by Paul Cody
I think Jason’s mom tried to make a fuss, and threatened to sue, but a lot of people told about all the things Jason had been saying to Levon since the start of school. Jason had to wear a mask around school for his nose, and I kind of felt sorry for him.
He was just a bully, and now what was he? Just a prick who’d had his ass handed to him by a sixth grader.
Levon Grady was a boy of talent and mystery. He rode into the sunset like the Lone Ranger, wearing not a mask, but glasses.
Hi-yo, fucking Silver!
Seven
Levon
I would’ve been there on time—I hate being late for anything—but just as I was walking out the door, my mom texted me and said she had forgotten to feed the cats. So I fed the cats, and they were swarming me like vultures, and I kept having to elbow them off the counters, especially when I cracked open the wet food. Honestly, they’re like lions on the Serengeti with a fresh-killed gazelle or something.
The school was only four or five blocks away, but I was still about seven minutes late, and when I knocked and went in, she was sitting on the edge of one of the big chairs like she was at a tea party, spine like steel. She stood up, and she was quite tall and had this mass of light brown hair piled on the back of her head with silver combs to hold it there. She had wide-set brown eyes, big eyes, a long, thin nose, and perfect teeth.
She was almost gorgeous, but five out of ten people would say she was slightly strange-looking, nose too long or thin, mouth a little wide, and she was wearing an almost mannish shirt or blouse, long sleeved, with the top button buttoned, which made me think, Shit, my top button is buttoned too.
But her shirt was buttoned at the cuffs, and she wore black cargo pants, and Birks, and the thing that got me, that made me feel a little sad for her, was that she had this thin tan suit jacket over the shirt, and the sleeves of the suit jacket were rolled back once.
I thought, Cutter.
We sat down and I started saying how I loved her poem, especially, say here her / feet rose.
She blushed and said thank you. And I said it was lovely, the alliteration, the languid through / white summer.
You don’t expect the white summer, you expect it to be green, of course, I said. Then I paused.
I turned to her, and she looked at me, still blushing. She had very fair skin.
I’m sorry. This must be embarrassing you, I said.
No, it’s kind, she said, looking at her toes curled in her Birks.
Meg didn’t say anything for a while. Meg watched both of us. She looked at me a few moments, then she looked at Sam. Meg was big on silence. She called it Quaker Silence. You were silent, and things came out of the silence. God or grace came from the silence. Stillness.
We must have sat a minute or two in silence but it felt like a half hour. Finally I said, Sam, Meg has this thing about silence. That it’s cool if there’s silence. Kind of like a Quaker meeting. That grace and God can come from the stillness.
I’m good with that, Sam said.
It’s not necessarily religious, Meg said. It’s putting up with the anxiety. It’s finding what Eliot called the still point in the turning world. Or Keats called it negative capability: the ability to be in mysteries, doubts, and uncertainties without the irritable reaching for fact or reason.
We were quiet a few seconds, then Meg said, You, Sam, sent Levon a poem, I gather, and Levon, you sent Sam something I’ve not been privy to. You’ve also had some idea, some sense, that this whole project might take place in cyberspace.
She looked at Sam, then at me.
Am I correct?
We both looked at Meg, then at each other. Sam had a hint of a smile.
Well, I said, we weren’t exactly sure. I mean, it’s all been kind of amorphous.
Sam?
I didn’t exactly know.
How about we set some ground rules, because this is a kind of senior honors project, Meg said.
We did some more silence.
Which means that it counts as two courses a term. Sixteen credits.
Before you duck and run, you only have to take two other courses. So you’ll have plenty of time. We’ll meet twice a week here, in my office. Wednesdays at ten a.m., and Fridays at two p.m.
And as much as I know you’re each disinclined to show, to share your work, I am making it a requirement of this course, that within a week of writing something, you send it to both Levon and me, or Sam and me.
And to help make it easier to open up, rule number one is that nobody else is to see your work, now or ever, unless all three of us agree.
Meg stopped, and I watched Sam look at the floor. Then Sam looked at me, and held my eyes, and I wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Can I trust you? Are you like everyone else? Who are you, Levon Grady, and what is this place? She looked angry and scared, and she looked like she was pleading for something, but I didn’t know what it was.
Then I looked at Meg. She had been watching us.
This could be a hundred pages, Sam said.
Yes, Meg said. But much of it will be accounts written or emailed or transcribed by other people. And you have close to ten months to work on it.
And try not to think of it as just you working on this thing alone. It’s you and Levon and me. We’re all pulling this cart together. We’re in it together, every step, every trudge, every stumble along the way.
Sam had sat back in her chair, and her legs were straight out in front of her. They were long as willows, and I noticed her arms were really long, and she had wonderful hands. Long, straight, strong fingers.
But I’m such a fuck-up, Sam said in this oddly flat way. As though she was talking to someone else.
We did some silence.
I’ve never finished anything, she finally said.
Then she pulled her legs up under her and turned away from us.
We’re all fuck-ups, Meg said. Which is to say, we make mistakes, we fail at some things, we do better at some things. We’re human beings.
I certainly am, I said.
