“This is totally serendipitous. You know? Complete and utter weird-ass kismet.”
“Fish,” says Lydie sternly. “Watch your language, please.”
“Sorry,” says Fish. “I just really like it when things fall into place. That’s the part that feels like kismet. You know what I mean?”
“I do know what you mean,” says Lydie, half-smiling. “But nothing’s going to feel like kismet today unless you two get to class quick. Dr. Austerlitz is strict about punctuality and I have a feeling he wouldn’t make an exception even though Max is new. So you two better skedaddle.”
“Skedaddling!” cries Fish.
She grabs my arm again and skips me down the hallway, Yellow Brick Road–style, all the way into class and into our seats, where she introduces me to her friend and my student fellow, The Monk, who kisses her hand and raises one skeptical eyebrow at me from behind his John Lennon glasses, and then Dr. Austerlitz appears, welcomes me to World Literature class, and tosses me a copy of The Metamorphosis.
“You’re going to need this,” he says. “It’s the cornerstone of our entire curriculum. No matter what we study, we will always circle back to Franz Kafka.”
Then class begins.
I know he is speaking, but his voice is on mute and his face is faded and blurry.
The tumor unbuckles his belt and expands like an old man after Thanksgiving dinner. He sprawls out on my cerebral cortex and belches luxuriously, reaching for the remote. I can feel him unrolling his gelatinous folds, oozing into my cranium, bubbling between the coils of my brain.
I begin to unravel. Dr. Austerlitz says something about Gregor Samsa and how he has transformed, and I start thinking, Oh my God, he’s talking about the tumor, he’s talking about how my mother’s favorite tumor is pushing against my left eye as though some heavy shoulder is leaning against it, and I wonder how my face will change after I die. Will my lips thin out and pull away from my teeth? Will my skin fall down against the bones in my face the way Mom’s did, one eyelid sinking in, but the other, the one with the tumor, grotesque and monstrous? The better to see you with, my dear. I take my sketchbook out of my backpack and begin drawing eyeballs, hundreds of eyeballs, thousands of eyeballs. I draw eyeballs so quickly you can hear my pencil scratching across the page.
“Mr. Friedman,” says Dr. Austerlitz. “Are you with us?”
I try to look at him, but the tumor is threatening to slice my eyeballs open from the inside, so I put my elbows on the desk and bury my head in my hands.
“Mr. Friedman,” Dr. Austerlitz says again, his voice touched with the slightest knife’s edge.
The Monk nudges me with his copy of The Metamorphosis, but I don’t budge. I breathe long and deep into my hands and try to come back into the classroom, where nothing strange is happening except a man turning into a cockroach. I clutch the edge of my desk.
“Hey,” says Fish. She puts her hand on my elbow and leans over to me. “You feeling okay?”
“I think he’s catatonic,” says The Monk.
His theory is interesting but entirely devoid of possibility, because if I were catatonic I would not be able to do what I do next, which is drop my head on my desk where the wood is cool and smooth and rock my frontal lobe back and forth.
“Mr. Friedman,” Dr. Austerlitz continues, “this is not a good way to begin. Please get your head off the desk and participate in this class. Or, if you are too ill, you may excuse yourself and take a walk down the hall to the infirmary. Which do you prefer?”
He is standing in front of my desk now, hands on hips.
I can’t see him with my head down, but I can smell jock itch powder, and I am certain that if I raised my head and opened my eyes, I would be staring right at Dr. Austerlitz’s crotch, a possibility that does not motivate me to come back to the equally disturbing world of Franz Kafka, no matter how much I love cockroaches or German literature. I choose to keep my frontal lobe on the desk instead.
“You may go, then,” says Dr. Austerlitz’s crotch. “Right now.”
Look at this. Less than five minutes into my first class and already the teacher is telling me to leave. Mr. Mancini would be so proud. I press my head harder into the desk, at which point the tumor gets rowdy and begins knocking on the inside of my skull with his fists, pounding against nerve endings.
