Ready to Fall

by Marcella Pixley

  Fish’s mom pulls into the parking lot in their battered old car. Fish slams the door, screams in pink fury, and runs to catch up with The Monk, who’s walking with his buddies. She bounds up to him and he twirls her ceremoniously. They continue up the path together, talking to each other with dramatic and animated gestures, Fish still skipping because that’s the way she is. We watch them as they talk and laugh and climb the stairs of Trowbridge Hall and then disappear through the huge double doors.

  “I should go,” I say finally.

  “Try to have a good day,” says Dad.

  “You too,” I say.

  But I know neither one of us is going to have a good day today, because my screaming from last night is still echoing in our ears and Mom’s plate is broken and everything feels raw. I head up the path. Fish and The Monk are nowhere to be seen. When I walk past the front office, Lydie comes out to meet me. She has dark circles under her eyes and she looks like maybe she didn’t get any sleep last night either.

  “You okay?” she asks quietly.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened, Max.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry,” I say. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I should have seen things escalating,” says Lydie. “Soleil was having such a good time with your grandma. She just kinda went nuts with all that running around. I should have been more careful watching her.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say.

  But I can see she’s going to worry because my reaction to the broken plate was so huge and so overwhelming that it beat everybody up and now we all are bruised.

  “Just let me know if there’s anything I can do,” says Lydie.

  “Okay,” I tell her. “I will.” And I turn around and start to head off to class.

  “Hey Max,” Lydie calls.

  I turn back around. “Yeah?” I say.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I sent an e-mail to Dr. Cage last night. I wanted him to know what’s been happening with you. He’s supposed to schedule regular meetings with you, not just a few words after class. Do you mind?”

  “I don’t mind,” I say.

  “I don’t know where that guy gets off making up his own rules. He knows what an advisor is supposed to do. He has the handbook.” Then she composes herself. “Anyway,” she says, “don’t be surprised if he makes some kind of contact with you today.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

  She reaches out and gives me a hug.

  Her hair smells like peppermint. At first I am rigid and then, despite myself, I relax into the hug. I close my eyes and breathe.

  * * *

  When I get to Creative Writing class, it’s hard to believe that Cage could ever do anything that would make me feel better. He is in rare form today. He hates everything that anyone has written. He sits in his throne with his arms crossed over his belly and looks disgusted, rolling his eyes at every cliché. He shakes his head at every run-on sentence and moans whenever a metaphor falls flat. By the time half an hour has gone by, he has completely trashed two different papers and both writers are on the verge of tears. Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth excuses himself and stalks off to the bathroom to cry in private. Forty minutes into class, kids are so intimidated and demoralized that no one wants to read or give feedback. We all just look around at one another, check our watches, and try very hard to disappear.

  “Really,” says Cage. “I don’t know how many times I need to tell you people the same thing. It’s December, for crying out loud. You’ve gotten it into your heads that to be good, you have to twist your sentences into pretentious pretzels. Your grammar is bizarre. Can’t you hear that? Haven’t you ever heard of subjects and verbs? English is your first language, people. There’s no excuse for this kind of garbage. Just say what you want to say and be done with it. If the guy is walking across the street, say He walks across the street. Period. End of sentence. You think your reader wants to sit there listening to you ramble on and on? Jesus Christ, I want to shoot myself sometimes.” Then he checks his watch. “Who wants to be next?”

  No one volunteers.

  Cue crickets.

  “Mr. Friedman,” says Cage, “what about you?”

  I look down at my desk.

  More crickets.

  Cage comes to my desk and puts his face up close. “Hello!” he says. “Hello, anyone in there? What, you think you’re auditing this class or something? You just here for the cruise? The free food? The shampoo samples, what?”

  I smile, but I still don’t say anything.

  “Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

  I close my eyes and keep them closed.

  “Ah,” says Cage. “Rebellion.”

  “Cage?” says Fish in a quiet voice. “I’ll read.”

  “And then, just like that, the mopey boy is saved by the masochistic girl with pink hair who’s willing to risk her soul despite the fact that I lambasted her on Wednesday. Who says reverse chivalry is dead? The end. Four stars. Rave reviews. Pulitzer. Go ahead, Miss Santacroce. Read. We’ll listen.”

  “Okay,” says Fish. “Here goes nothing.”

  I keep my eyes closed while she reads.

  Her voice is so lovely, listening to her is like being coated with honey.

  If I had known what she would become when he left us, I swear I would have gone with him. I would have packed myself into his suitcase or traveled in his back pocket along with his cell phone and his cigarettes. But how could someone as young as I was ever guess that the woman who called herself Mother, who gave birth to me and braided my hair, would crash and burn the way she did. Hot mess. Broken woman. Dirty dishes in the sink. Dirty clothes on the floor. A half-empty bottle on the counter. Her words slurred at night when she should have been singing me lullabies.

  I open my eyes.

  Fish is staring down at her story, smiling faintly.

  I open my mouth. I am about to tell her how amazing she is. But suddenly Cage is giving her a standing ovation. Fish is so shocked and relieved that she stands up, bows, twirls, and then falls into her chair, exhausted.

