by Steve Bloom
“Oh my God, I don’t have any pencils!” he cries, fumbling through his backpack and pockets. “I forgot my four number-two pencils!”
I, along with everyone else, ignore him. Then the poor bastard jumps to his feet, calling out plaintively, appealing to the entire room.
“Will no one lend me a number-two pencil?”
There are literally hundreds of us with four or more number-two pencils, and not a single one of us will part with a single one. Things are rough all over. Though I deeply sympathize with his plight, it’s a cruel world, buddy. Survival of the Fittest, man.
“My kingdom for a number-two pencil!” the guy moans, then starts sniveling like a baby, still refusing to go. It’s really starting to get on my nerves. I thrust a pencil at him.
“Here!” I growl.
“Bless you, kind sir!” He snatches the proffered implement. “I won’t forget this.”
“For the love of God, would you please just shut up,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Smug Guy rotating his arms and legs, squeezing his butt cheeks, counting backwards. We haven’t even started and I’m already falling behind! My relaxation exercises! Hurry!
Me and every other sucker in the room are squeezing our butt cheeks ragged. As our official numerically assigned packets are handed out, Strack, looking even more unhinged than usual since it’s the height of application season and being a proctor is the last thing she needs, reads aloud from a prepared text.
“Welcome to the SAT,” she drones. “The SAT is a standardized test for most college admissions in the United States and the rest of the planet.”
Tell me something I don’t know. I am impatient, champing at the bit, itching to get to it, to just get it over with.
“The SAT does not measure intelligence,” Stack continues reciting. “It is not an IQ test.” She snorts skeptically. “Yeah, right.”
Somehow I don’t find Strack’s attitude encouraging.
“The SAT only measures how well you do on the SATs. It is not a predictor of future success.” She snorts again, mumbling, “Who do they think they’re kidding?”
Sighing, she raises her official stopwatch. Hundreds of young anxious eyes fixate on her finger, poised just above the trigger.
“Oh, the hell with it.”
She clicks the tab. The race is on. We’re on the clock.
“You have twenty-five minutes.”
Yellow number-two pencils explode into action on computerized answer sheets. I crack open the seal of my booklet and flip to the first page of the first section to my first question. It’s a math section, a relative strength. I quickly compute my first answer, but when I go to fill it in, nothing’s happening in my first bubble because my pencil has no point. Around me, my competition vaults through problems like champion hurdlers. I cast the defective instrument to the floor and scoop up another pencil. Now I am down to only two spares. I’m rattled.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” I hyperventilate to myself, in and out. “I can do this, damn it!”
I hear the pitter-patter of hundreds of fingers tapping calculator keys. The soft creak of graphite rubbing against paper. The relentless ticking of a veritable sea of individual watches.
I sprint to play catch-up, am at a full gallop and on my last question when Strack’s voice cuts through the silence like an executioner’s ax. “Time’s up.”
I push it to the brink, filling in my final circle a millisecond after she clicks her stopwatch. I’ve made it just under the wire. But before I can absorb my achievement, the Scholastic Aptitude Test marches on.
“Please turn to Section Two,” Strack intones. She clicks. “You have twenty-five minutes.”
Section Two is Verbal, Passage-Based Reading, my greatest nemesis. Even worse, the passage is a poem. And it’s about fucking flowers. My heartbeat goes all loud and slow-motion. THUMP-THUMP-THUMP. The words are like hieroglyphics to me. On my stopwatch, the long hand sweeps around, the short one shifts an increment. A whole minute has passed, and I’m still on the first question. I sit paralyzed. It’s desperation time. I summon up Farkus and his words of hard-paid wisdom.
“The obvious answer is usually the right one on easy questions . . .”
I decisively fill in the letter B for the first question. Then I hear Farkus again.
“On hard questions, the obvious answer is a trap.”
I hurriedly erase B and fill in D, then erase that too and cast my fate with E.
The next three hours and twenty minutes pass in a blur. A blizzard of dense text, complex math diagrams, sentence completions, equations, word analogies, and graphs fly at me like attacking spaceships.
