The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  I'm embarrassed. The kind of embarrassed you feel when you've been watched and didn't know it.

  "Chai, Hansa, Bamboo, Flora, Tombi ..." I count on my fingers. "Who'd I forget?"

  "Onyx," he fills in.

  "Oops."

  "Onyx hates to be forgotten."

  Milo's manners are impeccable. Or maybe he's just exhausted. He doesn't strain toward the man with his usual desire to sniff pant legs. He just sits nicely and smiles. "Next time you come," the man says, "you work instead of sit. We always need the volunteers."

  "Okay," I say. I'm not sure if I mean it. As nice as he seems, I don't know this man, and as much as I love the elephants, being right near their actual selves with their huge, stomping legs and powerful bodies is another matter. I'd have to think that over. For a long time. Maybe such a long time that I'd never come back. Or maybe just long enough that if I did come back, he'd have forgotten he'd mentioned it.

  71

  "There's plenty of elephant dung to always shovel," he says, grinning. "I'm sure."

  The elephant keeper locks his car door again, waves a good-bye. I wave back.

  I walk Milo out of the zoo parking lot and around the nearby neighborhood. I let him lead, because wherever he goes, there are no red jackets, and no mothers in prom dresses. Finally, it is time to go home. The house is empty, and I reward Milo for that fact with a huge glass mixing bowl of the coldest water. He gulps and slurps happily, making a mess all over the floor. Then he looks up at me with water droplets glistening on his beard. He smiles gratefully, which I guess means that one of us, at least, is satisfied.

  72

  Chapter Five

  Male elephants live in a warm, loving family of females until they are ten to fifteen years old.

  When the male is of age, he is slowly but strongly forced out of the herd. He continues to follow the herd at increasing distances, until he is finally living alone. He lives alone for the rest of his life, except for siring children. When he is with the herd, his interactions with family are gentle and courteous, but little else. Male elephants are viewed by the females as dangerous to their children, and are not welcome after the baby is born. Their lives are solitary ones . . .

  --Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

  I go to the movies with Michael and Akello and have a pretty good time, and then we head over to Smooth Juice and buy a fruit drink and a pretzel. B-plus fun, but better than pretending the school gym is some tropical paradise with basketball hoops.

  When I get home, Oliver is back from football practice and is asleep in front of the television, and an exhausted Milo is curled up with his blankie and doing his dog-dream flinching. The basement is quiet, but Dad's car is parked on the street, so he's probably down there. It seems only polite to say hello, since we haven't seen each other all day, so I tromp down the stairs and open the door.

  "Dad?"

  73

  The train set is built on a platform that Dad has put on top of our old dining room table to make it easier for him to reach. Each week, it grows more elaborate. There is a little town with brick streets and tiny plastic people. A general store, a church with a steeple, a train station. A perfect little place. Now, the train is pointing out of town, which is the area of the platform Dad is working on lately. He is building the road out. It aims toward a tunnel that goes up and over a mountain to another place altogether. You can't tell what that place is yet. So far, it's just an empty area that only Dad sees in his imagination.

  I don't see Dad at first. He isn't standing by the platform as he usually is, bent over it, painting or gluing or sanding or sawing. But then I realize he's just sitting in the corner in this chair from our old house that we put down here because it didn't go with any of our new furniture. That's what's mostly in the basement--all the stuff that doesn't fit us anymore, from the dining room table and the recliner to a shelf of Dad's college textbooks, and my and Oliver's old clothes that Mom's packed in boxes and labeled with our ages in black marker. There's no decorating, really, except for a framed picture of a castle Dad got on a trip to France he took after he graduated, and a tacky advertisement for Rainier Beer painted on a mirror.

  Dad is wearing the gray sweatpants he wore to Oliver's practice, his Mariners sweatshirt. His hands are folded across his chest, his eyes open and just staring. The footstool is up, and his sock-clad feet are resting on it. I surprise him and he jumps when he sees me, sits up suddenly, causing the chair to pop back into upright position, footrest gone as if it had been doing something it shouldn't have.

