Evie of the Deepthorn

by André Babyn

  “You want something to drink? Tea, maybe?” he asked, waving to an electric kettle in the corner.

  “No, I’m fine, thanks,” I responded, a little leery.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to meet me here.”

  “I thought you might have thought my essay was plagiarized?”

  “Ha! — no.” He stood up, turning his chair around and reseating himself to face me: a move so fluid, yet also measured, that I associated it, for some reason, with the motion an aspiring actor might make coming to rest before his instructor in a studio. Not that that at all reflected our relationship. He took a swig from an opened water bottle by his computer.

  “But I did want to talk about your paper,” he said, putting the bottle down.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Did you spend a lot of time on it? You can tell the truth, I won’t be offended.”

  I looked at him for a while. He seemed sincere.

  I shook my head. “No, not really.”

  Wright smiled. “I thought so.”

  He began rummaging in a drawer behind him, and pulled out a sheet of paper — it looked like a brochure — and laid it on his lap.

  “Why do you think that is? Did you not like the topic?”

  “No, I found it interesting.”

  “I thought that was obvious, too. So what else could it be?”

  “Maybe I’m overworked.”

  Wright smiled. “You have a job right now? A girlfriend?” My response was negative. “A boyfriend?” Again, negative. Double negative. “An unreasonable amount of other homework?” No.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t overworked.

  “So, what?”

  I looked him in the eye. “My brother died.”

  We spent a few moments sitting in the silence that rippled out from that statement. Finally, Wright sighed and shifted his position, re-crossing his legs and moving the sheet of paper from his lap to the desk.

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry about that. I taught Jeff. He was a good kid, mostly.”

  I nodded. I knew what he meant.

  “But I don’t think that’s what it is.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think that’s what it is.” He re-crossed his legs. Almost petulantly, I thought.

  “What?” I said again. Was he allowed to say that?

  My chest started heaving. Maybe too quickly. I was ready to storm out, or to punch him, I wasn’t sure which. I didn’t, of course. I wouldn’t. And something about that feeling made me suspicious of myself.

  He continued. “I’m not wrong.”

  “You don’t know —”

  He cut me off. “I don’t. But I think it’s obvious that you’re not being stimulated. And maybe there are other issues, too.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I’m sure you’re still upset about your brother’s death. But I think it’s more than that. You did an okay job, but the paper didn’t ask for very much of you, and that was all you were willing to give. No more. Even though it seems like — I get the sense you want to do well.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be the first to admit, it wasn’t a very challenging topic.” He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Of course, your colleagues are thinking about university …”

  I didn’t say anything, keeping my eyes on the floor.

  “What are you thinking of doing after high school?”

  “I want to get out of here.” Meaning Durham.

  “Okay, but where?” Wright asked.

  “University. I want to move to Toronto. Or somewhere else.”

  “That’s what I thought. You know, every few years I get a student like you. Someone with obvious ability, but who doesn’t see it, or doesn’t know how to use it. Or who has friends who are holding them back.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I can’t pretend to know how others are influencing you. But it does seem sometimes that you and Walid aren’t a good match.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Just an observation. But I’m not the first teacher to have noticed.”

  Who was he talking to?

  “Walid isn’t the reason I’m not doing well.”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said.

  What did that mean?

  Wright sighed. “Okay, I’m sorry. Maybe you weren’t ready to hear that. Or maybe I’m wrong. I forget sometimes what it’s like to be a teenager.”

  “Yeah,” I said. Not really knowing why.

  “So what do you think the reason is?” he asked, re-crossing his legs for the third or fourth time. The conversation was getting uncomfortable, and I was beginning to wonder why Wright had singled me out. There must have been tons of underachieving students in that class. I mean, that’s high school. Walid, for example. Why wasn’t he talking to him?

  “I’m sorry?” I asked, to buy time.

  “Why do you think you aren’t doing well?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Wright stood up. “You don’t know,” he repeated, as he began fiddling with something on his desk. It was a plastic pencil sharpener. He was still holding the brochure in his other hand.

  “That’s right, I don’t. Can I leave?”

  Usually I don’t realize that I’m feeling weird or emotional until I say something, and then it comes out in my voice, beyond my control. It’s really annoying. When I asked to go, something in my voice quavered, which caused Wright to turn back to me. Then he shook his head — as if dislodging something — and sat down again.

  “I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time. But we haven’t quite got to the reason that I called you in here.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak.

  “I want you to think of the documentary project as your opportunity to do something really exceptional. The CBC is holding a contest for video shorts. If you enter, you could win a pretty big scholarship, and your video would play at a film festival downtown. That’s one of the reasons I changed the requirements this year. I’m not saying you’re guaranteed to win, and you’re not the only one that I’m telling about this — in fact, I’m going to announce it to the whole class. I just don’t want it to wash over you when I say it. I want you to really think about it. I think you have potential.”

