Monoceros

by Suzette Mayr

  Romeo and Juliet. Two dead teenagers. This is what she needs to concentrate on. Even though who besides their parents cares? Even these kids in her class care only about the sex.

  — So what if he was gay? says the unicorn girl.

  Good for you, Mrs. Mochinski wants to say. A++.

  — It’s a sin, chirps the chinless one behind her.

  That’s an F for you, Chinless, thinks Mrs. Mochinski. F–!

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

  The class dissolves into a buzzing like she has stumbled into a flight of mosquitoes, an infuriating whine needling every nerve in her body.

  Mrs. Mochinski whirls from the board and wheezes out another cough. She slams the play down on her desk, the chalk in her other hand jumps, shatters on the floor. Hands on her hips. — That’s it! I have had it. You people! Stand for prayer please, stand for prayer.

  The students rumble and screech their chairs to standing.

  — In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen, she says, making the sign of the cross, accidentally chalking her left boob. Then she leads them in the Lord’s Prayer, squinting through her partly closed eyes at them, ready to quash any hijinks.

  — So sit down and do your Silent Reading. And by Silent Reading, says Mrs. Mochinski, — I mean Silent and Reading. Stop doodling, Faraday, she says, suddenly remembering her name. — 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.

  Little Jésus fuckface jumps onto his desk and belches.

  At 3:45 p.m., Mrs. Mochinski beetles through the icy school parking lot to her car, yanks open the door and dives into the driver’s seat. Back to her own life. The divorce papers in their neat manila envelope lie on the passenger seat. She left the car unlocked this morning on purpose, hoping someone might steal them. The only thing she cared about this morning. Patrick Furey gone for good, then. A boy she hardly knew in her third-period English class. Grade 12, then. Nearly at the end. Gripping the cold steering wheel, she coughs and coughs, lets the coughs erupt unimpeded, the tears gushing and streaming from her eyes.

  Walter

  Tuesday morning, with the memo with its bullshit instructions sent out to every teacher, the news of Patrick Furey’s suicide flinging itself against the bars of its cage, Walter strides busily through the school hallways, checking the bulletin boards for inappropriate material as a way to avoid his own office.

  Finally in his office, he snacks on a power bar and sips tomato juice. He sucks up the juice too fast and droplets splash out his nose onto the keyboard. He stares at the bloody drops, breathes the stale air in his little pod of an office. Walter’s back crawling because that dead boy is sitting in that chair, still and silent, sweater resolutely inside out. Walter keeps his back to the dead boy, slides the binders back into their correct places above his desk, but it makes no difference: the surface of his desk, the computer screen with its hundreds of rows of tiny folder icons, are a multiplying landfill. Patrick Furey’s tiny folder icon smoulders on the screen, a disorderly tic, a rogue wave, a cigarette butt screwed into the middle of a strawberry-rhubarb pie. Walter clicks the dead boy’s folder icon open. Hobbies: Likes skateboarding. Walter prints a copy for the parents.

  This Tuesday. This Monday that refuses to end. Every day a stretch of endless Mondays.

  — Have you solved your problem then, Walter whispers to the dead boy. — Awesome.

  He leans his chin on his fist.

  The radiator ticks.

  He stuffs The Pride and the Joy deep into the outside pocket of his briefcase. He will abandon the book at a bus stop on the way home. Maybe someone will read it and it will change his life. Or drive him further to the brink. It will end up in a landfill. As a hunk of trash in the sea. A skateboard in a river.

  When Walter finally unlocks the front door of their house Tuesday evening — Max still muscling around at work making phone calls, writing agendas for Wednesday morning— the first thing Walter does is gobble down one of the two foil-wrapped Grandpa burgers with added bacon and cheese he bought on the way home, the warm meaty treasures at the bottom of the paper A&W bag, one for him and one for Max. He unpacks the burger, unhinges his jaws and bites into it, one bite so big the burger he draws away from his face is only a quarter its original size, a chubby crescent moon. He chews through the juicy meat patties, wipes ketchup, meat-juice drips, bacon fat from his beard with a paper napkin, slurps the stringy, wet lettuce splattered on his cheek. Lieutenant Fong leaps onto the table and perches next to his plate, her tail whisking, head cocking side-to-side as she assesses the waning burger, the cardboard container of disappearing french fries percolating with grease. Walter takes a long, freezing slurp of his chocolate shake, the ice cream chilling his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his throat; he waits for the fat from the burger to give him a great big hug from the inside, but today the hug doesn’t come.

