Sophomores

by Sean Desmond

  Pat pretended not to stumble to the kitchen. One more and I’ll be on the level.

  “Want me to throw that chicken on the grill?”

  “I told you I was going to use the broiler.” Anne gave him the enough-already look.

  “Just trying to help,” Pat muttered to himself, refilled two lowballs with bourbon and ice, and sulked back to the living room. His leg was not cooperating and he braced himself against the armrest of the chair as he sat down, knocking the doily cover to the floor. He picked it up and realized that he hadn’t sat in this chair since it was in his mother’s house. No one is going to hire a fifty-five-year-old actuary. We’re going to have debt. And then we’re going to have nothing. Pat drank and thought of that old rat-hole apartment on Willis Avenue, missing some story Jack was telling Dan about Colombian drug gangs. Anne fluttered in.

  “Dinner in about ten minutes. I don’t know about this chicken. Apologies in advance. So how are John and Ryan?”

  Jack futzed with the cheese and crackers. “John’s doing well. Does crew every morning on the Potomac in addition to football. Just got him an old jalopy to drive to Paul the Sixth and back.”

  “Is he a junior?” Pat asked.

  “Senior. Come on, Paddy, keep up, he’s two years ahead of Danny.”

  “Right, and Ryan?”

  “He’s good.” Jack’s enthusiasm for this line of questioning was noticeably shot. “Runs up my phone bill like he’s my daughter.”

  Anne frowned and hoped her nephews weren’t as uncouth as their father.

  “Okay, this chicken will be ready soon. Dan, bring the plates in. Let’s sit at the table. Can you put the leaf in, Pat?”

  They all moved into the adjacent dining room. Pulling the table apart and putting the leaf in was a gigantic pain in the ass. The table had been severely crippled in the moving van from the Bronx, and even though they had taken it to be leveled and refinished, it was never the same. Pat tried to align the dowels with the holes but was an eighth of an inch off. His leg was throbbing, and he wanted nothing more than to burn this table—a wedding gift from Anne’s father—in the backyard. He looked at Dan, who, like a canary to his father’s moods, was getting nervous as Pat’s anger grew.

  “Here, Dad, I got it.”

  “Wait, watch your fingers, Dan.”

  “Need some help there, Pat?” Jack was perusing old family pictures that Anne had framed and put out by the Waterford cabinet.

  “It’s like trying to dock a goddamn space capsule.”

  “I got it, Dad.”

  “Wait.”

  “Ow!”

  Pat stumbled back from the table. He had pinched Dan’s finger in between the table and the leaf. Dan sucked air through his teeth and shook his hand.

  “Shit. I’m sorry, son. My fault.”

  “You weren’t listening to me.”

  “Oh, Danny boy, did I get you?”

  “It hurts.”

  “I’m so sorry. Go run some cold water on it. Is it bleeding?”

  “No. God!”

  Dan stormed off to the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry, kiddo.” Why didn’t we just buy new furniture when we moved down? Pat was driving himself mad, and that realization only made it worse. Goddamn insane. Cost the same as shipping all this crap down.

  Anne, who had missed the incident, yelled out, “Don’t go far, Dan—dinner will be on the table in two minutes.”

  “Teenagers, like chickens without heads.” Jack chuckled to himself. “What’s Dan into these days? Playing any pigskin?”

  Pat took a big swig of bourbon. “He’s on the swim team.”

  “That’s good. Did I tell you John set the record for TDs in Fairfax County?”

  “Amazing.”

  “Yeah, as a junior. He’s a little small for the big state schools. But the coach at Holy Cross loves him.”

  Pat straightened out a dinner cloth over the table. “Not BC? I’m sure they’re looking for the next Flutie.” He started pulling out knives and forks from the silver drawer. All this useless shit we kept. He stood back from the table. Why did we put the leaf in? It’s only the four of us. Fucking hell. Well, a few more inches of distance from this asshole.

  “Listen, Pat, speaking of college, there’s something I want to bring up with Anne. I could use your help on it.”

