Monoceros

by Suzette Mayr

  — I heard he fell off the balcony in his building.

  — Garrett said he was hit by a car.

  — Accidentally poisoned when he bit into a poinsettia plant left over from Christmas.

  — Crushed in a trash compactor!

  Faraday blows her cheeks out into balloons of frustration.

  — Maybe he’s on a train to Antigua! she explodes to Madison right after lunch in the bustling lineup outside their classroom. — Maybe he’s not dead at all!

  Madison, chewing on the corner of her phone, shrugs her shoulders.

  Mrs. Mochinski, in her chalk-splotched black pants and lady’s feathery moustache, rattles out after them in the hallway to keep the noise down please, while fiddling with her brooch. But throughout the day — as they scarf down their lunch, after biology, social studies, math and religion, when Faraday has to bound from one end of the school to the other across the cracking tiles, the fresh gobs of chewing gum, around a janitor’s yellow mop bucket— she doesn’t see Patrick Furey anywhere. After lunch, in chemistry, French, then English. In English, again with Mrs. Mochinski, the chair where Patrick Furey normally sits, angled away slightly from its small table so it looks like he’s just stood up to go to the bathroom and will be right back.

  And, except for Madison’s tiny gigantic rumour, Tuesday is as predictable and unkempt as any other. Almost. She learns that the ancient Greeks placed coins under the tongues of their dead loved ones, about afferent and efferent arterioles, though she knows she will forget the difference before the next test. What should be remarkable is that, for the first time ever, Madison is talking to her, a lot of people are talking to her, and she actually has a conversation with the goth girl who sits across from her. But instead, what’s remarkable is that goth girl whispers that she’s sure as fuck the boy killed himself because why aren’t any of the teachers announcing that he’s died?

  — Like, if he’d been in a truck accident they would have said, says goth girl. — If he’d been randomly shot on his way to the snowboard shop, fuck, man, they’d be like, he’s been in a drive-by shooting, but they’re not. No one’s saying a fucking thing. As if him not coming to school because he killed himself is something ordinary.

  Goth girl drums her nails on her desk as she whispers, each of her fingers drumming on the fake wood surface, her fingertips galloping across neurotic fields. And goth girl’s parents switched her to this school, a fucking Catholic school, on purpose because Catholics are supposed to be more disciplined, right? They aren’t allowed to commit suicide. Right?

  Tap tap tap tap tip tap, goth girl’s fingers say.

  — Right? Goth girl’s eyes wide in the rings of charcoal eyeliner. — Right? Fuck! Right? She reaches over and grasps Faraday’s arm.

  — Yes, exhales Faraday, her eyes prickling at the clammy touch.

  — Suicides go to hell. It’s a sin for Catholics. It’s a technicality with no loophole, says goth girl, her fingers drumming a hole in the cover of her paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet.— Well, a girl drank something in the bathroom of my last fucking school and a janitor found her still fucking twitching on the floor, a fucking non-Catholic school this was, and maybe I’m cursed, fuck, I’m hoisting this curse with me everywhere I go, like I thought hiding among Catholics and their fucking crucifixes would protect me, how wrong was I? I blame society! You can’t run away from society, no matter how fucking hard you try.

  Tiny spit bubbles fleck goth girl’s lips, Faraday stares at the goth’s black, chipped fingernails, the flecks of dry skin in her moonless black hair.

  The goth’s eyes, globby with eyeliner, abruptly turn shiny, her tapping fingers trembling and uncertain, so Faraday turns away, scribbles the first words of the notes on the board with her unicorn pen on an empty lined page near the middle of her notebook.

  Goth girl’s fingers resuming their synchronized, millipede-foot tapping.

  Faraday would like to go to the funeral, but will the dead boy’s family be upset if a stranger crashes in and plunks herself down in one of the grieving pews? She wishes goth girl’s fingers would stop running, that goth girl would stop trembling and streaking her makeup and saying the f word. Mrs. Mochinski should have announced the date and time of the funeral in the daily announcements, should have announced the dead boy. Maybe Faraday will light a candle for the dead boy next time her parents make her go to Mass.

