The Dark Path

by David Schickler

  As soon as class is over, I hurry to Clement’s office. He confirms what my seniors told me. The hearing will be Thursday morning.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Just the truth,” says Clement. “It’s important that you speak. The assignment came from you.”

  And if I’d never given it, I think, that boy would still be a student here. Possibly making friends, possibly getting less troubled by the day.

  That night I have Formal Family Dinner. Milagros has transferred to a different table, not wanting to break bread anymore with her ex, Gonzalo, who is also absent tonight because of a field-house indoor soccer game that’s running late. The stunning Annabel and her fellow Spaniard from Barcelona, Pilar, sit as they always do at the table’s far end, whispering and studying me. My head is rioting with thoughts of Drake, but I spend the meal coaxing short sentences out of Tong and the other Thai boys:

  This chicken is good.

  America is good.

  I talk bad, sorry.

  After dinner I have Dorm Duty in Larchmont mansion again. I proctor Quiet Study Time. A toilet in the second-floor boys’ bathroom overflows and I have to clean it up. Finally it’s close to lights-out and I sit at the main hall table under the chandelier. When the clock strikes eleven, I’ll be free to go home, and the boys will be under the care of their normal proctor, Barry, who lives in the mansion’s ground floor apartment, where he spits chaw juice into an old two-liter Mountain Dew bottle.

  At five till eleven Gonzalo comes down in his sweatpants and silky sleeping shirt. He collapses in a chair beside me with a groan and tells me that it was a rough soccer game and his squad lost. I tell him that I’m sorry.

  “How is your hip, Señor?”

  “The same.”

  He watches me. “I know that weirdo Drake is returning. I know about the meeting. What will you say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I am sorry that there will be this meeting.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry, too.”

  He looks away and frowns, seeming disgruntled that I’m not confiding in him more. Then his face lights up. “Only six weeks from now is Christmas. Christmas in Majorca! What if you come to stay? For a cheer-up! We will go to clubs!”

  I say that flying to Majorca is expensive, and I’m broke. I say that my hip probably wouldn’t do me much good in clubs right about now.

  His eyes get a sly light. I can tell that he spends a lot of time in Majorca talking to people older than himself, and that he really does go to these clubs.

  “Señor,” he says, leaning closer, “forget dancing. In our Majorca nightclubs, you will go into the bathroom with me.”

  I can think of no response to this.

  “In the bathroom are many girls. All our clubs are good this way. In the bathroom, you will taste the many girls. The many pussies.”

  “Oh my God. Gonzalo, we can’t talk about this stuff. You’re a student, and I’m a teacher. It’s . . . inappropriate.”

  He gives me a startled, almost offended look, as if I’ve insulted him or Majorca.

  “I know you don’t want me to be sad. But there are some things that you and I can’t—” I feel like I’m telling Hugh Hefner to go do his trig homework. “Listen, you’re nice to talk to me. But it’s lights-out.”

  Gonzalo sighs and heads up to bed and I drive home.

  • • •

  THE MIDNIGHT BEFORE the meeting I walk the streets around my apartment. It snowed a full foot recently and the streets are thick and hushed with driven-over snow. The air freezes in my nostrils each time I inhale. My hip hurts and clicks.

  I don’t see any other people around. A police car follows me for five or six blocks, apparently having nothing else to do.

  When I get back to my apartment, I spill my thirty pills onto the kitchen table and line them up again while I drink bottles of Bass. Out the window I can see the Knute Rockne stump.

  No matter how big the next day’s game, I think, Knute never needed pills.

  I put all thirty Paxils away.

  Chapter Twelve

  THE CONFERENCE ROOM has a table with eight chairs around it. At the head sit Clement, the dorm dean, and the Academy’s lawyer. Opposite them at the table’s other long end is the lawyer for Drake’s family. He is lantern-jawed, like Dudley Do-Right.

