“St. Louis has always been segregated,” Mina said, relieved that Riley decided to change the subject. “Divided right down the middle. Here, it’s mostly black,” Mina swooped up north and then east on the map. “And over here,” she said, “to the south and west, mostly everyone is white. But in the Loop, which is right in the middle, people from these different places hung out, because it was the one place where it didn’t matter where you came from. Most people eventually ended up in Rahsaan’s. Music is cool like that.”
“That’s true,” Riley said.
“You asked how I came from here,” Mina said, “but really, here, in this little pocket were people who, like me, didn’t want to fit into the molds St. Louis had to offer.”
“You were lucky,” Riley said.
Mina thought about this. “Well, just because there was that pocket didn’t mean the giant circle of other stuff went away,” she said. “It was always strong, still is, as you’re finding out.”
“Did you ever know anyone who got killed by the cops?”
“That happened, certainly, while I was there, it’s always happened, but not to anyone I knew. But I did know people who got harassed a lot.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Him, his brother, my friend Brendon.”
Mina felt Riley trying to picture her mother as a teenager whose boyfriend got harassed by the cops. “I still think you were lucky,” Riley said.
Mina knew what she meant. In Riley’s high-achieving high school, she had failed at making friends. Mina often wished that there was a Rahsaan’s where Riley could hang out. Mina took a chance and put her hand on Riley’s knee. Riley didn’t push her away.
“I guess you’re right,” Mina said. “We were lucky. Especially because it’s basically gone now.”
“What do you mean gone? The Loop’s still there, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s become more of a place for wealthy college kids than what it used to be. Some of it has managed to survive.”
“Like Rahsaan’s?” Riley said. “That’s still there. And that guy Bones, right?”
Mina was about to tell Riley that actually, Rahsaan’s would soon be gone too, when there was a loud rapping at the window. Chloe stood with her hands on her hips, her head with her dancer’s bun cocked to the side.
“Been nice knowin’ ya, Mom,” Riley said and climbed into the back seat while Chloe hugged the other bun-headed girls and promised to text them later. Mina looked down at Riley’s phone, still in her hand. She traced the map to 6616 Washington where, as far as she knew, Cyrus still lived. Her breath caught with a need to see Cyrus. To sit on the nubuck sofa while he sat in his armchair in the corner and told her stories. To hear his deep, gruff laugh, watch his hand pour her a cup of tea, smell the fennel in the sausage dish his Italian landlady in Cambridge taught him how to make.
She handed Riley back her phone and took her own out of her bag. She looked at Octavian’s number that Bones had sent her, and that she had stored in her contacts. She pressed the message icon. There, in the text box was the message she’d begun the day she got the number. She’d rewritten it seven times. How was she supposed to fit everything that happened since she last saw Octavian into a text message? There was no way. Her last attempt simply said, HI. IT’S MINA.
“We going or what?” Chloe asked, switching the radio station.
Before she could think about it any longer, Mina pressed send and jammed her phone back in her bag.
OCTAVIAN SAT DOWN IN the back of the Winslow faculty meeting as the director, Dan Martin, asked for any announcements. Phyllis the nurse raised her hand and said, “Andrea Applegate drank a cup of bleach last night. So, I’m not sure when she’ll be coming back to us.”
A gasp went around the room like a collection plate. Octavian learned early on that becoming familiar with this kind of story was part of the job of teaching at Winslow. Sometimes they lived, other times they were tragically successful. But Octavian had not yet heard about Andrea and he immediately began to squeeze his hands together to keep them from trembling. He searched his memory to see if there was any way he could have known yesterday in his art class that she was going to do something like this, but she had been full of smiles and questions like always. They had listened to Miles Davis’s Round About Midnight while she worked on her portrait of St. Louis musicians—blending acrylics and scraps of album reviews, photocopies of record covers. It was actually becoming a powerful piece of art, and she was proud of it.
“She was taken to the hospital late last night,” Phyllis said.
Octavian strained to hear what others were saying about Andrea, but the rush in his ears was like a freight train coming. Octavian knew he should raise his hand, discuss the work she was doing in his class, but now his heart was slamming away and he knew there was no other choice but to focus on getting out of the room.
Cocaine business controls America, he sang inside his head.
In the background Phyllis said something about liver failure.
Ganja business controls America
Dan Martin asked to be kept posted and Octavian knew this was his moment. He stood up, excused himself to somebody, and walked straight through the dark gray that was closing in around him toward the door.
KRS-One come to start some hysteria
Out in the hallway, he pressed his cheek against the cold tile of the wall and closed his eyes.
Illegal business controls America
“You okay, Octavian?” He opened his eyes to see Phyllis standing there.
“I’m okay,” he said, clearing his throat. “Just fighting a little flu or something.”
“Come with me,” she said as she walked down the hall toward her office. “If you’re getting that bug that’s going around, you’ll need some zinc, and pronto.”
Phyllis was one of those post-hippie-era remnants who had settled thickly around Berringford. They’d came of age when the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution were over, but they still clung to the idea of having something to fight for. They practiced the Waldorf method, lived in quasi-communes, sewed their own clothes and birthed their own babies. When she wasn’t keeping track of the dizzying number of meds the kids were on, Phyllis was teaching them Tai Chi and rubbing essential oils on their pressure points.
