Belzhar

by Meg Wolitzer

  “Manchester’s going to sign you,” he says, pleased.

  “I’m not so sure,” I say. “I think Arsenal has their eye on me.”

  Standing on the makeshift soccer field with Reeve, both of us a little windblown, I wish I could hurry home to my house on Gooseberry Lane in Crampton and take a quick shower, then get dressed up and go to dinner with him at the Canterbury House, the one really good restaurant in our town.

  I’d always had a fantasy of taking Reeve there as a surprise. People say that you’re given your own little hot loaf of bread on a slab of wood, and a silver cup of whipped honey butter. Maybe we’d go for our two-month anniversary, I’d thought. I was going to try and scrounge up the money to pay for it.

  But dinner at the Canterbury House never got to happen in real life, so of course it can’t happen here in Belzhar.

  Reeve is oblivious to the limitations. He drops the soccer ball back into the grass and we walk together through the damp, cool afternoon, our hands linked. He tells me about the first time he saw me in gym class. “You were adorable,” he says.

  “No, you were.”

  “You were.”

  “You.”

  “‘They had to agree to disagree about their mutual adorableness,’” he says, as if quoting from a famous book about our relationship.

  We come together and kiss, and it gets serious and deep, our mouths together and then pressed against each other’s face and neck, breathing unsteadily and harder. Once in a while we pull back to look, then come forward again.

  But then the sky dims, and Reeve says, “Bloody hell,” and I say, “Oh shit,” and I’m thrust out of Belzhar without even saying good-bye.

  Back in my room, it’s late at night. DJ’s deeply asleep, breathing loudly. Some instinct causes me to go pick up the hand mirror lying on my dresser. I take it over to the window, and in the moonlight I have a look at myself. On my neck is a small purple hickey. I reach a hand toward it, startled, but it starts to fade, and within seconds it’s completely disappeared.

  Whatever happens in Belzhar leaves no trace in the real world. No shadow, no residue at all. I let my hand stay on my neck and I just want to cry.

  • • •

  The next morning Sierra pops into my room to exchange phone numbers so we can stay in touch over break. It’s the week of Thanksgiving vacation, and everyone will be leaving in the next couple of days. I’ll miss her even during that short period of time. “Hey,” she’ll sometimes say when we’ve been hanging around together and she can see that something’s made me suddenly shut down. “You’re thinking about Reeve, right?” And I’ll nod, and then we’ll just stay in silence for a while, neither of us needing to say anything more.

  Other times I’ll sit in the dance studio watching her rehearse, and I always admire her grace and her force. She has these amazing, tough dancer’s feet. And we’ve gotten into the habit of walking back from the library together during the time of day when the shadows get long and you can drop hard into a gloomy mood if you don’t have a friend with you.

  I tell her I’ll definitely call her when I’m home. But some people at school are getting a little worried that they won’t make it home for Thanksgiving at all. A big snowstorm is blowing in from Canada, and will arrive just in time to maybe screw up travel. Some girls are asking permission from the administration to get out early. Me, I’m not concerned, and truthfully I’m in no hurry to leave. While I miss my family sometimes, I still haven’t gotten over how my mom wouldn’t let me leave school when I’d called and begged her.

  Also, I’m a little worried about what it will be like at home. It’ll feel strange sitting at Thanksgiving dinner keeping my enormous secret and pretending that I still fit in there, when I don’t.

  I just want to stay at The Wooden Barn, and in Belzhar with Reeve, but my parents know none of that. They think I had an “episode” the day I called home, and that somehow it passed.

  They think I’m recovering from the “trauma” of Reeve. That I’ve begun to accept that he’s gone. They have no idea of what’s happened to me, and where I go twice a week, even if it’s just inside my mind.

  I’m also a little worried about running into my old friends at home. It would be so awkward to see Jenna, Hannah, and Ryan at the mall. “Hi, Jam . . . ,” they’d say, tilting their heads to one side and making identical “concerned” faces. The kind of faces they might have learned from a pamphlet called “How to Talk to the Emotionally Troubled Teen.” They all feel sorry for me, but I know they’ve moved past me too. When they see me, a memory will lick at their brains, but then they’ll go back to thinking only about themselves.

