THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN OF ARCADIA. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it. This particular story was also influenced by IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and C.S. Lewis' OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, and I have no connection to those, either)
(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place in the year after the show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. The main events that have happened since May 2005 are
(1) Joan has let Grace, Luke, and Adam into her secret
(2) Luke has been promoted into the same grade as Joan, Grace, and Adam.
(3) Grace and Luke have spent one night together
(Special note: this is an extensive revision of my original beginning, in which Grace's father fell dangerously ill. By a bizarre coincidence, my own father went into the hospital just after I posted Chapter 2, and everything became too personal. So I've decided to keep the Rabbi in good health, and hand Grace another crisis)
Chapter 1 Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
(The chapter title is from T.S. Eliot's poem "THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK")
"You can't do this," I said.
"You've done it to yourself, Miss Polk," Vice-Principal Price said smugly. "By not showing up on the day of an important English test, you got a zero. Your teacher calculates that combined with other poor grades, you'll flunk the English course as a result. And if you don't have sufficient English credits, you can't graduate in May."
"But everything was crazy at the time! That was the week somebody blew up City Hall, and the police were circulating around the school because they thought a student was involved. Joan Girardi got to take her law test over."
"Miss Girardi was granted permission to be absent that day, because the police required her services." It was of course Price who had done the granting. Power to help or doom a student must make him feel like G-d, not having met the real one. "Whereas you, if I understand properly, used your time off to go horseback riding."
I groaned. Fearful that the police were after me, and wanting an unexpected escape route, I had borrowed a hardy steed from Maggie Begh and ridden it cross-country to the next town, on a freezing January day. It had not been at all fun, and that stage of my flight it had actually occurred on a Saturday, not the test day. But try explaining any of that to Mr. Price.
"Of course all is not lost," said Mr. Price. "You can make up the English course during the summer, and at the end we will give you the diploma."
Great. Sitting on my butt in a schoolroom while everybody else was enjoying the crucial summer between high-school and the independent life of college. "And if I don't?"
"Well, one cannot get far these days without a high-school diploma. Not very far with one, for that matter."
I stomped out of the office. It was near the end of the school day Friday, so I didn't even bother going to the last class, which wasn't giving a test. I needed to think. And the more I thought about the problem, the worse it sounded.
Two or three years ago, it wouldn't have mattered. My attitude then was that high school was an ordeal designed for the torture of teenagers. But then I had met Luke Girardi, who taught me that learning can be a joy, particularly if it was a subject that one loved, as Luke loved science. And through Luke's cousins, a farming family named the Cavallos, I discovered a project in which genetically engineered grain was being tested as a possible solution to Third World famine, and realized that learning could solve issues that I cared deeply about. But now I was short the graduation credits, and I was going to look like a dunce.
Reputation was another thing that hadn't bothered me two years ago, when I had enjoyed being the Bad Girl. But since my mother's secret drinking had both stopped and come into the open, and I had gone through my bat mizvah, I realized that I cared what the community thought of me. My parents' peers admired academic achievement., and if one didn't achieve---?
At least there was one good thing about the timing. It was Friday, and on Fridays I got together with my best friends, Adam and the Girardis, to discuss divine revelations or anything else of interest to us. At least they would sympathize with my situation.
Come 5:00, I rang the doorbell at the Girardi house, and Luke answered the door. "Grace! How nice of you to stop by."
"We had an appointment, dude." I said, surprised.
"We did? Oh, that's right. Well, come in."
I came in and looked toward the broad living-room area, expecting to see Joan helping her mother with the beginnings of dinner. But nobody was there.
"Um, Mom took Adam and Joan shopping," Luke said sheepishly, realizing that I had an appointment with them as well
"Shopping for what? What could be more important than our sessions?" ..
"They're looking for a ring. Joan and Adam have decided to get married."
"What?"
"Apparently she proposed to Adam last Sunday, and kept it secret all week, but finally blurted it out yesterday."
"She proposed to him? That's refreshing, even though the rest of the marriage idea is so retro. Is she pregnant?"
"No, she insists that she's still a virgin, and after two earlier cases where we didn't believe her, I'm inclined to accept her word for it this time."
