Please Proceed to the Nearest Exit

by Jessica Raya

  “Give it here,” I said. “I’ll run it under the tap and see if it smudges.”

  “Don’t you dare!” She lifted the letter high in the air, her face lit with laughter. The old woman vanished. That would never be her. Mom hated cats.

  She stopped laughing. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” she said.

  “You have tuberculosis.”

  “What?”

  “Wandering spleen?”

  “You aren’t supposed to read the files.”

  “They’re everywhere. I glance.”

  “Mildred wants me to take on more responsibility, that’s all.” There would be a small modification to her title, she explained, and a modest raise.

  “You mean a promotion?” I said.

  “I suppose you could call it that.”

  “That’s not as bad as tuberculosis.”

  Mom shook her head. “I haven’t the foggiest idea why they’d want to promote me.”

  “Usually a promotion means you’re good at something.”

  “Well, yes,” she said. “I suppose it does.”

  Mom stuck the letter to the fridge with a magnet.

  “The hope for America,” I said.

  There was a hint of line between her brows. A questioning grin twitched at the corners of her mouth. It was the same expression she had when she drove now, not happy or unhappy, simply astounded by the unexpected hairpin turns life could take. “Assistant manager, records and billing,” she said and let the grin win.

  The following weekend brought the final phase to the Great Fisher Purge. This time I helped. We gritted our teeth and said little as we toiled, felt the significance of our actions in our muscles and bones. A few hours later, the contents of the pool house squatted at the curb. From there, two men from the Salvation Army loaded everything into a big white van. They wore dark blue trousers and shirts. One had a cross tattooed on his forearm. Holy garbage men. When they were done, the one with the tattoo shook Mom’s hand. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “Thank you,” she said, trying not to smile. The merry widow. “Thank you very much.”

  As the white van pulled away, a blue truck arrived, two men in dirty T-shirts and jeans, tools slung on leather belts around their hips. They used sledgehammers to get it started. The rest they did with their yellow-gloved hands and steel-toed feet. They pushed and prodded. They jumped up and down. If they were little boys, they would have been having the time of their lives, but because this was their job they wore the grim faces of men who had seen too many things destroyed. The thin wood snapped and crunched under their boots. The sounds were sickening, like the shell of a beetle being crushed under your shoe. Slowly, slat by slat, it folded in on itself, the little house that Dad built reduced to firewood. They carted away everything except the hole in the ground.

  Mom shook her head at the hole. “Happy now?” she said and went inside. Mrs. Houston started to say something to me from her side of the fence, but there was nothing to say. It wasn’t a funeral, it just felt like one.

  I went inside to get something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, but there was something gnawing at me and I couldn’t think what else to do with that. Mom was at the kitchen table, flipping through the college’s spring catalogue that had come in the mail the week before. I’d thought she’d thrown it away. There was an unlit cigarette in her hand. Lately, she’d been forgetting to light them.

  “We need to fill up that hole,” I said.

  “I’m working on it,” she said and turned another page.

  —

  Growing up in a town that was in love with the appearance of progress, I’d seen more holes in the ground than anyone ever should. Lately, I’d started taking the long way home from school so I could pass by the hole where the gas station used to be. I wanted to tell Jamie that I’d made a royal mess of things, and if he would just not go to Vietnam maybe I could fix some of them. But he was never there. It was already November. The water planes were long gone and the birds had come back. Sparrows, thrushes, finches, towhees. There were dozens of them most days, hundreds sometimes, circling and swooping overhead, drawing their Spirographs all over the sky. I tried not to make too much out it. A kid at school with an older brother said that Jamie Finley was in basic training somewhere on the coast, but I liked to think that maybe he’d found a new construction site where they needed bricks moved around. I heard Missy Carter tell Miss Blumberg that they should invite him to the pageant. Maybe he could say a few inspirational words. I pictured him on the stage, wearing one of his dad’s ties, a live version of the boys whose graduation photos would sit up there on easels come December. I stopped taking the long way home after that.

