Demons in the Spring

by Joe Meno

  “I don’t see how your proposal for economic sanctions against non-Communist countries is even legal,” Nigel, a freckled senior and the secretary of the Model UN, is saying.

  “Oh, believe me, it is,” Margaret responds. “I spent all last night on the Internet. It is now time for the capitalist nations to bow to the power of post-isolationist China. We will not wage war with bullets. We will wage war with loans that none of you will ever be able to repay.”

  “Well played,” says Gwen, the French ambassador. “But aren’t you concerned about possible military reprisals?”

  “Not with the largest army in the world. Not to mention a few nuclear bombs. In my estimation, China is pretty much invincible.”

  “Unless it’s against South Korea,” says Walt, the South Korean ambassador. “We invented tae kwon do as a way to attack Chinese soldiers mounted on horses. We could fight them to a standstill in hand-to-hand combat. Plus, we have the U.S.’s support. Do you have any idea how many U.S. military bases are stationed in South Korea? Thousands. Like a hundred thousand.”

  “I don’t know if all of that is entirely accurate,” Mr. Albee interrupts. He glances about the room, all of their faces flush, Margaret squinting victoriously across the table. A vote is being raised. Someone seconds someone else’s motion. Someone says something completely serious about world affairs in a voice that is wracked with the crackle of prepubescence.

  In moments like this, Mr. Albee could announce that he is in love with each and every one of them. In moments like this, he could gather them up, like a bouquet of precious crystal animals, like a bundle of brilliant Fabergé eggs, and run off, hiding them all in his coat.

  In other quarters of his personal life, Mr. Albee is not so very lucky. In his apartment, alone, Mr. Albee tries to dial up a personal or two from the back of some free newspapers. He tries gay chat lines. He searches websites, he looks in the back of awful porno magazines for a variety of telephone numbers, but he does not find any joy in the conversations he has. When those gay men—who invariably sound much older, much lonelier, much more desperate than their beatific photos in the glossy advertisements (young, tinted, eyes glowing brightly like Jupiter, coy looks on soft faces)—when those men speak, their voices slow, dumb, without any kind of resonance, without any kind of melody, when they begin to mutter their stupid, obvious words, their unkind phrases, their tragic euphemisms which Mr. Albee so hates to hear, when their dialogue is no longer bold, no longer one of ideas and ideals, when the other man’s tongue and teeth accidentally click too loudly against the phone’s mouthpiece, Mr. Albee will thank the other gentleman for his time and quickly hang up. It is not the fast heartbeat and nervous flurry of desire he is after. It is not the awkward mumbling, the imprecise heavy breathing, the fumbling hands against fumbling hands. It is hope. It is naïveté. It is the tremor of unseen possibility. What he most wants in the world is to hear Jessica Chin point out why she believes colonial deconstruction is responsible for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, her large eyes narrowed with conviction. What he fantasizes about has little or nothing to do with the complexion, firmness, or nearness of anyone else’s flesh. What he would like to have is Matthew Ankle standing beside his bed each evening, reciting the German national anthem, which the scruffy-haired boy has memorized in his spare time, in the few moments when he is not studying for his AP classes and not winning It Is Romance another fencing match. What Mr. Albee most desires is for the Model UN, the entire group of them, all eleven, even the scoundrel Quinn, to be there waiting when he gets home each dreary night, and there again when he awakes in the morning, all of them politely debating one another with their resplendent voices, their hearts—which have not yet been broken by anything more serious than an unrequited crush or an unfair grade—quietly aglow with everything.

  What Mr. Albee finds when he gets home tonight is not a chorus of fresh-faced future ambassadors, however. It is only a phone message from Barry, his ex: I hope you haven’t forgotten how to have fun without me. I hope you’re getting out. I’m worried about you. Give me a call when you get a chance. Here’s my new number. Mr. Albee quickly erases the message without writing down Barry’s new number. He looks up and stares at the odd space above the black sofa where an enormous Henri Rousseau print—a scene depicting a tiger wrestling a water buffalo—used to hang. It has gone with Barry. Now there is only the dusty outline of its frame and a perfect white space within its rectangular shape. Mr. Albee decides he has always hated that print and stands, staring at the blank spot on the wall, suddenly pleased at its absence, imagining the perfect loneliness of that unsullied space. The empty rectangle makes him think of his wards. Where are they right now? he wonders, almost out loud, staring at that blankness. What are they doing, for the first time, this very night?

