by Lisa Levchuk
Tennis Practice
SINCE THE KISS IN THE OFFICE, Mr. Howland and I are spending more time alone together. I don’t even bother going to History or Gym most days, and other than Ms. Clewell, no one seems too interested in which classes I attend and which I don’t. The only thing I still take seriously is tennis practice, because I am the number one player on the team. Last season, my mother used to come to my matches. I’m not sure why she didn’t stand next to the court and watch like the other mothers; instead, she drove to a spot across the road and watched from inside her car. She must have been nervous I would start double-faulting or hitting balls over the fence if I knew she was there. But I always knew where she was anyway. About one-third of the way into my match, I would turn my head, and parked across the street would be her brown and tan paneled station wagon. She always left before the match was over. As quickly as she came, the next time I looked, she’d be gone.
Today as I am practicing my serve, I see Mr. Howland walking toward the courts. The tennis courts are near the soccer fields, and both places are completely out of his way, so I know he must be coming to see me. He is wearing his Ray-Ban sunglasses and a light blue windbreaker and walking quickly, trying to make it look like he is in a big rush to get somewhere important, but I see him staring at the courts, trying to locate me. I attempt to hit a few really hard serves to impress him, but my nerves get the best of me and my serves sail to the baseline. So instead of trying to impress, I grab a full hopper and start firing balls at him. I’m about fifty yards away, and I can tell that this girl Sarah on the next court has no idea what to think about what I am doing, but I almost hit him once or twice and there are tennis balls bouncing around his legs.
“Hey,” he yells, “cut it out!”
By then, both Sarah and the number three singles player have started hitting balls in his direction, and he finally has to put his hands over his head and jog back toward the main building. My teammates think it is hilarious. The coach, Mrs. Schwimmer, is nowhere around; everyone knows she’s probably hiding out in the main office with her boyfriend, who is the vice principal. We spend the rest of practice trying to hit soccer players with tennis balls.
The Beach
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, Mr. Howland was somewhat mad about the tennis balls. However, all is forgiven and we are sitting in his office in the art room. The office is really about the size of a large closet. There are a few metal bookshelves, lots of oversize art books, an office chair, and a stool like the ones out in the classroom. I sit on the stool. It is dark because Mr. Howland stretched a piece of black cloth across a wood frame, which he uses as a shade for the window that looks out to the faculty parking lot. One of Mr. Howland’s secret plans is to order a bunch of art books and expensive supplies and then quit, take the expensive stuff with him, and pursue his career as an artist. I think it is a good idea, because as my father says, everyone needs to plan for the future.
Sitting in his office behind the black screen, I am happy. I love the fact that Mr. Howland is so creative and talented. Examining the titles of these beautiful books on art and artists, I firmly believe one day Mr. Howland will be either a famous artist with books written about him or a writer himself with books displayed on other teachers’ shelves.
On Saturday afternoon, we had what I would call our first official date. We met in the parking lot of the Presbyterian church on West Street and then drove to the beach in his car. On the way we stopped for a sub. After we argued for a while about where to park, he grabbed a blanket and we headed down to the most deserted section. It was a warm day for April, but not so warm that I wasn’t surprised to see a few men with their foil reflectors and their nut-snuggler bathing suits trying to catch some rays. We went so far down the beach that there was no one else within a hundred yards of us. The first thing we did was eat the sub, which was delicious, especially when alternating bites with potato chips and sips of soda. There was a nice, cool breeze coming off of the slightly choppy ocean, and the food tasted better than any food I’ve ever eaten.
“What a day,” Mr. Howland said.
Mr. Howland’s skin is rather fair, the kind of skin that probably freckles and burns rather than tans. He took off his shirt and lay down on the blanket, revealing his perfectly smooth chest. I pushed my finger into his belly button, and he squirmed before grabbing my wrist.
“What’s the news on your mom?” he asked.
“I think she needs radiation,” I told him, trying not to reveal how little I know about her actual condition.