  I actually haven’t thought of any of them too much either since I’ve been here. Now I wonder whether Hannah and Ryan have had sex yet, or whether he’ll be carrying around that ancient “reservoir tip” condom (“Ugh!” we’d shrieked when Hannah told us) for the rest of his life. And if they have had sex, whether it was as meaningful as Hannah had wanted it to be, or whether it was awkward, like a trying-too-hard a cappella concert. It’s sad that I know almost nothing about Hannah anymore, even though for a long time she was my best friend.

  The only thing that will make the trip home okay is knowing that I’ll have my journal with me. Once we’ve gotten through the big Thanksgiving dinner, and I’ve helped load the dishwasher and scrubbed the crust from a couple of pans, I’ll be able to go to bed. And the next morning, when Friday arrives, I’ll join Reeve again in Belzhar.

  “You missed Thanksgiving!” I’ll say to him when we’re face-to-face.

  “I’m British, Jam, did you forget? Thanksgiving is as meaningless to me as . . . Boxing Day is to you.”

  “Boxing Day? That’s not a real holiday. You made it up.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did so.”

  “Ooh, our second fight.”

  • • •

  By Tuesday at The Wooden Barn, the snow is coming down hard, and many people have already left. My parents call and beg me to get on a bus “ASAP,” but I don’t want to spend an extra day at home if I can help it.

  The bus I have a ticket for doesn’t leave until Wednesday afternoon. But on early Wednesday morning, with more than half the school gone including DJ, who flew home to Florida the night before, I’m starting to pack my bag when there’s a knock at my door. Jane Ann is gathering everyone who’s still left for a meeting in the common room.

  “Bad news, chickadees,” she tells us. “The highway has just been closed. Everything’s a sheet of ice.”

  “What?” someone says, not getting it, but the rest of us understand that no one in this room is going home for Thanksgiving.

  “But stay positive,” says Jane Ann. “We’ll have a lot of fun here. We’ll have our own Thanksgiving. I make a mean cranberry sauce. And lentils,” she adds. “Mean, mean lentils.”

  All of sudden, though I’d been nervous about going home, I feel like I might cry. I slip away from the common room, put on my coat, and push through the front door. The snow is really packing the sky, and I can barely see anything, but with my head ducked down I plunge right into it, wanting to be alone and feel sorry for myself.

  I am stuck here, a holiday prisoner. I won’t be going home at all. As I trudge along the path in the snow, someone standing in the distance waves to me, but I can’t make him out. He steps closer; it’s Griffin. He stands with his hands in his pockets, his boots planted in the snow.

  “Wait, why didn’t you go home?” I ask. “I heard that everyone else in Special Topics got out.”

  “I live right nearby,” Griffin says. “My dad’s coming to get me with the snowplow. He’ll be here any minute. Why are you still here?”

  “I didn’t take an early enough bus, and now I’m trapped,” I tell him. And then, idiotically, I start to tear up for real. The tears ice up my eyelashes almost immediately
.

  “You’re crying,” he says, confused. The idea of being faced with a crying girl in the middle of a snowstorm just doesn’t compute. He won’t know what to say or do. Except, after a few seconds, he does. “Come home with me,” he says.

  “What?”

  “You can fit into the cab of the plow if we squeeze you in. You’re small.”

  I look at Griffin through the snow. He’s never said anything particularly kind to me before. But I guess the sight of me looking so pathetic, freeze-crying in a snowstorm and stranded on a major holiday, has made him remember that Mrs. Q wanted us to look out for one another.

  My parents, naturally, are crushed that I won’t be coming home. But on the phone they say at least they’re glad I’ll have a family to go to on Thanksgiving, even if it isn’t them. I’m sent up to my room to quickly finish packing. I do, and then by the time I hurry downstairs, the snowplow has arrived. It’s a big, quivering orange monster with an extremely loud motor. Griffin’s already inside, and he reaches down and pulls me up.