  That fall, the Model UN begins to meet twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, at Mr. Albee’s request. He mentions it vaguely, as if it is an after-thought, at the end of a meeting one afternoon. He has already made permission slips. In the corner of the mimeographed sheet is an illustration of the United Nations building, its narrow, square shape flanked by a curve of indecipherable flags. The illustration is something Mr. Albee has spent an entire weekend perfecting. There are twelve flags in front of the drawing of the UN building he has made, one for each of the students and one representing him. No one seems to notice this, which is fine, but the twelve flags are there if anyone cares to look. The children do not question the addition of a second meeting. Although it is odd that an extracurricular activity like Model UN should meet more than once a week, all of the students involved, all but Quinn Anderson, of course, will return with signed permission slips from happy parents thanking Mr. Albee for his support and ongoing commitment to their children. One such parent, a district judge, Emily Banner’s eloquent father, writes this line at the bottom of the mimeographed page in fussy penmanship: You, dear sir, are an example of the most wonderful kind of teacher, the likes most of us as students never had the chance to have. Let your rapturously intelligent heart beat on, let it beat bravely on. In the pale gray fatality of the teacher’s lounge, Mr. Albee smokes a Dunhill and stares at the handwritten note, almost crying. He is so overcome with conflicted emotions, mostly joy and guilt, that he cancels the meeting of the Model UN the very next day. Canceling the Model UN, however, causes Mr. Albee to miss his wards’ vibrant voices, their gleaming eyes, their foreheads radiant without creases, their profiles alight with both intelligence and charity, which, in turn, causes so much anxiety that Mr. Albee goes out the very next day and buys an appropriate regional accoutrement for each member of the Model UN.

  At the next week’s meeting, Mr. Albee presents the children with his tokens of esteem: For Margaret Hatch, there is a Communist’s gray worker’s hat; for Hector, a beautifully woven belt; for Sasha, a black bowler; and for Quinn Anderson, a furry Ushanka cap. Quinn, predictably, refuses to wear his. It sits in front of him like a wounded animal as he glares suspiciously at its square shape, then up to Mr. Albee’s pallid face, back and forth, back and forth again.

  For most of this particular meeting, Pablo, the ambassador of Mexico, in a festive sombrero, has the floor. He is accusing Jerome, Spain, who is now wearing a dashing black neckerchief, of iniquities and persecution during Mexico’s colonial period. He is asking for compensation. He wants Spain to build a new bridge somewhere within the capital city. He wants the bridge to be made out of gold and wants it to be engraved with an enormous apology. The rest of the junior ambassadors, of course, vote in Mexico’s favor. Jerome concedes and imaginary plans are quickly drawn up.

  At the end of their meeting that day, Mr. Albee suggests they all take a picture together with their new garments. Gwen, who represents the nation of France and who happens to be junior editor of the high school year book, always carries her Polaroid with her. She excitedly poses the group. She takes off her beret and then snaps a shot. Each of the children is wearing their regional garment, even Quinn,
who sneers, then begins laughing as soon as Gwen takes the picture. As the photograph finishes developing, the Model UN stands staring down at it. In the photo, Mr. Albee is incandescent. He does not look like a man in his late thirties. His face, paunchy, bruised, the color of gooseflesh, is beaming. His thinning hair looks coiffed. He is as hopeful, as spirited, as an adolescent boy. “I’ll get copies made,” Mr. Albee promises, and places the photo inside his suit vest pocket, close to the radiating circumference of his beating heart.

  Once again, Mr. Albee receives a message on his answering machine from Barry: I stopped by but you weren’t home. Are you actually seeing someone? Just wanted to make sure everything is okay. Give me a call when you get a couple of seconds. Mr. Albee erases the second message and stares at the blank space on the wall—the ghostly space of the departed Rousseau print—then reaches into his vest. He finds a thumbtack in his utility drawer and tacks the Polaroid of the Model UN in place, directly in the center of the empty white space.