“There is no penalty for wrong answers on grid-ins,” Farkus advises, Yoda-like. “So when in doubt, guess, guess, guess!”
I draw mental straws. I fill in A.
“Wrong answers can kill your score on sentence completions,” I’m warned. “Whatever you do, don’t guess!”
I erase D, refill in C, my original second answer. Around me, I hear a chorus of flipping pages. The others are surging ahead. I gulp bottled water to steady myself.
“Never read directions. It’s a waste of time. Directions never change . . .”
I gladly skip ahead.
“Except in the experimental section.”
I stop in place.
“Nobody knows which section the experimental section is.”
I frantically backtrack. Panicked, I read the directions, I fill and re–fill in spaces. Faster and faster.
“Pencils down,” Strack intones. “Time’s up.”
She clicks her stopwatch with a conclusive, concussive snap. I look around. Crystal Guy springs to his feet and is first to hand in his answer sheet, then struts off with my fucking pencil. Smug Guy’s right behind, smiling. I could murder them both. Even the reliably gelatinous Tricia Prindle is looking spry and remarkably together. It’s over. And I am nowhere close to being done. I shakily close my booklet. A hollowed-out husk.
“Answer sheet, if you please.”
Strack pries my last hopes from my death grip.
---
As I stagger back outside into the glare of normality, a bunch of adult lowlifes are lounging by their cars, reading the sports page, rolling dice, smoking. Seeing me, they bolt into action, jockeying for position by the doors as other brain-weary seniors straggle into view behind me. We are swarmed with printed flyers.
“Post-SAT special at the Acme College Counseling Center!” one lowlife bellows. “Somewhere out there’s a school you’ve never heard of just for you!”
“Karen Richardson, licensed psychologist!” another booms. “You could have a learning disability and not even know it!”
“Blowout tonight at McClellan’s Bar and Grill!” yet another declares. “Kamikazes half-price!”
In a stupor, I wade through a virtual gauntlet of cottage industries that bottom-feed on the admissions process. There’s even a Hare Krishna dancing in circles, pounding on a tambourine, spouting gibberish. I actually contemplate joining.
---
Six hours, five Buds, and four bong rips later, I’m still PTSD, numb, staring into space. I can now defile the bodily temple. But, though I’m no longer denied the meager compensations of late-adolescent existence, though I have tossed abstinence to the winds, though I can even consider the remote possibility of sex again, I’m without solace.
“I feel very positive about it,” I inform The Murf for like the thousandth time since he got here. We’re wedged against the refrigerator, shouting into each other’s faces in the packed kitchen at some party of a girl neither of us knows, whose parents are away. The Murf, just off work, is still in full Gun regalia—fedora, striped vest, and shirt.
“I mean, I wish I had more time,” I admit. “But everybody feels that way.”
The Murf doesn’t say anything, merely replenishes the bowl.
“So there were a couple of sections I didn’t finish. Okay, more than a couple. But the answers I did ans
wer, I definitely knew the answer. Except for the answers I guessed. Overall, I feel very positive.”
“Well, you’re bumming the shit out of me.” The Murf thrusts the pipe and the lighter at me. “I’m going to scope out Julie Hickey. She’s wearing a V-neck you wouldn’t believe.”
He abandons me to myself, leaving me alone in the happy crowd.
“Bomb. Verb,” I croak, belting down another brew. “To achieve complete and utter ruin.”
I could cancel my scores. I have before. Only this time I can’t. Because the best aggregate of my old scores is still seventy-five points short of the Promised Land. I have to stick with the new ones, come what may. It’s never easy for me. Never. Suddenly, I brandish a clenched fist at the ceiling.
“I did everything right! Everything!” I roar. “Ate my proper food groups! Slept with my calculator! Squeezed my buttocks ’til they were black and blue!”
I stop, realizing I am getting strange looks. Then, through the clamor, I feel the Ramones vibrating. My iPhone’s ringing. I dig it out from my pocket and click on.
“Suicide Hotline. Charles Manson speaking.”
