The Savage Kind

by John Copenhaver

  Something shifted in Miss Martins again and warmth spread across her face. “Thank you for telling Judy and me about your mother,” she said, tilting toward me. “I’m sure it’s been difficult growing up without her.” Then dreamily, as if she were reciting poetry, she added, “The hardest thing in the world, I imagine.” I didn’t know how to respond. I should’ve said something like, “Thank you for saying that, and I don’t know what’s going on between you and Cleve, but I hope you’re okay.” Instead, flustered by all the emotional push and pull, I told her that I’d see her later with Love’s Last Move in hand.

  JUDY, OCTOBER 20, 1948

  I watched from the door as Philippa and Miss M spoke. They seemed surrounded by a golden bubble. It was like seeing myself a year ago in junior English at the moment I knew Miss M and I had a special connection. I’d written a composition in defense of Circe from the Odyssey. It was a sympathetic portrait—after all, she was just protecting what was hers. Miss M ripped through it with a red pen and wrote, “See me immediately!” When I approached her desk, she told me that my essay was extraordinary, that sure, my writing was a little rough here and there, but that I had “a remarkable aptitude for reading literature from a fresh point of view.” She insisted that I cultivate it and gave me a reading list, everything from Dickens to Fitzgerald to Dorothy Parker and Elizabeth Bowen. We began to meet after school to discuss my extracurricular reading. Although she never confirmed it, I was sure that she pulled strings to have me placed in her class this year. But today Philippa was in my place, and Miss M was beaming at her. I felt cut off, divided from Miss M and Philippa. Together, Philippa and I needed to confront her about why Cleve was threatening her. She wasn’t talking to us, and it was getting under my skin. As I stepped forward to burst their bubble, Jake Wallace rammed into my side. “Move it,” he said.

  Having lost my momentum, I walked to my seat and slung my bag on the floor, not making eye contact with Philippa. Miss M stood to greet students as they flowed in. Once we were settled, she instructed us to open Wuthering Heights and locate the passage where Catherine’s ghost confronts Lockwood. I knew the passage. Philippa and I reread the book a week ago.

  Miss M was about to elaborate on her instructions when Cleve entered the room. There was an uncomfortable hush. His head was down, hair flopped forward. He crossed in front of Miss M. Usually, she would’ve called him on his tardiness—or any student, for that matter—but she let him stalk to his desk with no reprimand, her troubled eyes lingering on his back.

  She continued her instructions: She wanted us to write an impromptu essay arguing whether Catherine’s ghost is real or a dream. Was she a figment of Lockwood’s imagination or an actual ghost? As she spoke, her voice seemed dislodged from her—a ventriloquist act—and she kept nervously eyeing Cleve, who was slumped in his desk.

  I set to work, paging through the novel. I ran a finger across Catherine’s wail, “Let me in—let me in!” And Lockwood’s response: “Who are you?” And her answer, “Catherine Linton,” not Catherine Earnshaw, a name far more familiar to him. It was proof the ghost is real, or at least that’s what I’d argue.

  I marked the line and glanced up. Cleve wasn’t working. He was flipping through a red-brown leather-bound book of some sort, pausing occasionally to let his eyes drift up to Miss M, who was grading at her desk.

  After removing a clumsy paragraph with my eraser, debris strewn across my desk, I looked at him again. He was glaring at her. His blue eyes, now glittering in the afternoon sun, broadcast pure disdain. Anger churned in me. I wanted to launch out of my chair and shove him against a wall and demand an explanation for this bizarre behavior—but I was also awed by his insolence, even frightened by it. Where was all this headed? I blew the eraser bits off my desk.

  Miss M called time, and we laid down our pencils. She stood, walked in front of her desk, smiled uncertainly, and clasped her hands together. “Okay,” she said. “Do I have any volunteers to read the first paragraph of their compositions?” She scanned the room, but no one volunteered, as usual. I thought Philippa would, but perhaps the exercise hadn’t gone well for her. “Be brave, now,” she said. “I’m not going to grade these harshly. We just need to hear a few examples to spark discussion.” She scanned the room again, the corners of her mouth turning up and her eyebrows twitching encouragingly. I was about to volunteer when Cleve’s hand shot up. His arm stretched high, fingers wiggling. “Yes, Cleveland,” she said, her cheerfulness seeping from her.

