Everybody’s Out There

by Robert M. Marchese

  The crew commenced on Halloween day. They promised a closing date for us on or before January 10th. With work ethics that more than made up for their errant bosses, the new crew proved efficient. The house was finished two days before Christmas and we moved in on January 2nd, a full year later than had been anticipated.

  The move was bittersweet. There were all the delays. There were the bizarre antics of the brothers we endured for far too long. And, most upsetting to me and Laura, there was to be no neighborhood after all. Two houses. That would be it. There would be no couples walking after supper; no children playing home run derby; no solidarity or security that inspires such suburban moves in the first place. These notions had exploded into wild plumes of smoke the night Abe Cadman went off the deep end. And there would be, for some time, a reminder of this on the ground where the trailer once sat; it was now blackened, and poorly concealed with a lopsided floating garden.

  The Kilburn’s house was finished just days after our own. They ended up moving in two weeks later, the day after a record-breaking snow storm. Laura brought over homemade cookies and hot chocolate. She suggested we have dinner soon. We didn’t see the Kilburns for weeks after that. Holed up in our own homes, we let the cold swells of winter keep us divided until the weather warmed and the ground thawed.

  So on a mid-April morning, I saw Glenn in his newly paved driveway, washing a vintage black Corvette. Whistling some tune, he watched me approach him from across our thawed lawns. It’s true that we were not destined to be close friends - this was evident upon our first meeting when I learned that he golfed and was an antique enthusiast - yet I had every intention of being neighborly. We shook hands and greeted one another, joking about the end of our hibernations. Dropping the chambray into a blue bucket, Glenn stretched his arms, circling them in the direction of the newly polished Corvette. He then took a deep sigh and surveyed his work.

  “Nice looking car.”

  “I appreciate that. It’s a ‘66.”

  “Your seasonal car, I assume?”

  “You assume correctly.”

  “Very nice.”

  “How about a drive once the weather gets a little warmer?”

  Fighting against the moment that had turned me into some awestruck little boy, I nodded before waiting for the talk to turn adultlike. Glenn kicked it off by telling me about the landscaping company he planned on using. We talked about our wives and the local grocer and the amenities of our new town, including the used book store and the retro burger joint with the Elvis motif. Glenn mentioned taxes, saying how he figured ours might increase. He said the town would most likely take it out on us that there would be no additional homes built on our street. That Abe Cadman’s wanton act of violence had in fact cost us dollars. The thought of having one and only one neighbor made me uneasy, especially neighbors like the Kilburns. I blurted out that they would most likely build on the vacant lots already primed for construction. They wouldn’t let perfectly good land waste away, I said. Glenn smiled and shook his head.

  “No way,” he said, “at least not for a few years. The Cadmans are done for. Finished.”

  I suggested that the brothers would sell the remaining land to new developers.

  “Eventually,” Glenn said. “But that’ll take time. Trust me. There’s going to be new permits and logistics and a shit load of red tape involved. I’m afraid it’s just the four of us - for now, anyway.”

  I would remember this final declaration many times, recalling the way he said it, which seemed almost sinister. Like he was privy to my disappointment and was glad for it. Like me, he must’ve known we were vastly different from one another. So there was likely a shared feeling that the other man must somehow be flawed.

  Glenn’s math would prove to be just slightly off. I didn’t know it the moment I was talking to him - I would find out a few days later when Laura nearly fainted at work and went to the doctor - but there would be one additional member to the Grove Garden community. It suddenly felt as though a new language had developed between me and Laura. When I think back on that time now, I recall a lot of silences that would give way to joyous bursts of talking. Ideas on parenting styles and baby names were presented with little forethought and then abandoned the second a better one surfaced. In my prideful haste, I even bought balloons - blue and pink ones - and tied them to our mailbox. Laura laughed at this and informed me that such a tradition was for after the child was born.

  We joked that the pregnancy must’ve been fate’s intervention. After all, we endured so many fruitless attempts at conceiving. We endured the Cadman brothers and the delay in building our new home. We endured having Glenn and Linda Kilburn as our only neighbors. So I suppose we felt as though we deserved this child and this feeling that our world had just been born out of some cosmically divine womb, and all its greatness and justice and cheer was for us and us alone.