  Carol still hadn’t come back to school. I didn’t see Melanie around much anymore either. Everybody I’d ever cared about was MIA. The only one I could count on was the person on the school roof. They were up there almost every day. I waved from Mrs. Maxwell’s window once, but they didn’t wave back. Whoever it was, I guess they had better things to look at up there.

  Down below, Mr. Galpin and the janitor were peeling paper pumpkins and witches off the front doors. Behind me, Moody was beating egg whites while Mrs. Maxwell explained to everyone else why it was important not to overwork the meringue. I couldn’t bring myself to watch anymore. There was something sad about all the eggs we’d used in that room, all the breadcrumbs and flour, all the butter and lard. So much of it ended up in the trash. The whole place was starting to smell like garbage left in the sun, but I was the only one who seemed to notice. I thought maybe I was developing an allergy to home ec that had nothing to do with peanuts.

  “See those lovely peaks?” Mrs. Maxwell said. “Very nice, Moody. Very nice.”

  My stomach didn’t think it was very nice. As it twisted and flipped, I untied my apron, hung it on the hook near the door, and went in search of fresher air.

  There was a Euclidean geometry to getting up to the roof, an intricate choreography of foot and hand placements to scale the wall of old pallets at the back of the school that served as makeshift stairs. Being neither dancer nor mathlete, I wasn’t doing too well. My arms shook as the pallets groaned and creaked beneath me. Suddenly, a hand appeared before my grunting face, bitten pink polish on its fingertips. Melanie bent over the edge of the roof, her hair falling toward me like rain.

  “You?” I said.

  “Come on. I can’t hang around here all day.”

  Her hand dangled, open and waiting. My own was white-knuckling a dirty length of pipe. I took hold of hers and let it pull me up.

  I have read that the refurbished Reagan High has a green roof, replete with living walls, solar panels, and grey water collection for the sustainable herb garden managed by the Farm-to-Table Food Club. But back then it was, like all school roofs before it, a heat-absorbing tarpapered slab littered with wizened apple cores and tennis balls. Someone had rigged a canopy of golf umbrellas in the middle and laid two old gym mats underneath. Melanie settled on one of them, cross-legged, and picked up an old library copy of Teen.

  “What are you doing up here?” I said.

  “I wait for Moody,” she said. “He brings me food.”

  “I thought Moody Miller was a loser.”

  “Who said that?”

  “You did.”

  “Huh.” Melanie adjusted one of the golf umbrellas so she was in the sun and lay back on the mat. The mound of her stomach pushed up between her sweatshirt and unbuttoned jeans.

  “Melanie!”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “But I thought…”

  She shook her head. “I chickened out. I was in the paper gown and everything. I guess I’m a good Catholic girl after all.”

  I wondered what Carol would think about Melanie’s baby. Something told me it wouldn’t make her happy. I also suspected that whatever made Carol unhappy didn’t have anything to do with this.

  I sat beside Melanie on the mat. “What do your parents think?”

  “I
thought I’d wait and tell them at Christmas, see how well the old Virgin Birth story works the second time around.”

  “If it was good enough for Mary,” I said.

  Melanie put her hand on her belly and tapped her fingers lightly like she was doing Morse code. Her boobs were huge now. I remembered how she used to sleep on her back because her sister told us that made them grow bigger.

  “What about Troy?” I said.

  “What about him?” She gave me a look and that was all we ever said about that. It was all we had to.

  “Are you scared?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Terrified. But what are you gonna do? If it wasn’t for Moody, I’d probably jump off this roof right now. Don’t laugh, but I think I might love him. I mean really love him. Isn’t that funny? Me and Moody.”

  I pictured Moody in a grey jacket with one of those joke tuxedo T-shirts underneath and started laughing.

  “It’s not that funny,” she said.

  “I was actually thinking about Jamie Finley,” I said, and laughed even harder. “He’s going to Vietnam, you know.”

