by Dan Josefson
“Sure, Benjamin.”
“What do I need to do to graduate? I mean, is there a way I can just pass the classes I need to and go home?”
Dedrick let out what I’m sure was supposed to be a good-natured laugh. “Well, you can complete all your classes, but to graduate here you also need to work your process. Or at least you need to do a really good job of faking it. It’s not exactly something you can rush.” Dedrick looked up at other students entering the room for his next class. “Try to take it slow,” he said. “Things’ll get easier.”
I’d begun to cry. “So there’s no reason to work hard at my classes? I mean, if it’s not going to help me get home?”
“Doing badly will certainly keep you from going anywhere, Ben.”
“Benjamin.”
“Benjamin. But there are also things other than classes you need to address before leaving. This isn’t an ordinary school.”
I nodded. I was starting to shake, tears falling faster now. I knew I should probably just leave, that the students arriving were looking at me, that this wasn’t going to do me any good. “I haven’t gotten any letters. From home.”
Dedrick must have found this all a little ridiculous. I could feel his patience running out. “That must be tough,” he said.
“But I’ve written to them. Do you think their letters could be lost someplace?”
“Well, have you talked to your dorm parent? You know mail gets inspected, right? Maybe … who’s your dorm parent, Ellie? You know what, I’ll ask her about it. Okay? But you probably need to get to your next class, don’t you? Otherwise no early graduation for you.” I could see Dedrick smile at me, but I kept staring down at the desk. Well, fuck him then, Dedrick must have thought. I gathered my things and walked unsteadily out of the classroom.
Next door, Spencer’s math class, Humble Starts and New Beginnings, had just let out, and his history class was about to begin. I bumped into students from both as I made my way to my art class. I was beginning to believe that there was a conspiracy aiming to keep me at the school. One aimed at me, personally, and I thought I saw the signs. The fact that no one could explain how the place really worked; Dedrick’s suggestion that my parents’ mail was being kept from me.
Of course, what was actually keeping me at Roaring Orchards was that I was being lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the days there, days that repeated endlessly and were filled with routines that even then had begun to ensnare me in their impenetrable mysteries. As we walked out of the dorm in the morning, we would all stoop to pinch pieces of lint and litter off the carpet and would drop them in a wastebasket Ellie held out for us as we went through the door. Before lunch, we all threw our backpacks into an enormous pile in the Cafetorium lobby and afterward had to disentangle them and each of us find our own. With dinner every night there were bags of soft bread.
When Spencer couldn’t find a reason to send his history class to the library, he worked with them on building a scale model of Fort Ticonderoga out of Popsicle sticks. In June’s science class, since they couldn’t use fire or anything huffable, they were growing lima beans in cups, the beans pressed against the clear plastic by wet paper towels. The students spent each class period drawing a new picture of how their plants had changed. Every chance I got I looked in at the bean plants growing in her classroom, their pale leguminous elegance stretching beneath fluorescent lights. I had no idea how ardently I would remember these things.
In my art class, which was called Expressions, we were making papier-mâché masks. Brenda insisted that the masks reflect our innermost feelings. She was skeptical of my mask because I had added a bird’s beak to it. She wouldn’t criticize it directly, since she probably worried it might indeed reflect my innermost feelings, and I’m sure I seemed pretty fragile just then. But she had asked me several times to explain why, exactly, a beak. She was more impatient that day because Tidbit had begun trying to fashion a duck’s bill to add onto her mask.
Tidbit had been in Expressions with me since classes began, but she hadn’t said anything more than hello. She acted as though it was no big deal that I’d seen her naked, as though she hadn’t whispered in my ear. I wondered if maybe the fact that neither of us mentioned this meant that there was something between us, like a secret, or if it meant that there was nothing between us. But of course there was nothing between us. We acted like we didn’t know each other because we didn’t know each other. But maybe the duck’s bill was a gesture.
Brenda dropped the rolled sheets of oak tag she was carrying onto a table. “I don’t understand this,” she said. “I’m willing to give you guys some leeway since I really want you to own these masks, but I’m not willing to let them become a joke.” She looked around the room. The students looked at one another, wondering.
“These beaks!” she said. “Tidbit, what’s with this? I’d like to know just where you got the idea to add a beak to your mask.”