“Brooks, Harvey Lieberman in Green Meadow again,” says a voice so meek I can barely hear it.
Lieberman. The name’s vaguely familiar. But there’s been so many on the ol’ voicemail lately. The voice mumbles something inaudible.
“Speak up, man!” I command, straining to hear.
I cover my ears to block out the noise. The voice on the other end barely increases in volume: “I hope I haven’t caught you at an inopportune time . . .”
I light up and suck on the pipe The Murf’s so considerately provided.
“What can I do you for, Mr. Lieberman?” I ask, like I don’t know.
“Actually, it’s Dr. Lieberman. And it’s not for me. For my daughter, Celia.”
“A wonderful girl,” I say in a monotone, exhaling a humungous cloud of smoke.
“Secretary-treasurer of Chess Club,” he recites by rote. “Captain of the Debate Team. National Merit Scholar . . .”
“But the Winter Formal’s coming up and she’s never been,” I cut in. It’s all so predictable.
Now that Homecoming season’s finally winding to a close, Winter Formal season’s just starting. I’m almost booked through November.
“Her mother believes—and I agree very strongly—that it’s important for Celia’s normal maturation process not to miss out.”
“When?” I’m all business, not in the slightest interested in any theories of child development, particularly inane ones.
“This Saturday?” he says meekly. I can feel him cringing. “I know it’s soon.”
Lucky for Lieberman, I’ve had a sudden cancellation. I sigh. After my latest debacle with the SATs, it seems so pointless to soldier on, but soldier on I must.
“Green Meadow?” I say. “That’s in New York.”
“I know it’s a little far . . .”
“Out of state will run you twenty-five extra.”
Across Estate Lines
If Havendale Hills is a tad crass, slightly tacky, and nouveau riche, the village of Green Meadow is refined, tasteful, and old money. Big old money. The kind so enormous it not only doesn’t brag about it, but doesn’t want word to get around. Touching up the sideburns with my trusty electric razor, I cruise in the Beast past the quaint little shops and boutiques, sprinkled here and there with super high-end jewelry stores. There’s even a furrier, as in a place that sells furs. You know, like mink coats and dried-up chinchilla carcasses. I’ve always wondered who the hell actually wears those things.
I’d heard about Westchester County, of course, but even though it’s less than an hour away from Pritchard, I’ve never before had reason to visit. I admire the glittering wares pyramided high like treasure behind shop windows and envy the charmed inhabitants of an almost fairy-tale land, free of drudgery and unfamiliar with want. This is a place of abundance, without thought of cost. When you don’t have much of it, everything’s about money. But not here in Green Meadow. Because here in Green Meadow, everyone already has everything.
I pass block after manicured block of stately houses on spacious wooded lots, monuments to the rewards of plunder, whether self-acquired or inherited. Glimmering fortresses, inaccessible behind wrought-iron gates, imposing and elegant, seemingly without end.
My iPhone directs me up a long, shaded driveway leading to what some would call a large architectural mélange, but I would call a large architectural mess. You know, all glass and corrugated steel and junk parts and weird angles, but jumbled together. I get out, check myself one last time in the side view mirror, and stroll up the walk to the front door. As I reach for the bell, I hear all this screaming and yelling from inside. I can’t make out the words or what it’s about, but it sounds bad, real bad, like a season finale of Breaking Bad bad.
Despite the potential loss of income and considerable distance already traversed, I’m instantly having serious second thoughts. If you could you hear what I’m hearing, you would too. Guttural animal noises, stuff breaking, footsteps stomping around all over the place. So, having no desire to be the star of my personal slasher flick, I do the logical thing and turn to bolt. Unfortunately, my survival instincts are a fraction too slow.
The door opens and a claw-like appendage shoots out and latches onto the tail of my suit jacket, which I still owe seven payments on. I’m running in place. If I move away, the semi-fine wool blend will rip. So I stop mid-stride. Trapped.
“Thank God!” says Dr. Harvey Lieberman, staring at me through thick Coke-bottle glasses that magnify his microdot eyes. Harvey looks just the way I pictured he would on the phone. All jittery and twitchy, like a rabbit terrified that any second something bigger’s going to squash him, which, in this psycho ward, could be a very real possibility. “We thought you’d never get here.”