  “That’s not funny either.”

  “I know it’s not funny. It’s the opposite of funny.” But I was laughing so hard I could barely get the words out, so hard I could hardly breathe. Then I was crying, crying and not breathing.

  “What’s with you?” Melanie studied me, arms crossed tightly over her giant boobs. Her mouth fell open. “Oh,” she said. “Oooooooh.”

  Her belly was as hard as a basketball when she hugged me. I hadn’t been expecting that. More surprising was how tightly she squeezed, how she dug her fingers into my shoulders so fiercely it almost hurt. Something loosened inside me at the pressure and I finally let go, finishing what I’d started at the road cut, all those hurts and sorrys pouring out of me. Melanie held me even tighter.

  “I hate this place,” she said. “I really do. I hate this school, I hate this town, I hate everything. I wish someone would blow it all to kingdom come.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I said.

  But she did. She pulled back just enough to look at me and smile.

  —

  The Monday before the 1972 presidential election, Mr. Jensen across the street lost his dog, a half-blind beagle that was always running away. “Here, Buddy!” he called. “Here, boy!” I heard him clapping and whistling as he walked down the street. It sounded like the world’s saddest round of applause. I thought of the Pageant of Ideas! When Missy Carter handed out the final program the week before, Carol’s name had been on it. Carol Closter—A Dramatic Interpretation of the 23rd Psalm. I wasn’t surprised. If there was a way for Carol to humiliate herself, she’d take it. Not that I needed another reason to skip it, but I’d seen Carol humiliate herself enough already. “Here, Buddy!” Clap, clap, clap. I shut my window. Some people just didn’t know when to quit.

  It wasn’t eight o’clock yet, but Mom was already up and dressed and burning a pot of coffee. She’d had her hair cut just above her shoulders. She’d told the hairdresser that she needed something sensible that she wouldn’t have to fuss over, but I thought the way it bounced and swished when she moved was glamorous. She’d even bought a new suit. Her blouse had a small ink stain on it, but she said it was fine, she’d keep her jacket on. It was her first day as Golden General’s assistant manager, records and billing.

  “What do you think?” Mom said. “Too much?”

  “You look beautiful,” I said, because she did.

  She smiled softly. “So do you,” she said. I glanced down to make sure I hadn’t accidentally put on a dress. Ripped jeans, faded rainbow T-shirt. When I looked up again, Mom was ruining her mascara. Her words were choked. “You’re just growing up so fast.”

  “I was going to say the same thing about you.”

  She laughed and swiped under her eyes. Instead of her wedding ring, a pale strip of skin circled her finger. I didn’t know when she’d taken it off, but I’d have bet good money it was sitting in a thrift store display case somewhere next to the gold-plated tie clips and cultured pearls.

  I stood on the front step to wave Mom off. As she backed the Buick out of the driveway, Mr. Jensen whistled and clapped across the street. I joined in now. A standing ovation, long overdue.

  Mrs. Houston came outside to see what the commotion was, and I told her about the missing dog. She said the Fosters down the block were missing a cat. I scanned our street. There were no animals anywhere, no tabbies climbing fences, no birds in the sky, only a low November sun and the cozy scent of burning leaves. Mrs. Houston pulled the two halves of her cardigan together. “Do you think it’s an earthquake?”

  My dad always said pets could predict an earthquake about as well as they could pick winning lottery numbers. I wasn’t so sure. If canaries could detect poisonous gas, why couldn’t a beagle sense an earthquake? But I was trying to be more optimistic about things.

  “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” I said.

  “Well, I’m an old wife,” Mrs. Houston said and went inside to wrap up her crystal.