  — Fucking Petra Mai and her skanked friends told him they were going to kill him, goth girl whispers, her black lips turning pinker as she chews off her black lipstick, voice so low Faraday can hardly tell it from the whistling in the heating vents. Petra.

  Ginger’s girlfriend, Petra, copying notes about Mercutio and Tybalt also like it’s all ordinary, her long dusty hair a shaggy curtain spilling over her anorexic shoulders, snapping her gum. Ginger’s chair empty too. Goth girl draws a pentacle in the margin of her coiled notebook. — That’s why he hung or poisoned or shot himself, goth girl says.

  — Or maybe she managed to kill him, says Faraday. — She got to him.

  — Oh, fuck! exclaims the goth, her hand flinging to her raw mouth.

  — Hanged himself is the correct grammar, the dead boy’s English teacher says. — This will be on the next quiz. Fumiko, quit swearing!… This will be on the next quiz!

  The class bursts into whispers. Petra flicks her hair over one shoulder and scans the class. Jésus at the back of the class stands up and whinnies into his hand.

  — You at the back of the class, you can raise your hand like everyone else, bellows the dead boy’s teacher, and then she coughs, croaks.

  Jésus raises his hand.

  — Yes? asks Mrs. Mochinski.

  — Because he was a homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al, says Jésus.

  Jésus’s posse howls.

  Faraday looks at Jésus.

  — What’s your problem, Unicorn Girl? Jésus smirks.

  — Jésus … That attitude smells like poo, says Mrs. Mochinski. — Where have all the manners gone?…Romeo was a homosexual?… Please.

  She holds her hand up in the air as though to say Stop. Coughs again.

  — What’s wrong with the word unicorn? asks Jésus. — Is it pronounced unicorn-ee? Shit!

  The teacher flings her arms around her copy of Romeo and Juliet, around her drooped monobreast.

  — Homosexual? says Jésus. — What’s wrong with the word homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al? Well, he was.

  — You can talk about that with the veep if you keep pushing it, Jésus.

  — All right! I’m sorry.

  — Now, says Mrs. Mochinski, — Can someone please…

  — So what if he was gay? Faraday says. Her paper one giant mess of unicorn ink.

  — It’s a sin, says Madison.

  — Where on earth does it say in this play that Romeo was gay? splutters Mrs. Mochinski.

  The class sizzles with whispers, a popping of ssssss and sssssh as students lean forward to speak, lean backward to hear, hunch forward to click text keys to buzz to each other about the dead and dying Romeo who up until today went to their school.

  — Listen, hisses goth girl, leaning across the aisle, — This is what happened: those girls from the chamber ensemble murdered him. Fuck. The ones who hang out with Ginger’s girlfriend when she’s not fucking sitting on Ginger’s face, they’re the ones. I think I’ve accidentally warped into the wrong Catholic dimension. I am torrentially fucked. This is so torrentially sad.

  She lays her cheek down on the top of her desk. Closes her eyes. Her eyelids scarab-wing blue. Murmuring all around them.

  The teacher swivels back from the board and coughs at her buzzing, whispering, humming class. She slams her copy of Romeo and Juliet down on the desk, another chalk breaks as it hits the floor, and she jams her hands on her hips.

  — That’s it! I have had it. You people! Stand for prayer please, staaaand for praaaayer.

  The students scrape, shuffle and skulk themselves to standing.

  — In the n
ame of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen, she says, crossing herself. — Our Father who art in Heaven…

  — Our Father who art in Heaven, the students say with her.

  After the prayer she enforces Silent Reading until the bell.

  — And by Silent Reading, says Mrs. Mochinski, — I mean Silent and Reading. Stop doodling, Faraday. Now that’s a nice waste of paper and ink. Fumiko, she says to goth girl, — Try to stay awake for longer than a minute!

  Faraday would like to hold Fumiko’s hand.

  Jésus jumps onto his desk and gives a loud, juicy belch.