“That’s a bummer,” he said.
“It’s quiet in my house with my father gone all the time.”
Mr. Howland squeezed my hand and then pulled me from my sitting position so that I was lying across his chest. He lifted my body on top of his and kissed my neck. There was something jabbing into my side from inside the pocket of his jeans. I didn’t want to move because he was rubbing my back very softly.
“There’s a sea creature in your pants,” I finally said.
“Indeed there is,” he replied. “An electric eel.”
I’ve had two moderately serious boyfriends in my life, Jack Carson in eighth grade and Jeff Riddle last year, but we were quite innocent about the whole sexual thing. We mainly went to movies and didn’t progress beyond making out. They were both pretty shy. I did go on a double date with Barbie last year over to the house of a high-profile senior named Mark Howell. After making us listen to him play the drums along with “Carry on Wayward Son” by Kansas about three times, Mark turned off the lights, and the other kid, a basketball player named Jimmy Keys, jumped on me and practically raped me with his clothes on. It was like being molested by a dog who won’t stop grinding on your leg even when you hit it repeatedly with a magazine or a newspaper. Since then, I haven’t really dated anyone. But I think I am finally ready for the next step.
I rolled off Mr. Howland and lay down next to him. I liked the feel of his soft skin, especially the skin on his sides. He turned toward me and put his arm across my stomach. Even with the presence of the eel, he didn’t try to make me do anything. With his hand on my stomach, his fingers stretched from one side of my waist to the other. He measured my stomach with his outstretched hand, and we laughed at the smallness of me.
Now Mr. Howland looks out the door to make sure the classroom is empty before he kisses me, but I ruin the mood by bringing up the unmentionable.
“What about your wife?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about that,” he says.
“Who do you love best?” I ask him.
“I love you,” he tells me. “I’ve loved you longer than you know.”
I don’t tell him, but I’ve loved him since Foodtown.
Waiting Around
BEING WITH MR. HOWLAND requires patience. When he tells me to meet him, he is invariably late and I end up waiting. It doesn’t bother me because I’ve always been good at waiting. I like having a reason to do nothing but stare into space. When I was a little girl, it seemed like I was constantly waiting around for my father. Back when we still lived in town, before my father built our new house and moved us to the farm where we live now, my father used to take me and Barbie to our farm to ride the horses I don’t ride anymore. If Barbie didn’t come along, my father might stop on the way at boring places like auctions where broken or not broken pieces of farm equipment were being sold in big, dusty parking lots. My father loved inspecting the machinery, hay balers and tractors and machines without names with forked metal teeth for tearing through fields. While he walked around, he would forget about me. My father never looked as interested in anything as he did in those tractors and machines. He could spend hours wandering, pausing now and again to examine a machine more closely. He must have wished that he wasn’t a lawyer when he stood there in those open lots. He probably wished he was a farmer who could ride around cutting hay all day long. In fall and winter, my father wore a red hunting coat that smelled of burning leaves and a red hat with wool-lined earfl
aps tied up with a leather string. He is tall and slim. His only flaw is that he walks with a slight limp that he got from being injured in the war.
There were Sundays when minutes passed like hours as I sat in our car feeling sick to my stomach before he would come back. While my father was walking around talking to real farmers, he treated those tractors and other machines as the only things that mattered in the entire world; he was not worrying about me—where I was or what I was doing or how nauseated my chronic car sickness might have left me. He walked and talked until he decided he had seen enough. And then, finally, at the moment I was ready to bolt from the car and grab his shirt, he turned and walked slowly back, away from the farming implements, and took me to the general store, where a very scary old man with bumps covering his head gave me a grape soda from an old refrigerator.