  “I’ll read,” he said.

  “Read what?” I thought.

  “Very well,” Miss M said. She took a step toward him, then stopped short. From amid the mess of loose notebook paper on his desk, he raised up the reddish leather book. His jaw was set, and his eyes were slits like he was taking aim. He began: “ ’Today was just extraordinary. The past is indeed not the past at all—’ ”

  “Stop!” Miss M said. Her entire body buckled slightly, as if some invisible force had socked her in the stomach. “Get out,” she added. Her face had flushed bright red.

  He didn’t move or react. Hatred was radiating from him. Both Philippa and I knew what he was capable of. I wondered when he might swing around and try to melt us with his gaze. Or worse, reach into his knapsack, grab something sharp—a pencil, a drawing compass—and fly at us or Miss M. I flicked my eyes at Philippa, who squinted back but offered me nothing. Wasn’t she worried?

  “Leave your things and—and get out,” Miss M said and, in a lower tone, added, “It’s for your own good.”

  “ ‘You never know what a day has in store for you,’ ” he continued to read, his voice grinding through the words. “ ‘How everything can change in a moment. You’re poor one minute, then rich the next. You’re alone, then suddenly you’re in love—’ ”

  “Go!” she shouted. “I don’t want to look at you!” Her eyes were leaking tears.

  He shifted in his seat but didn’t leave. I wanted him to go, to relieve the room of the weight of his presence. But he seemed determined to have a standoff, as if this was his way of forcing whatever it was to the surface, even if it meant pushing us all over the edge. Miss M dropped her shoulders, her resolve wilting. The rest of us remained on tenterhooks, sensing that we were witnessing something profound or just deeply strange. I wanted to jump up and shake him by the shoulders: “Spill it, damnit! Get it over with!”

  Finally, Miss M said, “If you don’t go, I’ll get Principal Green.”

  He didn’t leave. He just turned the page of the reddish book and glared at her.

  The room was the deck of the Titanic tilting toward the ocean, and everyone was paralyzed, waiting for the inevitable cold slap of water. I had to do something, so I plucked a pencil from my desk and flung it at him. It struck him in the chest eraser first. It was a childish move, but it worked. It punctured the tension. He leaped up, shooting me his death-ray stare, and spat out, “You’re next!” Whatever that meant. He shoved his papers, the leather-bound book, and Wuthering Heights into his beat-up red backpack in one crumpled wad. He dashed down the aisle and out of the room. In the commotion, my pencil fell to the floor and rolled toward me. A boomerang!

  Miss M looked at me, sad and exasperated, and shook her head, as if I’d done something wrong. The gesture stung. I wanted to step forward and be permitted inside the golden bubble that I’d seen Philippa in earlier, that many times before she’d dropped over me like a bell jar. But right then, like some ghoulish harbinger of doom, she was issuing a warning: “Turn back! Cleve is off bounds.” An impetuous part of me, deep inside, wanted to scream, to stand up and demand an explanation, but as soon as that emotion welled up, Miss M dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, threw back her shoulders, and with forced levity, said, “Enough of all that. Let’s turn our attention to the melodrama on the page?”

  I clamped my mouth shut and squeezed the sides of my desk.

  PHILIPPA, OCTOBER 20, 1948

  Once home, I flew up the stairs, gra
bbed Love’s Last Move, and flew down again, promising Bonnie I’d be back before six. Out on the street, a breeze tossed a few dead leaves into the air, and I slowed my pace. The windows of the townhouses I passed were life-sized puppet shows. In one, an old man in red suspenders was watering his plants. In another, a fresh-faced wife was helping her husband off with his coat. In yet another, a bedraggled maid was cleaning a chandelier from the top of a ladder. In others, shadows shifted across molded plaster ceilings, and cats waited for their owners, tails twitching, and as twilight descended, lights clicked on. The tinny voices of afternoon radio show hosts and even the tinkling of a piano lesson curled through open windows. Warm smells of baking bread, fried chicken, and bacon grease hit my nose and made my stomach growl. I wondered if Cleve lived in one of the houses, and if perhaps it held the key to his odd behavior.

