by Lisa Levchuk
Both Mr. Wallace and the teacher in the adjoining classroom are Vietnam veterans, but they couldn’t have more opposing views of the war. Mr. Wallace rarely mentions Vietnam. He loves to talk about wrestling and, on occasion, demonstrates a move with a boy in the class who is on the team. One day he shoved the kid into the giant trash can in the hallway and broke his tooth. Mr. Wallace says his goal is to turn us into little Republicans. He hates Jimmy Carter and wants Ronald Reagan for our next president. To be honest, the only news I’ve heard about Reagan, aside from the fact that he was a movie star, is that he will overturn a woman’s right to an abortion, and that seems pretty scary. Not that my goal in life is to have an abortion, but in the event I needed one, it would be pretty terrible not to have the choice.
Mr. Aniello, the teacher next door, is an entirely different story. One day back in the fall, we had to spend two whole days in Sociology learning about the life of his friend who died in the war in Vietnam. He even gave us a quiz on this guy. We had to know his dead friend’s birthday and the day he died and the reasons why he signed up for the war. The students like Mr. Wallace better, and I think he has more influence on how we view the war because he isn’t overly hung up on it. He makes it sound like it was fun sometimes. He did tell us that he never told his family or anything when he was coming home; he just showed up without any warning. Actually, if you think about it, World War II seems like it was a better war to fight. My father and other men his age seem fine, but no one I’ve met so far came back from Vietnam without some sort of problem. Even someone as perfect as Mr. Wallace.
The rest of the faculty, however, doesn’t see Mr. Wallace’s perfection. Mr. Howland calls him a moron, and Ms. Clewell rolls her eyes whenever we tell her what we think is a funny story from Western Civilization. She never directly calls him names, the way Mr. Howland does, because it almost seems that teachers are part of some secret society that doesn’t really break ranks. Still, she will give a good eye roll if we relate an especially outrageous story about his class.
Ms. Clewell is the only adult in the school who really tries to teach us. I don’t fully understand why Mr. Wallace, Mr. Howland, and most of my other teachers chose the profession. Still, while there are a bunch of faculty members who chose this career for reasons I don’t understand, I am very glad they did end up here because school would be a whole lot less interesting without them.
Back to the Shrink
IT’S WEDNESDAY. I’m sitting in the waiting room at Dr. Chester’s office. One of the true benefits of therapy is that I get to leave school early and still play in tennis matches, if we have one. There is potentially a lot to say, especially about the fact that I’ve had actual sex, but I’m planning not to say much of anything. Dr. Chester opens the door and holds it open. As I walk into the office, I make a stupid face knowing that he’s behind me and can’t see me. It is a serious place, this office, dark and paneled, with plaques and degrees framed on the walls. I sit across from the doctor and look at him, wondering if he can actually help people—if he has any power whatsoever. What good can come from me sitting here and telling him about the crazy stuff that has happened lately? Could I actually tell him about what happened in the woods with Mr. Howland? Why in the world would I want to become even more worried and guilty for doing the one thing I feel happy about lately? How could Dr. Chester understand how it felt to be lying under Mr. Howland? Would he understand that it was worth the painful parts? He wouldn’t approve. There is no question about it.
“Hello,” I say. I say hello because I’ve noticed something. Dr. Chester will not be the first one to talk. It must be part of the curriculum they teach in shrink school. Lesson l—never be the first person to say hello. He would let me sit there in silence for the whole hour, I think.
“Hello,” he says back.
“I can’t think of anything to say,” I tell him.
“All right,” he says.
I sit there looking around at the walls and at the statues of creepy voodoo-looking people on the shelves. I wonder if my father would like to add these creatures to his collection. Actually, these statues look African, and he probably wouldn’t like them all that much. Some of Dr. Chester’s carvings even have boobs and skinny penises.
“How much does one of these sessions with you cost?” I ask.
“Is that important to you?” he asks.
“I’d like to know,” I say.
“Ninety dollars.”