  But before the year’s end, Laura and I would be tested like never before; the hourglass had been tipped, and all the optimism and renewal that had rushed at us with a boundless overflowing had suddenly been dammed at the very moment we decided to count our blessings.

  Chapter 5

  Those who work at the Hundred Acre School inhabit a world that is rarely understood by outsiders. It’s a world you cannot prepare for with classes or mentors or manuals. It’s a world that has indefinable questions and answers. After barely two weeks at the HAS, I’ve encountered the cast of a reality show I would never opt to watch on my volition. There Cliff, a chronic masturbator who favors his dorm-mates’ clothing as a receptacle. Albert is a pimply-faced wizkid who puked yellow bile at my doorstep not once, not twice, but three times since my tenure began. Vicki is a chain smoking goth-queen who loiters by the Homer House, casually describing to its residents the size and smell of her genitalia. Andrew is a dazed sleep junkie who not only refuses to rise with his peers, but who pretends to be deaf, dumb, and blind with the skill and ease of some masterful thespian.

  I imagine my father watching my every move, my every interaction with his students - how I look at them and teach them and talk to them, asking them to please pick up their dirty socks or to extinguish their cigarettes or take their hands off of one another or get to class or get to sleep or get out of bed or to not let me catch them swapping their Adderall for another’s Ritalin. Yet the truth is I haven’t seen much of Rollie during my first two weeks. I imagine he’s got a system worked out. He’s close with these kids. And his staff, too. He’s probably snatching them away, one by one, and asking what they’ve heard about the new guy. He’ll tell them to forget the fact that he’s the son of the school’s overseer. Be candid, he’ll tell them.

  What could they possibly say? The truth is I’ve been nothing but cordial. To the kids and staff alike. Which is to say I’m so out of my element - and in a state of bewilderment over being here - that I’m too sulky to be standoffish. Everyone must sense it. It’s already been pointed out several times that I must be in my thirties, more than a few years older than the average Hundred Acre School teacher.

  The way solitary men drive eighteen wheelers, or the way extroverts sell themselves along with some pitiful product to the public: This is the way the Old Man’s faculty ease towards a job where in a single day they can be told to fuck themselves, witness a rancid sexual swap of some fellatio for a Marlboro, and partake in a therapeutic breakthrough. I know these people. Growing up among them, I was their boss’s son; my role was limited to being seen here and there on occasion, being told what a great father I had, and being asked if I planned on following in his footsteps.

  I’ve often wondered where Rollie finds these people. Or rather, how do they find him? The truth is that most of them are not from the area. A lot of them are recent college grads who share stories of backpacking excursions in Costa Rica or kayaking
exploits in Dubrovnik or making and selling jewelry in remote parts of Alaska. For them, Old Brookview is a stopover, an emotional filling station for the searcher, the drifter, the idealist, who thrives on saving its needy, broken-down adolescents. These people become a collection of selfless do-gooders, a batch of close-knit fraternities and sororities working roughly eighty hours a week, hellbent on imparting their freewheeling notions about travel and liberty and destiny and healing as though on missionary work. It’s not a place for narcissists or prudes. For that matter, I can’t imagine the weak-willed fitting in, either. I believe the more eccentric and even slightly damaged individual finds they are somewhat at home within HAS’s sprawling chaos. It’s for the type who, if asked their life philosophy, would respond with an immediate, relieved passion, a studied, almost mechanical stoicism, as though they’ve been waiting patiently to share their dissertation with just one more person.