  Pat finished his drink and put out the plates. Time to switch back to vodka.

  Jack leaned against the back of the sofa, his gut hanging out of his suspenders. “First off, Cat and I are so grateful for how you took care of Mary.”

  “Uh-huh.” Pat set the table. Mary was Anne’s mother, who lived with them for her last year. He was half-listening and trying to figure out if he could have another . . . “Anne, should we have wine with this dinner or something?”

  “I think we’re okay,” she yelled back from the kitchen. “Does Jack want wine? I’m not sure we have any.”

  “I’m fine. Listen, Pat . . .”

  Dan came out of the bathroom and plopped in a chair at the dining room table.

  “You okay, buddy?” Pat asked.

  “I’ll live.”

  “Sorry about that. This table is a pain in the—”

  “So here’s the thing, Pat. She had about ten thousand dollars. Half of that went to the doctors and the funeral. And the other half she wanted donated to the Church.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Have you given that money to Tolentine?”

  “You have to ask Anne. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “Well it would be a big help to us if Cat and I got that half for John’s and Ryan’s college.”

  Pretending not to hear, Pat looked at Jack. “I’m going to open some wine. It’s been a rough day.”

  “If you could help me talk to Annie about this.”

  “You can talk to Anne all you want, Jack. But it’s not her mother’s wishes.”

  “Half that money should be coming to us, Pat. You know that’s fair.”

  “Half after we paid for everything, right? So half of what’s left?”

  “We helped her with the rent at University Avenue.”

  “That’s the first I’m hearing about that.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Dinner’s ready.” Anne walked into the dining room and set down a tray of half-charred chicken smeared Indian red with barbecue sauce. She disappeared back into the kitchen for the sides.

  Pat sat at the head of the table. The sight of the chicken brought on a new wave of weariness. “So how much do you want? What’s the get here?”

  Jack realized he had kicked a hornet’s nest and backed off. “C’mon, Pat, this is not some king’s ransom.”

  Anne came in with potatoes and coleslaw and sat down. Pat popped up from the table. Ransom sounds about right. “I’m opening wine.”

  “We don’t have any.” Anne inspected the chicken for doneness.

  “Fine, just need a glass of water then.” Never mind there was already one on the table in front of him. Pat went to the kitchen, hobbled into the pantry, and snuck a big, burning gulp of vodka. He then stumbled back into the dining room, kicked his own chair out to sit back down, and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Anne, Dan, and Jack pretended not to notice any of this.

  “So go ahead, Jack, ask her.”

  “Let’s just eat.” Jack smiled at Dan. “Danny, your father says you’re swimming. What’s your best stroke?”

  But Pat was past the point of safe return. “Go ahead, Agent Hurley. Go ahead and ask my wife what you wanted to ask her.”

  “Let it go, Pat.”

  Anne put down the serving spoon. She realized they had forgotten to say grace in front of company. “What are we talking about?”

  “It’s nothing, Anne.” Jack tried to wave it a
way with his fork. “Let’s just eat.”

  “He wants what’s left of your mother’s money.”

  Anne looked at Pat. He’s shitfaced. And now my sister is going to hear about it. That upset her more than anything. “Okay, I’ll talk to Catherine,” she said quietly.

  “Thank you, Anne.”

  “Good.” Pat stabbed the chicken with his fork. “And tell J. Edgar fucking Hoover to pay for your fucking kids’ education.”

  Jack stood up and whispered an apology to Anne and Dan. He put on his jacket and walked out the door to his black government car.

  Dan lost his appetite. He sucked on his pinched finger. It was that stupid table. That set him off. His father served him a potato like nothing had happened. Unable to process his fear of his father, it channeled into fury at his mother. Her fucking dinner, her idea to sit at this table. She started this shit. He ran back to his room.

  Anne shook her head and returned to the kitchen. Seconds later she was crying.

