In the Dead of Summer

by Gillian Roberts

  “Please, Ms. P., I can’t say anything else. If I could, I would have already. And I’m in big trouble with Miss Fellows. She has this rule that she drops you a half grade for every tardy. No exceptions.”

  I envy the self-confidence of despots. Rules with no exceptions, no room for human error or happenstance. A part of me wants to be like that, wielding my pathetic power for all its worth. But the other parts of me are too lazy or rebellious or democratic.

  “I need a good grade in Modern History,” Miles said. “I don’t want to take it during the winter. I want to be in the school play and it takes up a whole lot of time. That’s why I’m here, mostly.”

  Grilling him was getting me nowhere, even though I was still sure he knew something important. “I’ll take you to Miss Fellows and explain,” I said. I thought of Aldis’s accusations again. “Miles, did she…did you ever hear anything funny about Mr. Five’s noontime sessions?”

  “Funny ha-ha?”

  “No…odd.”

  Miles stared at me with laser intensity, then shook his head. “Don’t know a thing about them.”

  I returned to the subject at hand, the one I was sure wasn’t pure speculation. “One more try—when I saw April’s name, and those allusions to guilt, I was sure you were trying to tell me what had happened, or who was responsible.”

  “And you were right. Correct.” He tilted his head, waiting for more, but that’s what I had. April. Woody. Present guilt. Romeo and Juliet. A mess.

  Speaking of messes, I had a class upstairs, undoubtedly raising hell in my undespotic absence. “Okay, let’s go face Miss Fellows,” I said. “By the way, are you enjoying her class?” It was a mean-spirited question asked only because I wanted to hear what a rigid bitch she was.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’re doing the Third Reich. You know, the rise of the Nazis. Every old movie you ever saw.”

  “History is interesting stuff,” I murmured. Had I expected Miles to click his heels and give me the secret Nazi handshake? Maybe not that, but I’d have liked a hint that Aldis Fellows was so into her subject matter that she incited her students to reenact fascist history, to sign their papers with eighty-eights. Something subtle like that.

  “Of course, some people say the stuff about the Jews and concentration camps didn’t happen.” Miles sounded considerably more at ease now that he was on his way to where he was supposed to be.

  “Oh, God, Miles, who’s telling you that? Of course it happened. You’re too smart to pay attention to lunatics who deny the Holocaust, aren’t you? It’s history—documented. We’re supposed to learn from it, not say it never happened. Does Miss Fellows say it never happened?”

  He glanced at me sideways and walked up the stairs. “I’m not talking about me. I know the truth. That’s what’s interesting, that some people can actually doubt it happened.” He spoke in a small, rational voice. “I was making conversation.” Trying to placate me. I must have sounded on the verge of hysteria, which was a realistic estimate of which verge I actually was on. All the same, he hadn’t answered my question.

  I tapped twice, then opened Aldis Fellows’s door. Miles turned to me. “Read the poem again,” he whispered. “Not the April part, the other part.”

  “What other part? The Woody part? What do you—”

  “Miles Nye!” Aldis said. “Seriously late.” She raised her wrist with a great flourish and considered an oversized watch. “Seven minutes,” she announced. Then she spotted me and came over, and once I’d explained that I’d detained him and he was quite worried about it, she was forced to flex her rule. Not at all happy about it, either. Her class slouched lower in their seats. Miles had gotten away with something they hadn’t been able to swing. Yet.

  I got to my own classroom nanoseconds before my students had destroyed life on earth as we knew it.

  From then on the afternoon oozed forward, each minute sweating into the next. Luckily, we had an American Playhouse video—the dramatization of a Steinbeck story—to occupy the first hour. Even more luckily, videos do not need the TLC that films used to require. Nothing snapped, blurred, or popped off its sprockets. I zoned all the way out, back to festering about the note this morning, until I realized that the next business of the day was not in the room with us.

  “I’ll be back in two minutes,” I told the class. “I left your job applications in my car.” They were well into couch-potatohood and amenable to anything, as long as it didn’t require effort.

  Outside the room I felt like I had as a kid when the teacher had allowed me the big wooden hall pass and I alone owned deserted corridors, thrilled at not being where I should be.