  Potential to be what?

  “Thanks,” I said, a little unsteadily.

  “I also want you to know — that if you ever want to talk, about whatever, that this office is always open to you.”

  I didn’t know why he was making that offer or what we would talk about.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I got up to go.

  “Wait,” said Wright. “Take this, too.”

  I took the paper he’d been holding. On top, in big, bold letters, it read: STAYING TRUE TO YOURSELF.

  “Oh,” I said.

  I started inching out the door.

  “I know high school can be tough. That it seems like what you are here will carry over into the rest of your life. But that’s really not the case. You’re going to change a lot.”

  “Okay,” I said, from the hallway.

  I threw the flyer into the first trash bin I found. As I did so I happened to glance up at my reflection cast into the glass of the fire extinguisher case. Then I quickly ducked into the nearest washroom. Luckily, it was empty.

  When had I started crying?

  * * *

  I stayed later than usual at school that day, reluctant to leave. I watched football practice with Kyle for a little bit, then hung around with some of the guys in the caf until I was practically the only one left. When Jackie’s dad pulled into the front parking lot to pick her up it was almost six o’clock. They offered me a ride, but I decided not to take it. I wanted to delay going home as long as possible. On my walk I kept thinking about Jeff — Jeff and the contest, like they were one and the same. Like winning the contest would bring him back to me somehow, like I could use the camera to trace his outline and
summon him home. It didn’t make any sense. I tried to straighten them out in my head, separate them.

  They weren’t related at all.

  Evening was already setting in by the time I walked up the front steps to the empty house. I put my bag down in the foyer and stood there in the stillness before turning on the hall lights. “Jeff?” I called, into the darkness. “Jeff? Jeff?” Each time a little louder. Then I listened as carefully as I could, not even sure what I was waiting for. A footstep overhead. A closing door. A cool breeze sweeping the hallway. But if there was any response I couldn’t tell: it was just me, standing in the hallway with my ears ringing and goosebumps rising on my neck.

  I turned on the lights as fast as I could, then ran to the living room, the ground floor bathroom, the kitchen, and turned them on there, too. There were leftovers in the fridge, meatloaf, soggy vegetables, and cold pasta, but I wasn’t hungry. Or maybe I was, a little bit, but I didn’t want to eat. Instead I grabbed the phone off the wall and dialed Lauren’s home number. It rang for a long time before anyone picked up, and then it was Lauren, sounding very far away, like she was at the bottom of the ocean. “Hello?” she said. Somehow I could tell she was home alone, too, like her voice was echoing off an absence.

  We talked for a long time. I walked back and forth through the house, turning on more lights, opening and closing windows and curtains, but sticking to the ground floor. I told her about Wright and our conversation, the contest, and what he had said about Walid. “It was weird,” I said. “No one has ever talked to me that way before.”

  There was a long silence. I pushed a curtain aside in the front room and stared out the window, into the street. There was no one out there, just a few abandoned cars and lights on in some of the houses.

  “Why do you hang out with that guy?”

  I was confused. “Mr. Wright?”

  “No, Walid. I don’t get it. He seems like a dick.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, unsure what to say. “I mean, he’s not so bad.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He can be pretty funny sometimes.”

  “I guess,” she said.

  “It’s different once you get to know him.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” she said.

  We kept talking. She talked about her dad, about her boyfriend, who had been distant lately, and about her mom, who seemed a bit like a menace, to be honest. But we talked about a lot of nothing, too. Eventually I felt like all of the lights were starting to bore into my skull, so I turned off the ones in the kitchen and lay down on the floor, staring up into the emptiness. That was how Mom found me, eyes closed, with the cordless lying on my chest, long after we had hung up.

  5

  For a brief, stupid moment I decided that I was going to do my documentary on The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.

  Until the previous summer I had consciously avoided reading it, I guess because it was so admired by the annoying, pretentious types at school, the ones whose parents encouraged and recognized their individual talents and tried to foster their growth and development by introducing them to art and literature tailored to their specific interests.

  I always had a sinking feeling that those kids were cooler than me, even if they weren’t. And not only cooler, but that they would do better in life overall. With less struggling, less pain. Ironic, maybe, that a book that was supposed to be a badge of alienation could instead signify that you belonged, that your parents loved you, or at least that some other member of your family did.

  Or maybe you were like me, and you came across the book purely by chance. I found The Catcher in the attic, its beaten-up corpse buried beneath the collected dust of centuries of what I can only assume was spider shit. With it were other books first boxed roughly two and a half decades ago when my parents made the first of many transitional moves. We’d missed them in the purge years earlier, probably because we didn’t feel qualified to judge their contents. But this time I chucked most of them. They were wrecked and rotten and I had never heard of any of the authors before. But I took The Catcher down, and after beating it on the brick and the sidewalk outside, hung it from a string and let it air out in my room. It was something of an experiment. After a few days it didn’t smell quite so much like musk anymore and its spore count had dropped to levels where I didn’t sneeze whenever a draught from that corner came upon me as I lay awake in bed. The spider shit tanned to roughly the same colour as the thin board that bound its pages and so I could pretend that its new blotchy design was just part of the original cover design.