  When he wakes in the morning and stares at the photo in his pajamas, Mr. Albee is deeply shamed. He untacks the photo, looks at it once more—all eleven of their faces brilliantly glowing—then places it in the trash. He stands there, over the garbage can, for an hour or more, staring downward, his eyes gleaming with tears.

  On the following Wednesday, the Model UN takes a strange field trip to the dangerous part of the city. It is Mr. Albee’s plan that they should all be killed together. It is the only way he can think to resolve this very dire situation. Under the feigned assignment of an activity which he has invented, “Understanding Foreign Relations as It Pertains to Contemporary Life in Major American Cities,” Mr. Albee borrows a Ford Econoline from the now-defunct badminton club, and drives the children downtown. Somewhere on the west side, across the street from a crumbling passel of housing projects, where Gwen takes a wonderful photo of three black girls jumping rope, double-dutch style, which she will use for a photo essay in this year’s yearbook to be titled “The Most Beautiful Kind of Poverty,” Mr. Albee informs his students that the van will not start. All of the children have cell phones, but Mr. Albee asks them to please be patient. He pretends to turn the key over and over again, but the engine does not roar to life. Quinn Anderson, sitting in the last row of the enormous van, rolls his eyes. Mr. Albee can see the shape of his pale face sneering from back there in the farthest seat. He pretends to turn the key again, feeling the surly boy watching him all too closely.

  “This is bullshit,” Quinn mutters audibly. “I have homework I got to do. I’m calling my mom.”

  “Only a moment more!” Mr. Albee shouts, terrified by the thought of having to meet Quinn’s mother, or worse, the boy’s certainly churlish father. Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Albee suddenly sees two young black men appear, very interested in the stranded van; they wear shapeless hooded sweatshirts, their gold teeth are frowning, and their earrings glimmer with diamond-studded light. Together, they walk over to the driver’s side where Mr. Albee is seated and tap on the window. Mr. Albee closes his eyes and hopes it will all be brief. He hopes he will faint before anything truly violent happens. Most of all, he hopes that they will kill him before they kill the children.

  “Open your window,” one of the men says. His face is wide and pockmarked, though quite handsome as well.

  Immediately, Mr. Albee places his hand over his ears. He imagines death will be like the end of a wonderful evening at the opera, when the baroque bronze doors are slowly opened by the bedecked ushers and the gentry—noisy, tired, overexcited—come hurtling out, their best coats and furs lightly brushing each other with the static of unfamiliarity, the opera’s musical reprise still hanging in the air, repeated here and there by a husband or wife helping their spouse out into the cold, the audience, having seen what there was to see, finally crossing into the dark night to simply return home, no blood, no pain, only a kind of sadness, a kind of disappointment at the songs that weren’t sung, at the actors’ kisses that weren’t actually kissed, at the scenes that were unknowingly cut.

  The men outside are pounding on the window now, their gold teeth cruel in the half-light of the streetlamps. Sasha has begun to scream. Gwen is praying. Nigel and Pablo and Matthew and Hector are trying not to look terrified, but their trembling lips and uncharacteristic silence have already begun to betray them.

  “Open the window, man!” the hoodlum outside is shouting. “Just open the window!”

  Mr. Albee imagines Margaret Hatch disemboweled, her skirt undone. He sees Jerome bleeding from his large hairy ears. He sees Jennifer Chin lying lifeless in a dark alley somewhere, her math homework blowing up and away from her still body, the lined notebook paper rising and falling like a specter searching for some sort of solace in the echoless night. Mr. Albee finds the key is still in the ignition, still in his hand, and gives it a turn, pulling the gearshift into drive, speeding off, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision, confidently blowing a red light. The children all happily cheer, clapping their advisor on the shoulder, hugging one another without embarrassment. Margaret Hatch, in a moment of true inspiration, starts singing “The Internationale.” The rest of the children listen thoughtfully for a while, then slowly, one after the other, they begin to sing along.