  The three flights of narrow stairs were, as always, furtively underlit, and it was a relief to get down and out, to step into open space, fresh air, and pure light.

  Except that, in the midst of the afternoon’s dazzle, there were human silhouettes where only my car’s should have been. Hulking, half-bent figures surrounding the vintage Mustang, one bent over the driver’s side door.

  “My car!” I screamed. On automatic, I ran toward them, going to save my baby. Those who would pirate her had their backs to me. Four of them. Too large a contingent for a ’65 Mustang convertible. How the devil did the stupid thieves plan to fit in and ride off? “Help! Police!” Stealing my car in broad daylight! “Hel—”

  I never finished the thought, or even the breath, or got to them. In a fragment of a second the figures spun, arms out, weapons gleaming in the sunshine. Wrenches? Bombs? Guns? It—They—Whatever—took aim, and even as I reflexively screamed, a burst of something alien hit my face. I spat, but it was in my mouth, a poisonous chemical taste, but I couldn’t keep myself silent. I raised my hand to my mouth and screamed again and again, and felt the hot-cold blast hit my arm, then my forehead, my eyes.

  I stopped screaming. I dared not blink and barely breathed. I was blinded, skin pulling and mouth burning, caged in by my own skin, trapped.

  I heard footsteps, but my eyes were sealed shut and I dared not open them—something was running down my forehead. I had no way to know if the men were gone—all of them—or if they were regrouping or circling me.

  I didn’t risk opening my mouth, either. I was afraid to swallow, to let in more of the poison. Couldn’t shape words, call for help, or demand the police. I merely let out the noise I could produce, a thin, tight-lipped wail. My skin was stiffening, getting hard. I was blind, burning, choking, terrified. The alleyway was appallingly silent. I put one arm out and felt the rough surface of the brick back wall, then edged along it until the temperature dropped and the facing turned a corner and I knew I was in the shade of the recessed entry.

  Five steps, I told myself. Somebody will hear you once you get inside. Four steps. I told myself not to think of my assailants smiling among themselves, waiting to pounce again. Three. Don’t panic. Two more steps. Okay, panic, but move. One. I groped until I found the handle, then pushed.

  Help me, help me, I’m blind and poisoned and sprayed with I don’t know what—I said, my lips still held tight. “Mrrree!” I heard myself mewl. “Gleeek!” Wasn’t anybody there? The janitor? Anybody? I cried out. “Deee-iiii?” I heard.

  I sounded like a stray animal. Nobody was going to come.

  Do not panic. Your brain was not sprayed. Use it. Think.

  I was getting good at groping walls, rough cool plaster this time, and I moved to the right. It should be there. Near the framing of the first door. A small box, glass-fronted. Poorly placed, Havermeyer had often lamented. Too accessible. He wanted it where nobody could ever misuse it. Unfortunately, that meant nobody could use it, either.

  I opened the little glass door and pulled, mentally apologizing to the fire company for breaking the law and wasting their time.

  The alarm sounded throughout the building. We’d had a drill the third day of summer school, had shown that we could get ourselves outside within five minutes. Havermeyer had been quite proud. That meant I didn’t have long to wait fo
r the sound of hundreds of feet making their exit.

  Then it hit me. The feet would pound out through the front door. Down the wide, safe, marble front steps. Down and out the first floor onto the street. I was another story down, and at the other end of the building. The back stairs were narrow and wooden. A fire hazard. Not to be used by students.

  I had just arranged my own demise, gotten rid of any possible rescuers. I was too stupid to live.

  But sometimes life is kind to the seriously stupid, because it turned out I was not all alone there in the basement.

  “What’s going on? I heard a—Oh, my God!” A pure, ear-piercing scream that would have shattered crystal, had there been any. “Oh, my—Jesus, Mandy, what—You’re covered in—oh, my God! You’re—oh, God—she’s—you’re—”

  Flora? Flora? “Bluhah?” I said.

  Another scream. I wouldn’t have thought she’d handle shock this way, the way I would, the way mere mortals would. “You’re alive,” she shouted. “Thank God! I thought you were—wait right there—” as if I were likely to race off. “I’ll call for help. Don’t worry, baby, it’s okay now. Things’ll be okay.”