  “There it is, folks,” says Cage, grinning at us with his crooked yellow teeth. “There. It. Is. The first real writing of the year. Hallelujah. Better late than never. Thought it wasn’t gonna happen. But it did. Yesss.” He walks over to Fish and knocks on her head with a soft fist. “Someone is home,” he says. “Thank the lord.”

  The bell rings.

  Cage tells us to leave our papers on his desk and get the hell out of his room.

  Kids start filing out.

  Fish is surrounded by kids who want to congratulate her, high-five her, pat her on the back. She looks at me.

  I swing my backpack onto my shoulder, put my paper on his desk, and start to go over to her, but Cage’s hand comes down on my shoulder like a bear’s claw.

  “Hey, Mopey,” he says.

  Before I can call out for Fish to wait up, she’s out the door, still surrounded.

  “You really aren’t much of a talker, are you?” says Cage.

  I shrug.

  “Are you like this with everyone or just with me?”

  “Most people,” I say.

  “Oh!” says Cage. “He speaks! I was beginning to wonder if you had problems with your vocal cords. I’ve started referring to you in my notes as Mr. Muteness.”

  “My vocal cords are fine,” I say.

  “But other parts of you not so much?”

  I shrug.

  “Again with the inarticulate gestures. I thought we had made a breakthrough, you and I. Ah well. Two steps forward, one step back. Life is a cha-cha. What can you do. So listen, Mr. Muteness, remember when I told you that I’m supposed to be your advisor?”

  He says the word advisor with a Kermit the Frog accent.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I remember.”

  “Good,” says Cage to an invisible audience. “He’s speaking again. That makes things
easier.” Then back to me. “Well, did you know that you and I are, apparently, supposed to meet a whole bunch of times this year so that I can, as they say, advise you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I knew that.”

  “Good,” says Cage. “We’re two for two. So what are you doing for lunch Monday?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Fabulous. I’m taking you out for Chinese food. As your advisor. Because you obviously need advice. Also egg rolls. Ever hear of Panda Wok?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “We get takeout from there all the time.”

  “You like it?”

  “Sure,” I say. “They have good lo mein.”

  “That they do,” says Cage. Then he leans down and whispers in my ear. “And their piña coladas ain’t so bad either. If you’re a good boy, I’ll let you have a sip.”

  BEEF LO MEIN

  Panda Wok is one of those iconic Chinese restaurants that were once popular in the seventies and eighties but have mostly become hangouts for lonely old men who like to sit at the bar, order neon-colored drinks and watch ESPN, passing gas from time to time, far away from their wives. Don’t get me wrong, normal people still go there to eat every once in a while, families who are drawn to the enormous combination plates (number 6 comes with pork fried rice and an egg roll), but it’s obvious that Panda Wok is in decline because there are two empty rooms, an empty function hall upstairs, and a huge, mostly untouched lunch buffet filled with stale scallion pancakes and vats of congealed moo goo gai pan.

  There are three times as many waiters as the place really needs to service the handful of customers who come out for lunch to feel ethnic, eat with chopsticks, and add in bed to their fortune cookies, so that You will be respected and admired, becomes You will be respected and admired in bed. This makes the cholesterol and triglycerides entirely worth it, in my opinion.

  A waitress in a Santa hat comes to our table. She smiles at Cage like she knows him.

  “Hey,” she says. “Long time no see.”

  “I know it,” says Cage. “My doctor says I need to lay off fried foods. Do you believe it? What a killjoy.”

  “He’s right,” says the waitress. “Fried foods are bad for your heart. So what will it be? Lunch buffet as usual?”

  “But of course,” says Cage, in a very bad French accent.

  “And a piña colada?”

  “Yes. Thank you kindly. And a Coke for the kid.”

  “Coming right up,” says the waitress.

  Cage watches her go.

  We proceed to the buffet, where we pile appetizers onto our plates. Egg rolls, spring rolls, dumplings, pork strips, chicken wings. Scallion pancakes, crab Rangoons. When we run out of room on our plates, we head back to our table for two by the window. Cage pulls out my chair and then seats himself. He struggles out of his too-small cable-knit sweater. He is wearing a faded undershirt and suspenders. He pats his belly. The waitress returns with our drinks. Cage mutters something appreciative and then dives into his heaping mound of fried food.

  “Do you keep kosher?” asks Cage, grabbing a sparerib in one hand and a crab Rangoon in the other and dipping them both into sweet-and-sour sauce.

  “Nah,” I say. “My grandma used to. But not anymore.”

  “Good,” says Cage. “Because this stuff breaks those laws in like a hundred different ways. Cloven hooves and bottom-feeders galore. You gotta love it. You know what? I don’t care what my doctors tell me. I just want to smear it on my face. I want to swim in it.”

  He does, in fact, have small pieces of food in his beard and his eyebrows. It looks like he has recently gone for a swim in a vat of Chinese food.

  I take a bite of a chicken wing. It’s greasy, but it’s good.

  “So,” says Cage, “Ms. Grossman tells me you’ve been through some hard times lately.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Your mom died over the summer. Cancer, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How you holding up?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m kind of a mess, I guess.”

