Shrug

by Lisa Braver Moss

  Declan wore a black leather jacket and black tennis shoes, and I recognized him from History, though he was rarely in class. Not wanting him to notice my shrug, I decided to stay clear of Mrs. Worth’s desk until he left. But a moment later, Declan spun around and saw me, flashing brilliant blue eyes. “And what might bring you to this corner of the world?” he demanded.

  I took a breath. “Need a pass,” I said.

  “Ah,” he said, raising one eyebrow.

  Something about this one syllable made me want to talk to him more. His profile reminded me of John Lennon’s, and he seemed mature for his age, not at all concerned about what people thought. “Aren’t you in Smith?” I asked. “Seventh period?” Shrug. Damn it! Shrug.

  He looked at me narrowly, and his leather jacket made a creaking sound as he dug his hands deep into his pockets. I could tell he was thinking of asking me why I’d shrugged, then decided not to. Instead, he answered coldly, “Yeah, what about it?”

  I knew how to win him over. “Are you feeling better?”

  “What?”

  “Are you better now?” I repeated. “I mean, you’ve missed a lot of class. You’ve been sick a lot.”

  He gaped at me.

  “What?” I started to blush.

  “You think I miss class because I’m sick?” He broke into a grin. One of his top front teeth was layered the slightest amount over the other, giving his smile an intriguing imperfection.

  Shrug. I knew I had committed some huge act of stupidity, but I couldn’t imagine what it was. I glanced over and saw that Mrs. Worth looked as if she were trying not to laugh. And then suddenly I understood.

  “Mr. Wilder?” Mrs. Worth said sternly, clearing her throat. She took her glasses off and let them dangle asymmetrically against her bosom from a metal chain.

  “Yes, fair damsel,” replied Declan airily.

  “Here’s the letter. And we’re sending a copy home to your parents.”

  “You mean, to my dear mother.”

  “To your mother, yes.”

  “Because I don’t have a father. I’m a bastard, you see.” He was enjoying himself.

  “Mr. Wilder, go directly to class. And we don’t want to see you in here again. Is that clear?”

  Declan Wilder grabbed the paper and made an extravagant bow. “Goodnight, ladies.” He kissed his fingers and spread them out toward me and Mrs. Worth. As he turned to leave the office, I saw a paperback jammed into his back pocket. Tropic of Cancer, it was called.

  Mrs. Worth turned to me. “And you are—?”

  “Martha Goldenthal.” Shrug. “I need to see Mr. Scranton right away, because—”

  “Goldenthal,” she repeated. I shrugged again, and I could see her deciding not to ask me about it. “Well, you’re going to have to wait a little. He’s on a long-distance telephone call.”

  Jesus Christ, didn’t Mrs. Worth understand that I needed to get to class? I put my binder and books down on a wooden bench and hoped she didn’t notice me watching Declan Wilder through the open door as he went down the dark corridor, past the first classroom, then past the second and the third. Why was it that when someone was walking at a distance in a dark hallway, sometimes you couldn’t tell if they were coming toward you or going away from you?

  I sat down on the bench. The noisy wall clock read 8:46, then 8:49. My mother would say it was “about a quarter to nine” or “about ten ’til.” She felt it was ridiculous that people were so precise in how they told the time. Then I thought about that saying, how even a broken clock is right twice a day. It’s a weird saying because really, a broken clock is precisely right twice a day—way more accurate than practically any regular clock.

  I looked over at the wall of locked wooden cabinets next to me. At school, there were always intriguing little forbidden broom closets and shelves that only the janitor knew about. And underneath the finished walls, sheet rock and studs and nails, hidden order. Without my having had to be involved in any of those things, they had gotten done. Plans had been made, decisions carried out—even mistakes, cast in concrete—all entirely without my participation.

  Mr. Scranton opened the door. “Go on in, Martha,” Mrs. Worth said.