Sam looked at me.
I’m a fuck-up. Majorly, I said.
I thought you were gonna say you were a human being, Sam said, and she laughed, then we all laughed.
I mean, I’m not always sure of that, I said. I have the basic attributes.
The arms, the legs, the hair, the heart, Sam said. She grinned slyly. You got your liver, you got your kidneys, you got your brains, eyes, ears, pancreas, she said in this Boston accent.
And don’t forget the fingers and toes, your opposable thumb. Where would you be without your opposable thumb, I said.
We were riffing a little, having, you could almost say, fun.
Meg said, And what did you send Sam, Levon?
Oh, just this thing about an old lady across the street dying, I said. Just something I had just happened to have written.
You want me to tell about it? Sam asked.
It was really just something—
I’ll tell, if that’s okay, Sam said.
And she started to describe it in detail, as if she’d read it five times. She said it was very well written, very fluid, even elegant, and it was about these three people in their sixties who had lived across the street from me my whole life, and who hardly went out, and who weren’t related as far as I could tell. She told about me seeing Mr. Smithie being taken out on a stretcher maybe a half dozen times over the years, usually at night, and how he was very short and very fat. And every time I thought he’d die, that this would be his last ride.
Then his mom wrote Levon an email, Sam said, that one of the two women who lived there had died and he hadn’t even noticed, and how strange and sad that was. How he lived across the street from them his whole life and barely noticed them, how they kept the shades drawn, and how you hardly ever saw them. They kept to themselves.
It was sad, and it was such a curious thing to write about, such an interesting thing to notice, Sam said.
What struck you most? Meg as
ked.
Well, the writing, Sam said. And how Levon noticed things and thought about things, and how he was both really curious and really sad.
We were silent for a minute.
Anything else? Meg asked.
Well, there was one other thing that struck me, but this may be me. I’ve spent so much time with shrinks. I don’t want to overanalyze everything.
Levon? Meg looked at me.
Sure.
It occurred to me that Levon, on some level, whether he was aware of it or not, was so curious, and empathized so deeply, maybe because he identified with the old people. I mean, they seemed to have had no friends or visitors, and they kept their shades drawn, and they might have kind of peeked out at the world from behind their curtains, just as Levon peeked out and saw the old man getting taken away in an ambulance. I wondered if he wondered what that life was like, and if he was maybe a little drawn to it, and a little scared that he could become like that. Afraid of being someone who peeked out at the world from behind veils.
I just looked at her looking at the floor, and I thought, Holy shit. OMG. Where did this girl come from?
We had a long Quaker Silence. Two minutes. Five minutes. We waited a long time, and I felt like I was being seen as I had never been seen. It was uncanny. Uncomfortable and wonderful at the same time.
Finally Sam said, I’m sorry if that’s out of line. I always read way too much into everything.
Levon? Meg said.
I’m startled, I said very quietly. I wasn’t really aware at the time I was writing it. But yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That’s got to be there. That is there. It’s all over it.
Then we were silent, and something very strange happened, like it was happening to someone else. Like it was happening from far away. I felt stricken and pale. My hands were shaky.
All at once, I felt sad, but I felt relieved too, as though someone had finally seen me. From nowhere.
But Meg came over and sat next to me on the couch. She put her arm around me, and then she motioned for Sam to come over and sit on the other side of me. Sam didn’t put her arm around me, but she put her long, beautiful hand on my wrist, and we sat there for two or three minutes.
It’s good sometimes, Meg said, to get found.
Then they went back to their seats.
Meg said we were almost out of time, and that surprised me, because it felt like we’d just been in there a half hour. But it also felt like we’d been there half the day too. Maybe it was all those Quaker Silences. All that stillness and grace.
She said, I’ve drawn up contracts for both of you to sign. It basically says what we talked about. Meet twice a week, turn in at least one hundred pages in June, and absolute confidentiality. What we say and write stays between the three of us. No exceptions.
We each signed down at the bottoms of the pages, and we each got a copy.
And how about you two send me what you’ve already sent each other? And maybe try to write a little more for Friday? Anything. Just get the writing muscles moving.
We were standing at Meg’s desk, and she was easily the shortest.
She handed us each cards with her telephone number and email address and, down at the bottom, she wrote in her cell phone number.
Why don’t you give each other your cell numbers and stuff?
We did, and then we stood, and Meg said, Okay, let’s bring it in.
I don’t think Sam knew what Meg was talking about. But Meg pulled us into this tight three-way hug. Sam was stiff and awkward, and then Meg said, Relax, and Sam didn’t so much relax, but her grip grew really strong, like rope, and it was as though she was hugging the two of us as if she meant it.
Then I said, Every year, Meg’s gotten a little shorter.
Meg said, Every year, Levon’s become more of a wiseass.
We broke and Meg said, We good?
Yeah, I said. Absolutely.
Sam said, I think so. As long as I didn’t push it too far.
I looked at her, leaned close, and said, Not a bit. The Dude abides.
