After Joel my sophomore year became less about studying and more about parties.
My roommate and I threw a luau in our dorm room, and I woke up the next morning to find vomit right outside my door. I nearly stepped in it when I walked out to pee.
“Who the hell puked in front of my door and just left it here?” I bellowed down the hallway, where several doors were open.
“You did!” came a voice from one of the rooms.
I ducked back into my room and gingerly closed the door. Looking in the mirror over my dresser, I could see my hair was mangled and tangled with leaves and small twigs. What the hell happened last night? I had no memory of even going outside.
I looked over at my roommate, who was still sleeping. She had wavy brown hair all the way down to her waist—only it was also tangled up with dried leaves and twigs. I shook her awake. When her eyes opened and she saw my hair, she started laughing.
“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.
“The same thing that happened to you,” I said, pointing to her head.
She got up and looked in the mirror. “Oh, shit,” she said, fingering the mess.
“There’s vomit outside the door,” I told her. “Apparently, it’s mine.”
“What did we do last night?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “I’m terrified.”
We didn’t find out how the foliage had gotten into our hair or what had gone on at our party, but I did discover that I’d written a check for eighty dollars to Pizzaroni’s delivery for nine muffulettas, which apparently fed our entire floor. Not exactly luau cuisine. There were cigarette butts in my spider plant.
I decided to take my acting seriously and settle down. I didn’t want to end up like Jamie, who was still in Salt Lake City, with no college degree, and only booze to distract and comfort him.
My junior year at Kenyon started with Mr. Whitfield calling me into his office to discuss my having a nose job.
“How was it singing in ‘Annie Get Your Gun’?” he asked.
“It was great. The only problem was that some of the notes were too high, and I couldn’t belt them. I have to develop my upper range—from scratch.”
“What about your breathing?” he asked.
“My breathing?”
“You’ve been complaining over the past two years that you can’t breathe through your nose. Is it bothering you?”
“It bothers me, but it’s not keeping me from singing,” I told him.
“I think you should consider having a consultation with a plastic surgeon I know,” he said.
“Probably too expensive,” I told him.
“If there’s a medical problem, insurance will pay for it. I’ll set up the appointment.”
Mr. Whitfield drove me to that appointment and when we were in the examining room, he told the doctor about my breathing and then pointed to the bump in the center of my nose.
“This is what I’m interested in getting smoothed out,” he told the surgeon. “Is it possible to get this nice and straight as well as narrowing down the bridge?” he asked.
“That’s no problem,” he said.
I was watching them go back and forth as if I weren’t in the room. I wanted to breathe through my nose, I wanted to look prettier, but I hadn’t planned on surgery.
“When can we schedule the surgery?” Whitfield asked, turning to me.
My eyebrows flew up. “I have to talk to my mom and dad first.”
“Well, let’s book a date. We can always move it.” Whitfield turned to the surgeon. “Should we shoot the ‘before’ picture?” Clearly Whitfield had done this before.
That January I had my nose straightened and my deviated septum fixed. Insurance paid. As soon as the swelling went down enough to reveal a lovely straight bridge on a very narrow nose, Whitfield was talking about fixing my teeth.
“They stick out,” he assured me, as if I didn’t already know.
I steered clear of Whitfield’s office for a while. Sitting in the costume shop with my friend Bella, she asked me about the nose job.
“Whitfield thought it’d be better for my career if I could breathe through it,” I told her.
“He’s always trying to get girls to have plastic surgery,” she laughed. Bella had been a student in the department for almost five years, taking a couple classes each semester. She’d seen a lot of girls come through.
“Why does he want girls to have surgery?”
“He wants all women to look like someone he could fuck,” she said, not even looking up from her sewing. I could feel the shock and embarrassment moving up my neck in a steady red wave. I excused myself and went for a two-hour bike ride. I needed some air.
The summer following my junior year at Kenyon, I was accepted to the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York. Teachers from Juilliard gathered for six weeks of acting workshops. I was proud to be accepted. Acting was usually the place I felt strong and self-assured. But once I arrived, I had an unexpected crisis of confidence.