  I sit alone across from Drake and his mother and father. His parents are blond and tall like Drake. Their clothes are Fifth Avenue serious. Their eyes are telling me, You’re young, like our son, don’t you understand him? Meanwhile Drake’s eyes, which are golden amber, never leave mine. His arms are crossed tight on his chest.

  The lawyers have talked. Drake’s parents have talked. They’ve claimed that his writing was merely inventive, pointing out that the narrator of the story is named Fake, and saying that this clever moniker proves how fictional and divorced from reality the story is. They want their son readmitted to the Academy, or else.

  The floor has now been given to me.

  “I felt like Drake and I were getting along,” I say. “We talked sometimes after class. But then when I read this piece of his—”

  Dudley Do-Right interrupts. “What did you tell Drake to write?”

  “I told all of the students the same thing. It was a creative writing assignment. I told them each to write a two-page story, to dream up—”

  “And that’s what Drake did,” interjects Dudley. “He dreamed his story up. What he wrote is no more an expression of his real feelings than any dream any one of us has is an expression of our real feelings.”

  Drake’s parents nod. I look at Clement, who is looking down at his lap, listening. He needs me to say more.

  “Mr. Schickler,” says Dudley Do-Right, “you write fiction yourself, don’t you? You told Drake as much. You have a master’s in writing fiction, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, isn’t writing fiction like dreaming?”

  I stare into Drake’s eyes. They’re as golden as hope, but I can see behind the gold. I can see that for Drake there are no lawyers present, and that if there are sweet things in life, they’re no concern of his, or at least they’re no concern of the part of himself that he’s showing me. He wants me to fucking die, period. My hip spasms, jolting me, and the point in my forehead throbs. I suddenly understand that other people’s feelings about me and certain pains in me are wrapped around each other like a double helix.

  “It’s . . .” I look at the lawyer. “It’s . . . crafted dreaming. It can’t go where you don’t steer it to.”

  Clement nods, without looking at me.

  I think of my dad hating my novel, hating where I steered it to.

  “But you admit that it’s just dreaming?” Dudley Do-Right asks me.

  “David is done talking,” says Clement. “He’s said what he asked for. Now we’re going to talk about what he got. I’m going to read what Drake wrote.”

  Clement proceeds to do so. He reads Drake’s whole piece aloud. Then he looks at Drake’s parents. “Notice how dispassionate the narrator of your son’s piece is. There are no exclamation points in this. Notice how eerily calm and meticulous the narrator is as he’s disemboweling the headmaster of a school who took a chance on admitting him even after so many other places threw him out. And which part of your son’s piece did you find admirably inventive? The part where he mentioned my daughter disparagingly?”

  Dudley Do-Right says, “I don’t think we need to—”

  “Or the simile where my guts are compared to Christmas tinsel?”

  “Again, I don’t think—”

  “Enough.” Clement stands. “This expulsion is permanent. If Drake isn’t off school grounds within the hour, he’ll be escorted off.”

  And then it’s over. Drake and his parents and Dudley Do-Right slink out. The dorm dean and the Aca
demy’s lawyer leave. I step out into the hall and go to the drinking fountain. Far off down the hall I see Paul and Max lurking in front of the men’s room, trying to look like they’re just going in or have just come out. They’re watching me furtively. I lift a hand in greeting and they raise their chins in acknowledgment.

  “Those two of yours?”

  I turn to Clement. He’s peering off at Paul and Max.

  “Um, yes. Two of my seniors.”

  “What’re they doing?”

  “I know this sounds crazy, but I think they’re . . . getting my back.”

  Clement puts his hands on his hips and faces the guys, like Move along, gentlemen, chop, chop. Paul and Max turn and lope off to class.

  Clement watches them go. “Good for them,” he says.

  Then he looks at me. “David, you can’t let what happened in there hit you too hard. There are some things beyond reason. And you have to meet things like that very directly. There’s . . . dark shit in some people. Do you get that?”

  • • •

  I DO. I get it. But it’s hitting me hard anyway. As I drive the next afternoon to my second Montpelier appointment with Dr. Brogan, my hands tremble and my breath comes in gasps. There’s a line in The Crucible about one of the troublemaking teenage girls: she must be ripped out of the world. I think of Drake and can’t get that line out of my head.