  Suddenly I’m sitting high up in the plow, but with horror I realize that I’m sitting on Griffin Foley’s lap. There’s nowhere else. His dad’s at the wheel, a thicker, bigger, shorter-haired version of Griffin, still good-looking. He shouts something I can’t hear, then guns the engine and we’re off, shoving snow out of the way with the big curved silver plate of the plow for the entire mile and a half.

  I don’t move or speak until we pull up at the gate. FOLEY FARMS, I can barely read on the hanging wooden sign. HAND-CRAFTED ARTISANAL GOAT CHEESES.

  In the big main room that’s crisscrossed with wooden beams, a fire pops and claps in the hearth, and Griffin’s mom, a pretty, delicate woman, comes to greet us.

  She shows me to my bedroom. It’s small, neat, and a little bit on the freezing side, but there’s a thick patchwork comforter folded at the foot of the bed. I unpack quickly, taking out my clothes, my toothbrush, and my subject notebooks.

  I stop.

  My journal’s not here.

  I paw around inside my weekend bag, but there’s nothing else in it. In my hurry to go to Griffin’s, I left my red leather journal in the desk drawer in my dorm room, and now I won’t be able to go to Belzhar this Friday. This is disastrous, not only for me, but also for Reeve, who’ll be waiting, and starting to lose it when I don’t show up. Twice a week isn’t enough for either of us, but we’ve both come to accept the schedule. It’s still only Wednesday now, and this means I won’t have my journal in hand until Sunday afternoon. An eternity.

  I turn around to see Griffin in the doorway. “What’s the matter?” he asks.

  “I forgot my journal.”

  “Oh,” he says. “Well,” he adds, not very convincingly, “it’ll be okay.”

  “No it won’t. I’m sure you’re going to write in your journal while you’re here, right?” I ask him. “You wouldn’t want to go too many days without doing that.”

  “Yeah,” he admits. “I go on Friday.”

  “I was supposed to go then too.”

  “No one would believe how much I write in that thing,” he says. “I always had to go to the learning specialist in grade school. I hated to write. One sentence would take me half an hour.” He shifts from leg to leg uneasily, and finally he says, “I know you’re upset. I don’t know what to say.”

  “There’s nothing.”

  “Sorry.” He pauses. “Want me to show you around or something?”

  “Sure.”

  The snow has let up a little, and as we walk around the grounds, I see flashes of well-kept white wooden buildings partially poking up from beneath the snow. The barn looks much newer than all the other buildings on the property.

  “Is that where the goats are kept?” I ask, and Griffin nods. “Can we go in?”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know, just to see them.”

  Griffin shrugs and says, “Whatever,” and we go inside. Goats are everywhere, milling around in clusters or alone. I’m overcome by the sharp, strong smell, which, after a second, I realize I actually sort of like.

  “Look at this place,” I say. “It’s like a goat cocktail party. Can I pet them?”

  “If you want.”

  I pet a few heads, and I think how easy it would be to go through life as a goat. You don’t have any problems. You don’t fall in love, so you don’t get crushed by loss. You just have your simple, farm-animal life, which I envy now.

  I go over to a small goat and kneel down, stroking its narrow head. The goat regards me with inexpressive eyes, but doesn’t move away. Nearby, a lumpy-looking goat is kept separate from the others in a stall. “What’s with that one?” I ask.

  “Oh, Myrtle,” Griffin says. “She’s in the kidding stall.”

  “You’re kidding,” I say. It’s the kind of dumb line that Reeve and I would’ve said to each other.

  But Griffin just says, “Do you even know what a kidding stall is?”

  “Is it . . . when you tell a joke, but you take your time with it? Get it? Kidding? Stall?” This, too, is the kind of dumb line Reeve and I would’ve said to each other.

  Griffin just says, “It’s where a pregnant doe is sent to give birth. That’s what the females are called: does. And the babies are called kids. She’s probably going to go into labor this week. My dad’s overseeing the whole thing.” I look at the face of the poor, isolated doe. I may be reading into things, but she looks fearful, and I don’t blame her.

  “Is she okay?” I ask.