  74

  "Jade," he says. "What are you doing?" "Just sitting here. Thinking." "Are you okay?"

  "Sure," he says. "Of course I'm okay. Is your mom home yet?"

  "Not yet."

  Silence.

  "Jade?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I'm sorry. You know--about that." "What?"

  "You know. Mom. The dance." "It's all right. It's not your fault." "Maybe. Maybe not."

  We both don't say anything for a while. It's awkward, him saying stuff like that to me. His voice is low and quiet. This isn't the kind of conversation I have with Dad. Mom, maybe, but not Dad.

  Dad asks how school is. How I did on tests. Dad talks exteriors, Mom talks interiors. He doesn't share the corridors of their relationship like this, or of any relationship. I don't really want to be standing there anymore. It makes me kind of nervous. He's my dad, but I feel some sense of responsibility to keep the conversation going, and have no idea how. Maybe, maybe not. I count the syllables on my fingers, May-be-may-be not, but end up on my pinkie the first time, so it's no good. I want to be back in my room, with the elephants and Philomena, but it's one of those times you can't just turn around and leave yet you don't want to stay, either. I pick up this package on the table, a new, tiny house in a bubble of plastic just bought at the train store. I pretend to study it.

  "Where's this going to go?" I say finally.

  75

  "I don't know yet," he says. He is still just sitting there, looking at his hands. Then he says, "Why don't you put it where you think it should be."

  This is a little weird too. See, Dad's train isn't this father-child bonding project, where we get to move the little people around and paint the moss on the rocks. Nope, this is hands-off-Dad's-big toy-if-you-touch-it-he's-gonna-be-pissed. The whole thing is making me uneasy, and I don't know why. He's not acting like the dad stereotype I know and understand. He's somehow gone from Mr. Black-and-White to something hazier and gray, and right then I prefer the him I'm familiar with to this guy.

  "Anywhere you want," Dad says, and I realize then that this is an attempt to reach out to me, to set a tiny bridge across where there are now two separate pieces of land. And I don't want to say no. So I just say, "Okay." I open up the package. I walk around the platform slowly, the little house in my palm. "This is a very serious decision," I say, hoping to lighten the mood. I put it on top of another house. Pretend to contemplate. "No, the neighbors would complain." I put it on top of the train station. "Too noisy," I say.

  And then I stop messing around, because I know where it should go. That new blank area outside of town, through the tunnel, where nothing is yet. I set it down there, appraise the situation. It looks funny, this house on this bare piece of undeveloped plywood. Kind of empty, but the start of something new.

  "There," I say.

  I'm expecting a protest, or a grunt of disapproval, or even a laugh. But he does none of those things.

  "That's what I was thinking, too," Dad says.

  76

  The next morning, our house has this disheveled, morning-after glow. Mom's wrap is draped over the banister, and her hair clip is on the coffee table, next to a photo of her and Mr. Dutton, our librarian, in a homecoming folder with the date on it embossed in silver. Their hands are clasped and they are standing under a faux sunset. Mr. Dutton looks happier than he ever has in the library. It pisses me off. Actually, it makes me feel
kind of sick. A wilted, browning orchid is in the fridge, next to the milk carton.

  Mom is bouncing all over the place, yelling cheerfully at everyone to hurry up or we'll be late for Oliver's game. She'd slept in her hairdo, which had barely moved, which meant either she'd gotten in pretty late and barely slept on it, or that the hairdresser had used a shitload of hairspray.

  I sort of wish she'd walk by an open flame right then, actually. Mom is doing this casual ignoring of me, not mentioning last night, and making the nonverbal point that she isn't bothered in the least about my bad attitude, meaning, of course, that she is bothered enough to be on the edge of really mad.

  Oliver is dawdling, which is making Dad tense. At least, that's why I'm guessing he's tense.

  Oliver can't find his cleats, then his shoulder pads, and then, when we're finally all in the car, he says he's left his water bottle in the house. Passive-aggressive behavior must come down the family line on your mother's side.