  Slashing and biting through the tasteless chicken, Pat Malone sat alone at the head of his table. When he heard his wife crying, he stopped chewing and blinked slowly. Then he threw his plate across the room, missing the Waterford cabinet, the chicken landing on the beige carpet with hardly a sound.

  And so he sat there. Burning down the house in his thoughts.

  [ OCTOBER 23 ]

  “The amazing thing, gentlemen, about Schlieffen’s plan is that it almost worked.”

  Mr. Robert Donahue, sophomore history teacher, stood before his whiteboards like an old master before the gesso on the cappella wall, furiously scribbling a quick map of the Low Countries in blue marker.

  “The German advance was like a gate, and it had to swing with precision, following Schlieffen’s command ‘Let the last man on the right brush the channel with his sleeve.’”

  Donahue had been at Jesuit for eleven years and was considered by many the toughest teacher in the school. Any word written or spoken could appear in a test question, and Dan approached the class with an on-your-toes boot-camp panic.

  “But Schlieffen died in 1913, a year before the war, and the German general staff didn’t quite execute the plan according to his design. Always fearing the unknown millions of troops the czar might throw at them, they took two divisions from the west to bolster the east. Then they spared the right, up here by Belgium, to strengthen the middle. And perhaps the biggest mistake is that this army turned in too soon, exposing its flank to Paris.”

  After drawing the arrow for von Kluck’s blunder, Donahue shook his head. “Remember—all of this is based on train schedules and planned with minute-by-minute detail, down to the number of axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.”

  Donahue scratched his nicotine-stained mustache. He had round, rimless glasses and looked like a distempered, gray-badger version of Teddy Roosevelt, running on coffee and low-tar Camels. Dan could smell his skunked breath from the third row.

  “Von Moltke, the chief of the German attack, expected to conclude the west by the thirty-ninth day of the war, and then the real threat—the Russian front—required this huge transfer of troops and materiel starting on day forty.

  “This was what the Germans feared, having to fight a war on two fronts. Schlieffen on his deathbed told them, keep this right wing strong. But they hedged, and then the armies didn’t quite meet up properly to encircle Paris. Which sets up the Battle of the Marne and a crazy last-ditch effort where the French commandeer every last taxi in Paris to race six thousand troops to the line. This miraculously thwarts the German advance and throws Schlieffen’s timetable out the window.

  “So, gentlemen, as von Moltke feared: ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy.’” Donahue turned to his sophomore class and placed a brown boot up on his desk. He had been a marine in Vietnam, which no one dared ask him about, and was still an active drill sergeant in the National Guard: talking and shouting were equal registers of discourse. “How this war started, how this all came to pass, is the result of a long chain of dominoes that we’ve been looking at in the century following Napoléon. The delicate balance of power established at the Congress of Vienna is thrown off by the assassination of Ferdinand and the goddamn Serbians’ acceding to all but one demand in the ultimatum! Old alliances become entanglements. The British don’t send enough support to the French, who, trying for a quick strike, ran right into the German war machine. The Russians are ridiculously slow to mobilize, but their backward country is impossible to invade because their trains run on an antiquated gauge.”

  Stepping to the right of the whiteboard, Donahue retracted the great-powers map, which was mounted on spring rollers. All of Europe snapped up to the ceiling.

  “This is how the First World War begins; millions die and Europe changes forever. So, my question to you and to General Schlieffen: Is war won by strategy or luck? Is history written by the design of rational nation-state actors, or is this all happening by accident? And, Mr. Flanagan, if you flick that pen one more time and drop it, you will disappear quicker than the Russian Second Army.”

  “Heil Hitler,” Flanagan muttered, just a touch too loud.

  Donahue placed the cap on his blue marker very slowly. “Excuse me, son?”

  Flanagan sank into his seat. “Nothing.”

  “Stand up!”

  Donahue’s command was like the crack of a volcano. A terrified Flanagan stood.

  “To the back of the class.”

  “For what?”

  Donahue’s face was bright red, full bull moose. “Mr. Flanagan, my class time is too short for your nonsense. Back of the room! Now!”

