Mean Boy

by Lynn Coady

  “It’s a crazy party!” I yell to be helpful.

  “That’s Lawrence!” says Sherrie. “He wants to talk to you!”

  The phone is in my hand, against my head.

  “No, I have to go, I don’t want to talk to him,” Claude is calling.

  “Hi!” I say.

  “Hey, Lawrence,” says Claude.

  “What’s the matter, you studying or something?”

  “Yeah, I’m studying,” answers Claude in a strange, slurred voice.

  “You don’t sound like you’re studying.”

  Claude sighs something in French.

  “Pardon?” I say in French back at him. “Donne moi le poulet.”

  Claude snickers. “You’re in a good mood.”

  “I’m just really drunk,” I tell him. “You hear the good news?”

  “I heard,” says Claude. “Congratulate Jim for me.”

  “I think the idea is for you to come and do that yourself.”

  “I’m not feeling so good,” says Claude.

  I look up at Sherrie. “He says he’s not feeling good.”

  She takes the phone back from me.

  “Why aren’t you feeling good?” Sherrie demands, turning away.

  I just stand there while Sherrie harangues, watching her shoulder blades moving beneath her sweater. I can’t quite muster the will to turn back to the party as yet, although I hear it, swelling, behind me. I hear Moira hack as though her previous laughing fit has shaken something loose, and Ruth’s low, gleeful croak in reply. I can hear that Crotch is back out among us now, holding forth on the Black Mountain poetry movement and the TISH Group, and, if I’m hearing this correctly, trying to convince someone that the word TISH is shit spelled backward. Those are the voices that drift above the crowd—the high notes. Below them, it’s just a garbled chorus.

  And now my consciousness seems to be getting snagged on moments, like when I was in the kitchen with Jim. Time drops away and I’m drifting, dreaming awake in the eternity of right now with the party behind me, Sherrie’s back in front of me, her shoulder blades jerking. Next month I will turn twenty, and more years will follow that, supposedly. I can’t imagine them, just as I can’t imagine Slaughter’s mother dying—what it would be like. The future is theoretical, thank God. How will I be? I won’t be—I can’t imagine it. I just am. I’ll always am. I’ll stay in this moment forever, this hinge of time. Secrets need not be revealed, the trauma of knowledge and experience can be forgone. There won’t be any more of those shattering, heartbreaking moments that hit you like a ball in the face and cause your personality to grow at warped and unexplored trajectories. Nothing left to learn, nothing from which to recover. I’ll just stay here, drunk and out of sync. Turned away, and turned away from. En-bubbled in this moment.

  “Well, something is very wrong there,” says Sherrie, blue headlights shining in my eyes like a cop’s flashlight.

  “Your eyes are so beautiful,” someone above me says.

  Sherrie’s face squeezes itself up with mirth and pain. “Oh God, Lawrence, snap out of it.”

  I do, but can’t help resenting her for starting time up again.

  “I’m hammered,” I tell her quickly. “Sorry. I mean they are, you—you probably know that. I’m not hitting on you, honest to God.”

  “I know, Lawrence, stop babbling.”

  “I like fat girls,” I babble.

  This arrests Sherrie’s attention completely. Everything about her stops except for the flap-flap of her eyelashes.

  Both my hands have at some point jammed themselves against my mouth. I remove them to amend: “I mean, not fat, exactly. You know, bigger girls. Just girls with … more meat on their bones.” That sounds disgusting—like I want to slap them on the barbecue.

  Blink, blink, blink, goes Sherrie, like a tentative, big-eyed bird hopping toward somebody’s picnic.

  “Please don’t tell anyone.” Though my back’s still turned to the party, I imagine every face burning into me like the tip of Moira’s smoke. The talk has become more focused, scandalized, intent. Soon the voices will gather together as one to condemn and pronounce, like in a Greek tragedy.

  And then my vision is washed in gold, my nose invaded with the unearthly smell of Head and Shoulders shampoo.

  “I would never tell anyone,” Sherrie promises, releasing me. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Lawrence, I think it’s lovely.”

  “It’s not lovely, Sherrie.”