  “She’s fine. Let’s go,” Griffin says, and he leads us back outside. For him it’s time to go. End of story. No emotion. He’s one of those boys who can get away with being like this. Moody. Silent. There have been boys like that since the beginning of time, and there’s nothing to do but try not to let them get to you.

  • • •

  Late that night, fast asleep and actually warm beneath the comforter in my cold little room, I’m awakened by loud talking. “I’m asking you—no, telling you—to get dressed and come help me,” says a man’s voice.

  “I already told you—” says another voice. Griffin’s.

  I quickly pull on my robe and head out into the main room. Mr. Foley is standing fully dressed and facing Griffin, who looks sleep-stunned in drawstring pajama bottoms and no top. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time,” Griffin is saying.

  “Then just do it.”

  “Hi. What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Sorry we woke you. Our doe is laboring, and she’s got a problem,” says Mr. Foley. “I need someone to come out there with me. My wife has arthritis in her hands and that rules her out, but Griffin refuses to help.”

  “Dad, I told you, I’d only fuck it up.”

  “Watch your mouth, sir. And you have no way of knowing that. You’ve never done this before.”

  “Exactly. I can’t,” says Griffin. “Why won’t you get that through your head, Dad?”

  “That’s all you have to say?” says Mr. Foley. “What is wrong with you?”

  They look like they’re going to take a swing at each other, so I step up and say, “I’ll help.”

  Both of them look at me as if they’ve already forgotten I’m there. And then, when they remember, they seem to think it’s stupid that I’ve inserted myself into this. How could I possibly help? I’m small, and not very strong, and I don’t have any useful skills whatsoever. I spent most of a year lying in bed at home until I was shipped off to a misfits’ boarding school. But I keep picturing the frightened eyes of the doe in the birthing stall.

  “Thanks, but you can’t help,” says Griffin’s father.

  “No, I can,” I say. “I’ll get dressed. Wait, I’ll just be a sec.”

  In our coats, with the snow still coming down, the two of us head out into the cold with Mr. Foley’s industrial flas
hlight. Griffin stays in the house, and as we pick our way through the snow, I turn around and see him framed in the lit window, looking out unhappily. He sees me and steps away.

  At night, the barn is a very different place from the day. The doe is moaning, and we crunch quickly across the straw in the dim light to reach her.

  “This is Myrtle,” Mr. Foley says, though I already know. “Griffin’s mother named her.” It’s as if he wants to assure me that he doesn’t believe in anything as sentimental as cute names for goats.

  We get right down to business. The problem is that the doe has started to deliver the baby goat—the kid—but the legs are coming out, not the head. “This is a very dangerous presentation,” says Mr. Foley, showing me the alarming sight of two baby goat feet sticking out of the mother. “She’s a young doe,” he says. “A yearling, very small. Hasn’t been used for milking yet. I tried to get in there and position the kid’s head, but it turns out my hand’s too big.”

  He looks at me in expectation, and I realize he needs me to reach my hand inside the mother goat and straighten out the kid’s head. I look at the doe, who’s quietly moaning, and even though this is way outside my experience and my comfort zone and way above my disgust level, of course I’m going to do it. Or anyway I’m going to try.

  I was wrong earlier when I thought about how easy it was to be a goat. That isn’t always true. This goat is in pain, and her eyes are so sad and desperate. I think about how everyone suffers: animals, people, everyone. I almost know what she feels, and I have to do what I can.

  While Mr. Foley rummages around for a box of rubber gloves that will fit my hand, I go over to Myrtle and stroke her head, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” even though it’s not. And then I whisper into her pinkish, hair-prickled ear the first thought that occurs to me, which is a ridiculous one.

  “Do you like poetry?” I ask the goat, absurdly. “Sylvia Plath wrote a poem about being pregnant. I think the end goes ‘I’ve eaten a bag of green apples / Boarded the train there’s no getting off.’”

  All she does is moan further. “Oh, you don’t like poetry?” I say. “That’s okay, you don’t have to.” Mr. Foley appears with the box of rubber gloves, and I pull one out as if it’s a Kleenex. My heart is pounding as I struggle to snap it onto my hand, and it takes two tries.