“Holy moly,” I say and whistle. “That’s pretty steep.”
“This time is valuable,” he says.
My parents would never in a billion years hand over ninety dollars to me to spend how I wanted. So why are they spending the big bucks for this?
“Are you tired today?” I ask.
“Why? Do I seem tired?”
“I asked you first.”
I am determined to beat him at his own game. What I want right now is to get into my car, smoke a cigarette, and listen to Astral Weeks very loud.
“You know what my father said to me?” I ask.
“No, what did he say?”
“He said that he wishes he could afford to be psychotic.”
“He’s expressing a wish,” Dr. Chester says. “However, I am afraid he is misusing the word ‘psychotic.’”
“He means crazy,” I say. “He thinks I’m crazy. My mother, too. My dad thinks we are both crazy.”
“Do you think you are crazy?”
“No,” I answer. “I think you are crazy. Crazy like a fox.”
He doesn’t answer, not that I expect him to answer. I would like to find a way to ruffle his feathers. But he’s tough. He can hold a bored and unimpressed expression on his face longer than anyone in the world, I think.
“Guess what?” I say.
“What?”
“I have this weird fear I’m going to get poisoned accidentally or that I’ll swallow shards of glass without knowing it.”
Although I am speaking in a joking and not serious way, the truth is that I do worry incessantly about being poisoned.
“Do you think that is going to happen?” he asks.
“It’s possible,” I say. “Anything is possible. Doesn’t that scare you? Every time you take an aspirin you are potentially risking your life.”
“Life is risky.” He yawns. “Sometimes even the most careful people get wiped out.”
I look at him. He said something funny. This is the first funny thing he has ever said to me, and it has made me like him better. I almost feel like talking some more. I’d like to ask him what he meant when he said my father was expressing a wish. I’ve never thought about my father having wishes, even if they are wishes to be psychotic. I wouldn’t even mind talking about my mother or my brother or maybe even Mr. Howland, but I feel like I’ve had the upper hand with Dr. Chester and I don’t want to blow it.
In the car I dig out my Astral Weeks tape, a tape not one of my friends will let me listen to when I am with them. I first heard Van Morrison at the house of a girl I was friends with back in ninth grade. Actually, we weren’t great friends or anything—it was more that she was terrific at algebra and I wasn’t. We’d sit in her room doing math homework, and through the wall I’d hear music—Van and Bob Dylan and post-Beatles John Lennon music. This girl would yell at her brother to turn it down—her taste in music didn’t extend beyond AM radio. One day when she left me alone, I sneaked into her brother’s room and wrote down the names of the first five albums I saw. That was how I got Astral Weeks and Blood on the Tracks and even a great record that I still listen to fairly often by a band called Leon Russell and the Shelter People. I hardly ever saw her brother—he was a senior at the time and he kept his door closed whenever I was around. Still, if it hadn’t been for him, I might never have discovered the existence of those records.
A Close Call
AFTER MY SHRINK APPOINTMENT YESTERDAY, I played my worst tennis match of the year. I got beaten by a girl who wasn’t very good. Mrs. Schwim
mer shook her head at me, but she can’t get mad because of my mother. The girl kept hitting junk at me, loopy lobs that made me want to kill the ball. Most of my shots went practically into the back fence. I knew the game was getting away from me, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I kept hitting the ball as hard as I could until the match finally ended. Afterward, I told Mrs. Schwimmer that I would continue to play matches but that I’d have to miss practice for the next two weeks because I was needed at home. It was a lie, but I do think my father is getting closer to forcing the issue of a visit. Like everyone else, Mrs. Schwimmer gave me guilt-inducing sympathy and support.
The good thing about missing practice is that now I am free in the afternoon. Today, however, as I get into the car, Mr. Howland says he needs to make a quick stop at home.
“Wait,” I say. “We’re going to your house?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Don’t worry. Mother Dracula is working.”
