by Greg Rhyno
“I can’t—” I try to articulate what I’m thinking, but nothing comes out. I brush past Alex and go back into the classroom.
“Folks, I’m sorry,” I tell everyone. “Something’s come up. Could you please start reading chapter four in your textbook?” As one, the class lets out an irritable groan. I raise my voice over all the grousing. “I’ll be in the office for a few minutes. Sit tight.”
I scurry down the hallway. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do, but somehow, I had to get her transferred out of my class. When I get to the office, I ask Kathy who I should speak to about a student named Alexandra Carter. She gives me a strange smile, and for second, I can’t help but wonder if I’m completely transparent. “You should probably talk to Ken about her,” she tells me. Before I can object, she picks up the phone and dials his extension. “You busy? Pete Curtis wants to talk to you about Alex.”
No, he doesn’t. Murdock’s the last person I want to talk to about this. And even if he wasn’t, I’ve just left all my students alone to ask squidgy questions about an attractive twenty-year-old student. How much more rope would he need to hang me?
“You can go in, Pete,” Kathy says. “He’s not doing anything important in there.”
I find Murdock in his office staring at a computer, toggling between the screens of some unfamiliar software. Maybe he’s finding new ways to ruin my next semester, like assigning me after school detention supervision five days a week.
“Mister Starkey,” he says without looking up. “What can I do you for?”
I try to build a case. “Well, I was wondering what the deal is with Alexandra Carter. She skips out for half the semester, then waltzes into my classroom today like she owns the place.”
There. That’s a perfectly legitimate question. Even Murdock must know you can’t just blow off half a semester, no matter how attractive and mature you might be.
“Well, the deal, Ringo—” he studies me for a moment “—is that Alex has been out of school for a couple years, and she’s back to get her diploma because she’s too smart to wait tables for the rest of her life. So you’re going to cut her a little slack because she’s a great kid and ... well—” he hesitates for a moment, as though he’s not sure I need to know the next part “—because she’s my daughter.”
I can hear Murdock’s voice hurtling out from ten years ago, just before the Mackenzie King Battle of the Bands: “Ali, honey—don’t drink all the orange pop, Sweet Pea ...”
When I go back to my class, I try not to look directly at her. Instead, I stand at the front of the room, with my dress shirt tucked in and my khakis pleated, and try to ignore her. She, in turn, slouches in her NoMeansNo t-shirt and ignores me right back.
How was it that only a few weeks ago we were on the same frequency? Now she was Brave New Waves and I might as well be John Tesh. I muddle through what’s left of my lesson and make a point not to watch Alex leave when the bell rings. I walk through the empty hallways and past the detritus left by teenagers. An orphaned pen. A crunched can of pop next to, but not inside, a garbage can. An uneaten sandwich in a ziplock bag on the ground. I wait until I’m off school property before I light a cigarette.
SIDE A
The First Day of Spring
When I leave the hospital, there’s a big sign that says No Smoking Within Twenty Feet of Entrance. It hasn’t stopped a lot of people. They stand out in the May sunshine with their coats over their hospital gowns, their hands gripping the polls of their IV carts, and their lungs filled with rich tobacco. I light up and keep walking toward the bus stop.
I thought maybe when Kim and I broke up, I’d quit smoking. I told myself it was a way of taking control of my life, but the real reason was that every time I lit up, I couldn’t help but think of lying naked on the floor of her living room. For those first couple weeks, I’d either get depressed and smoke or smoke and get depressed. So in a grand gesture, I threw the rest of my du Mauriers in a trash can. Sixteen hours later, I bought a fresh pack.
Hospitals always smell so gross, and the lighting is so depressing. It was really fucked up seeing Matty like that—head screwed into a halo, tube in his neck, hooked up to a respirator. I’m not going to pretend—like a lot of people at my school seem to pretend—that Matty was my best buddy, or say, “Oh, it’s such a tragic thing to happen to such a gifted young man,” like Sundell did at the school assembly. I think Matty was a mediocre singer, a lousy guitar player, and he did way too many drugs. I think it’s bullshit that since the accident all everyone talks about is his “lost potential.” That said, he’s my friend. Or at least, he’s in my circle of friends. I guess it’s only right I visit him.