  “You know what might help?” says Cage.

  “What?”

  “Egg rolls.”

  “Egg rolls?”

  “Yup. Egg rolls make everything better. Also spareribs.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” I say.

  “No problem. Believe me, there’s a lot more where that came from. I’m a veritable storehouse of good advice. That’s why they pay me the big bucks for being your advisor.”

  “They pay you to do this?”

  Cage takes an enormous sip from his piña colada. “Are you kidding?” he says. “You think I would hang out with someone like you for free? You must think I actually like you or something.” He winks and grins at me with his yellow teeth.

  I bite into a steamed dumpling and the juice squirts onto his undershirt.

  “Thar she blows!” cries Cage, throwing up his hands.

  I laugh.

  He dips a cloth napkin into his ice water and starts dabbing at the stain, which strikes me as odd because he has all kinds of other stains on his undershirt and dirt under his nails and his crazy gray hair is long and unbrushed. I watch Cage scrub at his undershirt and wonder if he ever catches flak from other teachers for being so rough around the edges. I can imagine Dr. Austerlitz raising his eyebrows, straightening his bow tie, and shining his shoes in response.

  “So,” says Cage. “How come you don’t talk in class?”

  “I guess I’m just not much of a talker,” I say.

  “You’ve always been like this?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You don’t know? Okay, new rule. From this moment on, you are no longer allowed to answer questions with I guess, yeah, yup, or I don’t know. You owe me a dollar any time I catch you using any of them. You up for that?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “No okay either. Okay is just as bad as I guess. So tell me. In a full sentence, please. How long have you been like this?”

  “I guess it’s been worse since my mom died,” I say. “I just never know what I’m supposed to say to people anymore.”

  “You could start with what’s been on your mind.”

  It turns out the tumor is an even worse tenant than I thought he would be. He throws these crazy keg parties every night. He ruins stuff. Pees in corners. Scratches off the wallpaper.

  “Go ahead, Friedman. Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

  “No thank you,” I say. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

  “And why would it not be such a good idea?”

  “If I tell you what’s on my mind, you’re gonna think I’m completely crazy and then you’re going to tell me I need to see a shrink.”

  “First of all,” says Cage, “there is nothing wrong with needing to see a shrink. I happen to see a shrink. Second of all, I like crazy.” He leans forward and wiggles his shaggy eyebrows.

  “You sure?”

  “Are you kidding? Look at me,” says Cage. “I’m a weird-looking dude. I’m a writer. I teach teenagers I don’t even like. Nothing you could say would surprise me. Here. Let me guess. You hear voices? You believe in unicorns? You see things that aren’t there?”

  “Kind of,” I say.

  Cage pounds the table with the meaty palm of his hand.

  “No kind of either. Kind of is just as bad as I guess. I’m putting kind of on the verboten list. Kind of is dead. Goodbye, kind of.”

  “You’re not leaving me much to say.”

  “Au contraire,” says Cage. “I’m leaving you the entire world. Everything except the repertoire of uncommunicative monosyllabic caveman grunts you’ve been using. Listen, Friedman.” He leans forward and speaks into my ear very softly as though he were sharing a secret. “Some kids don’t have much upstairs. They’re dull. I know. I know. It’s Baldwin. Everyone is supposed to be brilliant. But I’ll tell you a secret. Even brilliant people can bore you to tears after a while.
The thing is, Friedman, I’ve been watching you. Yes. I read your short story. And I happen to believe there is some good stuff going on in that funky little noggin of yours. I like your brain. It is a good one. I wish you would share it more often. Why not start now?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “You can tell me,” says Cage. “Why don’t you give me a chance?”

  It started out as a way to keep part of her close to me. It was imaginary. But it changed fast. I know it’s crazy to believe what I believe, but somehow it became real. And now I’m pretty sure I’m dying of my mother’s brain tumor. You, my good man, are looking at a kid who is about to kick the proverbial bucket.

  Cage leans forward and looks into my eyes. “You gonna tell me or not?” he asks.

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I say.

  “Suit yourself,” says Cage. “But if you change your mind, or if you want more egg rolls and bad advice from a hairy, fat mammal, come find me in my office. Or if it’s after hours, call me. Here’s my number.” He hands me his business card.

  I put it in my back pocket next to the shard.

  “Mission accomplished,” says Cage.

  He sighs and polishes off the appetizers on his plate.

  I watch him.

  After a while, he signals the waitress, who comes over with the check.

  “How are those arteries?” she asks.

  “Let me put it this way,” says Cage. “If I die tonight, I’m going to die happy. Thanks to Panda Wok.”

  “Don’t go into advertising,” she says.

  “You don’t think my statement would win you customers?”

  “Come to Panda Wok. Have a coronary? I don’t think so.”

  Cage pokes me. “This is what you want one day,” he says. “A girl who is beautiful and brilliant. These are the benefits of being as articulate and witty as yours truly. Girls are always nice to men who like to talk.”

  “So where’s your girl been?” asks the waitress. “You always leave her at home?”

  “And observant too,” says Cage. He winks at the waitress and puts two twenties on the table. “Keep the change.”