Mrs. Fletcher

by Tom Perrotta

  Change of plans, he said. I’m really sorry.

  You’re not coming?

  No, no. I’m still coming. But I’m bringing the gang.

  The gang?

  Bethany and Jon-Jon.

  Oh. What was I supposed to say? You couldn’t tell your dad not to bring his wife and kid. All right. Sure.

  You okay with that?

  I guess. I mean, I only have three tickets for the football game, and one of ’em is for Zack.

  Yeah, he said. I’m not so sure about the football game. Think I can take a rain check?

  *

  They showed up around eleven on Saturday morning. I hadn’t seen Jon-Jon in about six months, and I almost didn’t recognize him. He was a lot bigger than I remembered. He was really cute, blond hair and blue eyes, and those long eyelashes that everybody who met him commented on. Bethany had dressed him in khakis and a button-down shirt and a little denim jacket. He looked like a model in a Gap Kids catalogue, but that wasn’t the main thing. He just seemed more together than the kid I remembered. He was actually looking in my general direction and not screaming his head off.

  Look, Bethany told him. It’s your big brother. Brendan’s in college. This is where he lives. Why don’t you say hi to Brendan.

  Jon-Jon took this all in.

  Hello, he said, addressing the word to my knees. His voice was soft and mechanical, and the word sounded almost foreign, but still, he fucking said it.

  Wow, I said.

  I know. Bethany looked so happy. He’s doing great. We finally found the right school.

  He was pretty good in the car, my dad added. Hardly complained at all.

  They came in and I introduced them to Zack, who totally rose to the occasion, making small talk like an Eagle Scout. Jon-Jon was standing in the middle of the room, lost inside his head, while the rest of us chatted about how nice the dorms were compared to the ones my father and Bethany had lived in back in the day. It was the usual story—they got treated like shit and we got treated like kings.

  I saw the lounge on the way in, my dad said. That’s a big TV!

  And that communal kitchen, Bethany said. Jeez. I wouldn’t mind living here for a few months.

  At some point, Jon-Jon took a couple of steps in my direction. I thought he was maybe gonna hug me or sit on my lap, but he was just coming to examine the fabric of the couch I was sitting on, the one Zack and I had found on the street at the beginning of the semester. It had a weird texture, kinda fuzzy but also a little slick—almost greasy—and Jon-Jon seemed fascinated by it. He reached out his hand, very slowly, and started stroking the armrest, as if it were a living thing. For a while, the conversation stopped, and we all just watched him.

  I think he likes it here, Bethany told us.

  *

  Before lunch we went for a walk. Zack stayed behind, claiming he had work to do, so it was just me, my dad, Bethany, and Jon-Jon. There were lots of official tours available throughout the weekend, but my dad and Bethany didn’t think Jon-Jon was ready for something like that. Better to go at our own pace and not bother anyone else, even if that meant they had to listen to my feeble attempts to impersonate a college student who actually knew what he was talking about.

  Uh . . . I think that’s a science building. Maybe Chemistry. I’m really not sure. Could be Sociology.

  Yeah, so this is the new gym. It’s a lot nicer than the old one. That’s what everybody says. I guess the old one smelled really bad.

  So those are bike racks. Maybe I’ll bring my bike next year. I just need to inflate the tires.

  I’m not sure who that statue is. Some dude from the nineteen hundreds. Guess I should read the plaque.

  I felt like a dumbass, blathering on like that, but my dad and Bethany seemed happy enough. Whatever I said, one of them would repeat it to Jon-Jon in simplified language. Look at the bicycles . . . Look at the statue . . . That’s where people go to exercise. Sometimes Jon-Jon would look where they were pointing, but most of the time he would stare at whatever he felt like staring at. A tree. His own hand. Nothing at all.

  I could see why they were in such a good mood. Given the way things usually went with Jon-Jon, it was a minor miracle to be outside on a beautiful day, walking around a public place like a relatively normal family. I met Bethany’s eyes a couple of times, and she gave me this shocked, excited look, like, Oh my God, can you believe this? I felt pretty good about it myself. It wasn’t the fun day that I’d planned, but it was still kinda nice in its own way.