Still, there’s this weird culture of celebrity around people who almost die. With Matty, they didn’t allow visitors for a couple weeks. When they finally did, it was like a dam burst. Going to see Matty stretched out in a hospital bed and shitting himself became the hottest thing to do in Thunder Bay. Goths, Bangers, Skaters, Pussies, everybody did it. Even teachers. Deacon said they ran into Madame Greene, and that she was wearing these really tight jeans and a low-cut shirt. I couldn’t help but wonder if quadriplegics can still get it up.
I waited until things cooled off a little before I went. I didn’t want people thinking I was just another disaster groupie, and plus, I was kind of hoping to go with Soda, but he wound up going with the Bunsen Honeydew guys. In any case, it took me forty-five minutes to bus over to Port Arthur General, and when I finally found his room, Matty was asleep. The nerve of some people.
“Matty will be happy to know you stopped by,” his mom told me. She was dressed in these really flowy clothes and scarves, sort of like a gypsy. She acted cheerful, but I could tell she was tired and sad. I put the flowers my mom insisted I buy next to the billions of other bouquets and arrangements and gift baskets that cluttered his small room and looked for the exit.
About two blocks from the bus stop, I notice a 1991 Chevy Cavalier driving toward me. The Divorcemobile. It slows down and pulls over. I see Kim lean across the seat and crank down the passenger side window.
“Hey,” she says as I pass by.
I keep walking and she reverses her car to catch up with me. “Hey!” she says again. I stop. Car beats pedestrian, every time. One of these days, I’m going to have to fucking well learn how to drive.
“What?”
She turns off the engine. “Did you see Matty?”
“Yep.”
“How is he?”
“Asleep.”
“I went and saw him a few days ago. I promised I’d bring him a copy of the new Rolling Stone with Tom Petty on the cover, but they were sold out, so I got him the new Spin. It’s got a thing on PJ Harvey. I’m not sure if he even likes PJ Harvey.”
A car swerves around her and honks. Technically, she’s in a no-stopping zone, and someone wants her to know it.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
She slides over to the passenger seat and looks up at me. I remember we had sex on that seat once. It reclines all the way back.
“Ken says you’re not going to class. That you haven’t gone for almost three weeks.”
“Ken says?”
“Yeah. Ken. That’s his name. He’s a person and he’s got a name.”
“Sure. He’s also got a wife and a kid.”
An exasperated sigh inflates her cheeks. She slides back behind the wheel. “Just go to class.” She turns the key in the ignition and starts to pull away. “Don’t fuck up your last year of high school just because of me.”
Even when it’s about me, it’s really just about her.
So far, I hadn’t told anyone that Kim had dumped me for my OAC Art teacher. Even just saying it in my head made me sick to my stomach, so I imagine saying it out loud would be mortifying. As far as my friends were concerned, Kim was just a colossal bitch and I deserved better. I wish I believed it. Instead, I just felt outleagued, like I showed up to play baseball with a wiffle bat. Murdock has f
ifteen years on me, at least. How could I compete with fifteen years of living in England and Toronto and going to cool parties and saying clever British things to quasi-famous people? How could I compete with fifteen years of sexual experience? He probably has silk robes and special oils and kinky stuff like handcuffs and blindfolds, and—I don’t know—big, long feathers. What kind of experience did I have? Besides Kim, I had slept with one other person, unless you count the time I dryhumped Elisa Gowling behind a stack of gym mats at a grade eight dance. Which I don’t.
What’s worse, I keep worrying which of my sexual embarrassments Kim has already shared with Murdock. The time my equipment didn’t exactly work? Or how about the time we tried to do it in the shower and I slipped and smashed my head on the faucet? God. It’s no wonder so many exes wind up hating each other. You let someone know who you really are, and then, when it’s all over, you live in fear that they’ll reveal you to the world.