  When I got to school, I went straight up to the roof. Everyone would be getting ready for the Pageant of Ideas! Moody was on spotlight duty again, but Melanie and I were going to stay on the roof all day and do nothing. We called it our Pageant of Idle! She was already up there with Moody, the two of them lying side by side on the gym mats, feeding each other the cookies he’d made the day before. “They’re like little drops of heaven,” Mrs. Maxwell had called them. Melanie said she and Moody were going to open a bakery in the city some day. She talked about it the way she used to talk about her dream wedding. She never talked about the baby, I noticed, but I liked to imagine Melanie Junior snuggled in a basket under the cash register, happy and fat from all that heavenly food.

  After Moody left for the auditorium, Melanie and I made up a game involving a tennis racquet and a deflated soccer ball. It was easy to play. No matter what you did, you got a point. I wondered why there weren’t more games like this. Winning wasn’t any less fun for me because Melanie was winning too. We were both all-state champions and feeling really good about our achievements until we sent the soccer ball over the edge of the roof, across the parking lot, and under a yellow Pinto. The driver’s door opened and someone in a soldier costume got out. I shut my eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. It didn’t work. He was still there, standing in his dress uniform. Jamie Finley, a week too late for Halloween.

  He reached under the car for the ball. As he scanned the parking lot for its owner, something caught his eye. We followed his gaze to the football field. Someone was crossing the end zone, carrying a red suitcase. When he couldn’t see them anymore, Jamie looked up at the roof. I ducked behind the little wall that kept juvenile delinquents like us from tumbling over the edge. I’d been searching for him for weeks. There were things I needed to tell him. Only now I realized that telling him these things would mean actually having to talk to him.

  Melanie followed my lead, crouching beside me with her feet wide apart to accommodate her stomach. She wouldn’t be able to hide it much longer. In a few weeks, she wouldn’t even be able to climb up to the roof.

  “Why don’t you just talk to him,” Melanie said.

  I shook my head. I could feel the flush on my cheeks. I’d been so stupid for so long, I didn’t know how to stop.

  Melanie straightened up and sat on the wall. “Hey, Thinly! Robin says you look really sexy in that uniform.” She laughed, pleased with herself. Being pregnant hadn’t made her any more mature. Under that belly, she was still just a sixteen-year-old girl.

  “What’s he doing?” I said.

  “He’s checking his watch…Now he’s going inside the school.” She frowned and went back to her gym mat, broke a little drop of heaven in half and pushed it into her mouth. “Sorry. I should probably just stay out of your love life, huh?”

  “You and me both.”

  While Melanie finished the cookies, I considered what to do.
The longer I stayed crouched there, the more stupid I felt. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I climbed down from the roof. He already had his dress uniform. Ready or not, I knew that time was running out.

  I took the shortcut between the portables. Mr. Galpin was standing in the narrow dirt passage, leaning against the aluminum siding, a small bottle pressed to his lips. When he saw me, he slipped it inside his blazer.

  “You caught me,” he said. “I’m playing hooky today too.”

  “I was just going to the auditorium,” I said. I could smell the booze from where I was standing, sharp from the bottle and tangy from his pores.

  “I’m afraid you’ve missed most of it. Though I wouldn’t say you missed much. What those kids don’t know about life could fill an auditorium.” He laughed like he was choking on something, then shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Or maybe I did. I’m sorry either way.”

  “Carol signed up for it,” I said, hoping to cheer him up. “I guess she’s feeling better now.”

  Mr. Galpin nodded. “I’m sorry, Miss Fisher.”

  “What for?”

  “We should practise what we preach, but it’s not always easy. I’m no good at this anymore.”

  “You’re a great vice-principal,” I said.

  “Just a lousy human being. I’ve got a hole inside me, you see. A great big hole where a person used to be. People said it would close up in time, but it doesn’t. That hole only gets bigger. Eventually it gets so big that everything falls into it. One day you wake up and there’s no light at all. There’s nothing but blackness. There’s only that hole.”

  I wanted to say something that would make him feel better, but I was on unfamiliar ground. Teachers were supposed to give kids pep talks, not the other way around. I said the first thing I could think of, the thing I needed to tell Jamie. It would have to do for Mr. Galpin too.

  “Do you ever think about time machines?” I said.