  *

  We were walking toward the library, Bethany and Jon-Jon trailing behind my dad and me. I was telling him about my Econ class, leaving out the part about my D average, when he turned to check on his wife and son.

  Oh shit, he said.

  It didn’t seem like a big deal at first. Jon-Jon had stopped walking. He was just sort of frozen in place, staring up at the sky. Bethany stood right beside him, looking at my dad with a worried expression on her face.

  What’s wrong? I asked.

  My dad shook his head and starting walking toward Jon-Jon, moving slowly and carefully. He spoke his son’s name in a soft voice, but Jon-Jon didn’t seem to hear it. His attention was focused like a laser beam on the small plane that was flying overhead at a low altitude, trailing a banner that read, WELCOME PARENTS!

  He hates airplanes, Bethany explained. It’s one of his things.

  The plane was directly overhead, buzzing like a giant insect. Jon-Jon let out a yelp, quick and shrill, like someone had jabbed him with a pin. Then he did it again, this time even louder. I could see people turning in our direction, squinting in confusion. Jon-Jon slapped himself in the head.

  I’m sorry, Bethany told me. He was being so good.

  It was hard enough to deal with one of Jon-Jon’s meltdowns in the house, but it was way worse with all those strangers around. A gray-haired lady in a BSU sweatshirt wandered over, asking if the poor thing was okay. Bethany fished a business card from her purse and handed it to the woman. They’d gotten the cards printed up the year before, after an epic tantrum at Target.

  Please don’t be alarmed, it said. Our son Jonathan has been diagnosed with autism and sometimes needs to be physically restrained to avoid injury to himself and others. We love Jonathan very much and only want to keep him safe. Thank you for your understanding.

  The plane banked away from us, moving toward the football stadium, but I don’t think Jon-Jon even noticed. He was rocking from side to side, moaning and clutching his head. And then he punched himself. Hard, right above his ear. Like it was somebody else’s head he was punching, somebody he hated.

  Please don’t do that, Bethany told him.

  My father sat down on the grass and hugged him from behind, trying to pin his arms, but Jon-Jon fought like crazy to break free, thrashing and screaming like a trapped animal.

  The struggle only lasted a few minutes, but it felt a lot longer. Every time it looked like my dad had Jon-Jon under control, one of his arms would slip free, and he’d start punching himself again. And then my dad would have to grab that arm without losing control of Jon-Jon’s other limbs. It almost looked like a game, except that Jon-Jon was drooling and my father’s nose was bleeding from a backwards head butt. Even so, he just kept speaking quietly the whole time, telling his son that he loved him and that everything would be okay. A pretty good crowd had gathered by then, and Bethany was handing a card to each new arrival, apologizing for the disturbance.

  “They sound like great parents,” Amber said, when I’d finished with the story.

  “Yeah,” I said. “They’re really patient with him.”

  “What about you?” she asked. “How did you feel while that was happening?”

  “I just felt sorry for them,” I told her.

  That part was true. I really did feel bad for my dad and Bethany, and even for Jon-Jon, because I knew he couldn’t help himself. What I didn’t tell her was how sorry I felt for myself, and how jealous I was of my
little brother, even though that was totally ridiculous. Jon-Jon had a hard life, and I would never want to trade places with him. But that whole time, while he was screaming and thrashing around, I kept thinking how unfair it was that my father loved him so much and held him so tight—way tighter than he’d ever held me—and wouldn’t let go no matter what.

  The Human Condition

  At the end of the Tuesday night seminar, white-bearded Barry raised his hand and invited the whole class to reconvene for a nightcap at his sports bar.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” he said, “but all this talk about gender makes me thirsty!”

  The initial response to Barry’s overture was lukewarm—it was late, people had work in the morning—but public opinion shifted when he added that drinks would be on the house.

