Every Exquisite Thing

by Matthew Quick

  During the fourth session, proving that she actually read Booker’s masterpiece, June asks which of Booker’s characters I most identify with, saying, “Wrigley? The elementary school kids who spun the turtle around with sticks? One of the twins? The faceless masses of classmates? The teachers? The parents? Or maybe could it be—”

  “Unproductive Ted,” I say with great assuredness. “I’m the turtle.”

  “Which makes Alex your Wrigley.”

  “He’d certainly say so. He tried very hard to emulate his favorite fictional hero.”

  “So why does Unproductive Ted bite Wrigley? If you’re the turtle, certainly you can tell me.”

  I hadn’t really thought much about that before.

  And I’m not really sure I’m comfortable with how this metaphor is playing out.

  At the end of the novel, Unproductive Ted is dizzy and disoriented, yes, but maybe it’s because he can’t tell the difference between the little boys who terrorize him and Wrigley, who terrorizes the little boys.

  Maybe after so many bad experiences with humans, a hand is simply a hand.

  “Are you trying to say that Alex is no better than the boys who use violence to get what they want?” I say to June. “I already know that, okay? I’m not a fucking idiot.”

  I’ve become quite fond of cursing.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  “But how do you feel? You as Unproductive Ted. Unproductive Nanette, if you will. Your intelligence is not in question today. But your feelings—those are a bit more nebulous, to me at least.”

  Nebulous.

  I think of myself as some hazy, distant galaxy stretched across the night sky and then say, “Like I’ve been spun around on the back of my shell for too many years. I feel positively dizzy. As if life is a blur and the merry-go-round keeps spinning faster and faster. Sometimes it’s hard for me to hang on to the horse or pole. And I want to bite just about every fucking hand that extends toward me because I can no longer tell which are good and which are bad. Maybe like there isn’t good and bad anymore. Do you even know what I mean?”

  This leads to a discussion about all the many people in my life—most of whom have not taken my feelings into consideration or “have failed to realize that underneath her ‘shell,’ Nanette is very vulnerable.” Which may be confusing to many because my “shell” has historically proved to be very strong. It protected me for eighteen years before it failed. June says, “Eighteen years is a long time. It’s your whole life. And maybe everyone just started to take that shell for granted. How could they have known that it wouldn’t hold forever? I’m not sure you even knew. Did you?”

  I didn’t know. I laugh at that little epiphany. It feels good to laugh. I like the way June has turned my failure into an accomplishment using nothing more than words. At least she gives me credit for surviving the first eighteen years of my life. Credit lessens my desire to say fuck so much.

  June suggests “something that may seem a little weird at first.” I’m asked to kill the I in my mind. At first, I think she’s suggesting that there is an eye or eyeball in my brain, but it turns out that June means the first-person I.

  “We live in our heads, Nanette, which can be very scary places. We forget that we are not just an I, but a she and a you, too. We forget to see ourselves as others see us. For some people, the problem is narcissism—meaning they are selfish, too self-absorbed. But I think that your problem is that you are too selfless. You care about the needs of others more than you care about your own needs. You are strong for them even when it’s a detriment to your own well-being.”

  “Then why would I have quit the soccer team when I was the leading scorer and everyone else wanted me to play?” I say, perhaps a bit too proudly. “I absolutely did that for myself.”

  “Maybe you only quit when you were too exhausted to continue? Maybe you did what everyone else wanted you to do for so long by playing and scoring goals—you were so strong for others—that you finally just reached a breaking point and, well, you broke. And it was then—and only then—that you were able to quit. It wasn’t really a choice in the end, but like refusing to pay for your friends’ lunches only when you have run out of money. The cursing. The middle fingers in the air. Hardly evidence of a rational, measured decision. Much like Alex, who just started punching people. Do you find it odd that he gets himself sent to reform school just as soon as your relationship is blossoming? Just when you are about to end the mystery of The Bubblegum Reaper? A little self-sabotaging, maybe?”

  It makes sense.

  “And Booker, who published a masterpiece—got good reviews even in major papers—and then pulled his book from the shelves just a year later,” I say. “Same thing. So why am I pulled toward men who do this?”

  “Maybe because you do it, too? Quitting soccer just before you are about to set a record. Deciding not to go to college just when you are about to receive a scholarship. See a pattern?”

  I don’t like the pattern.

  And I sort of hate June for seeing it first.

  I feel like a big, dumb asshole.

  “I want you to do an experiment,” June says, and then suggests that I should begin to think of myself in the third person—not as an I but as a she. “Nanette is very good at making decisions for other people. She clearly sees that Alex shouldn’t have done what he did. But when she is deciding for the first-person I, Nanette, she is much less sure. So why not live in the third person for a bit and see how that goes? See yourself as someone else. Refer to yourself as Nanette in your inner monologue—the words that run through your brain all day. Kill the I. Maybe begin to keep a diary in the third person, too. You are no longer me or I. You are she or Nanette.”