  I doubted that, but I didn’t correct her. It didn’t seem the time to quibble. Besides, I still couldn’t speak.

  *

  In a way, it was lucky I hadn’t known what I looked like, because I would have scared myself right out of my few remaining wits. No wonder the unflappable Flora had flapped. She told me I looked like a corpse, a vampire’s sundae, as if I were dripping gore, as if I’d been exsanguinated.

  Crimson paint, the E.R. doctor said, rather quizzically. I’d been spray-painted, like any other piece of urban architecture.

  Unfortunately, it seemed no easier to remove oil-based graffiti from flesh than it was from the walls of buildings. My skin felt abused, though valuable, like the Sistine Chapel ceiling being slowly cleaned and restored.

  “Thank you,” I said when my mouth and nostrils were refinished.

  “Welcome,” the doctor said in a rough voice.

  “And thank you, Flora. You were my guardian angel, appearing then. What were you doing there?”

  “I needed things for my room. To replace the ruined stuff. Havermeyer said to check out the storeroom.”

  “Then you didn’t quit, after all. I’m really glad. I would have missed you terribly.”

  “Three computers were goners, and a couple of posters and books, but most of it was saved. And Havermeyer said they’d replace the machines. He spent half last night begging for my return. Face it, I’m a twofer, black and female. I provide staff diversity almost single-handedly. Plus, half you idiots don’t know the first thing about computers anyway, so you need me. And the truth is, I need the job. Whatever we say about Havermeyer, he arranges my hours so I can take my courses.”

  The doctor pitty-patted around the tender flesh on the sides of my eyes. Must be hard getting paint out of crow’s-feet.

  “Besides,” Flora said, “I hated myself for backing down. For being hassled into retreat. I’m not giving them that.”

  “How did such a thing happen?” the doctor asked. He sounded seriously perturbed, perhaps feeling he hadn’t gone to school for twenty years in order to remove paint. “We get Krazy Glue on the eyes. People mistake it for eyedrops. People with bad eyesight. But a face full of red paint?”

  “People were stealing my car.”

  “Painters stealing your car?”

  “I don’t think they were stealing it,” Flora said.

  “Then I don’t understand,” I said,

  “Working on the eyes now,” the doctor said.

  “Good. Crimson mascara is not overly flattering,” Flora said.

  The doctor was still not amused. I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t, either. I was terrified that my eyes would never open again, or that they would—and have been burned blind.

  “Nobody was stealing your car,” Flora said. “They were painting it. I saw it when the ambulance came.”

  “Painting it?”

  “Stay still!” the doctor said.

  “Painting on it,” Flora said.

  “On my car?”

  “Please! These are your eyes I’m working on. Either your friend leaves or you get quiet or you need sedation.”

  “Sorry.” I kept my head rigid and spoke in a flat voice, as if that would help. “They used red on a burgundy car.”

  “You don’t like it aesthetically?” Flora asked. “They used red and black.”

  I imagined the Mustang looking like a checkerboard.

  “I don’t think they got to finish what they intended,” Flora said. “You interrupted. It’s nonsense—squiggles, zeros, and a set of stairs.”

  I felt a hot rush of fearful rage. “It was them.”

  “Who?”

  The doctor stopped doing whatever. I almost suspected he was interested.

  “I don’t know names. The haters. Those circles are eighty-eights, like on the church. For Heil, Hitler.”

  “You sound a little crazy, girl.”

  “I’m going to try and manipulate the lids open now,” the doctor said. “I don’t think there’s any paint in the eye. Good blink reflex. But these lashes are pretty much…”

  “And the stairs?” Flora asked. “A step, maybe.”

  “Half a swastika,” I whispered.

  The doctor tsked, then cleared his throat. Then I heard snips, very, very nearby. “What—What are you doing?” I asked softly.

  “Clearing the affected lashes so your eyes will open.” Snip. Snip.

  He was cutting off my lashes. I was going to look like Yoda, or an earthworm. I almost told him to leave me alone. Let’s see if I could popularize the bright red shut-eye look.

  “Don’t let them win,” Flora said. “I’m not going to. I’m going to find him. Or them. Or her. Or it. I’m taking countermeasures. Nobody’s going to push me around. No more retreats or yelps—this is war.”