Harvey smiles weakly. I do too. Even though I go slack and become dead weight, he’s able to kind of tilt me over inside. He closes and bolts the door behind us.
“Celia’s very excited.”
“Yes,” I say. Somebody sure as shit is.
The house is just as whacky inside as it is out. Geometric furniture you can’t sit on. Grotesque tribal masks, fertility statues, and generally disturbing primitive art. Offbeat—but not in a good way. But the joint is huge, I’ll give it that. The Rattigan hovel, by comparison, could easily fit within any number of its high-ceilinged rooms. But that isn’t surprising, considering what I’m dealing with. According to my customary exhaustive online research, Harvey Lieberman’s a world-renowned neurosurgeon in Midtown Manhattan. You know, the kind that operates on aging actors and deposed dictators, sometimes both at once. Beaucoup bucks.
“I simply don’t understand it,” says a woman with frizzed-out hair, also wearing big thick glasses, who clunks down the stairs on weird wooden shoes in some flowy caftan thing. “I would have died to have gone to my Winter Formal.”
Gayle Dross-Lieberman’s a Professor of Child Psychology at the New School for Social Research. And from what I quickly gathered, considered a bit of a quack—even for there. Her big breakthrough? After the weaning process, breast milk can be used for cold cereal and hot cocoa. For real.
The two Liebermans squint cheerfully at me, like the insanity I’ve just heard is perfectly normal. I regard them quizzically. Without question, they are two of the biggest geeks, if not the biggest, I’ve ever met in my life. No, the word “geek” doesn’t do them justice. They are dweebs.
“Celia,” Gayle trills. “Your gallant knight awaits!”
No answer from above. I shrug philosophically. Easy come, easy go. As I inch for the front door, Gayle darts between me and it.
“Harvey, do something!” she demands of her husband.
“Do I have to?” he squeaks.
She gives him a look that gives me the shivers. Harvey shudders.
“Celia, this is your father speaking,” he calls up the stairs authoritativ
ely. “Come down right now! I mean it!”
“EAT SHIT!!”
Gayle turns to me apologetically. “She’s just a little nervous.”
I feel embarrassed for Gayle. At this point I feel embarrassed for all of humanity. I just want to get out of Dodge while the getting’s good. Exit stage right. And I will—as soon as Gayle gives me the slightest glimpse of daylight to run.
“Harvey, sweetheart, the unevolved teenage mind requires insight and empathy,” she says and, by way of demonstrating, calls up cloyingly. “Honey, Daddy and I only want what’s best for you.”
No eruption. Both Harvey and me are way impressed. Gayle continues, triumphant, on a roll.
“To build the memories we never got to have. We both missed out going to Winter Formal when we were seniors.”
“I couldn’t get anyone to say yes,” says Harvey, misting up in painful memory.
“I couldn’t get anyone to ask me,” says Gayle sorrowfully, obviously still traumatized by it.
Looking at them, I can understand why.
“We’ve regretted not going our whole lives,” Gayle says sweetly. “I swore then my daughter would go. I swore if someday I had a daughter, she’d get to dress up in frilly, pretty things and experience all the fun stuff I never got to experience.” Suddenly, the mask of motherly solicitude shatters. “I’m not going to let you deprive me of that, damn it!”
“IT’S JUST A STUPID HIGH SCHOOL DANCE! I LOOK RETARDED! I’M NOT GOING! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”
Although I am brand-new to the Lieberman family dysfunction, if I was choosing sides, which I’m not, I’d side with Celia. I don’t have to see her to know that it’s got to be rough being a living do-over for two dweebs who never got to do anything fun in high school. And with good reason.
“DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED! YOU LOOK DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED!” Gayle blasts back, insight and empathy out the window. “AND IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE THIS INSTANT, YOUR CREDIT CARDS ARE CANCELLED AND YOU ARE GROUNDED FOR LIFE!!”