  I put my books down on Mr. Scranton’s desk and saw him glance at them: Latin for Beginners, Advanced Algebra, English Composition, Concert Chorale music. Also The Lilies of the Field, which I’d checked out one day when Stephanie was home with a cold, and I had decided to eat lunch alone in the school library. There was a huge window in there with a nice view of the eastern hills, and if I looked out the window and forgot about all the books around me that I hadn’t read, it was peaceful. Paisley Gorman had come in with her bag lunch and eaten with me. She was getting ready to return a couple of books of Renaissance poetry, plus The Lilies of the Field, which she told me she’d really liked. So I checked it out, took it home, and tried to read it. I didn’t finish. It was about nice people who didn’t have to deal with anyone like my mother or my father.

  I sat down. Mr. Scranton closed the door, came around the desk and sat down across from me. “What can I do for you?”

  The lack of accusation almost made me want to cry. “I’m Martha Goldenthal,” I began.

  “Goldenthal,” he repeated, just as Mrs. Worth had done. Did his eyes flicker? “You’re Hildy Goldenthal’s sister?”

  “Yes. My mother—” I couldn’t help it, I started weeping. Wordlessly, Mr. Scranton handed me a shallow box of Kleenex like the kind I’d seen in the pediatrician’s office. “I was sick for two days. And my mother wouldn’t write me a note, because she said it was my fault I got sick.”

  “Oh!” Mr. Scranton said.

  “Plus, I think maybe she was mad because I didn’t want to eat barley stew for breakfast. Which, I mean, she worked hard on it, I guess, plus she had to go to the store for all the ingredients. But it just made me gag, I couldn’t help it—” I swallowed, trying to focus. “Mr. Scranton, I tried to explain the rule to her, that if I didn’t get a note, I’d get an unexcused absence. But she just—”

  “I understand.”

  “Maybe you could try calling her at home—” Wait, he understood? Shrug. I glanced vaguely in his direction, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore and didn’t even seem to be listening. He was scribbling something on a small notepad.

  “The last two days, you say? Wednesday and Thursday?”

  “Right, but—”

  “Take this to your first period teacher,” Mr. Scranton said as he finished the note and tore off the little sheet. He got up and crossed the room, opening the door for me. Then he patted me on the shoulder—run along, now, with a little comfort mixed in.

  I wasn’t happy with Mr. Scranton’s solution. I wanted to be in trouble for having two days’ worth of unexcused absences and half a period of lateness. I wanted him to call my mother and see for himself how crazy she was, what a horrible person, someone who hated her own children. I wanted to tell him that when I read things, I didn’t understand them—that the good grades were a kind of parlor trick I could do, like knowing what key a piece was in, and that I was worried to death someone was going to find out I had no substance. Most of all, I wanted to ask why Mr. Scranton had let me off the hook.

  But I was late, and now wasn’t the time to be curious. Now was hardly ever the time to be curious.

  I ran down to the girls’ bathroom, grateful that it was the middle of first period. Probably those two awful big-haired girls, the ones who always shrugged exaggeratedly and laughed when they saw me in the halls, were already in class. Or maybe they weren’t in class. Maybe, like Declan Wilder, they were cutting. The water was cold against my hands and face, the pink powdered soap scratchy, the rough brown paper towel strangely sweet-smelling as I dried off. I wondered what people did when they cut class. Smoke grass, I guessed.

  At lunch, I told Stephanie that Mr. Scranton had excused my absences without even checking with my mother. Her eyes went wide. Then I told her how while I was waiting, I�
��d talked with this guy who was in trouble for cutting class.

  “Finally over Paul Shapiro, huh?”

  “Shut up!”

  “So what guy?”

  “Declan Wilder,” I said, trying not to blush. “He’s in Smith with me—” Stephanie saw right through me. “Dummy! Don’t you know all the girls have crushes on him?”

  “Shhh!” I whispered fiercely as Philip Gorman was coming up to us. He didn’t look like a wisecracker today. In fact, he seemed kind of jumpy. “Hi, Martha,” he said, his voice wavering a little.

  “Oh hi, Philip.”

  “Hey, um, I have a question—”

  “Well, I missed most of English today, so I don’t really—”

  “—would you go to a school dance?”

  “Eeew, no!” I answered. I felt a kick from Stephanie under the table.