If he was feeling especially nice, my father let me shift gears on the way home. I moved over toward his seat and put my hand on the shifter. When it was time, he yelled “Now!” and I would push the stick into third or fourth gear. The best place to shift was at a stop sign at the top of a hill near a red stone church and a small graveyard. Starting from the stop sign, I would do the whole sequence of gears—first through fourth. On top of that hill was a good place to be because you had a view that stretched for miles. It may have been one of the highest spots in New Jersey. Like most great moments, however, it was short-lived. By the time you appreciated how high you were and how exciting it was, the car was in fourth gear and the magic was over.
I hardly see my father anymore. We pass in the hallway at night, but he is gone before I even get up in the morning. And then he has left work and gone to New York to see my mother in the hospital when I get home from school. If we do happen to be in the house at the same time, I tend to avoid him because he always asks me to go to the city with him to see my mother. It has been a long time since I went to a farm auction, and I guess that should make me happy because they really were dead boring. I’ll tell you this: I wouldn’t mind it one bit if he took me to that general store for a grape soda. I’d go with him even if it meant I had to look at that bumpy-headed old guy one more time.
Distance
MY FATHER TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING about distance. On Thursday nights during the summer from the deck of our beach house, I would watch the fireworks with him. We sat all wrapped up in a blanket, and he explained why the bang came so long after the flash—five seconds for every mile. My father knew this from having fired artillery shells during World War II. Distance was everything. Maybe he didn’t remember, or maybe it was so important it needed repeating, but he told me the same thing every time. He held me there and told me how many seconds and how many miles. He could always calculate how far away things were. It went like this: fireworks—one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi four Mississippi five Mississippi BANG! During the school year, our house is rented. Otherwise, Mr. Howland and I would go there and I could show him the exact spot over the ocean where the fireworks would explode.
Tonight, when I go downstairs to get a drink of water, my father is asleep. I go to the closet in the hallway and dig through my mother’s raincoat and fake fur and my old windbreakers and team jackets until I find that red hunting coat. There is a grease stain on the collar and the sleeves are dirty, but I bury my face in that coat until I think I can smell the burning leaves.
My Brother
I DON’T USUALLY MENTION IT because the whole thing is somewhat complicated, but for some reason I tell Mr. Howland about my older brother, who died when I was very small. We are sitting in his car, which makes sense because most of our alone time is spent either in the car or hiding out in his office. We are parked in the corner of the giant lot in front of Britt’s department store. Mr. Howland is talking to me about his brother, whose name is Tom. He lives in Virginia. It’s funny to me that his name is Tom.
“Wait,” I say. “Your brother’s name is Tom and your name is Sawyer?”
He gets mad so I stop laughing and change the subject.
“I used to have a brother,” I say.
“What do you mean you used to have a brother?” he says.
“His name was Tommy. He died a long time ago.”
“What did he die of?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “He had some disease called autism, and the strangest part is that he never learned to talk. Other than that, my parents haven’t really told me much about him.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Howland says.
And then he tries to console me the way people console each other. He hugs me, expecting me to be upset, the way people expect me to be upset about my mother, but I am not upset. I sit there in his arms feeling frozen while he tells me how sorry he is and how terrible it is to lose someone.
What I don’t mention to him, what I’ve never told anyone, is that Barbie asked me once if my brother was murdered by a psychiatrist. We were only about ten or eleven years old, but I never forgot. She made it sound as though she knew something I didn’t. I was sleeping over at her house and she asked me about my brother right in the middle of a game of Barbie dolls. She acted like she figured I would know the answer, but the truth is no one ever told me how he died. The extent of what I know is that he was six years old, he couldn’t talk, and he was living with a psychiatrist. I have no idea how I answered her or if I even answered her at all. A few days later, a day when I was in one of my most worried and least talkative moods, I asked my mother if I could get autism and she said no. She told me it was something you were born with. The fact that I knew how to speak at the time convinced me that she was right, that I must be normal.
To be honest, it would be good to know what happened to my brother. Maybe the psychiatrist he was living with got so mad at him for not talking that she murdered him. I know from experience that people don’t like it when you clam up. Or maybe he died of something else. It is hard to believe someone murdered him, but once a seed gets planted in your mind, it’s difficult to root it out.