  What about me, Lack-of-God? What about things I’ve done? What about how I am right now? Do I have to be ripped out of the world too?

  The quicksand is strong enough that I pull over. I think of Drake off somewhere, buying fertilizer, clock parts, wires, a triggering mechanism. The pulsing point in my temple is making my right eye twitch. I start driving again and I blast Peter Murphy and Love Spit Love.

  At the appointment, Dr. Brogan asks how I’ve been feeling since our first session.

  “Still pretty ratcheted up.”

  “Remember what I said. The Paxil might make things worse first before you feel relief. You’ve been taking it daily, yes?”

  “Yes,” I lie.

  • • •

  THE NEWEST BUILDING complex on the Tapwood Academy campus is the Eckhardt Center. It holds classrooms, the dining hall, the vocational culinary school, and the vocational auto school. The auto school runs an actual, three-bay garage business that does oil changes, engine work, and even collision repair for customers from town. In one little-traveled hall of Eckhardt is a large plate-glass window that looks out onto the auto repair bays. If I have a class period free, and my pain and panic are strong, I hide in this hall and spy on the auto students as they fix cars. It can calm me sometimes to see them find a problem—a corroded spark plug or some rusted brake pads—and repair it quickly, swapping in strong new parts, throwing out the old.

  On a day just before the Christmas holidays I’m in this hall, trying to get my breath, clenching and unclenching my fists. I’ve been having nightmares about Drake, and even when I’m awake I see graphic images in my head of him setting off bombs, killing young schoolchildren, studying their corpses with his golden eyes.

  He’ll be all right, I think now. He’s just young and angry, and that passes. Doesn’t it?

  I watch two auto-shop boys put new tires on a Dodge. While they’re working, they’re talking to a man who, from behind, looks like my father. Then he shrugs in a certain way and I realize that he is my father.

  I hurry down to the auto bay.

  “Dad?! What’re you doing here?”

  He turns to me. He’s wearing a full suit, the way he always does when calling on customers or potential clients. “Surprise, David! Good to see you.”

  The two student mechanics nod at me, then focus on their work.

  “I’m donating some of my fleet maintenance software to the Academy.” My father has grown his company: he now has several employees. He looks around appreciatively at the Academy garage. This is his element. He can take apart an entire car engine and reassemble it. I can’t even change a car’s oil.

  “They’ve got a great program here,” he says, “and I think my product will help them.”

  I pull him aside. “That’s really why you’re here?”

  He gives me a hug, then stands back, his eyes focusing over my shoulder on a tire balancing machine. “Yes . . . plus, well, you said on the phone how your hip’s been killing you while you drive. I figure when you drive home to Rochester for the holidays, I’ll just, you know, drive in front of you and run interference. Make sure your hip is up to the haul.”

  “Dad, you don’t have to check up on me.”

  “I’m here to donate software. Now take me to meet this Clement who’s been so gracious to you.”

  I take him to meet Clement, who arranges for a dinner to be held hours later at his home in honor of my father’s visit and his donation to the school. Daphne and Andrew attend, plus Clement and his wife, Beatrice, plus my dad and I. Beatrice makes her chicken piccata over mashed potatoes with carrots on the side. It’s a dish she knows I love, and Clement keeps the chardonnay flowing.

  My father talks, telling everyone about his business. He’s charming and funny and he mixes in stories about growing up on the farm, and all the while my hip spasms and my temple throbs and I drink too much wine. There are candles on the table and from the stereo in the background Handel’s Water Music plays low, and I want to be taking part in the good event around me.

  But sitting across from me, Daphne has never looked so beautiful. She’s in jeans and a trim white wool sweater that complements her figure, and she’s holding her husband’s hand, and laughing at the few things I say, and, Oh, Lack-of-God, it’s too much, it’s too hard tonight to look at the other best woman I missed out on. I had chances with her, Lack-of-God. At Georgetown’s graduation ball we slow-danced together—she asked me—and when she visited me in Manhattan once and stayed overnight I almost made a move but didn’t. I should’ve but didn’t, I was still too hung up on You.