In her office Octavian allowed her to take his temperature, but when she took out her stethoscope, he put up his hand. “I’m fine, Phyllis, I promise,” he said.
“Octavian, do you realize that when you left the meeting you knocked over two chairs and nearly fell on top of Teresa?”
Octavian blinked and cocked his head, unsure of what to say. She pressed the stethoscope to his chest. “That’s what I figured,” she said. “You were having an anxiety attack. I promise you, I’ve seen enough of them so don’t try to argue.” She rested the stethoscope on his chest a second time. “Still going pretty strong. How about we take some deep breaths together?”
Octavian stood and moved out of her reach and said, “Really, I’m okay.”
“Andrea was a sweet child. It makes sense that you’d be shaken up by this, especially if you suffer from anxiety.”
“Who says I suffer from anxiety?”
Phyllis narrowed her blue eyes at him. “Are you going to tell me you don’t?”
Octavian pulled at the cuff of his sleeve.
“How long?” she asked.
Outside, in the sleepy field that surrounded the school, the bluestem grass had begun its dusky turn to gray. It bent in the slight breeze that came through the open window. One thing Octavian knew about Phyllis was that she could out-wait anyone, and so without taking his eyes from the field, he said, “Since before my mom died. Since I was nine, maybe ten.”
“You ever seen anyone about it?”
“I went to a doctor once, when I was younger. He thought it was asthma. And back when I lived in Chicago, I saw another doctor. He told me to get some
therapy, to exercise more, not drink so much, and that he could prescribe me something if I wanted.”
“Did you do any of that?” Phyllis asked, winding up her stethoscope.
Octavian smiled a bit sheepishly and took a full inhale. “I stopped drinking so much,” he said. “And I moved out here.”
Phyllis snorted out a laugh. “You came to work at a therapeutic school to help your anxiety? Now that’s one I’ve never heard.”
It felt good to laugh a little. “To be honest, it’s helped,” he said. “You know, thinking about other people, focusing on their problems instead of my own.”
Phyllis nodded. “Yes, but by now you must know that it’s not sustainable. Eventually, if you don’t do at least one of those things—therapy, meds, exercise—sometimes even if you do all three, the anxiety will rear its ugly head.”
“I’m starting to figure that out,” Octavian said. “It’s always come and gone and it’s been awhile since it’s been bad, but it’s acting up a lot now.”
“Do you want me to recommend a therapist?”
Octavian shook his head. “I tried therapy once. All it did was make me want to strangle the therapist.”
“Is there anyone else you can talk to?” Phyllis asked. “Sometimes we just have to say things out loud so they don’t hold us captive anymore.”
Without meaning to, Octavian’s mind went right to Mina. She would be someone he could have talked to once. Someone who would have understood the things he could never explain.
“Actually,” Octavian said, “I’m thinking about going home for a few days. See my father, some folks from before, see if I can’t come to terms with a few things I never settled.” He hadn’t said it aloud yet, even in his own thoughts, but there it was, out in the universe. What he needed to do was go home and close up some of those holes that still ran through him.
Phyllis smiled. “Sounds like as good a place to start as any. Where’s home?”
“St. Louis.”
“Ah, where that young man was just killed by the police officer. A lot of stuff going on there now. No wonder you’re having a hard time. Did you know him?”
In his mind Octavian said, We don’t all know each other, but out loud he said, “No I didn’t, but the story isn’t that unique. Race relations in St. Louis have never been great.”
“Actually, I know that,” Phyllis said. “I took a course in African American History a few summers ago at Harvard Extension. We studied the East St. Louis massacres, learned how some 200 people were killed, though they like to say it was only forty or something, and never talk about the six thousand or however many were burned out of their homes. Not an easy place, St. Louis,” she said. “At least according to what I learned in books.”
Octavian smiled at Phyllis. “No not easy,” he said. “But different, too, from what you see in books and on the news. I haven’t been back in a long time.”
Phyllis put her stethoscope away and said, “You can go around the world, Octavian, and that anxiety will be right there with you. You’re not going to outrun it, no matter how fast you go. As they say: No matter where you go, there you are.”
“You quoting Confucius or Naughty by Nature?”
“What?” Phyllis said.
“Nothing, just making a bad joke.”
Phyllis reached over and patted his knee. “Go on home,” she said. “But don’t stay away too long. We need you here.”
Octavian swallowed and nodded. “Thanks, Phyllis.”
“Anytime, sweetheart.”
Octavian went back to his classroom and took Andrea’s piece from the shelf where she’d placed it just the day before. He felt his heart begin to shake. Phyllis saw the anxiety, called it by its name. Therapy, meds, exercise, she’d said. Maybe even all three. Talking to someone. Octavian took his phone out of his pocket. The last number he’d dialed was Cyrus’s. He pressed the name again.
“You decide whether or not you’re coming home?” his father said when he picked up.
“Hey to you, too, Pop. How are you?”