Most of the students came from the East Coast, and I came straight from the cornfields. My teachers tried to change the way I spoke (“You have a Midwestern drawl with an annoying nasal quality. It’s difficult to listen to”), the way I walked (“Please stand with your head directly over your shoulders and try to walk as if you were poised”), and the way I breathed (“You breathe very high. Have you ever thought of breathing from your diaphragm?”). Until I arrived at Chautauqua, I’d had no idea what a mess I was.
I worried myself to death, rehearsing every line, every dance step, every breath I took, and where in the monologue I was supposed to take it. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t make friends, and I didn’t do good work.
I figured if I couldn’t cut it at Juilliard, I couldn’t cut it at all, which only brought on more angst.
Several messages from Mr. Whitfield came in that summer. “Give me a call when you get a chance.” Finally, I walked to the pay phone.
“Hello?” he said.
“Mr. Whitfield, this is Monica.”
“Monica Peterson—you finally called me,” he said.
“It’s hectic here. I’m completely miserable, by the way. You might as well know, there’s no way I’m getting into Juilliard for graduate school. They think I’m retarded, and they might be right.”
“Don’t worry about that now. You have all next year to worry about that.”
“Instead of coming back to Kenyon, I’m enrolling in beauty school and learning to perm hair.”
“I wanted to ask you something,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been sensing something from you, and I thought we’d get it out on the table.” I heard him shut his office door.
“What?” There was nothing he could say to upset me at this point in the summer.
“Are you attracted to me?” he asked. I was wrong—there was something he could say to upset me. Mr. Whitfield was forty-two years old and married. His daughter was four years younger than I was and he was ten years younger than my father.
He took another approach. “Do you feel any attraction toward me?” I didn’t, but I was mortified and he kept waiting for an answer, so I finally said, “I guess so.”
“I feel the same way,” he said, and hung up the phone.
I stared at the number pad on the pay phone. What was that?
I took my time walking back to my dorm, sitting by the lake, watching the sailboats bobbing in the sparkling water. I was in this magical place where everyone was focused and talented and the scenery was picturesque, and yet I felt just the opposite. With my call to Whitfield, my problems just got bigger.
When I returned to Kenyon in the fall, it was my senior year. Whitfield cast me as Ariel in The Tempest and had the costume designer put me in a white unitard. The set designer said my butt looked like “two little bears in a bag wrestling.” I knew who the unitard was for.
After rehearsal one night Whitfield asked if he could driv
e me home. And that’s how it began—the thing I couldn’t picture—my professor and me having sex. It was seedy and obvious.
Worst of all, it was mind-blowingly terrific. If it had been terrible, it wouldn’t have been a problem to stop, but it was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Rifle-toting Adam was a novice compared to Whitfield, who was interested in what my body could do and how many times it could do it. I was surprised to see that my body could do quite a few things, quite a lot of times.
Boys asked me on dates, but I was busy with Whitfield, in the lighting booth, on his desk, in the costume shop, and in his car. His only attempt at being noble about his marriage was his refusal to kiss me.
“This is not a romantic relationship,” he once told me as he pulled up his jeans, “it’s physical.”
So, when he’d call and I’d be curling my hair for a date with someone else, I’d tell him, “I’m trying to find something physical and romantic.” We wouldn’t speak for a day or so, and then back to the lighting booth we’d go. We became obsessed with each other and stayed that way throughout my senior year.
When it was time for graduate school auditions, I chose an acting conservatory as far away from Whitfield as I could get: San Diego, California. UCSD was affiliated with the prestigious La Jolla Playhouse regional theatre, which was the combination I wanted—a professional theatre and a focused acting program. When I told Whitfield, he kissed me on the mouth and begged me to go to NYU.
He would have easy access to me in New York, since he frequently traveled there. I wanted to focus on attaining my master’s degree and fall in love with someone who hadn’t been alive during World War II. I couldn’t have Whitfield calling and visiting. The closer I got to graduation, the more he wanted to kiss.