  I don't always go to Oliver's games, or that's all I'd be doing every weekend. I usually have too much homework, plus it's cold and boring standing out there with all those parents and their big golf umbrellas bought at Costco. But it's his first football game, and I figure he could use the moral support.

  77

  Jenna's brother is also on the team, so Jenna and I decide to meet to keep each other company.

  Oliver rides with his chin down and his water bottle in his lap, just picking at the threads of his pants. I jostle him with my elbow, but he doesn't respond. He forgets his gym bag in the car when we get there, and I have to run back and get it. I plunk it down with the other bags. Before he runs off to join the others on his team, I tell him not to worry, because I've brought the Flask of Healing.

  "Football is so brutal," Jenna says.

  "And too cold," I say. "Baseball's sunny at least." I stick my hands in my jacket, jump up and down a bit. It's early-November gray, the sky filled with flat, stubborn clouds. My legs are already getting cold through my jeans. If standing out on a muddy field way too early in the morning isn't enough fun for you, make it cold enough to stop feeling your fingers.

  "Baseball games go on forever, though," Jenna says. Her brother plays every sport too. He even wrestles. "What's with your mom's hair?" Jenna says.

  "Homecoming. Chaperone."

  "Oh, that's right. Did you tell her it's ouer?" This is the Jenna I like. We both chuckle at ourselves.

  "You're lucky your mom works," I say.

  We watch our brothers. I don't know anything about football, but, basically, they line up, run two feet, crash into each other, and line up again. The dads on the sidelines are this tribe of jumping, screaming, pacing men, mostly wearing some form of athletic attire and shouting orders to their sons as they parade up and down the chalk marks at the edge of the field. The women talk and pretend to watch the players, except for

  78

  this hard-core mom that's screaming, "Get in the game! Get in the game!" as she stands there all comfy in her down coat, holding her steaming coffee cup. Every sport of Oliver's is the same--

  parents who look like they themselves would have a coronary jogging halfway across the grass, yelling at their kid to do it faster, better, harder.

  The whistle blows, and no one quite understands why. There's more lining up. Occasionally, our quarterback, the coach's son (the coach's kid always gets the best position), breaks out and runs from the pack, throwing the ball in a wide pass, where it lands on the ground and bounces on its nose. The coach shoves his hands in his pockets, looks down, and kicks the ground with the toe of his shoe. You can see the puff of air his sigh makes when it escapes into the cold.

  "They're killing us," Jenna says.

  "How can you tell?"

  "Just look."

  She nods her head at our sidelines, toward three scared-looking kids, another who is crying, and one who has just gotten hurt and is holding his arm tight against his chest. The dads crouch over the players, hands on their fatherly knees, giving "pep" talks. I've heard plenty of these, and they are all a version of the same theme: If you really wanted to win, you would. It doesn't matter if the other kids are twice your size and look like they're already shaving, it doesn't matter if they are just plain better, or have more players, or have a team that's been playing together since they all were in the womb--it's about attitude. Shout the team name, boys, loud enough so the other team hears and is scared out of their already-shaving wits. It all reminds me of animals that eat their young.

  79

  My own dad seems to have lost all of his introspection from the night before. He is wearing his nylon training pants with his Seahawks sweatshirt; his hair is combed in rigid perfection. When the game begins again, his jaw is strong and tight as he walks up and down the sidelines, yelling at Oliver, pausing only to turn his head and spit. It's a miracle, I decide then, if team sports don't make a kid hate his father.

  "So far, at least, Jason and Oliver are okay," I say.

  The words are barely out of my mouth when the whistle screams a fierce breeeep! The players stop, look around. One kid is still running forward until the news from his visual cortex catches up to him. Kids huddle around a fallen body, but you can't tell who it is. The assistant coach runs out and clears the kids aside, who all gather to stare like motorists at an accident. That's when I see it is Oliver.

  "Oh, shit. It's Oliver," I say.

  Dad has stopped pacing and just stands there, then folds his arms as if it's nothing to be concerned about. The mother Mom is talking to points, and Mom stops chatting and sees that Oliver is down. She watches with her hand to her mouth.