Then we both smiled, and at that moment I thought, She’s not sort of a little, almost odd-looking. She’s stop-your-blood, render-you-mute gorgeous. And she was half again as clear-eyed and sharp as anyone my age I’d ever come across. Which made me feel like skipping for joy and running away at the same time. And that was wonderful and scary in a way I don’t think I’d ever known.
I could almost hear Meg say, You’ve finally met your match, Levon Grady.
Eight
Nathan
If you know Roslindale, then you probably know Boston. It’s a neighborhood of the city, about five miles from downtown, bordered by Mattapan, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, and is a mixture of small single-family houses with chain-link fences surrounding the tiny yards, two-family houses, and an occasional three-decker, particularly near Mattapan. Roslindale is a step or two up from South Boston, two steps up from Dorchester, and two and a half steps up from Roxbury.
So I grew up in Roslindale, and most of the kids I graduated high school with went to the army or navy or marines, or jail, or they took the civil service exam to get on with the post office or the fire department or the city. Or they became alcoholics or addicts, which is kind of a full-time job. I went to UMass Boston, in Dorchester, built on a former dump, situated not far from the always-congested Southeast Expressway.
My old man was a mail carrier, my mom was taken by cancer when I was sixteen, and I remember, in the last year of her life, how she said to my brother Bobby and me, over and over, Make something of yourselves. She must have said it a hundred times.
Maybe it was how skinny and gray she’d become, and how it was like she was gone before she was dead, but it made an impression on me. That, and how we knew, she knew, Bobby and I knew, that our dad could have been so much more. He worked hard. He went out in all kinds of weather. But at night, he read books. He listened to classical music. He read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and he read Plato. He loved Bach and Vivaldi, and this morning show on public radio called Morning Pro Musica. It had a guy who had a really deep voice and who spoke very slowly. Dad called him Robert J.
Bobby took the civil service exam and got on the fire department, but I went to UMass. I was seventeen, and it was odd because it was so much easier than high school in so many ways. You had a class or two or three each day, and then you could go home, or spend your time in the computer labs or the library, and the best thing was that there were no knuckleheads. No spitballs. No assholes in the back of the class with their Red Sox caps on backward, snapping gum, saying, Hey, Vash, ya mothah have any kids that lived? Hey, Vash, good to see ya back in men’s clothes.
I was taking mostly math and computer science classes, and the professors were good. They weren’t just punching the clock. You got your syllabus at the start of the semester, you knew what was expected, and it was clear and simple.
I knew I might not be the smartest kid in every class, but I was absolutely sure that nobody anywhere, ever, would outwork me. And that was my great strength, and of course, my great weakness. I never ever forgot where I came from, even later, when I was sitting on the top floors of the very, very best places. It consumed me sometimes.
I took precalculus, and basic programming, and a writing class, and American history, and first semester I got three As and an A-minus. I remember when the grades came in the mail, and I opened them, and it was my birthday, December 21, and my dad came in from work. It was dark out already. He was taking his coat off in the front hall, and I turned the hall light on, and after he hung his coat up he turned to me and I handed him the sheet with the grades.
What’s this? he said.
Then he read, and I swear, there were not quite tears in his eyes. But almost, and I think that was from the cold. But he said, Nathan. Then he paused, and he read again. And he said, It’s your birthday too.
Let’s each get a beer, he said.
Then we were both sitting in the parlor, and he said, I’m not
a bit surprised. Not one bit.
We sipped. Then he smiled and said, What’s with the A-minus?
First semester sophomore year, I met Professor Ira Rosen, who had really and truly given up a tenure-track job at Harvard to come to UMass because he believed in public higher education. He said, Think of all those smart Jews at City College in the ’30s and ’40s who they wouldn’t let into Columbia and Yale. Schmucks!
He came to UMass to help build math and business and computer-science departments.
After about six weeks in his computer programming class, he called me into his office, looked at my test score, which was 99 percent, and said, Are you a Jew, Nathan Vash?
Am I a what?
A Jew?
He was short and thick and bald, and wore thick rimless glasses.
Not that I know of.
What are you?
I was brought up Catholic, and I think my mother was Irish and my father was Ukrainian or Latvian or something.
They made him convert, the fucking Russians or Krauts, Rosen said.
He looked me over some more. What’s your dad do?
Postal carrier.
Does he read books? Listen to music? Good music?
I nodded.
Classical music?
Like Bach? I said.
Jew, Rosen said. I knew it. With some Irish thrown in. Two exiled peoples. Your mother read?
She’s dead. But she used to.
He looked down.
I’m sorry, he said.
From that time on, I was Ira’s protégé, he was my rabbi. I took six classes with him, in advanced calculus, physics, computer programming, number theory, business applications, and a senior honors thesis on encryption and integers.
Ira’s theory was that everything in the universe was absurdly simple and absurdly complex. It was all 01010101—only stretched out to infinity, and prime numbers were absurdly simple but with a diabolical twist. He said they drove brilliant men crazy.
In August, right before the start of senior year, he said, What’ll it be next year, kiddo?
What do you think?
He smiled, then started to laugh. An old Jewish trick, he said, perfected by Freud. You answer a question with a question and they think you’re wise. Very wise.