The summer after I graduated from Kenyon, Whitfield drove down to Elk Grove because his elderly mother owned a farm there and he was helping her sell it. He and I met at Bullard’s Drive-In but immediately went to Dad’s lake house instead. Dad was at Mammaw’s trailer in Florida, wining and dining his girlfriend, Laura, so Whitfield and I partook at Lake Hiawatha. We were having a wild powwow, clothes thrown all over the living room, when I heard a car pull into the driveway. Dad was home two days early!
We dressed—fast—and by the time Dad hit the doorway, we were sitting in the living room, Whitfield in a chair, me on the floor, pretending to have a conversation. My bra was unhooked, my Conair vibrator was shoved under Dad’s plaid recliner, and I was flushed and breathing hard. My legs were like noodles, but Dad was oblivious.
I introduced Dad to Whitfield. “Dad, this is the head of my department at Kenyon, Mr. Whitfield. You met him last spring.” Dad shook Whitfield’s hand and nodded. “His mom is selling property near Elk Grove,” I added, hoping that would keep Dad from suspecting that Whitfield was having sex with his daughter. Turned out, I needn’t have worried.
“Glad to see you,” Dad said. He walked into the kitchen and prepared three cups of homemade hot chocolate with miniature marshmallows bobbing on top. I sat in the living room watching the two of them sitting side by side with matching green-and-white mugs in their hands. The wrinkles on their foreheads and their soft tummies were a thwack to the side of my head.
What was I doing with Whitfield? He looked like my dad.
With that thought, I got all squirmy and grossed out. I excused myself, set my mug of cocoa on the kitchen counter, and went into the bathroom to rehook my bra. I looked at myself in the mirror. What the hell was wrong with me? The list was endless.
Whitfield and I said good-bye to Dad and drove back to Elk Grove. When I dropped him off at the only hotel in town, I saw his white-haired mother opening the curtains in their room and waving to him. Trying to find any dignity in the situation was hopeless.
After Whitfield left, I visited the Kilners, my family-away-from-family. We were watching Ghostbusters in the living room when a call came in. Julie’s younger sister Liz picked up the phone, grabbed a white pad of paper, and wrote down the details. When she hung up, she said, “Business calls, ladies.”
“Who’s dead?” I asked. Liz was the new undertaker at Kilner and Sons, having just earned her degree. She was also running for Mason County coroner.
“A guy from Harrisburg. I’m meeting them at the mortuary. You want to come?”
I was so excited. It had been years since I’d last played in the mortuary, and after the craziness with Whitfield, I needed some good, clean fun. I was going to see a dead body.
I glanced at Julie, who looked bored. “Will you come too?” I asked.
“I’m not gonna sit here by myself,” she said, pulling herself up off the couch. I could always count on Julie.
The three of us squeezed into the cab of Liz’s shiny black pickup and headed into town, smoking and laughing.
We pulled into the mortuary and Liz unlocked the doors. Julie and I turned on the lights and went into the office to find cookies. Ten minutes later an ambulance pulled up to the side of the building.
“Dead man on blacktop,” Julie yelled to Liz. They started laughing. I flinched.
“Are you gonna be able to handle this, Mo?” Liz asked.
“I think so,” I said.
“Don’t be a pussy,” she said, referring to the time I’d called her a pussy when she was only in fifth grade and refused to put her hands up in the air on the big roller coaster at Kings Island.
“I’m no pussy,” I said, but suddenly I wasn’t sure.
Liz walked outside and signed for the body. As I watched from the office window, the EMT helped her get the gurney into the body elevator.
I turned to Julie. “He’s coming down.”
“I’ll alert the Elk Grove Courier,” she said dryly.
“We can leave if you want to,” I said.