  Snip. Snip. Shame on me and my vanity. I was under attack by neo-Nazis, but all the same, I winced each time I heard the tiny click of his microshears.

  “Now you’ve got your own battle scars,” Flora said.

  More than she knew. I’d tell her about the note later.

  I couldn’t see her face, read her expression, but her silence coated me as thickly as the paint had. Finally, she cleared her throat and spoke. “So push comes to shove, doesn’t it? You going to run away, or stay the distance? You have the choice, you know. It isn’t about you, isn’t your battle the way it’s mine.”

  The clipping paused for a second so he could work at prying my remaining lashes apart. “That’s where you’re wrong,” I answered Flora. “It’s about me, too. About who I am. About who I’d be if I didn’t speak up. Besides, if you think I’m going to let some left-brain computer-nerd bean counter like you show me up, you’re dead wrong.” My lashes parted a bit and I saw a glimmer of light. It was artificial, fluorescent cold, and illuminating a blank ceiling—and the most beautiful sight of my life.

  “I’m not running anywhere,” I told Flora, “even if,” my voice nearly broke with joy, “even if, as it appears, I wouldn’t be running blind.”

  Fifteen

  “THIS EXPEDITION IS STUPID,” MACKENZIE SAID. WE parked his car in my spot in the alley behind the school. The Mustang, not sufficiently damaged to be covered by my insurance, had been towed to a semi-schlocky body shop that promised overnight magic, and Mackenzie didn’t think graffiti would strike twice in the same parking spot. “I’m only going along because I don’t think you should be going anywhere at all tonight. And surely not alone.”

  “I’m fine,” I muttered.

  “Yeah, right. You still have a patch of bright red in your hair, as if your scalp were bleeding. And red dots around your eyes.”

  “They said they’d wear off.”

  “An’ you don’t have much in the way of eyelashes.”

  “That’s not a real handicap, is it? Besides, the sunglasse
s help.” I looked like a termite, but I was trying to be gallant about it. My eyes were working—working well enough to make out a fine spray of pinky-red paint on the ground near where I’d stood this afternoon.

  “The point is—somebody’s after you,” Mackenzie said in a low and lethal voice. “You’re a target. You could at least lay low.”

  “Back down, be intimidated? Play by their rules? I can’t. It would make the future much scarier than anything happening now.”

  Five was picking us up around front. I would have gladly chauffeured, but Mackenzie’s VW does not seat a trio gracefully, particularly when one of the group has a log leg. “What is my cover story for going there? Who am I supposed to be?” he asked petulantly. This was accompanied by grimaces and grunts as he insisted on extricating himself from the car without assistance.

  “Look, C.K., I’m glad to have you along, but it was your idea, remember? You’re going as my friend, if you go—but you don’t have to. I asked to borrow your car, if you recall. And even with that, Five could have picked me up. This isn’t going to take long. I want to see what I can find out, and nothing would be made better if I sat in my home instead of the Truongs’. And Five’s along. I can manage.”

  “Five,” he muttered. “What kind of name is Five?”

  I glanced at him. Some macho competition was in progress even before the players met. “A man without a name is not in a position to challenge somebody else’s nickname.” I wondered how I’d manage the introductions. “C, this is Five” sounded like inept spy-talk. I nonetheless explained the Bartholomew Dennison business. “Maybe you’d like to decipher your lack of a name while we’re at it?”

  “I don’t like the sound of this guy. Too hail fellow well met.” Mackenzie was finally out of the car. “Oh, forgot to give you this in the confusion,” he said. “I got what you wanted, the contents of April’s book bag.”

  The slip of paper he passed me listed, in his handwriting, a cerise canvas wallet with two dollars and thirty-seven cents and ID, a dark pink lipstick, a student assignment calendar, a paperback dictionary, a rolled up rain hat, a three-subject notebook, house keys, seven student discount bus tickets, an apple, a copy of People magazine, a flyer advertising a series of Taiwanese films to be shown on Penn’s campus, an environmentally correct spray bottle of something called Hair Scruncher, and Huckleberry Finn, property of the Philly Prep library, not due for another week.