  “Well it’s fine, then.”

  “Okay,” I tell her. “I just wanted—this whole conversation—I came over here wanting to tell you I’m sorry for what I said about Chuck—that’s all. That night in the marsh.”

  Sherrie waves her hands to make me stop talking. She looks down at the floor.

  “I was just being an asshole because—” I stop and glance around, not so drunk it doesn’t occur to me to lower my voice. “The whole thing with Jim. I really wanted you to tell me what was going on, uh … with you guys. And you wouldn’t. It was none of my business but—it pissed me off.”

  There was more to it, of course, but that seems to be the only aspect I’m able to articulate.

  “Anyway,” I say, exhausted all of a sudden, “we can change the subject now if you want to.”

  Sherrie looks up at me, finally. It turns out she doesn’t want to.

  36.

  AND YOU KNOW, it’s nothing really. It’s nothing I couldn’t have worked out on my own, just by putting two and two together. I see now I was too preoccupied with my own prurient imaginings—my lurid little worst-case scenarios. I can be forgiven for this, can’t I? It’s undeniable there’s a quality about Sherrie that makes a guy assume the worst. And there’s a similar quality about Jim, now that I consider it.

  And at the very moment I’m considering it—this quality of Sherrie’s coupled with this quality of Jim’s—the universe rushes up to agree. The universe scrambles to provide an illustration of this principle in the person of Todd Smiley. Hovering, as he does. Looming silently, sullenly a few feet away, waiting to be taken into account. But we take him into account too late, Sherrie and I, deep in conversation as we are.

  Sherrie had been saying: So it was all my fault. The whole thing with Sparrow, the whole thing with his tenure. I just knew it had to be my fault and I felt so horrible.

  And I had been saying: Sherrie, there are lots of reasons Jim’s tenure could have been pulled.

  And Sherrie was saying: But it happened right after I made the complaint. Right after, Lawrence!

  And then I heard myself saying: Lots of people could have complained about Jim. You’re right—he misses classes, he doesn’t keep office hours. He … he fucks people around.

  That statement—monumental as it felt—was not the part Todd heard—at least I don’t think it was. Imagine Todd bearing witness to such blasphemy. He’d bring the temple down on all our heads.

  Sherrie looked at me with her wide-open face—eyes and mouth agape.

  “He does,” she squeaked. “He does fuck people around. He fucks people around, and I was tired of it. Are you saying he fucked you around too, Lawrence? Is that what you’re saying?”

  I nodded. I couldn’t do more than that. The sense of betrayal had caught up with me, and my brain felt heavy and sluggish like a cloud full of rain.

  And then something happened to Sherrie’s face I’d never seen before. It went ugly.

  “He never read my poems,” she whispered. “I know he didn’t. One or two short ones, maybe. I would ask him about them, and I could see him faking it. I mean, half the time he wouldn’t even put any effort into it, Lawrence, he couldn’t even be bothered faking it. Or he’d just change the subject—I came in to talk to him about my assignment one day, and Jim just launched into this lecture on Sexton, told me I should read her. I mean, Christ!”

  I kept nodding. I gave her arm a squeeze, hoping to calm her down and relay empathy without uttering further mutinies. But also I was kind of struc
k dumb. Sherrie’s pink face was practically pulsing. Her enormous blue eyes were squeezed into Schofield-esque pinpricks. Her teeth were even bared. This might seems strange to say, but all at once Sherrie made sense to me. Sherrie the poet, that is. In her anger.

  Here’s what Todd would have seen and heard as he approached: Sherrie gone ugly, gesturing in jerks and swiping at her eyes, talking fast and squeaky. A tantalizing word or phrase might have reached him—I know he didn’t … faking it … effort into … he’d just … him … Jim … Christ! Me standing close, nodding urgently.

  “I had such respect for him,” Sherrie was saying. “I mean, I still do, Lawrence. Jim’s brilliant. I love him.” She stopped talking abruptly and seemed to suck for a moment on the inside of her mouth as though getting ready to spit. “That’s why it was so infuriating. I loved Jim so much and he just fucked me around. He didn’t even care.”