  The Model UN will not meet for many weeks after that. Mr. Albee informs the children that he has personal business he must attend to. He invents a sickly mother with a mysterious fatal disease, something akin to shingles. The children do not complain or put up a fuss. Quinn Anderson, at the end of their last meeting, offers his condolences, quoting Tolstoy: In spite of death, he felt the need for life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the threat of despair, had become still stronger and purer.

  Mr. Albee stares at the pale boy, strangely moved.

  “That’s from Anna Karenina,” Quinn adds.

  “I didn’t know that,” Mr. Albee says.

  “It’s one of the most important books in Russian literature.”

  A flame of gratitude leaps along Mr. Albee’s white cheeks. He watches the boy exit, knowing his life will never be more full than it is at this moment, dreaming of a brain aneurism to end it all right then and there.

  * * *

  Once again, Mr. Albee returns to the gay chat lines. He reimmerses himself in the fraudulence of pornography. He revisits many singles bar, he spends hours in disreputable bathhouses, he buys a membership to a gym. When none of this works, when Mr. Albee finds himself sobbing on the treadmill machine, when a beautifully burly accountant named Gary says he doesn’t know anything about the war in Darfur, when the Model UN advisor discovers he is circling the high school alone in his Toyota Corolla at 4 in the morning, he finally gives in. The Model UN will have to resume its meetings. An announcement is read at lunch and all eleven of the Model UN show up promptly at 3 o’clock that Wednesday afternoon. Nigel has drawn up an agenda and he and Margaret Hatch are already arguing about something.

  On and on, into a contented winter, then into a delightful spring, Mr. Albee and the student ambassadors of the Model UN meet unfailingly, twice each week. Near the end of the school year, the students are all invited to the National Model United Nations summit in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Mr. Albee does what he did not think he could do. He purposely books a single hotel room for himself and his wards: one hotel room and only one hotel room. After a chartered bus ride of several hours, the students are exhausted and giddy. They stand anxiously in the motel’s chintzy lobby, all flecks of gold and mirrored glass. When Mr. Albee explains that there has been some kind of mistake, that there is only one room and that all of the other hotels in town are booked, that the eleven of them are going to have to share a room, the students do not immediately disapprove. Or he does not believe they immediately disapprove. Standing in the hotel lobby, gathered about their suitcases and traveling bags, some of the children groan a little while others sigh.

  Quinn Anderson shakes his head, crossing his eyebrows, muttering
. “What bullshit. My parents paid sixty dollars for this trip.”

  Gwen, always the optimist, so much the bon vivant, announces that she thinks it’s a wonderful opportunity. “It will be like a slumber party,” she says. “We’ll be able to talk all night and really come to an understanding with each other.”

  Some of the children agree, while the rest are unsure, staring down at their belongings in silence. Once inside the luxurious room, however, all of the Model UN representatives are quite happy. They fling their clothes about, put their sleeping bags and blankets on the floor, and ask if they can order room service. Mr. Albee, in a flush of emotion, quietly consents. The girls do each other’s hair. The boys sit watching the girls and wonder if, during the night, there will be a secret entanglement of unfamiliar limbs. All together in their nightgowns and pajamas, the children sit in a half-circle and begin to tell each other secrets: Jennifer Chin has a birthmark in the shape of a boat on her stomach. Hector was the one who pulled the fire alarm last year. Jerome fears he might be gay. Margaret Hatch doesn’t know how to swim. Nigel has eczema. Pablo is failing Latin. Gwen had a twin who died when she was three. Matthew doesn’t know who his real father is. Quinn is afraid of heights. Suddenly, when it is her turn, Sasha begins to cry. No one knows why. She tells them, holding her hands over her eyes, that she’s just so happy to be here, right now. She says she’s the luckiest person in the world to have friends like this. Mr. Albee feels like he is going to die all of a sudden. He does not know if he should pull himself to his feet and hurry out the door, out into the street, away, away, or if he should tell them, if he should just say it to them now, here, while they are all together: I love you. I am in love with all of you.