We drive in the direction opposite from the secret spot, out toward the mall. A few miles later, we pull into a gravel driveway. Mr. Howland’s house is set back about fifty yards from the road. It resembles a house from a fairy tale—like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel. The shutters on the windows could have been shaped by cookie cutters. Behind the house are woods.
“This is a funny house,” I say.
“The mortgage isn’t funny,” Mr. Howland says.
When he opens the door, I sit there hoping that he doesn’t think I’m going to go with him.
“Come on,” he says.
“Come on where?”
“Don’t be such a coward. You can see her car isn’t here.”
I don’t know why I refuse to obey my inner voice, which is telling me to stay where I am, but I get out and follow him into the house, which is dark and smells of fresh-cut wood. There are the signs that he’s been fixing things.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
I wander around. An art studio looks like it was added on to the kitchen. The studio is filled with sketches done mostly with charcoal pencils. In the kitchen they have one of those old-fashioned black, potbellied stoves. On the counter is a small bowl filled with black licorice jelly beans, my least favorite flavor. Next to the studio is a set of stairs, and my curiosity gets the best of me. The stairs are wooden and worn, and the entire staircase tilts to the left; it’s clearly not a part of the house that has been renovated. I begin to climb, trying not to think of a scary dream involving a staircase I used to have all the time when I was younger.
As I reach the top step, I realize I am seeing exactly what I came to see. The bed is unmade, and the room itself is decorated in a sort of artsy way. The pattern on the bedspread looks like one of the mosaic designs on Mr. Howland’s pottery. Near the window, there is a screen made of wood and black cloth, much like the one Mr. Howland put on the window in his office, but it is larger, like you could get dressed behind it. I see Mr. Howland’s jeans on the floor, but I don’t see any of her clothes. On the night table is a gold wedding band. I think to look in the closet, but then I hear a sound that causes my heart to stop inside my chest for a second. I look outside. Pulling up next to Mr. Howland’s car is her bright yellow Trans Am. I hear Mr. Howland’s footsteps running toward the kitchen and then him yelling, “Where the hell are you?”
‘I’ll hide,” I holler back.
I scoot under the bed. It is clear that the Howlands don’t have a maid because I am covered with dust bunnies and breathing in what seems like enough dust to fill a vacuum bag. I feel claustrophobic, and unless I turn my head to the side, the bottom of the box spring touches my nose. Next to my face is a pencil stub, a pair of Mr. Howland’s boxer shorts, and a single black jelly bean.
“What are you doing home?” Mr. Howland asks his wife.
They are at the bottom of the stairs. Every word is loud and clear.
“I forgot a file,” Mrs. Howland says.
I figure that, if God exists, she won’t come upstairs. If he doesn’t, then she will. I hear her feet trotting up the steps and I hold my breath. She is wearing older woman shoes, brown sling-back pumps with a high heel. It amazes me that she can walk without falling down. She walks quickly past the room I’m in and into the room next door. She stays there for a minute or two and then goes back down the stairs. My heart is banging so loudly in my chest that I am surprised she doesn’t hear it and drag me out from under her bed.
“Are you going to finish the walls in the living room?” she calls to Mr. Howland.
“I don’t know,” he yells back. “We’re past the extension on the taxes. We need to get those out by the end of next week.”
This conversation seems pretty mundane to me. Eventually, the front door slams; the muffled sound of a car door follows. Last, she revs up the engine, gravel crunching as she drives away. I slide out from under that bed, trying to get some of the dust off of me.
“What are you doing upstairs?” Mr. Howland calls to me.
“Hiding,” I say.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Mr. Howland says. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Before I go downstairs I pull open the closet door and discover a pile of trophies in a cardboard box. His wife was not exaggerating—there must be about twenty of them. I am even more impressed, because now I know that not only is Mr. Howland a great artist but he was a terrific athlete. Hanging over the bed, I see a framed print I hadn’t noticed earlier. It is a painting of a man’s face behind what appear to be the bars of a jail cell. Underneath the picture in bold capital letters it says, “AT THIRTY-FIVE PAUL GAUGUIN WAS WORKING IN A BANK. IT IS NEVER TOO LATE.”
