by Patti Abbott
It’s mid-morning when I’m sent to the principal’s office. Mr. Kavanaugh’s sitting in his office. He’s a short man and his desk is too high for him; his head seems to bobble over it. Peering at me, he taps his fingers on his blotter—he always does that—and hums a little of “Seventy-six Trombones Led the Big Parade” while I sit down.
“Rufus,” he finally says, clearing his throat. I nod. “Rufus,” he begins again. Another long pause. “I noticed on your school records today,” he says, “that your father sells insurance. Can you tell me what company he works for?”
He sounds a little irritated—like he’s been waiting for me to figure out what he wants and give it to him. “We need it for our files.”
I’m not sure my father ever was an insurance salesman. It’s probably something my mother just put down on some form, but I finally blurt out, “I think Prudential.” That’s the only name I can come up with except for Mutual of Omaha and I think maybe they only insure animals.
Mr. Kavanaugh nods and steeples his fingers. “Here in Shelter?” he asks. “The office down on First Street?”
My mind travels to First Street where a big (by Shelter, Maine standards) building sits. I’m pretty sure my father wouldn’t have worked in a fancy building like the one on First Street.
“Not there,” I tell him. “He travels most of the time. I think he’s over in Portland or maybe Augusta. He doesn’t get home too much.” Not once in five years, but I don’t say that.
He nods again. “Rufus, tell me this. Have you seen your father in—say—the last two years?”
At least three other kids I know don’t have fathers at home. Are we all getting called in? “I don’t see him much when he’s on the road,” I finally say.
“When exactly was the last time you saw him?” Mr. Kavanaugh asks, pushing on.
With the inspiration born of desperation, I suddenly wipe my eyes with balled-up fists, moan a little, fidget. Mr. Kavanaugh stands up like someone’s blown revelry.
“Well, that’s just fine, Rufus. I’ll note in the file that your father works in Portland. Then we’ll know to call your mother with any problems that arise.”
In less than a month, I’ll be moving on to middle school classrooms over in the high school so none of this conversation makes sense. He walks me through his secretary’s office and into the outer office. Suddenly I feel sick at my stomach but I’m not sure why. He puts a hand on my shoulder and leans in, concerned.
“You okay, boy?”
I can smell his cologne, his toothpaste even. Another wave of nausea hits me.
I nod and pass into the hallway, which is silent and smells like wax, sweat and the slightly burned coffee from the teacher’s lounge. I gulp in these familiar smells and feel better right away.
At 3:15, the bell rings and I meet up with Georgie at the monkey bars. I tell him about going to Mr. Kavanaugh’s office, about how good Ms. Proctor smells, about seeing her thighs and maybe a flash of her tits, saying the word aloud for the first time. I get home in no time flat and am glad to find my mother has removed her lingerie from the line on the porch. She’s nowhere to be found so I make myself another bowl of Count Chocula and wait to see what happens next.
It’s a night or two later at eleven o’clock when I hear that clackety sound on the stairs again. In a split-second I realize what made me feel ill in Mr. Kavanaugh’s office: his shoes make the same sound. He click-clacked his way to the door of the office with me. And here he is now, clicking up to my mother’s bed. I cover my head with my blanket—even though it’s too warm for wool now—and manage not to hear anything. I fall asleep counting backwards from 1000.
Every few nights, Mr. Kavanaugh comes to have sex with my mother. One night I decide the click-clacking sound is not proof enough. Peering out my door I see his familiar blue suit, dusted with chalk or dandruff or lint, as he climbs the steps. He stays about two hours. Does it take that long to have sex or do they talk about other things—like me—afterwards? Sometimes my mother tiptoes downstairs and brings back a drink or the newspaper. My mother must be pretty good at having sex, better than Mrs. Kavanaugh, whom I see once a year at our Christmas pageant, always wearing the same royal-blue wool coat.
I tell Georgie about this and he finally says, “So are you gonna do something about it?”