  “Now that you mention it,” said Russ, the fanatical hockey fan, “I could definitely go for a free beer.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Barry. “What’s the point of being in college if we don’t socialize outside the classroom? That’s like half your education right there.”

  “Does that include hard liquor?” Dumell ruefully patted his midsection. “I’m watching my carbs.”

  “Within reason,” Barry told him. “I’m not breaking out the Pappy Van Winkle.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Dumell assured him. “I’m a cheap date. Just ask my ex-wife.”

  Eve had no intention of joining the party. She’d been dodging Barry’s invitations to get a drink after class for the past two months and didn’t want to offer him the slightest encouragement, not that he needed any. Barry was one of those guys who didn’t know the meaning of rejection; he just kept trying and trying and trying. His persistence might have been flattering if it hadn’t felt so smug and entitled—so steeped in male privilege—as if there was no possible way she could outlast him in a battle of romantic wills.

  Hoping to avoid any unpleasantness in the parking lot—Barry sometimes lurked outside the exit and then attached himself to Eve as she walked to her car—she ducked into the ladies’ room and killed a few minutes in the stall, playing several turns on Words with Friends (random opponent, not very good) and then peeing, not because she needed to, but because she was already sitting on a toilet and it seemed foolish not to. She washed her hands with excessive diligence and checked her face in the mirror—an unbreakable, though less and less rewarding, habit—before leaving the rest room and almost colliding with Dr. Fairchild, who was standing outside the door, her lanky basketball player’s frame augmented by businesslike heels.

  “Eve.” She sounded concerned but vaguely reproachful. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  “You were in there for quite a while.” The professor heard herself and grimaced, mortified by her own rudeness. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

  “Great class tonight,” Eve said, trying to cut through the awkwardness.

  Dr. Fairchild gave a distracted nod and then asked, with some urgency, “Are you going? To the bar?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Fairchild couldn’t hide her disappointment. “I was hoping you were.”

  “Are you?”

  “I was thinking about it. Might be fun, right?”

  Huh. Eve hadn’t given a lot of thought to the professor’s idea of fun, but it hardly seemed like drinking at a sports bar with guys like Barry and Russ would be high on her list.

  “It’s been a long day,” Eve explained. “I’m kinda wiped out.”

  “I just—” Dr. Fairchild flipped her hair over her shoulder, first one side, then the other, her favorite nervous gesture. “I really don’t want to go there by myself.”

  “You won’t be by yourself. Sounds like a bunch of them are going.”

  “I know.” A pleading note had entered the professor’s voice. “It’s just a lot easier to walk in with a girlfriend. Especially at a place like that.”

  Eve was puzzled, but also touched, by the professor’s use of the word girlfriend. Until this moment, they’d never even had a conversation outside of class.

  “I guess I could get a drink,” she said. “Just one, though. Tomorrow’s a workday.”

  “Thank you.” Dr. Fairchild leaned down and gave Eve a hug. “I really appreciate this.”

  “No problem. So I guess I’ll see you over there?”

  Dr. Fairchild’s smile was also an apology. She knew she was pushing her luck.

  “Could you maybe give me a ride?” she asked. “That way I can’t chicken out.”

  *

  Ten minutes later, they were parked outside of Barry’s bar, a squat brick building that had the unappealing name of PLAY BALL! emblazoned on the front awning, with a baseball bat standing in for the exclamation point. Dr. Fairchild didn’t seem in any hurry to leave the car.

  “I have very big feet,” she said. “It’s not easy to find cute shoes in my size.”

  “Those are nice,” Eve observed. “You can’t go wrong with black pumps.”

  “You should see my red stilettos. I can barely walk in them, but they look really hot. I just don’t have many opportunities to wear them at the moment.”

  “I’ve pretty much given up on heels,” Eve told her. “At my age, I’d rather be comfortable.”

  “You’re not that old.”

  “Forty-six. Not young, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m not that much younger than you,” Dr. Fairchild pointed out. “I guess I’m trying to make up for lost time. I missed out on my best years.”