  My presence here mocks all of this. Not that anyone besides Rollie is privy to that notion. For now, I’m sure I’m regarded simply as the outsider who’s biding his time. The word nepotism is sure to have come up in at least a few conversations about the new guy. But I know I’m flattering myself to think that anyone is paying more than a little attention to my presence. Under normal circumstances it would’ve been the subject of great conflict and brazen juvenile stare-downs; these kids hate deviations to their routines. The truth is that they hate their routines, period. But they hate it when at the very least they cannot count on that which they hate. Yes, I’m the new guy who’s replaced Dimiti Ames. And yes, it’s well known that he was fucking around with Lindsay Lowe, a mature and attractive student. It’s a scandal for sure. Not to mention currency for committing deeds of egregious misbehavior. But their minds, naturally, are on the murder of Nicole D’Ambrosio. And how their little asylum has become the subject of great fear and suspicion - even more so than usual. The girl was not one of their own. In age, yes. But she was a public school princess with an impeccable reputation and a nuclear family and a promising future. Sympathy, I have to imagine, might not be their first reaction. Probably it’s more dread over being suspected of the crime.

  One of my classes - American Literature for juniors - nearly erupted over the matter just the other day. Vanessa, a tall, petulant girl with soft brown eyes who always wears her pajamas to class, led the discussion.

  “I’m not saying that one of us didn’t do it. That’s not the point. And I’m willing to bet that one of us did do it. But we were fucking branded before they found that girl. And we’re fucking branded after. And you know what the brands say?”

  “Yeah, they say eat my dick,” said Josh, a broad shouldered, rambunctious spaz with an angel’s face and a trucker’s mouth.

  This kid is a student of sardonic comedians: Carlin, Pryor, Bruce. He quotes their material often and with his own affectations, much to the approval of his peers, who know the jokes are lifted, but give him points for memorization, delivery, and timing.

  “That’s fucked up that you’re so quick to accuse one of us, Vanessa,” said Bridget, a blonde hippie chick whose dreadlocks are in their early stages. “Do you think that makes you a realist? Because it doesn’t. It makes you a bitch.”

  The nine boys in my dorm are far less polemical. Aged sixteen to eighteen, the Homer House boys are regarded as HAS’s macho veterans; they strut, swear, and start fights with younger, less cocky kids. I’ve overheard a few conversations during lunch or morning cleanup where they’ve surmised over the murdered girl’s anatomy. The boys, as well as the entire town of Old Brookview, have had plenty of chances to commit Nicole D’Ambrosio’s appearance to memory; her parents deluged the town with professionally made posters with their daughter’s beatific face staring out into streets she will never walk again.

  “I bet her tits were like scoops of heaven,” I overheard Noah say one morning as he mopped the bathroom floor. “What a waste.”

  A short, brash, arrogant kid with big white teeth and a raspy smoker’s voice, Noah Calash hails all the way from Oahu, but has recently moved to upstate New York with his mother. The kids call him Hawaiian Punch, or sometimes just Punch.

  “Forget her tits,” Cal said. “Who needs tits? I’ve got tits. The real waste is between her legs. You know these rich chicks wax and sculpt down there like it’s up for consideration in the pussy museum.”

  Cal Henry: a chubby rich kid with a penchant for smut - I discovered a stash of dirty magazines in the soundhole of a beat-up acoustic guitar in his closet - and a gift for offending the opposite sex with his misogynistic quips.

  The oldest of the bunch, Nick Russo, a quiet brooder with a reputation as a daredevil - in his old life, he supposedly jumped a motorcycle from the rooftop of a friend’s house - appears especially pensive. He contemplates saying something; his focus suggests that he thinks his words will be permanently etched somewhere for all to see, and he will be forever known by these words alone. He ends up walking away from the conversation altogether.

  My reaction to all of this is the same. I ignore it. I either feign distractedness and walk away like Nick, or I yawn and rub my eyes, showing boredom over their banal pleasure. Why would I discipline them? How would I discipline them? The truth is that I can’t even fathom the notion of delivering some absurd pep talk about scruples and then having to deliver it with a straight face.

  Conversations with my students are limited to literature. We’ll read a few pages of Kerouac or Thoreau, watch a few online clips, and I’ll sit back and listen to them duke it out over what means what. Once this grows wearisome, they’ll work on the questions Dimitri Ames left in yellow folders in his classroom.