The doctors told us that at the time of my mother’s death, her tumor was approximately the size and shape of a grapefruit. When did it start, this strange desire to make analogies between tumors and food? It is the size of a grape. A walnut. An apple. A grapefruit. A melon. A pumpkin. These days, I avoid spherical foods at all costs. I promised my dad I would be strong. Oh God.
“Someone help him out of here, please,” says Dr. Austerlitz wearily.
“I’ll do it,” says a voice through the haze. “Hey. Dude. Let’s go.”
“Don’t forget his backpack,” says Dr. Austerlitz.
The hazy kid grabs my stuff, as though I were an enormous scuttling cockroach, and pushes me down the aisle and out the classroom door.
“Hey,” he says, snapping his fingers in front of my eyes. “Come on, dude. Look at me. Come back to earth. Jesus Christ. What’s the deal?”
It’s my student fellow.
David Moniker. The Monk.
“Don’t worry, dude,” says The Monk. “I bet it’s just nerves. First day in a new school? New kids? New teachers? German literature, for God’s sake. Anyone would get stressed out. Maybe you should get a drink of water and come back in.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I think I may be coming down with something.”
“You want me to walk you to the infirmary? See if they can give you a couple Tylenol? Maybe a shot of Jagermeister to wash it down?”
“Nah,” I say. “Jagermeister’s made with elk piss.”
“Blood,” says The Monk, clearly pleased with my knowledge of alternative trivia. “Elk blood, you sick bastard. And that’s just a myth, by the way.”
“That’s what they all say.”
The Monk starts giving my stuff back, ceremoniously, one item at a time. My pencil. My backpack. Then he hands over my sketchbook, still open to the page with all the eyeballs staring in different directions.
“Good God,” he says. “That’s completely disturbing.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“I collect oddities,” says The Monk. “Those eyeballs would look perfect on the shelf next to my two-headed cow embryo. I just may need to procure it from you one of these days.”
“It’s not for sale,” I say.
“Oh my dear boy,” says The Monk dolefully. “Everything is for sale.”
Then he smirks at me from behind his round glasses and hands me my copy of The Metamorphosis. “Kafka appeals to me,” he says. “Think about it. Gregor Samsa starts out as a regular old middle-class slog like the rest of us. Sleepwalking through life. Then he turns into a cockroach, for God’s sake. Six legs. Antennae. The whole nine yards. Now that is truly twisted shit. You agree?”
“Ja,” I say, in my best German accent. “Und now I must go to the infirmary. Because I vell azleep. And as I vas vaking up from anxious dreamz, I discovered that in bed I had been changed into ein monstrous vermin.”
“A monstrous vermin. Ha. Well, listen. If you need anything, I’m here for you, vermin-dude. Bratwurst. Blood sausage. Wiener schnitzel. You want it, you got it. Anytime. Okay?”
“Jawohl,” I say.
The Monk points toward the infirmary and clicks his combat boots.
I salute him, flash him the peace sign, and hitch up my backpack. I pretend I’m a cockroach saying goodbye with many legs. I raise one shoulder like a hunchback and start to scuttle down the hall toward the infirmary, with its yellow door wide open like the mouth of some huge yellow smiley-faced clown, revealing yellow walls, an orange vinyl sick-couch, rows of pink Dixie cups, and a glowing, toxic, neon-pink hand-sanitizer dispenser hanging on the wall. My head pounds and pulses with the tumor raging insi
de it, scratching against the backs of my eyes, a veritable cornucopia of irony and demise.
YELLOW SMILEY SICKROOM
I stand at the desk and breathe all the happy colors into my lungs.
“Hi there,” says the nurse. “How can I help you today?”
“I don’t feel so good,” I say.
Behind her desk, there’s a window that looks out onto a courtyard. There are rows of gnarled trees shaking their fists at the sky.
“You must be our new student, Max Friedman. So not feeling good on the first day? That stinks. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m feeling really sick.”
My words hang in the air.
Sick. Sick. Sick. Really, really sick.