“Like what?” It’s never occurred to me that I could or should do anything about it. “You mean like go into his office and tell him I know about it? Tell him to lay off?”
“Or tell your Mom to lay off,” Georgie says.
That is the most frightening thing I can think of. I imagine her standing at the kitchen stove, her legs crossed, peering at me through the haze of smoke from the cigarette in her mouth with that look on her face. The look she gives me when I cross her in some way. When I remind her of my father too.
“I’ll think about it,” I say.
Georgie nods.
I do think about it; I think about how much I hate having a prostitute for a mother. How much I hated Mr. Kavanaugh calling me into his office that day to find out if I knew what was going on upstairs or where my father was. I hate that my clothes are often dirty and that I have to cook for myself. I hate that there is always pee on the floor in the bathroom from the men my mother brings home. I hate how those bottles of expensive alcohol are always full and the refrigerator’s empty. I hate my mother. I feel flattened when I realize that.
“So what are you gonna do about it?” Georgie asks when I tell him I hate my mother.
“I’ll see what happens next.”
He flashes me a disgusted look.
What happens next doesn’t happen till a Friday night, the last Friday before school gets out. I don’t know what it is that wakes me up. It’s after midnight and the house is quiet. No clicks on the floorboards or on the steps to the third floor. I don’t hear my mother snoring, which she’s likely to do on a weekend night when she’s had too much to drink. I don’t smell Canoe cologne. Nothing seems out of place, but I know something’s wrong. The air feels like it did in Mr. Kavanaugh’s office: tight and thick.
I get out of my bed and go to the window. Even though it’s spring, it’s still cold in Maine at night so my window’s shut. It’s pretty dirty too, but through the spattered, dingy glass I see someone standing outside by the garage. It’s my mother. I push the window up and stick my head outside to see better.
“Mom?” I yell, before I can stop myself.
Her head jerks up and she spots me at the window. She either gestures for me to come downstairs or to close the window. I’m not sure which, so I do both. The back door is hanging open when I reach the kitchen and I fly through the opening. She’s still standing in the same spot, shivering and quietly sobbing. My mother never cries and it’s scary now that she’s doing it.
“What is it, Mom?” I ask, not really wanting to know. I want to reach out a hand to her, but things are not like that between us.
“I killed him,” she says, finally adding, “But he deserved to die.”
I look around, and after five seconds or so I spot the body about ten yards away. It’s a man and he’s propped up against the side of the garage, wearing the same suit I saw him in twelve hours earlier. Mr. Kavanaugh. I start shivering then too. I can see the cleats on his shoes in the moonlight and in the middle of his chest, a huge stain. It looks black.
“Did you shoot him, Mom?” Maybe a gunshot woke me up.
She raises her arm limply instead of answering. In her hand is a kitchen knife—the big one we never use. It has sat in the same wooden block on the counter for as long as I remember. Right now it’s covered with blood, which runs down Mom’s arm in a trickling stream. It’s also splattered across her chest. Maybe it’s the full moon tonight that makes the blood stand out, but it looks like it’s everywhere.
My mother stands on the dirt path like the Statue of Liberty, holding her torch for another few seconds. Finally, she flings the knife aside. The point of it goes into the e
arth so that it stands upright two feet in front of us—like some knife-thrower’s trick. We both look at it mutely.
“Sure he’s dead?” I ask, finally looking at Mr. Kavanaugh again. I walk over to him, crouch down, and from the look on his face, decide he must be dead. He has a surprised look and I smell urine as well as Canoe. I don’t touch him.
“Get him out of here,” she says.
I look at her. “What?”
“Get rid of him,” she repeats. She takes a step or two toward the house and then turns back. “Get Georgie if you need help. He’s big enough, isn’t he?”
“I can’t get rid of Mr. Kavanaugh, Mom.”
Don’t be ridiculous, I think. I want to remind her I’m only twelve years old and I don’t know how to get rid of a body, but she looks like she’s not in the mood to hear this. Her face’s like a plaster of Paris mask. How can I ask Georgie to help me? We’re kids, I want to tell her that but I don’t.