  “I’ll give it a try, I guess. Or should I say, she’ll give it a try?”

  “Nanette will give it a try,” June says. “Say it.”

  Why the fuck not? I think, and then say, “Nanette will give it a try. Nanette will now exist in third person. Nanette O’Hare will only speak in third person. Nanette O’Hare will annoy the hell out of everyone by speaking in third person, which, come to think of it, just may give her great pleasure.”

  June smiles. “Let’s see where it takes us.”

  20

  Love Has Not Necessarily Won

  Booker does not call Nanette’s iPhone, which greatly disappoints her, because she calls him several times, leaving detailed messages and her phone number just in case he has misplaced it.

  When she knocks, Booker does not answer.

  His exterior doors are locked; she knows because she tried the knobs of all three.

  He is inside.

  She hears him walk quickly away from the windows.

  His hardwood floors squeak.

  His lights turn on and off at night.

  Oliver calls many times, but Nanette doesn’t answer.

  She does not return the boy’s messages.

  She realizes that she is now Oliver’s Booker.

  Nanette is a hypocrite, as she expects Booker to be there when she wants him to be there, yet she resents young Oliver for wanting the same thing from her.

  June says it’s okay for Nanette to take care of herself before she begins taking care of other people again. She also suggests that Booker might be doing the same. Everyone needs to take care of him-or herself first. Nanette needs to work on not only taking care of herself but also allowing others to do the same. June suggests that Nanette’s parents need to work on this, too, and that maybe the behavior is learned, or passed down.

  Her father moves back into their home and resumes sleeping in the same room as her mother, which seems like a good sign if only because it is one less thing that’s different. Stability. It’s certainly ironic how much this rebel loves that word right now. Nanette knows it doesn’t mean her mother and father love each other again—love has not necessarily won—but she likes having her father home. He no longer as
ks her about college or soccer or the stock market, and Nanette is grateful for that. However, Nanette wonders if this means her father is not taking care of himself, but sacrificing his own mental health for his daughter. Isn’t that what good parents do? Nanette wonders, but she cannot completely convince herself that this is okay. If her father were a true rebel, he’d be long gone.

  Nanette asks if the three of them could play a nightly game of Scrabble, and to her great surprise, her parents agree.

  They play every night for weeks—spelling words, adding up points, finding ways to reach the colored squares that boost their scores, teaching one another by example the good two-letter words to play, words in the Scrabble dictionary that no one ever uses in real life but come in handy when trying to fit letters onto the board, such as za, jo, xi, qi, ka, li, and so forth.

  Nanette wonders if she is the real-life equivalent of such a word.

  She comes in handy when her mom and dad want to feel like they are part of a family, but Nanette can’t find her use outside their metaphorical Scrabble board, which is sort of falling apart lately anyway and would surely have called it quits if it weren’t for her breakdown.

  Nanette wonders about the timing.

  Since Alex used to attend a different high school, no one at Nanette’s school knows anything about what Alex did. And since she already alienated herself from the soccer team and everyone else at her school, she mostly floats through the hallways unnoticed, like a ghost.

  If the boys are coughing into their hands and saying “muff diver” whenever she walks by, Nanette no longer hears them.

  June says that detachment can be healthy.

  That’s what she calls the ghostlike feeling: detachment.

  With wide eyes and hopeful voices, Nanette’s mother and father ask her a lot of questions every night.

  What happened in school today? How do you feel? Would you like to discuss anything? What time would you like to play Scrabble? Is there anything you’d like us to help you with? Have you thought about next year at all? Not that we’re trying to rush you, because we aren’t. We don’t necessarily mean college, we just mean the future in general. We’d like to talk about that whenever you are ready. But you have time.

  Nanette answers these questions as vaguely as possible, well, except for the Scrabble one—the family always plays at 8:00 PM, which is the best part of her day—but she honestly is glad that her parents are asking questions. Mom and Dad are being gentle again, which is pleasant. They seem genuinely interested and much less manipulative. June has impressed upon them the seriousness of Nanette’s situation. She wishes that her family had found June a long time ago.

  Nanette also wishes her family began playing Scrabble on a regular basis years ago.

  She likes arranging letters on a board, crossing words with her parents, reaching into the velvety letter bag and wondering what she will pull out—each grab is a fresh chance and makes her feel like a spelling wizard reaching into a magic hat.

  Scrabble.

  It’s what the O’Hares now have.

  Sometimes Nanette volunteers to put the game away, but when her parents leave the room, she just stares at the crossword puzzle that her family has made and thinks of snowflakes, wondering if any two finished Scrabble boards are ever exactly the same.

  Nanette appreciates the visual representation of her family and the time they spent together, the words that they each picked—nouns and verbs and prepositions and adjectives and conjunctions and adverbs and pronouns—that only they, the O’Hares, would have chosen. She takes a long mental time-exposure and then drops the letters back into the pouch, folds the board, returns the box to the closet, and begins to look forward to the next night’s round.

