir, that an adult is a social construct. Adulthood is a concept shoved down our throats, created for the sake of legality and ease of order – you know the strategy. Divide and rule.’
‘And the crowd erupts! Leena Mathew hits big with a strike that crumbles the opponent’s defense!’
Mr. Brandolini, if he could hear Jürgen’s (adorable) nonsense, ignored it.
‘Very interesting, Leena. Very interesting. Hmm. So you’re saying that society has – metaphorically speaking – embedded in us some sort of mental…ah, chip, that activates once we reach some agreed-upon age? Eighteen, twenty-one?’
‘Essentially.’
‘And the activation of this chip is the switch to that great, deathly realm of adulthood?’
‘Practically.’
‘And the purpose of this is…?’
‘Like I said, legality. Separation of population into minors and majors. Segregation. Pornography. It’s an authoritarian conspiracy, Mr. Brandolini.’
‘I see. Well said, Miss Mathew. Well said.’
And so we moved on. I daresay no one else lived up to my vitriolic attack on society, although Jonathan Wasserman tried hard, in his usual cynical Orwellian style but Mr. Brandolini knew a farce when he saw it. We still hadn’t quite figured out why he was wasting time on such an exercise. It was only fifteen minutes later when Wasserman had calmed down and was gulping from his yellow Tupperware, that Mr. Brandolini grabbed a bunch of worksheets from his table and told Gita to distribute them.
‘A study in adulthood,’ Jürgen read.
‘This is exactly the kind of thing I try desperately to avoid,’ I told him, examining the assignment. The paper was blank, except for the name of the assignment, and two words: Character Sketches.
‘This is part one of a two-part assignment,’ said Mr. Brandolini, sitting on the desk and waving the paper around. ‘Before we begin, I must request you all to pick a partner.’
Jürgen lazily stuffed another croissant bit into the corner of my mouth.
‘Hm?’
‘Mm.’
It wasn’t quite so sublime a process for the rest of the classroom. Mr. Brandolini had to wait five minutes till social order was restored and friends reclaimed.
‘This study comes at a time when, as I’m sure you all are aware, you are going through one of the most important changes in your life.’
He looked very pointedly at me, as if daring me to deny the fact that I was fast approaching this shadowy premise of Adulthood. I didn’t. By virtue of my physical attributes, I suppose I was already an Adult – if not a slightly spotty, breasty, uncomfortable Adult, but an Adult nonetheless. But in every other sense of the word – legal, pornographic, political – I refused to conform.
‘As and when you answer the questions and complete the tasks I am going to set out for you, you will find yourself establishing – or destroying, as the case may be – the very grounds of your existence as an…ah, adult. It will be spread over four months, till completion of term. Your writing remains entirely confidential. You will also be working closely with your partner, and you need to accept the possibility that you might learn much more about them than you bargained for.’
‘I think I could handle that,’ Jürgen said, wiping his hands delicately with his La Boulangerie napkin.
‘I’ll have to think about it,’ I replied.
Everybody in class seemed fairly unperturbed at the prospect of this horrific-sounding assignment – due to what I suspected was a general lack of existential grounds or principles, and therefore an absence of fear for the destruction of these grounds. This wasn’t going to be some fun getting-to-know-you exercise. This was some serious shit. Mr. Brandolini was fucking with us.
He seemed solemn enough about it.
‘We’ll start on question one tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Class dismissed.’
Class wasn’t even half over yet. Obviously no one was stupid enough to point that out so the room was empty in two minutes. The two of us remained. So did Mr. Brandolini.
The thing about Mr. Brandolini is simple. He has a thing. He’s smart. He’s thirty-five, but he looks forty-two. He wears Indian Terrain shirts and jeans and hiker shoes and comes to school on a Yamaha. He has his own brand of snobbery, which is very similar to mine and Jürgen’s brand of snobbery. Naturally, we get along.
‘Hey, Mr. Fettuccini.’
‘I could think of meaner nicknames for you, Herr Rudolph.’
Jürgen blushed. I’d already pointed out the pimple bubbling freshly on his nose in the morning today – he didn’t need another brutal reminder. Then again, he shouldn’t have called Mr. Brandolini Mr. Fettuccini, however irresistibly his name reminds us of pasta.
‘Mr. Brandolini –’
‘Please Leena, outside class it’s Gene.’
He does the whole first-name thing with kids he likes. I know he likes Jürgen and me. I even know that he likes me more.
‘Right, Gene. This assignment is dumb.’
He looked like he was expecting that. He smiled, almost to himself, and got up, polishing his glasses on his shirt.
‘We’ll see about that. Tomorrow will be fun.’
‘I refuse to conform,’ I declared, just to make it clear and remove all doubt from his mind.
‘I’m more than aware of that,’ he assured me. ‘Now run along and play outside. I have essays to grade.’
We ran along and played outside. It was February, so Outside was still at a bearable temperature and humidity, enough that one could lounge about in the shade and only break a mild sweat. I had another class twenty minutes later, so I had to leave Jürgen by the pool as he bit into an apple and watched Nina and Desiree prance about on the diveboard in their tummy control swimsuits. It was only later, when I was jogging steadily on the blue vinyl floor of the gym during PE, that I realised Mr. Brandolini hadn’t really told us who he thought an adult was. I considered asking him. When I first met him I thought he could be one of those adults you could look up to in the vague fashion of a role model – although I disagree with that terminology conceptually. But, as I soon realised later, Mr. Brandolini had various complexities and unpredictabilities, which I suspected stemmed from the insecurity of being a Philadelphian stuck in India, and from his less-than-happy relationship with his wife. I only know this second juicy morsel of gossip because when I went to the theatre to watch American Hustle last month, I saw him getting heavy in the couple seat with this woman, and as I was preparing myself to go say hi when they resurfaced for air, I noticed that the woman was not his petite, tame-looking Indian wife that I so often saw around campus. This event was a disappointment for me on two counts: first, that my dear Mr. Brandolini could be reduced to such a teenagery activity as tongue-wrestling in a cinema hall, and second, that Mr. Brandolini did not possess the third in a set of three things I felt every Reasonable Adult must possess: Passion, a Sense Of Humour, and a Happy, Functional Marriage Likely To Result In The Production Of Offspring.
I did not share my revelations with Jürgen. Consequently, he still calls him Mr. Fettuccini and has no reason to feel suspicious that this man is giving us an assignment on adulthood, when he probably knows nothing of it himself.
~