She pauses a second. “If you don’t get rid of him, they’ll put me in jail. What will happen to you then? Where will you go?”
Her voice is cold and matter of fact, as if she’s just pointing out what should be obvious to me. She stands still, waiting for my answer. It feels like an hour’s passed.
“I can cover him up for now, I guess,” I say. She nods as if it’s of little interest to her and walks back to the house.
Cover him with what? I go into the garage and find an old tent that probably belonged to the people who lived here before us. It smells of mildew, and half-gagging, I yank it outside and cover Mr. Kavanaugh. When the heavy canvas hits him, he tips over, hitting the ground with a thud and I’m finally sure he’s dead.
I spend the rest of the night looking at Mr. Kavanaugh from my window and listening to my mother’s snore. I don’t then, or ever, ask her why she stabbed Mr. Kavanaugh with a knife.
“He deserved to die,” was her last remark on the subject. I can’t imagine the necessary questions ever coming from my mouth. I never ask her things like that, even natural things like why my father left, why we have no friends or family, why she hates me. Questions I don’t want the answer to, I guess. I think this is the same because I’d rather not have her explanation. Rather not hear that Mr. Kavanaugh was too neat or always on time.
It’s Saturday morning soon. Georgie isn’t waiting for me on the dirt path, of course. I thumb through the phonebook, looking for his address and, surprisingly, find one. How is it I don’t know where Georgie lives and why have I never thought about it before? But now I need help so I figure out where his house must be and tramp over there. It’s more like a chicken coop than a house and as soon as I start up to the door, Georgie comes hurrying out, looking surprised. He’s in his underwear and he motions for me to sit down on an old tree stump and goes back inside to dress. The yard is full of tree stumps as though this is his family’s means of heating the house or feeding themselves or maybe some strange hobby they have: hacking down trees. The stumps have blackened tops like someone tried to burn them away. Georgie’s life looks worse than mine.
In a minute, he comes outside and wordlessly we head back to my house where I pull off the canvas and show him Mr. Kavanaugh. He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even seemed surprised. Maybe this sort of thing happens more than I think. My mother’s on the porch, drinking her first cup of coffee, which she always makes the night before and lets build up strength overnight on the sideboard. She doesn’t say anything to us and after a second, we forget she’s even there and go about our business.
Georgie grabs Mr. Kavanaugh’s arms and I take his feet and we carry him over to Mom’s car and dump him into the trunk. Although he’s a very small man, Mr. Kavanaugh’s the heaviest weight I’ve ever lifted and Georgie bears most it. We sit down on the ground for a minute to recover and then Georgie climbs into the driver’s seat. I didn’t know Georgie could drive, but he starts the car right up and I get in. We drive into town and right up to the back door of the school where there’s a service entrance.
I never once ask Georgie what he’s going to do, but there never seems to be any doubt for him. He lets himself inside the school without any trouble, fiddling with the lock for less than ten seconds, and I wonder if he comes here at night or on the weekends sometimes. We carry Mr. Kavanaugh in and I am heading toward his office, not knowing what Georgie has in mind, when he heads instead for his own classroom and I manage to follow him without dropping Mr. Kavanaugh’s feet. Twice we stop to rest. Mr. Kavanaugh smells pretty bad and I think I might get sick if this goes on for too long.
Still I follow Georgie, me wordless, for once. Inside his classroom, we set the body down again and head for the wall, right next to that crack. He pushes a wallboard with the flick of one finger and it swings open with a tiny creak. I have no time to wonder about any of this because Georgie’s picking Mr. Kavanaugh up again. I grab his feet and follow him into the hidey hole and down a flight of steps made of stone. Just when I think it’s too dark for us to keep going, a light comes on and I see Georgie’s pulled the string.
“They put some lights down here once,” he says, without my asking. “At a party to celebrate the anniversary of the underground railroad. My uncle helped wire it.”
For no particular reason, I wonder if Georgie even know what that is—that is was not some train running under the ground. But how can he solve a problem like mine and still be in that room above us?