  I drink a lot more wine.

  After dinner my father drives me back to my apartment. He’ll be staying a few nights at the Lilac Inn, a bed-and-breakfast near town. He walks me to my door. I have a hip flare-up as I’m climbing the steps and he holds my shoulder to steady me. It’s subzero weather again.

  “You didn’t talk much at dinner,” he says.

  I think of the cassette tapes in his car. They’re tapes of sermons from famous Christian orators.

  “David, I can see that it’s not easy for you to be around Daphne. She’s as gorgeous as you’ve told me.”

  “It’s not just that . . .” I stare at the Knute Rockne statue. “Dad, when you talk about your work, the fleet stuff . . . you sound like you’re in love. You get so excited, and you’re an expert and it’s your calling and you’re inspiring and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “And I’m not anything.”

  He makes a small sound in the back of his throat and squeezes my arm. “You’re my son. You’re my son.”

  “I’m freezing.” I turn away from him and go in.

  • • •

  TWO NIGHTS LATER is the Academy faculty Christmas dance. School closed for two weeks earlier in the day and the dorms are empty now. The boarder kids have flown to their home countries for the holidays or else they’re spending a fortnight in the States with American friends.

  The dance is held in the dining hall, but the place has been decked out in glamorous fashion. There’s a huge Christmas tree with white candlelight bulbs and red bows. Actual white candles are lit elsewhere around the room, the overhead lights are off, there’s a DJ and an empty, waiting dance floor. Two tables are covered with treats: almond cookies, cupcakes, roast venison on skewers, curried chicken sandwiches. There’s a giant punch bowl from which guests can ladle themselves top-shelf Manhattans, Clement’s favorite cocktail.

  No students
or children are present. All the men are in suits and the women are dressed to dazzle. One dark-haired English teacher named Alyssa wears a bold, sleek black dress with matching long teardrops of her abdomen visible on each side, where the material is cut away. Daphne is in a black dress, too. Hers has spaghetti straps, and she wears silver and jade earrings that play elegantly against her hair.

  I sit in a corner, drinking a Manhattan, my third. My father is at the food table, sampling venison. He’s my date. Tomorrow morning he and I will drive home to Rochester, but right now he’s telling Ed Neville—who’s having a pop—more about aftermarket auto parts cross-referencing software than Ed will ever need to know. Also listening to my father are Alex Bergeron and his wife, plus Clement and Beatrice.

  We’re an hour into the party and the DJ has started up the faster music now, trying to goad us all out beneath the silver streamers hung over the dance floor. No one is out there yet, but people are lurking close to the floor, waiting for the party to catch fire. The DJ puts on The Proclaimers and I see Alyssa tapping her feet and nudging her husband, like Come on, let’s groove, but he’s a burly woodsman type who’s probably waiting on a ballad.

  Daphne keeps glancing at the dance floor too, but she’s holding hands with Andrew, who’s talking to a tall, older history teacher whom I call Lurch because he looks like the Addams Family character. Lurch is a grouchy, pack-a-day smoker, but both he and spooky Andrew have got it going on over me right now because they’re making Daphne laugh, and I’m sitting here alone, hating my flaring hip and my quicksand and my sorry black jealous heart.

  “Hey.” My father sits down in a folding chair beside me. “I brought you some venison.” He holds out a cocktail plate loaded with treats.

  “No thanks, Dad.”

  He sets the plate down.

  “Oh, man.” He listens for a second and smiles. “Great song.”

  It’s “I Saw Her Standing There” by The Beatles. No dancers are taking the bait, though.

  I nod at my father, agreeing from a clinical distance. Yes, it’s a great song. Yes, venison is tasty. No, I don’t want any part of either. I want to sit here like a self-pitying loser and study the pains inside me, for they are me now, and I’m them.