Tidbit didn’t look up from her work but answered evenly. “Well, when Benjamin added a beak to his it made me think of Sheila Baird. Do you remember her? Bairdypants? Her parents withdrew her like a year ago, but when she was new she used to fall asleep all the time. In the middle of class and everything. Not like Bev, but still a lot. I don’t know if her meds were off or if she was depressed or what. We were in Alternative Girls then, and Jodi was our dorm parent, and Jodi said she didn’t want other faculty members to have to keep waking Sheila up. She said she was our dorm mate and it was our responsibility to be aware of her and keep her awake, so she set this limit where if anyone outside the dorm had to wake Sheila up, everyone in the dorm who was there had to stand up and sing that Sammy Hagar song ‘Eagles Fly.’ Like as a consequence. And after Benjamin’s mask made me remember that, I couldn’t get that song out of my head. ‘Eagles Fly.’ And I thought maybe there was a reason it was there. Like thinking about eagles flying was a sign that I was feeling good about myself. And I thought that was something I could represent on my mask.”
Only now, after having glued the top and bottom parts of her bill together and carefully wiping off the excess glue, did Tidbit look up. Brenda looked skeptical. “So why a duck’s bill?” she asked. “Why not an eagle’s? Beak, I mean.”
“There are these ducks on the pond near my mom’s house? I guess I was thinking of how they fly south in the winter and then come back. Like they have two homes, and they go where they need to be to take care of themselves. Like how I have a home there, but this is where I need to be now, and it’s a kind of home, too. I guess I could really relate to that, you know?” Tidbit looked right at Brenda without cracking a smile or even blinking. There was nothing Brenda could do, though Tidbit might as well have just spat in her face. This was what, even then, I was beginning to love about her.
Brenda was relieved of having to respond by Pudding, who called across the room. “Those ducks’ issue,” he said, “was they were looking for a geographical solution to an emotional problem.”
“Shut up, Pudding,” Brenda said.
7
A freakish snowstorm hit the school in late September, dumping almost two feet in the valley. The trees hadn’t yet lost their leaves, so their branches held more snow than they could support. As we woke and hurried to take care of our snow jobs, we heard enormous branches snapping under all the weight. They sounded like rifle shots, followed by the muffled fall of the branch and its weight of snow against the snowy ground. I tingled with excitement at the almost constant crack and thud from every direction, the world falling to pieces.
There was so much snow that every dorm was late to breakfast. None was allowed to eat in the Cafetorium. We all had to carry trays of food up to our quarters in the Mansion. In the Cafetorium, Aubrey and a few faculty members quietly ate poached eggs. Even Regular Kids had been late. But after breakfast Aubrey canceled classes for the day so that we could clear more of the campus of snow. He had Floyd, the cook, keep the hot chocolate machine working, and over the course of the day Aubrey personal
ly went around and sent one dorm at a time into the Cafetorium for a break.
Aaron arrived on campus just as the sun dropped through the low-lying clouds. It warmed him through his driver’s side window despite the snow and the cold. He pulled into the driveway, made his way past the stone pillars and the open iron gate, and parked next to a red Subaru wagon in the small carport by the Mansion. Getting out of the car, he thought that the school looked different under the snow. He checked to make sure his car was locked and climbed carefully over the packed snow on the Mansion steps into the Office, where Doris had told him to meet her. Aaron happened to arrive on the same day that my parents made an impromptu visit to the campus, one that I wasn’t told about for quite some time.
The receptionist, Hazel, told him that Doris was in a meeting, but that he was expected and she would be with him shortly. She opened a drawer and pulled out a form attached to a clipboard. She handed it to Aaron with a pen and pointed him toward an armchair across from her desk, beside the entrance to Doris’s office. There was something clipped about her tone. Hazel always acted as though she were playing along with some sort of farce but wanted you to know she didn’t buy it for a second.
Aaron filled out the top half of the form, then clicked the pen shut and looked around. Hazel was going through a pile of messages and throwing most of them into a round wire wastebasket at her side. She was old, and her white hair was done up in a perm. Aaron must have wondered whether he would become friendly with her, if he would joke around with Hazel when he passed through the Office. Beyond Hazel’s desk there was a large open space with five or six desks, one secretary sitting at each. Occasionally a phone would ring, and someone would answer, “Hello, Roaring Orchards School for Troubled Teens, how can I help you?” and then efficiently shoot the call across to some other desk.
At the far end of the Office was an open doorway that led into the Great Hall, but Aaron couldn’t see much of it from where he sat. While he was looking, Doris walked through the doorway, and Aaron began to get up when two other people followed her into the Office. Aaron sat back down. One of the people with her was a tall, stooped man with a large bald spot and thick glasses. A short, frail woman was with him. Her long, black hair was frizzy and streaked with gray. Her face was pale, and the left half of it was entirely covered with a white bandage. A long piece of medical tape stretched from her forehead to her chin affixed the bandage to her face, along with another that went from her nose to the edge of her left ear. She kept wiping at the corners of her right eye and the right side of her nose with a balled-up Kleenex. Her hand was also bandaged. Over her arm she held a dark blue ski jacket that would be much too large for her. It had a red stripe across the chest. These were my mom and dad.