“It’s my head. It hurts right here in this area.” I point to my frontal lobe.
“Is it a dull pain or a sharp pain?”
“Sharp,” I say, wincing.
She raises her eyebrows.
“I mean dull. No. I think it’s definitely sharp. Ouch.” I close my eyes.
I lower myself down onto the orange vinyl couch and put my head in my hands.
“Wow,” says the nurse. “It hurts that much?”
“Yeah,” I say, making myself breathe slow and deep.
She brings me a Dixie cup filled with water.
I drink it and then crumple it in my hand.
“You want to lie down here for a bit and then go back to class?”
“No,” I say into my hands. “I think I need to go home. It really hurts.”
“Sounds like you have a little migraine. Have you ever had a migraine before?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t get migraines. This is something different.”
The nurse takes out my medical file and starts riffling through my information.
“Hey,” she says. “You have Ms. Grossman in the office listed as an emergency contact. Is she a family friend?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know her pretty well.”
“Well, why don’t we give her a call and see if she can come and keep you company for a while. Maybe you’ll feel better after talking to someone you know.”
I don’t say anything. I am massaging my eyeballs.
I don’t see how talking to someone is going to help shrink my tumor.
The nurse picks up the phone.
“Hi, Lydie. Karen here. I have Max Friedman in the infirmary. He says his head hurts. I looked at his file. Right. Exactly. So I was thinking maybe it would help if you came down to chat with him, and then we can get him back to class.”
“I need to go home,” I say.
“Ms. Grossman will be here soon,” says the nurse.
She makes herself busy at her desk and I sit quietly until Lydie comes in.
“Hey, Max,” says Lydie.
Her voice is soft.
“Hey,” I say.
“Ms. Henderson says you have a headache.”
“It really hurts,” I say. “I want to go home.”
Lydie sits down next to me. “Coming to this school is a change,” she says. “You’ve had a lot of changes lately. But give this one a chance, Max. I think you’ll like it here.”
“This isn’t about changes. It’s about my head. My head hurts. Why won’t anyone listen to me?”
“Where does it hurt?”
“Here,” I say. I point to my left eye. “There’s something pushing against my eyeball. See? Look at it. Look at my eye.”
“You have lovely eyes,” says Lydie.
“It’s bulging.”
Lydie frowns. “It’s not bulging,” she says. “It’s fine. Ms. Henderson, can you come over here a second? Max is wondering if his eye looks like it’s bulging. Does his eye look unusual to you?”
The nurse looks into my eye with a tiny flashlight. “Nope,” she says, smiling. “His eye looks just fine. Gorgeous, in fact.”
There’s another wave of pain. I curl into it.
“I want to go home,” I say. “Please call my dad.”
Lydie and the nurse look at each other.
“I’m not making this up,” I say. “Please.”
“Okay,” the nurse says finally. “I’ll give him a call.”
I look out the window. It has started to snow. Snow falls on the bare branches, the stone benches, the fallow gardens and the flagstone paths, and farther out, where I can’t see, beyond the gates, where the concrete starts, it falls on the long stretches of nameless buildings and the busy people in their cars with the windows rolled up and the whole, wide, godforsaken world.
TRUTH AND TRUANCY
Lydie welcomes Dad into the nurse’s office.
“Max,” she says. “Your dad’s here.”
She and the nurse wander to the other side of the room so Dad and I can talk in private.
He looks completely out of place in this school. Too rough around the edges. Too unkempt in his work boots and his plaid jacket, his two days’ growth of beard.
“So what’s the deal?” says Dad.
“I don’t feel good,” I say.
“Do you have a fever?” He puts his hand out to feel my frontal lobe but I push it away.
“I don’t have a fever,” I tell him.
“Then why are you telling them you want to go home? You’re fine.”
“I’m not fine,” I say. “I have a headache.”
“You want to go home because of a headache? Max. It’s your first day of school. You need to deal with this. Go back to class.”
I push in my left eye and wince.
“What?” says Dad.
“Do you think one of my eyes looks strange?”