  That’s what Todd comes in on. Those last two sentences. At least, that’s when we finally take him into account. Having just arrived, perhaps, but already veering away.

  At a party like this, the problem is, you lose track. You don’t keep your attention focused where you should. It switches around, seemingly on its own accord—like when someone else is controlling the radio dial. Sherrie and I, for example, should have stayed focused on Todd—and what the universe was trying to impress upon us—instead of watching him veer, dreamy-seeming, off into the crowd. We should have called him to us, pulled him into our circle instead of letting him drift away like an unmoored ship with a cargo of gunpowder.

  Things began to speed up, then, blink on and off. I lost time, found myself in the kitchen listening to vomiting, castigations, and barks coming from outside (which a peek out the window informed me were Jim, Moira, and Panda respectively), lost more time, sat beside Ruth for a while insisting that Moira was the real poet of the household (Moira was an oral storyteller, I maintained, embroidering outlandish dreamscapes—or something like that), until I noticed Dekker standing a few feet a way listening and grinning a little too broadly, so got up and went outside to take a piss and clear my head. Jim was still there, breathing fire, or so it seemed. It was snowing and going to snow, the temperature had dropped, the air was winter-cold, and so his breath came out like smoke. Or no—he was smoking. It was smoke.

  He sat on the chopping block, smoking and going to smoke, with Moira no longer in sight, but Panda spent at his feet. There Jim was.

  And here I am, back in now.

  I pee discreetly before preparing to say hello, but don’t have time to say hello because this is where Charles Slaughter comes in. Comes out, that is. I see him and think through my haze that there is something I should have been keeping on top of tonight. What was it again? I meant to be paying attention to something. Todd. He should be here. We haven’t talked since I walked away from his proffered palm. I have a feeling I shouldn’t keep walking away from Todd like that. And Slaughter—what about him? He keeps lurching out of place. The universe and I, we pin him neatly down under headings like “friend,” and “sane”—he rips himself off the page and blunders off, headingless, till we can pin him down again.

  Then Todd does appear, almost as if I have invoked his stubby presence, which materializes in the doorway just as Slaughter is approaching the chopping block. Jim turns, chucking his cigarette into the night, and sees me standing behind him apparently playing with my groin as I tuck myself in. He sets his lips for a bemused comment, but is interrupted when Charles shoves him off the stump.

  “Hey, man,” Smiley calls to Slaughter.

  “Well—” says Jim from the ground, as if collecting his thoughts.

  Slaughter kicks Jim.

  You weren’t supposed to hear that, man, Todd is in the middle of saying—this drowns out any further sound Jim might have made.

  Jim rolls away fast, like a tumbleweed. Slaughter takes a step forward and, get this: Todd—Todd hurls himself onto Slaughter’s back.

  And Panda’s gone. Panda’s lost it. Panda all but turns himself inside out. He shrieks and capers.

  Todd goes flying and rolls away in awkward imitation of Jim. Slaughter takes another step forward and I am yelling Charles, Charles Slaughter, Chuck you stop right fucking now as Panda yells a crazed-dog version of the same thing. Jim has gotten to his feet and now hunkers on the other side of the yard, monkey arms a-dangle at his sides. He’s not bothering to protest or demand an explanation. He’s putting everything he has into being ready.

  “Ugfh,” says Todd from the ground as Slaughter takes another step away from him, toward Jim. Jim moves slightly to the side. Soon they will be circling each other like gladiators.

  “Slaughter, Slaughter, look at me,” I’m yelling. Slaughter takes another step forward. “Look at me you—you goddamn ape!”

  Slaughter takes another step forward, so I yell louder. I yell and yell—variations of the above. I force the words into higher decibels with every step he takes. My voice scrapes away at my throat like a harrow, but I keep yelling, I keep screaming. What else can I do?

  Until finally Slaughter turns his head. He turns to me, the universe slows, and the five of us seem to hang in time, like planets across the void. Even Panda goes quiet, haunches trembling.

  37.

  RING, RING.

  Ring, ring.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring.

  Oh, why.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring—

  “Hello!”