We continue along the narrow corridor and suddenly it opens up into a square room. I am about to say I don’t think we can just leave Mr. Kavanaugh here when Georgie pushes on the wall and another room opens up.
“Nobody ever goes this far,” he says and we set our principal down carefully on the earth floor.
We stand and look at him for a few seconds and I think this may be the only funeral service Mr. Kavanaugh has.
“Okay,” Georgie said, “That’s it.”
We leave the room, putting everything back the way it was and tramp back along the corridor, turning out the light.
“You come here after school?” I finally ask him.
He shrugs and stops talking right then, my question hanging in the air as we climb back in the car. We drive to my house, parking the car just where it was and I notice the knife is still in the ground. Georgie sees it too, pulls it out of the earth and starts to hand it over but then doesn’t. He heads back to the dirt path, the knife at his side, and in a minute, he’s gone.
“Why’s he taking that knife?” my mother asks from the porch and I jump about a foot. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” She’s sitting with her legs on the rail. For once she’s not smoking or drinking anything.
“He’s probably gonna put it out there with Mr. Kavanaugh.”
My mother nods and for the first time, I wonder if she’s crazy instead of just mean or a slut. Then she gets up and goes inside.
There’s a lot of fuss for a month or so about just what happened to Mr. Kavanaugh. I think nobody’s very sad to have him disappear because the next time I see Mrs. Kavanaugh she’s wearing a new coat. My mother stops bringing men upstairs at night for a while. But inflation gets to her and she starts it up again. When she leaves her cigarettes lying around now, I smoke one. But I’m still on time and neat like my Dad.
Since I’m going to middle school in the fall, I may never find out who the new principal is.
Georgie’ll still be there though, watching the line descend.
MY HERO
Dave was an awful man; I can show you the scars to prove it. But, even knowing what I know, I was pretty surprised when Superman whisked him away. I wouldn’t have dreamed that Superman had the time to intercede in a routine marital dispute. I guess it was one of those days when the Number #1 Superhero was looking for trouble and there was no bank being robbed or runaway train to throw his body in front of.
Anyway, Superman found trouble on my terrace.
Dave and I were standing on the narrow balcony of our eighth- floor, two-b
edroom, two-bath condo in Metropolis. It was a tiny section of iron, hardly five feet by three (the larger ones come with the three bedroom models) and there wasn’t even enough room for one of those cute tables with umbrellas or a window box. Dave had me backed up against the railing, his hands around my throat, all because of a bad check I had written. Well really, what did he expect with the stingy allowance he gave me?
“You careless bitch,” he was saying. He liked to say things like that. His other favorite expression was “you redneck whore,” but I never got used to his words (blame my Iowa background) and I usually tried to correct him.
“At least, use the “w” word instead of the “b,” I begged him. “I’ll make the substitution in my head.”
This comment only made Dave angrier and his hands tightened around my neck. He had me backed up against the iron so tightly I could feel the manufacturer’s embossment straight through to my stomach.
Things were starting to turn pretty black when Superman flew by and, like a chicken hawk, passing over a unwatched barnyard, scooped Dave up. I watched open-mouthed for a second or two, not quite believing Superman was hovering over our condo in Metropolis. Hovering with my husband in his arms, to be precise. Dave looked pretty small and insignificant from that height. About the right size.
Oh, I’d seen Superman a few times before. Once coming out of a phone booth outside the Daily Planet Building and once in maximum Superhero action when he pushed a subway car off a man’s leg. I liked the way he didn’t hang around waiting to be congratulated when it was over. Nope, he was off in a flash, probably looking for more people to save. It never entered my mind that someday it might be me scanning the sky for some help.
Still, things don’t always go perfectly, not even for Superman, and after soaring above our building, hardly breaking a sweat from the added weight, he got caught in a wire and dropped my husband. Dave fell right in front of my eyes; I could practically have touched him. I think he may even have called my name as he catapulted to the ground.