  Oh, my God, Oliver. He doesn't seem to be moving. Thoughts crash--a broken neck. Oliver in a wheelchair. People's necks got broken playing this stupid sport, didn't they? What if he never walks again? Is he breathing now? I picture an ambulance with lights whizzing, blaring onto the field. He isn't moving at all. The other coach runs out too, and at this, tears start welling up, and my throat shuts. Goddamn it. Oliver didn't want to play. Maybe he knew this would happen.

  Maybe that's why he didn't want to play--a premonition. Now he is broken.

  "He's okay," Jenna says. And it's true. Or else, he's okay 80

  enough. He stands with a coach on either side, limps off the field with their help. The parents clap. Injury always gets applause. His face is streaked with dirt and tears. Some other kid jogs reluctantly out to take his place; they tell him to hurry, and the game goes on.

  "I'm going to see if he's all right," I say to Jenna. I head over to Oliver, who's trying hard to stop crying. He isn't having much luck. His chest is heaving up and down. Sobs catch in his throat.

  "What happened?" I ask. My heart hurts.

  "That big guy," he says. His voice is high and tight. "Number forty-six. Jeez, he just bashed his shoulder right into my chest, and when I was on the ground, he steps on my leg with his cleat."

  He sniffs hard, rubs his nose on his sleeve, doesn't meet my eyes.

  "That bastard," I say. "The minute he gets off the field I'm going to kick him in the balls." Oliver laughs a little, his eyes filling up at the same time. "He'll never know what hit him. His balls are gonna go flying, I promise you that. People will wish they brought their catcher's mitts." Oliver half laughs. Dad is there now.

  "He's all right. He's fine," Dad says, his usual line whenever Oliver gets hurt. It means: Go away.

  Don't baby him. Don't show too much compassion. The other dads do this too. It's some kind of group hysteria, based on some fatherly fear that says compassion equals homosexuality. Parents and sports--I've come to the conclusion that it's all about fear-- fear that your kid won't come out on top, be a success. Forcing him into these brutal encounters will a) make damn sure he is a success, and b) allow you to see evidence of that success with the added bonus of a cheering crowd. This means that sports

  81

  are supported with an almost desperate enthusiasm. The football team gets ca
tered dinners before a game. Honor Society is lucky if it gets a cupcake. Academic success--forget it. That requires too much imagination. There's no scoreboard.

  Dad moves in close, hunches over Oliver. I know he's going to say what they all do in this situation. You're okay, you're okay! Come on, get up! Be a winner! Shake it off! The kid is bloody and bruised and can't move, but, hey, what's your problem? You've got another leg!

  I walk back to Jenna. Mom is sending glances their way, weighing, as she always does, whether or not to interfere. She catches my eye. Gives her head a little shake and rolls her eyes upward to communicate her disgust with the whole masculine display. I nod back in agreement. It makes me miss her a little. Makes me remember that we were usually on the same side. I feel a pinprick in the oversized inflatable beach ball that is my anger. Dad bends down to talk to Oliver. Oliver is looking at the ground.

  "Is he okay?" Jenna asks.

  "I guess."

  "Wow," she sighs.

  "I don't see any redeeming value to this stupid game. None."

  "Really. The best part for the players is when they get the snack after the game," Jenna says.

  "Not even," I say. "Look."

  "Oh, man. Granola bars." She points to the box of snacks on someone's foldout chair. Everyone knows there is an after game snack hierarchy. It moves from cupcakes and doughnuts at the top, to granola bars and raisin boxes at the very bottom.

  82

  My chest is recovering from the feeling that it had been me who'd been hit. Poor Oliver. Poor guy. The "men" line up again. Then their helmets clack together, same as those big-horned sheep doing battle over a mate. The players fall on the ground. Jenna has her eyes closed. I wonder if she is praying or something. Maybe that her brother, Jason, won't get hurt next. Maybe that these fathers would soon find a more evolved way to usher their sons into manhood than this mini battle reenactment. Praying seems like a good idea. I stand in respectful silence. But then Jenna pops her eyes open again.

  "Man, I got something on my contact," she says.