  The cat yawns, her mouth bristling with fangs. He tries to pet her, hopes she might curl into his lap, but she squirts away from his outstretched hand.

  When he’s crammed the last of the burger into his mouth, landslid the rest of the french fries down his throat, he scoops up the chocolate shake and screeches his chair away from the table.

  He unfolds himself onto the carpet in the basement den; his upper half releases so quickly he falls straight backward and his head bounces. He lies on the carpet, his head bloated, his joints hardening, tears streaming from his eyes, pooling in his ears. A very nice pose for a man of fifty-two, only three years away from retirement. How terrific for a man whose job it is to advise young people about career choices, course schedule timetabling, how to participate in the world as upstanding citizens, and how not to kill themselves. The cat licking her anus right next to his face, her leg sticking into the air like she’s offering it for supper.

  His heels grilling on the heat register, he can smell sweaty stink billowing out the collar of his shirt. He reaches for Lieutenant Fong’s left paw. She lets him take it in his hand, she spills onto the floor next to his face, her body hot and solid. He strokes the pads’ cool, soft leather, the furry knuckles. She pretends to sleep, her eyelids slightly parted. She presses her other leathery palm against his chin. Listening to the furnace sighing, belching through the vent at his feet, smelling his own shame, eyes sticky with tears, resting his hand on Lieutenant Fong’s back as she clambers up onto his stomach and curls herself into a warm turd.

  His stomach flip-flops. He has to tug open his eyes, gummed together as they are.

  He lurches to standing, Lieutenant Fong swinging to the carpet, a claw hooked into his sleeve, and he lumbers to the kitchen to eat the second Grandpa burger, the second set of french fries he’s stowed in the warm oven. Max won’t be home for ages. And burgers don’t taste good cold.

  Walter is not the dead boy’s mother. He is not the dead boy’s father. He was just his guidance counsellor. What was the last thing he said to the dead boy? Good luck. Or Perk up.

  Max

  Today is Tuesday. The day is one elongated blob. A temporal Möbius loop that makes him so dizzy he might vomit.

  Saturday night Max the school principal drives his parents to a female impersonator show. He inhales his cigarette to the glorious, bitter end, grinds it into the ashtray on their porch, then ushers them into his car.

  — Mother, you’ve slammed the seatbelt in the door. Mother, the door, Mother, no, the door, your seatbelt. Right. Good.

  And his car spins off into the snow.

  Before he leaves home to pick them up, he pecks Walter goodbye on the top of his thinning curly black hair, Walter haloed by the lamp next to the couch.

  — Mmm hmm, says Walter. Walter wearing his bifocals and thumbing pages in his novel, chewing his moustache. Not until Max’s key is turning in the lock does he hear Walter yell, — Bye, Maxie!

  Max would rather be sitting beside Walter, his
bony toes tucked under Walter’s warm buttocks, watching old DVD reruns of Sector Six or Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica with a Guinness at his elbow, but it is his parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary and his father specifically requested that Max come along, said, — Your mother and I won’t have anything to talk about, you’re a terrific buffer, sonny.

  So even though he would rather be stuck on the wrong end of Satan’s pitchfork than watch men mincing around in miniskirts for two hours, he drives his parents on the bitterest night in February, the windshield brittle and bumpy with ice from falling wet snow. The star female impersonator is named Crêpe Suzette — how original. Obviously Max has accidentally stumbled into 1977. The waitress deposits their drinks, a giant strawberry daiquiri in front of his mother, a White Russian for his father, a club soda for him— no, he doesn’t care if it’s a lemon or a lime slice, — Surprise me, he says to the waitress. He jingles the keys in his pocket while his parents order their food, quesadillas for his mother and spaghetti and meatballs for his father, then he stands up and straightens the crease in his pants. Sits down again. He could roar for a cigarette. — I’ll have the salmon steak, he says, then he puts his head in his hands.