  In the bright public sphere of the classroom, Eve never had a problem accepting Dr. Fairchild as a woman. In that context—a teacher interacting with students, deconstructing outmoded concepts of masculinity and femininity—she seemed like an embodiment of the curriculum, her theory and practice a continuous whole. In a minivan outside a sports bar, however, the professor’s gender identity seemed a little more precarious, as much wish as reality. It was partly the timbre of her voice in the darkness, and partly just the size of her body in the passenger seat, the way she filled the available space.

  I can see who you were, Eve thought. One self on top of the other.

  As soon as this uncharitable image occurred to her, she did her best to erase it from her mind. She wasn’t the gender police. Her job—her responsibility—was to be kind and supportive, and not to judge the success or failure of somebody else’s transformation.

  “You look really pretty,” she said.

  “I’m trying.” Dr. Fairchild’s chuckle was tinged with anxiety. “Every day’s an adventure, right?”

  “I wish.”

  “At least that’s what my therapist tells me. I think she’s just trying to cheer me up.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  Dr. Fairchild stared out the windshield while she considered the question. The only thing in front of them was a brick wall.

  “It was my daughter’s birthday last weekend,” she said. “Her name is Millicent. She just turned eight.”

  “That’s a sweet age.”

  “We threw her a party, my ex-wife and I. And some of the other parents came by at the end, and it wasn’t like they were mean to me or anything. But I could see I made them uncomfortable, and my daughter saw it, too. They stood as far away from me as possible. Like whatever I had might be contagious.”

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean anything by it,” Eve said. “It just takes people time, you know?”

  Dr. Fairchild examined her manicure. “If it wasn’t for Millie, I’d probably just move to New York or L.A. Just get far away from all this suburban bullshit.”

  “If that’s what you want to do, you should do it. New York’s not that far.”

  “It’s too expensive,” Dr. Fairchild said. “And it’s not like it’s gonna make any difference. Doesn’t matter where you live. You’re always just kind of alone with your shit, you know?”

  “It’s the human condition,” Eve told her.

/>   Dr. Fairchild turned away from the wall.

  “You’re as bad as my therapist,” she said, but it sounded like a compliment.

  * * *

  Julian Spitzer wasn’t old enough to drink legally—not even close—but none of the adults objected when he poured himself a glass of beer from the communal pitcher, and then another one after that. That was the upside of going out to a bar on a Tuesday night with a bunch of middle-aged people. You just sort of slipped in under the radar. Nobody bothered to check your fake ID or otherwise give you a second glance, especially if you happened to be sitting with the owner of the bar, which, he had to admit, was pretty fucking cool.

  The downside of this situation was that he was stuck at a dump called PLAY BALL!, surrounded by people twice his age who were talking among themselves about the kind of unbelievably boring crap people that age liked to talk about—dental benefits, kale, lower back pain. He might as well have been hanging out with his parents, except that his parents never would have seated him directly in front of a pitcher of Bud Light or whatever weak-ass beer this was and then pretended not to notice while he imbibed to his heart’s content.

  This wasn’t the kind of news you could ethically keep to yourself, so he snapped a pic of the half-empty pitcher and shot it off to his friend Ethan, who was having a blast at UVM.

  Dude I’m getting WASTED with a bunch of old farts from my Gender and Society class! How fucked up is that?

  Until he typed this message, Julian was unaware of the fact that he was in the process of getting WASTED. But once he saw the word WASTED throbbing like a prophecy inside the green text balloon, it struck him with the force of undeniable truth. Because, really, why shouldn’t he get WASTED? He’d been in college for almost two months and this was the first time he’d partied with his fellow students, or with anyone else, for that matter. It had not been a very exciting fall.

  His phone pinged right away: That’s what you get for going to community college, asshole!

  Dumell, one of two black guys in the class—he was the African-American, not the Nigerian—heard the chime and elbowed him in the arm.

  “Message from your girlfriend?”