"So when will the ceremony be?"
"June."
Under any other circumstances, I might have made a satirical remark about adhering too close to tradition. But the mention of the summer suddenly reminded me again of my meeting with Price. "Crap!"
Luke blinked. "There's something crappy about June?"
"For me there is." I poured out me story of the missed graduation and the dread possibility of summer school.
"That's not fair," Luke said indignantly. "I missed a couple of days, too, but since my teachers didn't give big tests then, I got away with it. Still, I don't see how I can help straighten out the situation. If it was a science teacher flunking you I might be able to talk to her, but English teachers have no reason to listen to me."
I hadn't even thought of talking to a teacher; to me teachers were The Enemy. "No, I don't expect you to do anything about it. Just offering tea and sympathy is OK." I had meant it literally, but uttering those last three words triggered a weird attack of déjà vu. I had once seen a controversial 50's movie called "Tea and Sympathy" on cable, and it ended with the central male character getting --- "There is one thing I'd like," I said.
"Yeah?"
"My 18th birthday is next month. Do you think that, in honor of the occasion we could---?" I left the end of the request unspoken. "After all, we did It on your birthday."
"Your parents wouldn't like it."
"They're not going to be in bed with us!" I said with annoyance.
"You know what I mean. I want them to consider me a suitable future husband for you, and I already have one strike against me, being a goy. If they think I'm obsessed with sex --"
"We're talking about an ex-alcoholic and a hypocritical rabbi! What right have they to judge you, particular when I'll be a legal adult at the time?"
"They're still your parents, Grace."
"Fine. Enjoy the celibate life." I made a further rude suggestion on the subject of sex that I'd rather not repeat here, and marched out the front door. A summer in school with no boyfriend; what else could go wrong?
When I got back to my house, there was a letter addressed to me in the mailbox. It was a rejection letter from my most recent job interview. That was infuriating, and not just because of the rejection itself. If I couldn't get a job, I had to stay with my parents even after I hit 18, which meant I sort of had to live on their terms. Or at least not let Luke spend a night in my bedroom in their house.
"G-d damn it!" I yelled, kicking the mailbox post.
"Is that an order, or a request?" asked an amused female voice behind me. I guessed who it was before even turning around.
My riding teacher Diana, who had turned out to be G-d in disguise. The deity appeared to Joan in a variety of forms, but usually chose the Cowgirl identity to deal with me. She never explained why, but probably it was simply because Joan was less suspicious of strangers than I was. I had a lot more important things to worry about than that.
"We need to talk,." I said.
"Of course. Much more productive than sending an inanimate mailbox to the nether regions. What do you want to talk about?"
"You can see for yourself." I took a deep breath. "My life is hell right now. I argue with Luke all the time, and nobody wants me to work with them -- but we've talked about all this before. And now this! My first summer as an adult, and I'm in remedial ed! Why do you let these things happen?"
"You know that I prefer not to interfere with the natural sequence of events.--"
"Don't give me that! You invented nature! Don't tell me that you couldn't have done a better job."
"I could, but free will--"
I heard this lecture before; that humans made their beds and had to lie in them. "You can throw 'free will' in the toilet for all I care."
"Oddly enough, I did once. A few weeks ago I told Luke about another world that I made. It's hard to express the difference in human language, but in that world I gave humans an extra drive to serve one another's good, at the expense of their free will. As a midrash, you could say that their version of Adam and Eve waited for me to teach them good and evil, instead of seizing that knowledge before they were ready for it."
"I wish I had been born there." I said angrily, implying that it was G-d's fault that my soul ended up in the wrong universe..
"No. Because if you were, you wouldn't have grown up to be you, Grace Polk. You'd be afraid to speak up for fear of hurting another's feelings, and you'd be a rebel with no real cause. Frankly, your struggles to do the right thing are more beautiful to me than the pre-programmed goodness of the people in the other world."
"I don't feel beautiful. I don't care about beautiful. That's a girl thing."
"No, it's a G-d thing. Someday, you'll see all of this in perspective." She walked off with her characteristic wave, leaving me still fuming at my lot.
TBC