“I’m gonna call Jay on the office phone so we can have a long conversation for once.” Jay was Julie’s new boyfriend and he was a long distance call away. Julie’s phone bill was enormous and she’d been warned by Dave and Joan to cut down on “Jay” calls. She picked up the mortuary phone as I headed downstairs.
It took a lot of strength to lift the corpse onto the white porcelain embalming table, but I didn’t offer to help. I couldn’t bear to touch the man. Once they had him in position, the EMT pulled the gurney toward the elevator. The dead guy looked youngish, with black hair, and was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white flannel shirt. I imagined him sitting in front of his television watching 60 Minutes and suddenly dropping like a stone.
“See ya, Liz,” the EMT yelled from the elevator.
“See ya,” Liz hollered back.
“Do you want to undress him, Mo?” she asked, winking at me.
“No thanks,” I said. “I can get that action on any corner in Elk Grove.” I walked out and sat on the steps. It wasn’t dignified to watch a dead man being undressed.
A few minutes later she yelled, “He’s naked, Mo.”
“I’m on my way,” I said, walking back into the room.
He was naked all right, except for a white terry cloth towel covering his crotch. He looked too young to be dead, but he definitely looked dead. His skin was a yellowish bruised color, his eyes were shut but sunken, and his fingernails were blue.
Liz put on a white plastic apron and threw one to me.
“Am I gonna get shit on me?” I asked, worried.
“You never know, Mo. Be prepared for anything,” she said, giving me the two-fingers-over-the-eyebrow Girl Scout salute.
Liz enjoyed torturing me. She pushed a button on the boom box sitting on the shelf behind her, and AC/DC’s “Back in Black” started playing. I loved “Back in Black,” it helped me relax, but I looked at the guy on the table and wondered if the song was relaxing to him. He didn’t appear to be in his body. Still, I felt a little sorry that we were jamming.
Liz uncoiled a clear plastic hose and began spraying the body.
“Disinfectant,” she said, over the beginning drums of “Back in Black.” I n
odded as if I’d always known that morticians sprayed humans with disinfectant.
I wasn’t going to freak out. I’d waited more than eleven years to finally have a look at what Max had been doing behind the big wooden doors. I wasn’t going to blow it now. It might be my last chance.
After Liz sprayed the disinfectant, she didn’t dry him off. I knew it wasn’t irritating his nose or stinging his eyes, but I still wondered.
Once he was hosed down, Liz lifted his heavy head onto the head-block and crossed his stiff, thick hands over his stomach, hand over hand.
“Once they’re embalmed, you can’t move ’em,” Liz explained. “I make sure everything’s in place before the formaldehyde gets into the tissues.” I nodded.
Liz held up two plastic discs. “These are going under the eyelids,” she warned. “Can you deal?”
“I’m good,” I said, wondering what a dead person’s eyes looked like. I guess you could no longer see their souls through their eyes, since their souls had, hopefully, departed to a “better place.”
AC/DC started singing. Back in black, I hit the sack, I’ve been too long I’m glad to be back. Liz rubbed cream onto the eye caps, opened the man’s eyelids, and placed one on top of each eye so quickly, I couldn’t see his actual eyes. When the eyelid folded back over it, his eyes weren’t sunken anymore.
“Amazing,” I said, pulling up a metal stool, my stomach less tight. The plastic eye caps helped depersonalize the embalming. This was a job with tricks and tools, just like any other job—only there was a large naked dead man lying there.
I wondered who he was. He looked to be around forty, so I imagined his parents were still living. Who’d called them tonight? I’ve been looking at the sky, ’Cause it’s gettin’ me high, Forget the hearse ’cause I never die.
“What killed him?” I asked.
“Heart attack,” Liz said.
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Forty-three,” she said. He was Whitfield’s exact age, and in much better shape than Whitfield.
Liz took a piece of suture string with a curved needle and stuck it through his lower gums. Then she pulled it up through his upper gums, right through his nostril, crossed it over to the other nostril, and threaded it back down through the gums on the other side. I was slapping the top of my thighs and squirming on the stool.
Driving With Dead People Page 20