  The time is 3:19, and then that droning, time-for-home-and-dysfunctional-family bell. Faraday and her asymmetrically frizzy hair dawdle on the front steps of the school, other students in puffy coats and parkas shoving her into the sandstone door frame in a continuous herd as they crash through the doors, cascading, coursing, dribbling down to two students at a time, the occasional one cantering down the snowy carved stone steps and leaping to the bottom. Faraday leaning into the stone, scarf drawn up over her nose, not because she’s cold, but because she is afraid to breathe. Clicking and unclicking a unicorn pen— the cold starting to pluck at the fingers on her clicking hand— she is afraid to walk, worried how to place her toes on each step so she won’t fall and crack her head open like a snow globe on the school steps. Madison sucking her phone and telling her that rotten, indisputable thing that Patrick Furey is not in school and probably dead.

  The Canadian flag whips against the grey winter sky; her head is bubble-clear on her neck. The flag isn’t at half-mast like it was at her brother’s school last year when that Grade 7 kid died on a downhill skiing field trip.

  She breaks the spring in her pen because she has overclicked it, and nearly tumbles down the school’s front steps.

  She takes the bus to Bettie’s Bag Boutique, the bus windows foggy with condensation. Faraday listening to staticky piano music as she stands in line at customer service with her brand-new unicorn bag. Paying for the bag, jamming her papers, books, emergency menstrual equipment— and her old bag— into the new bag, clicking closed the silver clasp in the shape of an anatomically correct unicorn — billy-goat beard, lion’s tail, cloven hooves, the shadowy angle of a penis, not the kiddy, neutered, Disney horse-with-a-horn version. Leaning into and through the front door of the boutique to stand on the sidewalk and wait for her bus. The people around her walking, blabbering, spitting, begging, complaining, farting, buying, selling, and a boy from her English class. Most probably dead. Did she serve him his last large iced cappuccino? Did he die Monday morning or Monday night? Or Sunday night? Maybe she was the last person to see him alive. Should she go to the police?

  She wants to plop down on the gritty, icy concrete and cry.

  She remembers how he had not a single zit on his entire face. Once she knocked her eraser off her desk and it bounced across the floor. He had to reach from an awkward angle to pick it up, his face reddening as he hung upside down. Did he know he only had a month and three days to live? He exhaled a breath when he tossed the eraser to her, his face scarlet— a crack in the veneer of him.

  She never was his friend. She said Thanks when he threw her the eraser but that was all, she was so afraid she would miss catching it. If she’d known he was going to die she would have said something or written him a note saying Hi. She would have donated her virginity to him even though it would have meant giving up her chance at having a unicorn lay its head in her lap as her life companion, its pearled alicorn spiralling smooth and nourishing in her hand, its shaggy lips nuzzling her other palm. Even though he would never have slept with her because he was gay, but whatever, she would have liked to give. Let him know that soon a blessing of unicorns would be here to save them all.

  She wonders how many days she has left to live. If sitting on this revolting sidewalk is one of her final acts. Formaldehyde stews behind her eyes. She clasps her bag in her arms, its stiff new-car smell.

  Walter

  Way back on Monday, 4:17 a.m., Walter, the guidance counsellor — stone-cold irritated at his boyfriend Max because of their fight the night before, stone-cold awake hours before the alarm clock is set to shriek them awake— hauls himself out of bed and shakes open the newspaper in the dark of the kitchen. His boyfriend Max now awake too, bumps into the wall on his way to the bathroom. Walter hears the toilet flush, so he flicks on the coffee machine. The coffee almost done gurgling as Walter cranks open a can of cat food while their cat, Lieutenant Fong, twines her tail around his shins, and Max sucks in his morning smoke on the back porch, wrapped in his parka, his boots trailing their laces. They spoon low-cal cereal and skim milk from their bowls, drink the coffee, bite into toast with peanut butter, Max still oppressively silent like a great big pouting man-baby, his silent fury left over from last night because Walter accidentally marked the coffee table with a ring from his glass of orange juice. The Cold War all over again because of a bit of marked varnish on the coffee table. It’s 5:32 a.m. as they knot their scarves and pull on their toques and boots. Walter stuffs the book he finished this weekend into the papers spilling from his satchel: Max’s secretary, Joy, recommended it, The Pride and the Joy it’s called, and he loved it. Loved it. He hasn’t cried so much since he read Sounder when he was eleven.

  Max about to yank open the front door.

  — Wait, says Walter. — Where’s my goodbye kiss?

  Max purses his lips, his arms crossed. Leans forward and pecks Walter on the mouth.