  21

  What Put Her in the Rocket Ship Headed to Wherever She Is Now

  After six or so weeks of ghost-floating through school, ten therapy sessions, and approximately forty-two games of Scrabble, Nanette finally feels well enough to visit Oliver. She does this in mid-December. There is a thin layer of crunchy snow on the ground when she knocks on Oliver’s bedroom window.

  “Alex?” he says as the blind flies up, and then Nanette watches his face fall in disappointment. He opens the window nonetheless, and Nanette climbs through.

  “Have you heard from him?” Oliver asks.

  Nanette shakes her head and says, “You?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Pretty boys leaving you alone?” Nanette uses the term pretty boys only because she doesn’t know how else to refer to Oliver’s tormentors.

  “Yeah. We all had to go to these meetings where we sat in a circle and shared our feelings with the school psychologist, and now the pretty boys are being overly nice to me.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “I don’t know. Every day, the pretty boys ask how I’m doing and if anyone is messing around with me—as if anyone else would torture me. It’s kind of weird and I think I liked it better when they were just mean to me all the time, as strange as that sounds. Their being nice is like eternally having a boa constrictor around your neck and pretending that it will never choke you to death. Maybe it’s like the school psychologist is feeding the boa live rats to keep it full, and so if he ever stops… I really don’t know.”

  Nanette nods and lets Oliver finish.

  “The school psychologist, Dr. Fricke, also brings me into his office once a week for a solo visit, and it’s always during science class, which I like the best. Why should I have to miss my favorite class just because I am a victim? It’s like they win twice.”

  Nanette nods again.

  “Dr. Fricke asks me a lot of questions that seem pointless, like ‘Do you miss your father?’ and ‘Is your mother taking care of you?’ and ‘Are you ever sad?’ I tell him I want to be in science class because I like that period best, but he says he has a strict schedule, which makes me think that he really doesn’t care all that much about my feelings despite what he keeps saying.”

  Nanette is surprised that Oliver is just picking up where they left off without her having to explain where she’s been or apologize for blowing him off, but she’s grateful, too. She doesn’t want to rehash everything. And she wasn’t planning on asking for forgiveness, either, especially since she didn’t do anything wrong. She instead tells young Oliver all about June and the roundabout-yet-helpful conversations she has in the fourteenth-floor office high in the Philadelphia sky and how Nanette is now living in third person, which she actually enjoys.

  “What about school?” Oliver asks. So she explains her concept of ghost floating, and how speaking in third person keeps everyone at bay by freaking them out. And Oliver says, “Yeah, that’s me, too. Same strategy. Although I call it Mr. Invisible. And no third person.”

  Nanette says that she was recently forced to attend a pep rally for the basketball teams—that the whole school shut down and gathered in the gym so that everyone could worship the few students who were best at dribbling balls and throwing them through a hoop. She asks Oliver how that came to be—how did high schools all over the country decide that athletes needed pep rallies to boost their pride and self-esteem? Isn’t it enough that people actually pay money to see these kids compete in games? That people cheer from the sidelines? And they get their names in the paper? Why don’t they take all the lonely ghost floaters in every high school and have a pep rally for them? Make all the most popular kids in school sit on the hard bleachers and cheer until their asses hurt like hell?

  “Here is Nanette O’Hare, who used to play for the girls’ soccer team but now does nothing because she is depressed and seeing a therapist. Let’s give her a big round of applause! Lend her some of your pep because she really needs it! Band members, please begin to play a corny orchestral version of a popular rap song while Nanette stands at the center of the gym and waves to all the people who are not depressed! Let’s really pep her up! Pep the fuck out of her!”

  Oliver laughs but in a sad, uncomfortable sort o
f way, and Nanette realizes that she is being self-piteous, if that is even a word.

  “So what have you been up to?” Oliver asks. “Have you been hanging out with Booker?”

  “He’s not returning Nanette’s phone calls at the present moment, which has lasted for months. Won’t let Nanette into his house, either. He pretends he’s not home whenever she goes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of Alex. His punching that dad really freaked Booker out. Apparently other kids who have read The Bubblegum Reaper have reacted violently before. It’s somewhat of a trend.”

  “But you and I haven’t reacted violently,” Oliver says. “And we’ve read the book hundreds of times. I bet most people who read the book don’t react violently. It’s just that we don’t ever hear about those people, because they are law-abiding citizens, maybe.”

  “That’s true,” Nanette says, and thinks about how Oliver seems wise beyond his years.

  “So why is Booker punishing the nonviolent people who really get the book?”

  “June, Nanette’s therapist, says he’s self-sabotaging, like Alex did. It means they do things to ensure that they fail so they don’t have to deal with the consequences and responsibilities of success. Nanette’s starting to think that Booker’s kind of fucked in the head, truth be told. Just like Wrigley.”

  Oliver makes a sad face, and Nanette can’t tell if he’s disappointed that she’s saying “fuck” so much or if he’s sad for Booker, who is fucked up in the head. Then Oliver says, “Have you gone back to Sandra Tackett’s?”