  “Larry?”

  “Yes!”

  “I’m sorry. Were you … just getting up?”

  I look up at my kitchen clock. It’s one in the afternoon. I am just getting up.

  “No, no, no, no. No. I was doing something in the bathroom.”

  “Ah.”

  “Having a shower!”

  “I see.”

  And then I recognize the voice. My body unclenches and drops onto the couch.

  “Oh my gosh. Hi, Dermot.”

  “Hi,” he laughs—slightly. “You know, I can call back.”

  “No!”

  “No?”

  “I mean—I’m sorry. I am just getting up, actually, I lied.”

  “I can call back,” says Schofield again.

  “No, it’s great to talk to you. Sorry, I’m just all fogged up.”

  I scratch. I’m cold—the temperature has dropped to a ridiculous degree over the weekend. It’s going to snow again—you can taste the crystal in the air. I’m naked. I reach behind me and pull at the afghan draped across the back of my couch. It’s an identical pattern to the one in Janet’s apartment, only composed of man-colours like black and green. Crocheted by my grandmother’s own two grudging hands.

  “I just found your letter in my mailbox this morning, Larry, and I had some time, thought I might as well give you a call,” says Dermot. “The poems were great, by the way.”

  I’m warm.

  “The poems?”

  “The ghazals? A bit unorthodox in terms of some of the content, strictly speaking. But some compelling stuff. There’s an energy there.”

  “I wrote them all in one afternoon,” I tell him.

  “Is that right?”

  “I wrote sixteen of them! I can send you the rest if you—”

  “Well, I’d encourage you to send them into Re:Strain, eventually, yes. And, my goodness, if you have sixteen of them, don’t hesitate to shop them around, Larry, you won’t hurt my feelings. We’d like to publish one or two from this batch if that’s all right with you. As long as the editorial board okays it.”

  “Don’t let Joanne read them.”

  Dermot laughs. “I have some sway with Joanne, Larry, I wouldn’t worry.”

  “Which ones,” I ask. “Which ones do you want to publish?”

  “Well, I very much like the ones about the wax museum.”

  “The Hollywood Horrors?”

  “Yes. Don’t tell me that’s a r
eal place.”

  “It is! In Summerside! You never went when you were there?”

  “I must have missed that,” Dermot confesses.

  I lay back on the couch. “What did you like about them?” I can’t stop myself from asking.

  Dermot chuckles, hearing the loopy joy in my voice. “Well, they have a certain vividness, I think. They really evoke the notion of childhood as a kind of Gothic landscape. This wax museum, it’s a great metaphor. The intermingling of glamour with the grotesque. Hollywood Horrors.”

  “I didn’t even send you all the poems I wrote about it.”

  “I can see it carrying a whole book,” says Dermot. “You should think about that.”

  I don’t answer him. I’m thinking about that.

  “Surely,” ventures Schofield after a while, “Jim has told you something similar? You mentioned Jim’s been overseeing the work?”

  “Jim,” I repeat, and have to pause because it’s the first time I’ve spoken Jim today, and the word still brings on pain.

  Another Friday. We all sit staring into the void of the blackboard. There was no notice on the door. Dekker hasn’t yet come bustling in to substitute.

  Fifteen minutes, we’re still sitting. Everyone’s pre-class conversations have long since died to silence.

  “You know,” someone announces in back, “to hell with this.” He scrapes his chair, and walks out. A couple of people follow after a moment.

  Another few minutes, and the class has nearly emptied itself except for the four of us.

  Sherrie says, “We should call. We should call and see how he is. Has anyone spoken to him since Friday night?”

  I stayed overnight but don’t feel like telling anybody this. I don’t feel like describing the Arsenault household in the scarred morning light.

  “I thought you said he was okay,” says Claude, turning around. His lips are still pretty swollen. He kind of looks like Mick Jagger.

  “He was—he wasn’t hurt at all,” Todd hurries to assure him. “Chuck only shoved him a couple of times.”

  Todd’s voice is loud. It echoes in the almost empty classroom. He looks over at me like a dog desperate for a pat.