  Someone once told me that Holden was the biggest phony of all the characters in the novel, because he never aired his reservations. I had never read The Catcher in the Rye when this person, whom I forget now, told me this, but because the aforementioned annoying kids in my university English class had, the interpretation stuck. It seemed damning. I thought they were all phonies, too. Which of course they were, but in a different way than I thought.

  One of them, Christian (he hates it when we call him “Chris”) Heslop, asked me to proofread an essay of his once — perhaps sensing from my classroom discourse that I was something of a thinker, though maybe not a future pseudo-intellect like him — and when I took it in my hands I had to push down the sense of intimidation just to register the first few sentences. But those sentences, and the ones that followed, hardly registered even then. They were gibberish. When I finished I looked at him and blinked for a full seven seconds. Then I explained that his essay was really good, and it didn’t need any changes.

  Christian is so wealthy that it wouldn’t have mattered whatever I said. I don’t know for sure what his father does, but I’ve heard that he invented some simple form of plastic used in an ubiquitous product, like, say, the lid on your Coke bottle. When Christian turned sixteen he pulled up in a brand-new car. When Christian first met me, on second period lunch in grade ten, he took me aside, and sensing either a kindredness in us — or maybe just the fact that I was a willing listener — told me about how awesome things kept happening to him, like how some of his older sister’s friends had told him out of nowhere they’d like to sleep with him, or give him a blow job, and how during the first week of grade nine he and Luna Scapey made out in the stairwells within ten minutes of knowing each other. He spent the whole lunch telling me these things, things so removed from my own experience that he might have been describing the landscape of an alien planet. I still don’t understand why he felt compelled to let me in on all of that stuff, but it was the beginning of what you could call our friendship.

  In the past year or so Hess has started affecting a pair of academic-looking glasses which somehow only serve to highlight the fact that he doesn’t know as much as he claims to and that he will never have to. There’s a kind of gap between his eyes and the frame, like he’s admiring a spot of grease on the lens. I told him I was doing my documentary on “local responses to the influential novel by J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.” Before lunch I lined Hess up in one of the hallways and pointed the camera at him. Once I asked Christian if he rode horses himself. He said no, but that his mother owned a few at a local barn and went riding most days. I knew that already, but I humoured him.

  “So who’s the horse?” I asked.

  “You’re hilarious.”

  I didn’t end up asking Hess anything really good about The Catcher. Just when he first read it, how he’d felt, that kind of thing. What other books he likes. Had he read any more of Salinger. Who told him to read it. The thing I discovered when I finally read The Catcher is that it really is pretty good. Holden is a complete basket case, and it’s true that he’s a phony. But we’re all phonies. That criticism has no legs because the book’s about something else. Holden’s kind of like a holy idiot somehow in that he believes in the ideal of a world where we’re all on the level. But he can’t even be on the level with himself. Which is fine because no one is. The book is about the human condition, I guess.

>   Hess said his favourite part of The Catcher is when Holden is dancing with the three women from Seattle in the hotel nightclub. Specifically when Holden tells one of them that he saw Gary Cooper, and even though it’s a lie she tells the others she caught a glimpse of GC just as he was leaving the nightclub.

  He likes the trick.

  I can think of better parts than that.

  On camera I asked Hess whether he was really doing the documentary on his father. He told me that had been a joke. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do the documentary on. He thought he might do it on Toronto.

  “Oh, fuck you,” I said, still filming.

  I tried to get my leg kicking him into the shot.

  Hess can drive into Toronto pretty much whenever he wants.

  * * *

  After interviewing Hess I set up the camera in the hallway to capture the flood of students clearing their lockers after the final bell. Then I got a shot of Walid, Kyle, and some of the other guys talking by the doors. Lauren waving goodbye from her car. I also got lucky, because the Christian club — that’s a club for Christians who study the Bible, not a club for fans/admirers of Christian Heslop — had organized a prayer circle in the island in the centre of the parking lot, holding hands around the Canadian flag. If I wanted to include it in the movie I knew I’d have to make sure to edit out Kyle’s comments in post.

  After Kyle had gone, and I had my camera bag packed up, just heading back to my locker, I heard shouting from down the hall. A crowd was blocking the hallway to the Athletic Hall. Kids were pushing back and forth against one another and some idiots on the far side were chanting “Fight!” I went to the edge and saw two figures sparring. Without thinking, I reached into my bag and fumbled with my camera, slipping my hand into the strap and turning the device on. Bringing it up over the edge of the crowd I spent a second working the focus until the camera finally found one of the two figures.