  The boys in the Homer House are inquisitive in a self-serving way. They ask for extra dorm snacks or if they can sleep for fifteen more minutes or if they can finish a movie even though it ends at 11:30, a full hour past curfew. My response is always to let them have their way. Why wouldn’t I? Being agreeable makes for shorter interactions. It’s win win.

  I feel like an off-duty cop at an after-hours party where someone breaks out a little cocaine; sure, I have some power, but everybody knows it’s in check and that I won’t be using it. I imagine the Old Man a day or two before my arrival. I imagine him gathering the students and staff and telling them to not mind me, that I’m a curmudgeon and to make my life as hassle-free as possible. This place is simply a layover for me, he’d tell them, and I’ll be gone soon enough and everyone can forget about the brief, harmless, and strange appearance of the overseer’s son.

  My father did introduce me to the school. It was my second full day when he dragged me up to the podium after breakfast:

  “I’d like to introduce you to Grayson. He’ll be with us for a bit in the Homer House - as well as teaching English in the Virginia House. Welcome, Gray.”

  There are no formal salutations at the HAS. It’s all first name basis. Part of Rollie’s grand design to create unity through familial vibes. There was silence after the introduction. No polite applause. No Hello, Grayson in awkward, half-assed unison. And then he said, “That’s it,” and the students were dismissed. The Old Man then walked past me, sat down, and went to work on finishing his pancakes. He never made mention that I happened to be his son.

  The routines I’ve fallen into have already been created for me. They’ve always existed. Morning: gently rouse kids to wake, bathe, dress, do chores, take meds, and be on time for breakfast. Teaching: attempt to convince my classes that theme and symbolism are as interesting as their own lives. Afternoon: lunch, group therapy, meds, embark on activity - some on campus: billiards, basketball; some off campus: beach, movie - and sell the idea that the distraction will bring them something everlasting. Evening: dinner, second activity, help with homework, meds, showing enough leniency towards study time, curfew, and allotted phone calls to ensure there won�
�t be an insurrection so I can close my door sometime before midnight.

  Then comes the dorm report. This involves writing a narrative about each boy’s night. The purpose of the report is to discuss behavior; the Old Man asks his staff to remember the acronym C.O.P.

  “It all comes out at night - every type of behavior. There’s a subconscious anxiety about waking up the next day to do it all over again,” he says. “The classes, the therapy, the routines. So any concerns, observations, and even praise, are essential to these reports. C.O.P.”

  It’s not likely that the night will go smoothly, especially in the Homer House. Nine emotionally unstable boys. Two or three per room. Nightmares, pranks, midnight scuffles. During my on-duty nights - I alternate with Ryan, the other dorm staff, a twenty-something optimist with a peach-fuzz goatee and watery, sympathetic eyes - it’s common for me to be woken up at 2:00 a.m. with a furious pounding at my door. So I drag myself out of bed, stumble through the dark, and find a few of them in the hallway - one of them always has their hands flailing about, their bare chest heaving with anger.

  Two nights ago is as good an example as any:

  “Gray, Noah keeps farting and using his fan to blow it in my face,” said J.J., a miserable redhead with sharp, bony fingers he likes to stick in your direction to make his points.

  Noah, smiling, denied the charge and told me that J.J. takes it up the ass. I rubbed my eyes and swayed to the dull hum of the light burning above me. After coaxing them back to bed, I returned to the dorm report. Seated at my desk, my mouth dry and my head empty, I made an addendum for the farting.

  . . .

  I recall J.R. III’s occasional appearances at the school as something of an event. Always unannounced, always alone, Roarick would show up, usually during mealtimes or some schoolwide function, slowly stroll through a sea of questioning faces, barely speak to anyone, and survey his surroundings as though trying to commit them to memory. When he seemed satisfied, he’d huddle with the Old Man for a moment, take one last look around, and head to his vehicle, always appearing content that he inspired confusion. The kids knew who he was. And though he may have owned most of Old Brookview, including the very campus on which they resided, he must’ve been another mysterious figure to them, one who lived in the real world and had something they couldn’t relate to in any way whatsoever: power.