“Your eye is fine,” he says again, more sternly this time. “What class did you leave?”
“World Literature,” I say.
“When’s it over?”
“Nine thirty.”
Dad checks his watch. “Good. It’s only nine twenty. If you go now, you might just get back in time to catch the homework.”
“But Dad,” I say.
“No,” he says. “Stop it. I don’t want to hear another word about this. You need to be strong.”
“Aren’t you worried about me?”
“Yeah,” says Dad. “I am. I am very worried about you.”
“Because you think there’s something wrong with my eye?”
“No,” says Dad. “Because this school can give us a second chance and I’m not going to let you ruin it. So I’m not taking you home. You need to deal with your headache, man up, get back to class, and do your best.”
Dad calls Lydie and the nurse over from the corner of the room where they have been pretending not to listen to us.
“Ms. Grossman, Ms. Henderson, thank you so much for being so kind and helpful. But Max will go back to class now.”
“Are you sure?” asks Ms. Henderson.
“Yeah,” says Dad. “He’s sure.”
“I’ll pick you up at three,” says Dad. “Be strong. Make me proud.”
“Okay,” I say, expressionless. “Thank you for helping me.”
“You’re welcome,” says Dad. “Now get going, please. And no more melodrama.”
I have no choice. I have to do what he says. I make a silent promise to myself that no matter how bad it gets, I will never mention the tumor to him. I swing my pack onto my shoulders, put my hands into my pockets, and trudge back to Dr. Austerlitz’s class, where I take my place at my desk.
The Monk reaches over and shakes my hand.
“Are you ready to join us now?” asks Dr. Austerlitz.
I nod and try to give him a look that means I’m sorry.
The tumor is shouting obscenities, but I try to ignore him.
I take my copy of The Metamorphosis from my backpack and pretend to read.
In a few minutes the bell will ring and it will be time for second period. The school day stretches before me in even, never-ending rows. It’s portioned into minutes and hours and grade books and calendars and megapixels and we
bsites and text messages and doors opening and closing and arteries and veins and valves opening and closing and hearts, all those hearts, one in each kid, beating, because that is what they do when the person is still alive.
BOTTLE OF COW
On Tuesday, after we eat lunch, The Monk takes me to his dorm room to see his collection of oddities. He kicks off his combat boots and sprawls on his unmade bed, watching me examine the tiny bovine in a jar of formaldehyde with a satisfied smirk on his face. “That’s Bertha,” says The Monk. “She is my destiny.” I shove a jumble of notebooks aside so I can perch on the edge of his desk and examine the strange specimen under the light. At closer inspection, it seems that Bertha is not actually one cow with two heads but two cows with one freakishly conjoined body and four translucent legs that wave vaguely if you turn the jar: the tiny, perfect hooves milky and delicate, rearing up, almost luminous, even under the harsh light of The Monk’s green desk lamp.
“See what I mean?” he says. “She’s amazing, right?” I nod but don’t say anything. I have never been in a dorm room before, and I’m so struck by the utter profundity of his squalor that I’m finding it difficult to focus on the cow, which is probably a good thing because frankly I find it disturbing. The floor on The Monk’s side of the room is covered in books and T-shirts, folders, towels, sheets, and blankets all rumpled together in a swirl. There are socks and boxers shoved hastily underneath the bed, along with empty tissue boxes, energy drinks, and packs of gum. It is immediately evident that The Monk, despite his apparent coolness, is also in desperate need of either an intervention or a garbage can or both.
There is a clear division across the middle of the floor, an invisible but completely recognizable line where The Monk’s tornado of stuff ends and the ordered, organized world of his roommate begins—poor Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth, with his perfectly stacked books, his white duvet, and his plastic containers of black socks stored neatly under the bed, who must be forced to look with narrowed eyes into The Monk’s swirling tornado every morning. Thomas A. Trowbridge’s bed, I notice, perhaps in direct reaction to The Monk’s aggressive disorganization, is so incredibly neat and tidy that it actually has hospital corners.
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