We don’t talk about any of what happened as we drive out toward the secret spot. I don’t care much about their taxes or their renovations, but I did want to see more of the house. I wanted to see their clothes and examine the football trophies, and I wanted to see what kind of food was in the refrigerator. Mr. Howland dragged me out before I had the chance to investigate much of anything.
Later, as we lie in the barn, I am studying the caps on Mr. Howland’s teeth, the ones I noticed when he and Patty’s mother were drunk and laughing at everything.
“Your teeth must be worth about a million dollars,” I say.
“What can I say?” he says. “I’m rich with rottenness.”
He pulls me toward him to kiss me, but I won’t let him.
“I could steal your teeth one at a time and put myself through college,” I tell him. “If only I had some chloroform.”
He’s not paying attention to anything I say. His only desire is to kiss me. This is one of those times where I suspect that Mr. Howland and I are perverts. Who else but a couple of perverts would do this? Who else but perverts would go to a gingerbread house and then drive in an old BMW through one hundred feet of pricker bushes to get to a clearing? Who would come to this place to be naked and drink brandy out of the bottle and have sex in an abandoned barn? Not to mention the fact that I’m seventeen and he is thirty-two and has a wife who is a paralegal. And I’ve got a father who might secretly wish to be Chinese for all I know. And a mother who could die without me ever visiting her. There is no other explanation. We are perverts.
While Mr. Howland is folding up the blanket, he begins to cry. It happens suddenly. I am lying still, feeling the cool breeze blow across my naked skin, raising the hair on my arms a tiny bit—not the way it does when you have chills or goose bumps but the way it does when you get out of the ocean on a sunny day. I am not accustomed to seeing people cry.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you, too,” I say.
Whenever Mr. Howland tells me he loves me, I want to pause time and make sure that I’m not in a fantasy. His “I love you” is so much better than mine. I’m not used to saying those words, so when I do, they sound fake to me, like I’m on a soap opera.
“What are we going to do?” he asks. He wipes his eyes with his sleeve.
&nbs
p; “Are we going home?” I ask.
He’s got tears running down his cheeks. They are pouring out of his eyes.
“Listen,” he says. “I’m asking you what we are going to do. Do you have any idea what it is I’m asking you?”
I sit there silently.
“Don’t you think I wonder what I have done here, Edna? Can’t you see that I’ve got all my eggs in one basket?”
I am the basket. I am carrying all of Mr. Howland’s eggs.
“I’m putting everything on the line here,” he says.
He’s looking at me like he wants me to say things, reassuring things, but there are no words because my emotions are malfunctioning. I’d like to tell him how much he can trust me to carry the eggs and not break them. But I’ve lied so much to my parents and my teachers and Dr. Chester that I don’t know how to sound like I’m telling the truth. I don’t want Mr. Howland to be crying because of me.
“Are you sure you love me?” he asks.
“Of course I do,” I say. “You are my Mr. Handsome.”
I think this will help, but Mr. Howland cries even harder. Sometimes I make up nicknames when I am nervous. Despite the fact that I am pretty confused and tongue-tied, I can honestly say that I do love Mr. Howland. I think about him all the time and I’m only truly happy when he is with me. Isn’t that love? I hold Mr. Howland’s beautiful hands, which aside from his sandy hair and square jaw might be his best feature. They are large and strong-looking, like my father’s hands except without the bulgy veins and too-long fingernails. I remember pressing the biggest vein in my father’s hand once, trying to push it back into his skin. That vein was thick and blue and ran between his thumb and forefinger. Every time I pushed it, it would reappear just as blue and thick. My father also has a big mole on his right cheek, a mole almost as big as a large pea. I used to pretend that his mole could talk. I look at Mr. Howland. For as much success as I am having making Mr. Howland feel better, I might as well be talking to that mole.