  Philip looked surprised. Then he seemed to be on the verge of saying something but deciding not to. “Oh, okay,” he said softly, and hesitated a little before turning around to leave.

  “Martha!” Stephanie glared at me. “That wasn’t very nice!”

  “What? Everyone knows it’s not cool to go to school dances and sports. School spirit is, like, you know—a hobgoblin!” Or wait, was it a hemoglobin? Shrug. I blushed, sure that Stephanie was going to start teasing me about how I sounded just like Brett. The cafeteria doors closed behind Philip.

  “Dodo! He was asking you!”

  “He was?” I thought a minute. “No! He said, would you go to a school dance. Like, did I think events like that were worth going to! I mean, in general.”

  “The. He said the school dance.”

  “Oh, no! He said the? Are you sure?”

  She nodded. I managed to shriek “Oh, God!” before Stephanie and I went completely out of control laughing, rolling side to side, putting our heads down on the table, pounding our fists, laughing some more. We tried to calm down, because even in the din of the cafeteria other kids could see we were having a spaz, but we couldn’t help it. Every time we looked at each other, it started all over again.

  When we’d finally gotten ourselves to stop, the muscles in my face ached from trying to force myself to be serious. Stephanie avoided looking right at me and tried to change the subject to Helvetica’s kittens, but her voice wobbled with the effort.

  We looked for Philip after school, but we couldn’t find him. “God, I feel so bad for him,” Stephanie said, kind of lording it over me that she understood boys better than I did. I felt bad for Philip, too, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was also kind of angry about the whole thing. If I apologized, I’d have to say, Yes, I’ll go to the dance with you, because if I said Sorry, I misunderstood you, but I still don’t want to go to the dance, that was just too mean. Besides, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go or not, and I didn’t feel like asking Stephanie to help me figure it out, because she already thought I was an idiot. Thank God it was Friday, and I wouldn’t have to think about Philip Gorman again until English on Monday.

  We knew something was wrong the minute we walked into Stephanie’s house. There was no music blaring from Brett’s room, and it sounded like Morris was upstairs. We plunked our stuff down on the kitchen table. “Dad?” Stephanie climbed the steps two at a time, and I scrambled up behind her.

  Morris and Sylvia were sitting on Stephanie’s bed. Brett was sitting on her floor. “It’s not unheard of,” Morris was saying.

  “What’s going on?” Stephanie’s voice was shrill as she rushed into the room. How was it that a divorced mother and father sat side by side on their daughter’s bed, talking? It could only mean something bad had happened.

  I peered into the closet, where Helvetica was asleep. There were three kittens, not five. I looked over at Morris and Sylvia, but they weren’t holding any kittens. I looked back at the cat bed. Wait, were those bloody body parts lying next to Helvetica? A tiny grey tail, a whole white furry leg, what looked like a miniature grey ear—had Morris brought over some cat toys?

  Then I saw that one of the three remaining kittens was missing both of its back legs and a front leg. It wasn’t moving.

  “What happened to Gumby?” Stephanie’s voice was shrill. “And where’s the little white one? Orbit?” She seemed to have forgotten Portico—the one I’d touched while I had a cold.

  Morris was standing up. “Stephanie, sweetheart, once in a while— it’s rare, but—there are instances where a mother—well, she eats her own kittens. It doesn’t happen often—”

  “What?” Stephanie said.

  “Sometimes the kittens don’t smell quite right to the mother,” Morris explained. “Or there can be other reasons, like they have an illness that only the mother can detect.”

  Why had I touched the kittens? Why? Shrug.

  “Dad, you told me not to over-handle the kittens, and I didn’t! We didn’t!”

  “I didn’t,” I echoed.

  “Gumby is all chewed up!” Stephanie cried. “I should never have used that name—it’s like a chew toy!”

  “You did everything just fine, Stephanie,” Morris assured her. “But then, why—?”

  “Sometimes the mother doesn’t feel she has enough strength to feed them,” Morris explained. “Or there are too many kittens for her to care for. Mother cats sometimes perceive that there aren’t enough resources to sustain the lives of the kittens. Other times—”

  “It’s like ’done because we were too menny,’ Brett remarked.