  “Sir, I don’t think—”

  “That’s right, keep talking,” Donahue growled. “Make this easier for me and worse for you.”

  “Fine.” Flanagan shuffled to the back of the room. No one dared make eye contact with him or Donahue. Jesus Christ, Dan thought, Flanagan’s triggered a Nam flashback.

  “You know what I see?” Donahue was barking so loud, the windows shook. “Know what the Führer thinks?”

  Silence.

  “I asked you a question, Mr. Flanagan. You know what I see?”

  “No, sir.”

  Donahue stepped into Flanagan. They were inches apart. “A disrespectful little shit.”

  The sophomores stared straight ahead at the whiteboards. Dan was straining his side-eye to witness the massacre behind him. Donahue might destroy Flanagan in order to save him. Flanagan’s chin was trembling. He gulped a breath. Donahue moved in even closer.

  “Are you going to cry now? What kind of a wiseass are you? You waste my time as a student, and when you want to act like a joker, you can’t pull that off either.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Dan felt like crying for Flanagan, and Sticky gave him a “holy shit” look. How could we have possibly lost the Vietnam War? Dan wondered.

  “No apology necessary, Mr. Flanagan. I feel sorry for you. You are a first-class fuckup, and for the rest of the year, you will speak only when spoken to. You will not like me, but you will respect me, and you will learn. How tall are you, Flanagan?”

  Flanagan wiped his nose in his sleeve, head bowed to the carpet. “Five foot four, sir.”

  Donahue uncapped his blue marker, made a histrionic display of ballparking Flanagan’s height from the floor, and then drew a small circle on a poster of the Magna Carta. “Put your nose right here, Mr. Flanagan.”

  Flanagan stepped to the poster and put his nose in the circle. It was two inches taller than nostril level, just enough to raise his chin and tip his toes in discomfort.

  “If your nose comes out of that circle before the end of the period, you will be writing a twenty-page book report this weekend on All Quiet on the Western Front.” Donahue marched to the front of the class, a kick in his step, the fury turned off like a light swi
tch. “Gentlemen, we were talking about the best-laid plans of the First World War . . .”

  And in the Catholic school tradition of “punish one, teach many,” no one spoke out of turn in Donahue’s class for the remainder of the year.

  * * *

  From there it was a Friday of attrition. Dan went from class to class gaining work and worry for the weekend. His editorship of The Roundup was careening toward the wandering rocks. The deadline for all stories for the November issue was that morning, but when he checked the mailbox at the newspaper office, not a single reporter had filed. Polishing the lens of his Pentax, Father Argerlich shrugged. As Dan sat in Oglesby’s class trying to focus on The Old Man and the Sea, he felt salao, the worst form of unlucky.

  Oglesby stalked around the classroom as he went on about parataxis and iceberg theories of narrative. He sliced the air with Euclid, a former metal curtain rod that had been segmented with white notches. Dan tried to focus on Santiago, but all he could think was: The old man was a Yankees fan, so life wasn’t that bad, right?

  “Gentlemen, turn to the last two pages. Mr. Dowlearn, tell us what happens.”

  “The old man is resting. The boy is attending to him.”

  “And what about after that, Mr. McGhee?” Oglesby tapped the metal leg of Rob’s desk. “Focus us on the last two scenes.”

  “There are tourists. They are looking down at the water and they see the bones of the fish. Its skeleton.”

  “Correct. And what then?”

  “And they ask the waiter what happened.”

  “And what does he tell them?”

  “That the sharks had eaten the marlin.”

  “And do the tourists accept that?”

  Liam Plimmer’s hand shot up. “No, they don’t. They think the waiter is saying it’s a shark’s skeleton, not a marlin’s.”

  “Exactly.” Oglesby planted Euclid in the carpet. “They think it’s a shark carcass and don’t understand what happened to the old man and the marlin. So the question is: Why did Hemingway include this? Why did he essentially end the book on this conversation? Mr. Torkel?”