“Do you ever talk to your parents about him?” Mr. Howland asks.
“Not really,” I tell him. “I did read an article about autism in Reader’s Digest one time. They used to say it was the parents’ fault.”
“That’s all crap, right?” Mr. Howland asks.
“Yeah, but they still have no idea what happens.”
“Doctors,” Mr. Howland says, shaking his head. “Never trust doctors or lawyers.”
He seems to have forgotten that my father is a lawyer and his wife is studying to become one. Mr. Howland leaves me in the car while he goes to get me a soda. I’m tempted to open the glove compartment and seek evidence of his wife, but I decide that it will only make me feel lousy if I do.
Me and a Psychiatrist
I AM GOING TO SEE A PSYCHIATRIST on Wednesday. My mother is actually forcing me to go from the hospital because she must think she isn’t going to come home. She was already talking about getting me counseling before she got sick because of my sinking grades and refusal to talk about anything with her, but the idea of seeing an actual doctor feels a bit extreme to me. My father seems irritated at the idea, but I can imagine why he might not be too hot on psychiatrists. His response was, “I wish I could afford to be psychotic.” He can’t afford to have any mental issues because he has to work almost all of the time. The last time he took a day off was for Expo ’67, when I was around four years old. But he did buy me a very nice little car, a green Triumph TR7. I can’t stress enough how cool this car is. Most of my friends drive their mothers’ station wagons or beat-up El Caminos. Believe me, if my mother was home, I never would have gotten a car this nice. The best part about the whole thing is that the psychiatrist’s office is pretty far away and I’ll get to drive my new Triumph.
Mr. Howland doesn’t think the psychiatrist is the greatest idea, and I can’t say I blame him. He’s probably afraid I am going to spill my guts about him kissing me and whatnot in his office. But he can rest assured. I definitel
y will not spill my guts. I am not an idiot. Being with Mr. Howland, no matter where we are, is my favorite place to be, besides driving my new car. Why would I risk blowing the only outstanding things in my life right now? The truth is that I don’t know what the hell I’ll say to that stupid psychiatrist. Because I am not sad that my mother is gone. I’m really not.
The Psychiatrist
I AM THE ONLY PERSON in the waiting room. I am wearing my most colorfully patched jeans and my father’s white shirt with a frayed collar. My mother would flip out if she saw me. She believes in getting dressed up when you go to the doctor and when you fly on a plane, among other places. I never could make sense of it, but now that she isn’t around to monitor me, I can wear whatever I want. I felt awesome driving here in my new Triumph with the roof down in my too-casual-for-the-doctor outfit, even though I forgot my cassettes and had to listen to stupid songs on the radio for the entire ride. The only things missing were some cool sunglasses and a cigarette. And of course, it would have been better if I were going somewhere other than a psychiatrist’s office.
I have to sit there alone before the doctor comes out to get me. There are a few framed prints on the wall in the waiting room. My favorite is a watercolor of some colorful fish swimming in a bowl. It is one of those prints you see in every doctor’s office and reception area, but I like it anyway.
When he opens the door, Dr. Chester isn’t wearing a white coat and carrying a pinwheel with which to hypnotize me; he is wearing a tan poplin suit and he is going bald and he doesn’t seem to care one bit what I am wearing, which just proves me right about it not mattering. He escorts me into the office, where he sits behind a large oak desk and I sit across from him in a pretty comfortable chair, but not as comfortable as the big leather bend-back chair he gets to sit in, of course. Over by the plaques on the wall is a couch, which looks more like what a psychiatrist might ask you to lie down on while you do free association, but he doesn’t seem to want me to move. He sits there like a stump for a while not talking, slowly nodding his head. One of the plaques says that he graduated from Harvard Medical School, and I don’t know whether or not I should be impressed. Seems like he might be too much psychiatrist for what I need.