Two buses later, I get home and find that Lovely Rita’s left a message for me. When I call her back, she tells me she’s heard about this guy who’s coming through town. He’s got a portable studio and records bands on the cheap.
“You guys need to put some of those songs to tape,” she says, “and not those shitty four-track recordings you never seem to finish. Something decent.”
I agree. I never did get Chris Murphy’s phone number after the accident, but it couldn’t hurt to send him a demo.
“I’ll wrangle Soda and Deacon. Just make sure you’ve got nothing going on next weekend.”
I scoff a little at this. “Don’t worry. I never do anything anymore. The social highlight of this weekend was going to visit Matty in the hospital—and he was asleep.”
“Yeah ...” she says quietly.
She’s been beating herself up a lot over the accident. Like it was her fault Matty had a bad trip. Like it was her fault Greatorex and McLaren tried to run Matty—me—down.
“Have you heard any more about what’s happening with those douchebags who hit him?” I ask.
As far as I knew, Dave Greatorex had been charged with dangerous driving causing bodily harm, and there was going to be some kind of court date in the next couple of weeks.
“The latest is that he could get ten years,” Rita says. “I still can’t believe they didn’t nail that other little shit, too. He could have at least tried to stop him.”
Brad wasn’t charged with anything. Instead he’s been enjoying his new status as Mackenzie King’s social leper. I guess he found out pretty quickly that most people—even his fellow Pussies—just tolerated him because he was Greatorex’s sidekick. Now that he’s an accessory to the vehicular crippling of the school’s most popular stoner, Brad eats a lot of lunches alone.
The next day in Law class, everyone’s buzzing. Kohler tries to calm us down and get us working on some chapter questions, but in the end, it’s futile. Apparently, Murdock’s wife had burst into my Art class (I wish I had been there) and started pointing out female students like she was picking them off from a bell tower.
“Was it her?” she demanded to know. “Her? Her?”
She thought he was sleeping with one of his students.
Robin Samchek, a diminutive Middle Earther, revealed that he witnessed the whole spectacle, and was now experiencing a kind of rapt attention that was, for him, previously unknown.
“... and then Mrs. Murdock called him—” he looks around the room nervously and whispers the next part “—a fucking pedophile!”
Mazz Moore slaps his knee and whoops. “Holy shit!” Even Brad listens from his desk and smiles, happy just to be a part of something.
“Yeah,” Robin continues, propelled by everyone’s enthusiasm, “and then Mrs. Murdock dropped to the ground. Like, boom. Mr. Murdock tried to help her up, but she told him, ‘Get away!’” He shakes his palms in front of his face as if to demonstrate. “So then, Mr. Murdock went back into his Quarters? You know? And I guess he made a phone call, because a couple minutes later, Mr. Sundell and Mr. Doyle showed up and helped Mrs. Murdock out of the classroom. She was still crying a lot.”
Kim catches up with me on my way home as I’m crossing the Mike’s Milk parking lot. She jumps out of her car just after she almost hits me with it.
“What the fuck did you tell her?”
“Nothing. I wouldn’t do that.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Yeah,” I say, with a wry smile. “I’m a liar.”
The truth is, I am a liar. I mean, yeah, I didn’t tell Murdock’s wife about Murdock and Kim. But when I said I wouldn’t do that—that part’s a lie. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would do.
“You can’t just go around fucking with people’s lives,” she says just before she slams her door and her tires spit little stones at me. She’s pretty smart, so I’m sure the irony of her statement will come to her in time.
I’m not sure who ratted out Kim and Murdock—if anyone ratted them out at all. It’s entirely possible that Mrs. Murdock found a pair of Kim’s turquoise bikini briefs, or spotted Murdock climbing out of the Divorcemobile one evening when he was supposed to be working late. All I know is that I didn’t say shit.
But I almost did.