  Miss Martins lived in the English basement of a large townhouse with stone siding and a weather-vaned turret, like something out of an Inner Sanctum Mystery broadcast. The entrance to her apartment was on the outside of the building, five feet below street level. In the growing dark, it took me a minute to locate the steps. Beside her door was a small metal mailbox: “900 A: Christine Martins.” The door was ajar, which was odd. People in the city didn’t leave their doors unlocked, much less open. I rapped on it, and loose in its hinges, it swung wide.

  Inside, the dimly lit room was modest and neat, everything arranged at right angles. In one corner sat a writing desk covered with stacks of papers, most likely overdue grading. The only light in the room came from a banker’s lamp on the desk. Its green glass shade emitted a sickly, underwater glow. A spicy metallic odor hung in the air like a heavy perfume or cologne, stinging my nostrils and rushing to my head. A scratchy and muffled melody—something from a radio or record player—drifted out from beyond an arched doorway.

  “Miss Martins?” I said and waited for a response.

  Nothing. Just the music, the perfume.

  Certainly, she was here. She told me to come. I was on time. Perhaps she was just out of earshot. “Hello?” I said and continued on.

  Beyond the archway, streetlights shone through the ground-level windows, revealing the shadowy outlines of a kitchenette with a cramped breakfast nook and thin strip of Formica countertop. Here, the radio was louder, the tune more discernible, some old crooner going on about being a prisoner of love. I told myself that I shouldn’t go any farther, that it was invasive, that Miss Martins would be angry with me, but my body was drawn to the cool, lazy notes, so I crept on. Besides, she’d invited me here, she knew I was coming, right? Perhaps after the disturbing standoff during class, she’d forgotten?

  The odor—it was definitely a man’s cologne—was even more oppressive. My head throbbed; a headache was gathering steam. I took another step, and something crunched under the sole of my shoe. The noise seemed terrifyingly loud, like I’d overturned a tray of glassware, but it was just a small piece of glass. In a puddle beside it were white chrysanthemums, baby’s breath, and shards of a milk-glass vase. Something rustled deeper in the apartment; someone was there. “Hello? Miss Martins?” I said in a squeaky whisper, unsure I wanted her to know I was there. I’d gone too far. The music and the cologne swirled around me, disorienting me, making it hard to pin down a directive: Flee or plunge ahead? But something was off, something was wrong. If Judy were there, she’d grab my hand in hers and drag me forward.

  Before me was another archway, veiled with a sheer curtain. The music, now on to another song, something about madness and love, was coming from behind it. (Seriously, why are so many songs about love and insanity?) Anyway, I stepped forward, over the puddle, clutching Love’s Last Move, as if ready to hold it up in my defense. I almost said, “But you told me to come! Here’s the book!” I heard mumbling, nothing intelligible, then the soft cry of a woman’s voice. Shapes were shifting behind the translucent fabric. Imagining Judy’s hand in mine, tugging on me, urging me, I drew back the curtain.

  Other than a bedside lamp draped with a pink scarf, the room was unlit. Ten or so feet from me, across a floor strewn with women’s clothes—dresses in various patterns, vibrant scarves, several pairs of pumps—a man’s bare buttocks undulated, thrusting savagely at a dark form under him. His pants were down mid-thigh, and his leather belt drooped from his belt loops, snaking around his left leg. His rumpled white dress shirt hung loosely from his shoulders; its collar twisted away from his neck. His dark-toned fedora was cocked back, obscuring the shape of his head and hair. His arms, thrown forward, vanished into a shadow. To either side of him, a woman’s legs were spread, gray and contorted, one of her black suede pumps dangling from a toe. He grunted, and the woman stirred—a slender arm fell into view. Her open palm was a bright cup of light.