  — That’s right, says Walter.

  — Doesn’t fix the goddamn table, spits Max, furiously shooting back the lock on the door.

  — Oh bugger off, says Walter. Max pounds his feet into the snow.

  — You bugger off.

  Max violently brushes snow off the car windshield, the hood.

  — No, you bugger off, whispers Walter, stepping through the front gate and out onto the slushy sidewalk.

  That Monday morning before all the bad things happened. A normal Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.

  Monday, Walter decides to walk to work instead of taking the bus while the diapered and swaddled giant squalling baby Sir Max, His Royal Highness, the Sulking King of Coffee Tables, who as principal of the school and so technically Walter’s boss, drives away and onward to his special, reserved parking space at the school. Excruciatingly early for work. Walter estimates it will take him an hour and forty minutes to walk to school. Two hours maximum.

  Walter forced to run the last fifteen minutes to work, he broke down and jumped on the bus part of the way there, his clunky boots nearly kicking off his feet as he lumbers through snowbanks, leaps icy gutters, his coat flapping wide open, his armpits soggy, his knees creaking, his lungs raw and heaving, socks sliding down inside his boots, his heels naked and rubbing against the felt lining. Bursting through the doors only one minute before the first bell which means he’s twenty-nine minutes late.

  Walter mops and blots himself down in the bathroom with paper towels as best he can, his shirt drenched with sweat; ten minutes later, sauntering casually, his lungs still smouldering, to the main office to refill his coffee cup, The Pride and the Joy under his arm, when Joy the secretary says, — The Pride and the Joy? No no, I said The Pride of Provence! It’s a book about a man from Ontario who decides to renovate his country house in Provence. Look at this picture I took of my husband and son when we did a bus tour of Provence. More like an eating tour!

  Walter crinkles his lips, — That’s awesome! he says, tucking The Pride and the Joy behind his back. His chest pings. His book a different book entirely.

  She flips through her little plastic book of pictures twice, so he won’t miss the white canvas cap her husband is wearing, how tanned she is in her striped tube top, camera case slung over her shoulder, an irritating Frenchman who pops his head into the picture at the last second. Her son’s round face and barbed wire teeth blocking the view of a stone church, the outline of a quaint bakery window neatly ar
ranged with iced pastries and loaves of bread. Walter gazes at the pictures, gazes at the bobby pins criss-crossed on the back of Joy’s head from where he is hunched over her shoulder for her exciting pictures.

  — How wonderful! he says. — Awesome!

  He grins when she swivels in her chair to watch the delight on his face. He’s read the completely wrong book — a dreadfully wrong book, a sentimental, gloopy, ridiculously happy-ending gay love story that he read for twelve hours straight on the weekend while Max was out, and which made him bawl.

  — You should go to France! exclaims Joy. — You can borrow our Michelin guide. And the French women are beautiful. Beautiful! Very stylish. Find yourself a girlfriend in no time. In fact, I have a girlfriend in my book club, Yolanda, recently divorced…

  — Getting too old for that kind of nonsense, Walter grins. He grips the wrong book, tucked even more firmly, behind his back. She’s new, been working here for less than a year. He’s a fat black man in his fifties, an old bachelor, who eats alone in his guidance counsellor office every lunch hour. Doesn’t she know to leave him alone?

  He points at a picture of her son doing a grinning handstand in a fountain to distract her from Yolanda, from the book burning his hand. His spilling desire, his longing to talk about The Pride and the Joy with someone, anyone, in this relentless place, who might understand just one word. Max so absorbed in the damn coffee table, he refused to listen when Walter tried to tell him about the book this weekend. On the way back to his office, Walter grasps the book, title in, against his chest, its pages slippery with inadvertent radioactivity.

  Walter puffs into his office, then realizes he forgot his coffee cup in the main office. He opens the Tupperware container on his desk, a jumble of carrots, celery pieces and cherry tomatoes. He pops a tomato into his mouth and bites on it while he scrolls his emails, flips through his appointment book, scratches his beard hard all over, beard dandruff flakes fluttering, then remembers with a start that graduation is in less than four months. He fritters the morning away printing up Grade 12 transcripts and trying to come up with a more time-efficient plan for the graduation ceremony.