I called from one of those payphones around the corner from the main office. A couple times. The first time, I came into school early, during my spare. No one answered, so I tried again period three, when I was supposed to be in Murdock’s class. This was last Thursday. I felt kind of badass at first, like I was a secret agent or a spy or something. When I came up with the idea, I imagined I’d be calling from some street corner downtown (in this fantasy, I was probably also wearing a trench coat), but I realized if she had caller ID, the school was probably the best place to call from.
I got this weird, reckless thrill when I heard the phone ringing on the other end. I had a whole speech prepared: ‘Mrs. Murdock? You don’t know me, but ...’ It was full of all these self-righteous statements like I believe in the importance of honesty, and I just thought you had the right to know. I never once thought about whether or not she wanted to know.
I almost started to hyperventilate when someone finally picked up the receiver, and I suddenly realized that I never really believed anyone would answer.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t Mrs. Murdock. It was a little girl. She sounded about nine or ten. Her nose was stuffed up like she was home from school with a cold.
“Hel-lo-o ...” she said again, nasally and impatiently.
“Uh, hi,” I said, not sounding at all like a secret agent. “Could—could I talk to your mom, please?”
“Are you a telemarketer?” the girl asked.
“Nope. Not a telemarketer.”
“Okay ...” she said skeptically, “but if you are a telemarketer, my mom’s going to yell at you ...”
There was a rustling sound as someone—Mrs. Murdock, I assumed—took the receiver and shooed the girl away. She sounded faintly amused when she finally said, “Hello?”
I hung up the phone; I couldn’t do it.
I leaned against the payphone divider for a full minute, frozen with—I don’t know. Fear, maybe? Shame? The hall was pretty empty, but I felt like the few people walking by—a couple of grade nine girls, that kid from Rotten’s band with the liberty spikes—knew exactly what I was doing. Like they knew exactly what a shitty person I had become. I jammed my hands in my pockets and started walking. Eventually, I found myself in that sketchy bathroom in the basement that no one ever uses. I locked myself in the stall and sat down on the seat. I tried to fight it—if anyone caught me crying, that would be the end of me—but then I thought about Matty lying in the hospital room with a tube in his throat. I thought about Soda living in the basement of that shitty house with his shitty, drunk dad. I thought about Mrs. Murdock and her daughter. I thought about Kim. I even thought about that piece of shit Brad McLaren, and how even though he wasn’t going to jail, he had a whole different kind of sentence, just for being as
weak-willed as I am.
I stayed in there until I was sure my face had gone back to normal. It’s no wonder boys try not to cry in public. When girls cry, they look vulnerable and their eyes get all shiny and you want to hug them. Guys just wind up looking like puckered assholes. Before I left, I took out my house key and carved FUCK MURDOCK into the back of the stall door in big block letters.
Now, without someone to drive me, the way home seems infinitely long. I know that, on top of all the big sadnesses, the little sadness of having to walk everywhere now probably seems kind of petty, but it still sucks nonetheless. It’s just barely springtime, and while the sun feels good on my face, the air still stings the tips of my ears. When I get home, my mom’s making dinner in the kitchen.
“Hey. How was school?”
Mom started being extra nice when she found out Kim dumped me. She met Kim a couple of times. I don’t think she really liked her all that much.
“Fine,” I tell her and hang up my coat in the hallway.
“Anything eventful?”
“Nah. Not really.” I sit down at the kitchen table. Maybe I’ll tell her about Mrs. Murdock tomorrow. I don’t feel like getting into it right now.
“Want a cup of tea?”
“No, thanks.”
“Jesse stopped by earlier.”
Soda? “Why? Did he forgot it was a school day?”
My mom sighs. “You know, it’s a real shame. I always thought he was smarter than that. And Matty? The Chronicle-Journal said he had taken LSD the night he got hit. I hope you never get involved with any of that stuff.”
“Nope.”
“Well, Jesse left a bunch of records for you. He had two crates, so I asked him to put them in your room. They’re probably full of mildew. I don’t know what you’re going to play them on. That old record player in the basement hasn’t worked since we moved.”