  He lifts his head from his hands and nearly faints when a brown female impersonator in a Wonder Woman costume checks him out first thing, before the show has even started. She glides into the room on her red stilettos, jerks to a stop, her shoulders and long black hair flinging back, and violates him with her neon-blue contact lenses from under her impossibly long, curling eyelashes. Does she recognize him, he doesn’t recognize her, he hasn’t been to a bar in decades, oh God please make it go away, and his father’s face is chubby and wide with smiling when Crêpe Suzette kicks her back heel and sashays a perfect forty-five-degree angle toward their table. Jazz-stepping toward Max, she glides right past Max so she can stroke Max’s father’s bald head with one long, golden brown finger. She cradles his father’s face right next to her gold bald-eagle breasts. His father almost exploding right there, his mother smiling wildly into her strawberry daiquiri. Walter would laugh hysterically if he were here. He thinks Max’s parents are secretly swingers.

  During the show, Crêpe Suzette and the other men in dresses swan around a giant leopard-print high heel set right in the middle of the stage. They single out men in the audience— the ugliest, dweebiest, oldest men who are sitting next to delighted, laughing wives. The drag queens crack jokes about Prince Charles, balls, princesses, balls, tiaras, balls, balls, balls. Max, the soon-to-be-dead boy’s principal, drinks his club soda. He could be smoking on his back porch right now, or at his desk, his fingers ragged with typing. Among the important items:

  Choose a guest speaker for this year’s graduation ceremony. It isn’t too late to get that female newscaster. The one who reported on the big fire last year.

  Phone the bishop and run interference between him and the mother who complained that her son said his teacher was forcing them to read pornography in English class: The Wars by Timothy Findley.

  Have that carpet in the basement bedroom removed and figure out what type of flooring he and Walter want down there.

  Manipulate the budget data so that he can find the money to deal with the graffiti in the north stairwell.

  Purchase a carton of cigarettes. He is down to three packs and only if he rations will they last the week.

  He tries not to pull back his sleeve to look at the glowing hands on his watch because his mother will ask him if he isn’t enjoying himself and he’ll have to stammer out, Of course, of course, I adore the dance routines! but the soon-to-be-dead boy’s principal can’t help nudging up his sleeve just once: 10:36 and 17 seconds. The soggy slice of lemon disintegrating in the bottom of his glass.

  — Aren’t you having a good time? asks his mother, her icy hand clutching his.

  He has to void his bladder, but he doesn’t want any of those lousy transvestites to direct their heat-seeking-missile, faux mammary glands in his direction. His bladder is about to pop when Crêpe Suzette starts a routine about how he can tell the straight men from the gays in the room by what kind of socks they’re wearing; Max feels the blood drop from his head to the soles of his feet, feels the urine suck right up out of his bladder and flood his already toxic system. Suzette moves from foot to foot to foot and calls out — Straight! Gay! (the audience laughs) Straight! Straight! Oh honey, you’re so straight! (the audience laughs again) Straight! Straight! Max’s ankle grasped in Crêpe Suzette’s hand, Suzette yanks up his trouser leg and evaluates his sock. Even though every strand of hair on his head is already white, Max can still feel his hair bleach, has a desperate child’s wish that he could just teleport out of here. Suzette shouts out, — White tube sock! Straight! and Max wants to weep. He blinks quickly to barricade the tears, he is straight, thank God he is straight, he would lose his job if anyone found out the truth, the snow razoring outside the lounge windows, and his father claps Max on the shoulder, his mother waves for another daiquiri, the dead boy’s principal sizzles in the liquid gleam of his almost-horror.