  I felt like I’d been swallowed whole. The air was humid, and under the cologne, which was so strong it singed my eyes, creeped the funk of body odor. My headache ballooned, making the veins on the sides of my head pulse. The cover of Love’s Last Move grew damp from my sweaty palm. I almost cried out “Stop!” or “Don’t do that!”—something deep within me wanted to protest, to scream, to rage—but instead, feeling Judy’s phantom hand detach from mine, I weakened, and the courage drained out of me. I backed away, trembling. I turned and began to run. But as I did, I stepped in the water on the floor and slipped. I fell hard against the counter, dropping the book. It tumbled under the table in the breakfast nook.

  My side throbbed and my vision blurred as I began to recover. I gripped the brittle Formica and hoisted myself up. I had to get out of there—and right away! I couldn’t let Miss Martins know I’d seen her like that, with him. The thought was just too horrifying. My chest was heaving. A harsh whisper—it was his voice—slid out. “Someone’s here. Jesus Christ!” The shadow behind the curtain grew larger, man-shaped. He yanked up his pants and turned, his fedora still crooked. He stepped forward, his silhouette blotting out the rosy light from the lamp. I drew in a deep breath and bounded over the remains of the smashed chrysanthemums, throwing myself through the living room and out into the street.

  JUDY, OCTOBER 21, 1948

  So, here’s some news: Philippa walked in on Miss M with a man, not just with a man, not just sex, but… what? Something worse? Rape? Of course, she could be exaggerating. She could be that naive, that inexperienced. She could be. She seems that way at times, especially the silly way she smokes her cigarettes like she’s channeling Rita Hayworth in Gilda.

  Not that I’m an expert, but my experience with Roy goddamn Barnes taught me a few things, a few lessons. First of all, fucking is painful and weird, not the romanticized nonsense that movies or magazines make it out to be—or literature, for that matter. It’s messier too, and not aesthetically pleasing. Midway through my ordeal with Roy, I opened my eyes, saw his doughy face, his features balled up like a baby’s fist, and laughed out loud. It was easier than crying. He gave me a confused, desperate look as if to say, “Huh? What did I do wrong?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. He just moaned, pulled out, and left his goo on my skirt. That was it. Can you believe it? Since I was his first—or so he said—does he expect girls to laugh at him during sex now? Is he baffled when they don’t? Does he think that’s normal? Does he care?

  Surely Philippa has had some experiences, some idea of what goes on between men and women. Perhaps I should give her more credit. I don’t know. She was really frightened for Miss M. That was clear. After all, she wouldn’t have pulled me into Eastern High’s grimy service stairwell to tell me the news if it was nothing, right?

  After she rushed through the story—she was all fluttery hand motions and run-on sentences—I searched her face and said, “Did Miss M see you leaving?”

  Humiliation bled through her cheeks, not the brief flash of embarrassment you feel when tripping going up the stairs or giving the wrong answer to simple arithmetic. She was mortified, almost in tears. Then I understood: she’d dropped Love’s Last Move. Miss M knew who had walked in on her and h
er paramour? Her attacker?

  Recovering, she said, “I think something is wrong. She wouldn’t have asked me to drop off the book when she was… entertaining someone. She knew I was coming.”

  “Maybe she forgot,” I said, “or maybe he wasn’t invited.”

  “It doesn’t seem like her to be with a man that way. To be… loose.”

  When she said that, I thought, “Jesus, she is a virgin!” Only a virgin would say “loose”—only a virgin from a nineteenth-century novel, that is. I stymied a smile.

  “What if she was in danger?” she continued, her face growing pale. “What if he was hurting her, and I did nothing?” She looked at me, her pewter-gray eyes brimming. “Jesus, I just ran.”

  “You don’t know what you saw,” I said, touching the side of her arm. “It was probably just a passionate sexual rollick.”

  “A rollick?” she said, a little irritated. “It was rough. Not a rollick.”

  “Have you ever seen a man and woman doing it?”

  She squirmed a little, exposing her inexperience. Trying not to be a jerk—not always easy for me!—I didn’t want to make her feel even more self-conscious. Besides, I was charmed by the paradox of her high-minded moral position on Miss M’s romantic life coupled with her fear of admitting to being a sexual neophyte. How she holds her cigarette… Clearly, it’s all for my benefit.

  “So,” I said, “you don’t really know what sex is supposed to look like… in action.”

  “Something wasn’t right about it.” She scrunched her face at me. “I’m not an idiot.”