Cyrus laughed on the other end. “I’m good. Upright, breathing. How about you? You sound like something is bothering you.”
Octavian wondered how his father could always tell. “One of my students,” he said. “She tried to commit suicide last night. Thankfully, she failed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cyrus said. “But glad to hear she survived.”
Andrea had taken the lyrics to Ike & Tina’s “I Idolize You” and made them into stripes on Tina Turner’s dress. Octavian hoped he would have the chance to tell Andrea how much he loved her piece.
“Pop,” he said, “I know we still don’t talk about him much, or ever, but I got to ask you something about Frankie.”
“You can always ask me about Francis.”
Octavian traced his fingers along the cut-up pieces of the cover of Julius Lester’s Departures that Andrea had incorporated and thought about how, when they listened to “See How the Rain Falls,” Andrea had said, “This song always makes me so sad.” But when Octavian offered to change it, she told him not to. Just like Mina, she also loved the sad songs.
“Do you think Francis wanted to die?” he asked Cyrus. “I mean, like it wasn’t an overdose, but a suicide?”
There was silence on the other end and Octavian wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have asked, but then Cyrus said, “I want to believe that he made a mistake, that he took too much, but I’m not going to say I haven’t thought about it.”
“I think he meant to do it,” Octavian said quickly. “Maybe not consciously, but sometimes I think he wanted to die. Not just when he did, but all the time. You know, when we were kids, he used to lie in the bed and sob because he was so afraid.”
“What of?”
“Everything. Nothing. I think he was always in pain. That he suffered. For so long I wrote it off as Frankie’s failing, his inability to just stop using. And after he died, I was convinced it was my fault, that I failed. I was supposed to be the one to save him and I didn’t. And now, this little girl, my student who tried, she really tried, planned it out and none of us even saw it coming. She did not want to be alive and I wonder if really Francis wasn’t just the same way. Only he made it.”
“Made it? You think he’s better off?”
“Sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, Pop, there’s not a day I don’t want him back, but then I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t want him here, still trying, still hurting, still failing.” A sob broke in Octavian’s chest and cracked through his throat. He swallowed and looked out the classroom window. The sun was setting, leaving dark blue and yellow streaks across the sky.
“It’s alright, Tave,” his father said.
“Is it? I mean, I’ve been trying to figure out which is harder—living with Francis alive, or living with Francis dead. And every time I miss him, I think about what my life would be like if he were still here, if I was still underneath the coming and going of his pain. And then, I don’t know, I feel grateful that he’s gone, but that’s worse. Because how can I feel that way about someone I loved, love, more than anyone in the world?” Octavian stopped to catch his breath. Cyrus was silent on the other end.
“You remember how I used to have those attacks sometimes, where I couldn’t breathe? You thought it was asthma and took me to the doctor and all?”
“I remember,” Cyrus said. “They couldn’t figure out what was going on. Your lungs were fine.”
“It wasn’t asthma. It was anxiety. I was having anxiety attacks. I’ve been having them since the fifth grade. I still have them.” Octavian could almost feel his father’s guilt seeping through the phone. “It’s not your fault, Pop. You didn’t know. Shit, the doctors didn’t know.”
“I don’t know what to say, Tave. I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry. I talked to the school nurse about it today and it just got me thinking is all. I mean, they know a lot more abo
ut mental health than they used to. And maybe Frankie had anxiety attacks too, or maybe his anxiety was worse, maybe that’s why he was always so afraid, why he needed to escape. They say it’s hereditary. So, I was wondering if there was ever any history of mental health problems in your family.”
There was silence again before Cyrus said, “Tave, there’s something I need to tell you, and I need to see your face when I do. Do you think you might be able to come home?”
The blue of the sky had gone deep indigo, the yellow turned to a heightened gray. Octavian looked down again at Andrea’s piece. She had just begun painting Josephine Baker’s eyes and she was getting them right.
“I’ll come home,” Octavian said. “I’ll go to Bones’s damn party and you and me’ll talk, that sound alright?”
“That sounds real good, Tave.”
Octavian felt a sudden weightlessness. Maybe Phyllis was right. You just had to get things out sometimes. “You know I never did finish that drawing of Francis I started. I bet it’s still somewhere in your house. Probably in a box I hoped you’d throw out but knew you never would.”
Cyrus laughed. “I don’t dare open that closet, I’d get crushed by what’s shoved in there. We’ll take care of that too, when you come home.”
“Okay, Pop. Thank you.”
“Just come home,” his father said.
“I’m coming.”
Octavian sat and watched the rest of the sunset and thought about Andrea. In his car he queued up Billie Holiday and as he drove home, he said a silent prayer for her and let himself cry for a second time that day. When he got back to his cabin, he wiped his eyes and said, “Enough.” He took his phone out of his coat pocket and saw he had a text message.
Hi. It’s Mina.
He put the phone in his pocket and waited until he was inside to take it out again. He stared at the text. He wasn’t sure what he waited for—maybe for another text to come, or maybe for Mina to appear, right out of the phone like Princess Leia. He put it down and rubbed his forehead. “Dinner,” he said out loud to the cabin. “Dinner and a drink first.”
There You Are Page 12