  He sees the dull, damp ring corroded into the surface of the coffee table top before he even makes it completely in the front door of his house, the table his grandfather made with his bare hands from a fallen maple tree, and the surface gleaming except for the now-permanent ring just off to the left, where Walter must have set down a wet glass or a hot mug, and he wants to clutch his bare hands around Walter’s neck and squeeze, then kick him in the stomach, kick the entrails right out of him. Watch Walter sob and expire because he ruined the only beautiful family heirloom Max owns.

  Max pulls off his argyle socks, brushes his teeth, pokes his scruffy toothbrush around in his mouth. He’s so angry his mouth almost locks shut while he bawls Walter out after Mass on Sunday for ruining the varnish on the coffee table, his back to Walter in the bed for the entire Sunday night, his head brimming with vermin, fucking Crêpe Suzette and his father, his father’s face practically buried between some tweaked-out faggot’s tits, his mother chewing on the umbrella from her strawberry daiquiri. And now the coffee table. Wrecked and destroyed. Just like everything else.

  Monday afternoon, so abruptly it pains his teeth, so loudly he doesn’t even have the chance to take his keys out of his pocket, take off his coat, not even his scarf, he has one glove off, only one, he got to the school at 6:19 a.m., he’s been downtown at meetings all day, biting down his lunch during a bathroom break, and he just wants to decompress in the imaginary holodeck in his office, but his secretary, Joy, rushes to him, sails into his office on a punch of perfume and says, — Patrick Furey’s father called in that Patrick won’t be coming to school tomorrow, then said he killed himself this morning.

  Max stops pulling off his second glove, his hand still hot from the first glove, a boy in Grade 12 killed himself, Max feels strung up by the neck. He gasps.

  — How did he kill himself ? he asks Joy. — Do they know where?

  — Oh, she says, a box of paper clips showering silver from her hands. — Oh. His father didn’t go into details. And she shakes her head. — Now why would that boy want to go and do that?

  — Mr. Boyle, he says into the phone. — Walter.

  The school week is only five hours old but already assassinated. Max hates Mondays.

  Notify the crisis team immediately, then phone the parents, pass on his condolences and delicately get the facts around the death. Both vice-principals shuffle into his office. He will need the details, every one, because soon the phone calls will start jangling in, and he will have to know what the suicide has to do with his school, his staff, his student body, did it happen on school property, he has to know because he will be running the front line, dodging, catching, lobbing reporters, parents, teachers, the superintendent. He will need to know the circumstances of the death better than he knows the hairs and wrinkles on the backs of his hands. The school’s inhabitants a simmering mob. He will need to clamp the lid down on this boiling pot. He will n
eed to burn this witch until not even ash remains. He snaps his fingers at Joy for the crisis team phone number, then immediately apologizes; she is new and doesn’t know when he is being efficient rather than rude. — I had a restless sleep last night. Do accept my apologies, Joy.

  Joy’s comma of a mouth sagging open in distress, her eyes limp. He could kill this kid. What was his name? Furey. Max’s family heirloom absolutely decimated.

  He will have to buy Joy chrysanthemums or a box of chocolate truffles. She sits at her desk, poking pens into a jar, her mouth melting into an upside-down U.

  The smooth running of his high school disrupted, ruined— a hole punched in the walls he practically put up with his own hands.

  He pulls out his chair and holds the phone number between his fingers. Fumbles his bifocals out of his pocket.

  Because it might sound odd and he would never tell anyone else this— well, Walter perhaps— but a school is like a spaceship, just like on Sector Six, the best fictional example he knows of a well-run organization with a leader who is firm but personable, effective. And all the smaller parts have to work together to make the greater machine function. He is the captain of this ship, the crank in charge of the wheels and cogs. Colonel Shakira from Sector Six never has to buy Lieutenant Fong a box of chocolates to apologize for speaking too gruffly when she issues orders, but there you go.

  Time for red alert.

  The ringing of the crisis team’s phone burrs in his ear. He props the phone between his head and his shoulder, smooths and straightens his tie with both hands, jingles the keys in his pocket.

  Tuesday he is still on the phone. He swears he never went home.

  Ginger

  Because people in school were spreading an inconceivable rumour.