  “Brett—what?” Stephanie demanded.

  “Jude the Obscure, man,” Brett answered. “We’re reading it in English. At one point, the older boy hangs the two younger—”

  “Shut up, Brett!” Stephanie shrieked. She was crying. “What are we going to do?”

  “We should call the vet,” Sylvia said.

  “Absolutely,” Morris agreed. “At the very least, we need to have the half-eaten one put to sleep. And we should probably remove the surviving kittens.”

  “But—?” Stephanie persisted.

  “Sweetheart,” Morris said patiently. “There are cats that just aren’t cut out to be mothers. It happens.”

  Brett peered at me. It looked like his expression said, It’s okay, Martha, you didn’t do anything wrong, but I wasn’t sure. He was the one who’d told me not to touch the kittens. Shrug.

  “Look, this is all my fault!” I shouted. “I was getting sick the other day, and I touched Portico! The germs must have rubbed off on the other kittens!”

  Sylvia said, “Don’t be silly, Martha. It could’ve happened for any reason.”

  Then Morris got up off the bed. He came over to me and looked straight into my face. My bowels were roiling; all I could think was that I was in big trouble. Shrug. “Martha,” he said slowly, as if about to deliver a message of grave importance. “This is not your fault.”

  Stephanie said she thought the two surviving kittens should be put up for adoption right away at the Humane Society, for their own safety. Morris said Helvetica should be spayed, for real this time, so that she’d never become pregnant again. Sylvia put a call in to the vet, and everyone was waiting to hear back, even Morris.

  Brett offered to walk me to the bus stop. He’d never done that before, and I figured he didn’t want to chew me out in front of everyone else. I said yes, just wanting to get it over with. But instead, Brett put his arm around my right shoulder as soon as we left the house. “Give yourself a break,” he said as we walked slowly up the street. “Usually when bad shit happens, it’s for more than one reason.”

  Was that true? But it still meant I could be one of the reasons. Let’s face it, the main one. I was miserable, but at the same time, my heart was beating fast, and I hoped like hell I didn’t shrug and knock Brett’s hand off my shoulder. Why can’t Logan Starch see me now, walking along with a cute eleventh-grade guy? Why can’t Barb Mendelsohn? Why can’t those mean girls who make fun of me? “But I was getting a cold! I should’ve—”

  “You blame
yourself for stuff too much, man!” Brett said. “Why do you think everything’s your fault?”

  Well, isn’t it? I wanted to say. Shrug, went my shoulder, but Brett’s hand weathered the jump and stayed right there. He waited with me at the bus stop, and we kept talking. And then, just as the bus was nosing in, Brett turned me toward him and kissed me on the forehead.

  It had been the world’s shittiest day, but I grinned off and on all the way home. I couldn’t wait to call Stephanie and tell her, even though she’d probably give me at least a mild lecture on not getting attached. But given that Morris was still at the house when I left, my guess was that all four Kenyons would be having dinner together. Stephanie would be busy. Besides, I had my mother to face.

  Usually when my mother was mad at me, she stayed mad for days. But she seemed to have forgotten all about the note for school and the frying pan and my telling her to go fuck. She was just sitting in her bed, crying and watching TV, as if everything were normal.

  14

  tree house

  Everyone talked about war being wrong. It wasn’t healthy for children and other living things—Brett had the poster in his room. That made sense about Vietnam; of course it did. But then why were so many American men in World War II considered heroes even though they killed innocent people? Morris Kenyon, for one, who had been a bombardier in the Pacific, and whose service was something Stephanie and Brett were really proud of? It was like “everything happens for a reason,” except when it doesn’t. It was like “parents want the best for their kids,” except when they don’t.

  The windows at Smoke and Records had been shattered twice in riots in the last few months alone. Broken glass had become so common on Telegraph that the insurance companies had stopped reimbursing store owners when their windows got smashed. My father’s sales had dropped, the rent had gone up twice over the last year, and Hildy said he might even lose his lease. Plus my father had gotten tear-gassed at least three times. None of it made me feel sorry for him.