It wasn’t until years later that my parents told me they had come to the school that day. I only learned that my mother had burned herself falling asleep smoking when they visited the next Parents’ Sunday.
They spoke with Doris quietly, just inside the Office, and although Aaron couldn’t hear them, he could tell from the way they were gesturing and looking that my dad wanted to go back into the Great Hall and that Doris was trying to talk him out of it. My dad half turned toward the doorway and looked back into the Great Hall for a long time without saying anything. He said something to my mother, but she was searching in her purse for another tissue and shaking her head back and forth. My dad nodded and let Doris lead him and my mom to the main doors, next to which Aaron was sitting.
As he shook hands with her, my dad said to Doris, “Couldn’t you just tell him for us that his mother is all right?”
“What I’ve been trying to explain is that he never got the letters about the accident in the first place,” Doris said. “We thought it would be too upsetting, on a number of levels. So you don’t need to worry.”
My mother’s mouth moved, but she didn’t say anything.
“That’s why there’s no need right now to show Benjamin that you’re okay. You must be aware that our dorm parents read all incoming and outgoing mail. To make sure nobody’s sending drugs or making runaway plans. But since you’ve come to campus at a time other than Parents’ Sunday,” Doris said, “we have another problem. That you’ll have to solve with Aubrey or with the other parents in your area. But I’ll tell you, they’re much tougher about this sort of infraction than he is.”
My parents were silent. “You’ll give it to him?” my dad finally said. Doris nodded. He opened the door and held it for my mom, who was trying to fold the big ski jacket. She was standing almost directly in front of Aaron, who might have noticed, in that pause, that under the edges of her bandage her skin was red and raw. My mother shook Doris’s hand awkwardly and passed her the jacket.
“I’ll come up with something,” Doris said. Then, after she had closed the door, she turned to Aaron. “Hello again,” she said. “An unsanctioned parental visit. I shouldn’t be much longer. Why don’t you wait in my office? You can finish the form in there.” She gestured with the jacket to a door to his right.
Doris left Aaron in front of her enormous desk, surrounded by store-bought Thanksgiving decorations, and went to bring me my jacket. I was outside shoveling snow, wearing two shirts and a hoodie, when she showed up and told me the jacket had come for me in the mail. I asked her whether there had been a note or anything, but she just shook her head and said she had to go.
Aaron took a closer look at the decorations. There were orange, brown, and yellow streamers taped to the walls and other cardboard shapes taped to the windows, facing out. It was early for Thanksgiving, Aaron thought. He took a moment to remember the date. It was still September. Maybe some of these were for Halloween. Aaron wondered whether the students were involved in preparing the campus for holidays. Was that something they enjoyed, or would they resent it? He had seen some students when he came up for his interview, but there’s no way he could imagine what we were really like.
Doris’s office had built-in bookshelves that held some framed photos of Aubrey with groups of students and family and friends. The rest of the shelves were taken up by a series of bright blue binders. Aaron thought of Hazel at the reception desk and of a waitress she reminded him of at Johnny-O’s Club Andy, a little bar where he’d spent most evenings the past few months. He used to feel so comfortable in that shitty place that he often got panicky at the thought of leaving at the end of a night. It sent a shiver of fear through Aaron. He hadn’t even known how bad off he was. He was terrified that this job wasn’t going to work out. On Doris’s large oak desk stood a turkey with a glossy cardboard face and a spherical body made of colorful tissue paper.
Aaron heard the sound of Doris’s cane against the wood floor as she approached and realized he’d forgotten about the form he was supposed to fill out. She entered and stood in the doorway, her cheeks red from the cold. “As soon as it started snowing, they headed up here to bring him a jacket. Talk about overidentified.” Doris laughed, and Aaron laughed, too. He had no idea what she was talking about. “Shall we get going?”
“I haven’t finished this,” Aaron said, tapping the clipboard with the pen.
“Oh, that’s all right.” Doris took the clipboard from him. “I don’t think you need to worry about this right now.”
Aaron followed her to Hazel’s desk. “Do you mind,” Doris asked, “if he fills this out next week along with the tax forms?”
“All right,” Hazel said, “but the last two people left before they gave me any paperwork, so I don’t have contact numbers or anything. One of them put us down as a reference, God knows why, and I didn’t know what to say when they called me. What kind of person puts down for a reference a job he left the afternoon after he got there?” Hazel shook her head and put the clipboard back in a drawer. “The same kind of person who leaves a job the afternoon after he gets there.”
Doris led Aaron out of the Mansion and past his car. “You can unpack this evening. I’d like to show you your apartment and introduce you to the dorm yo
u’ll be working with. You’ll be living in the Greenhouse Annex, a charming little space.” Aaron was wearing his nice pants and shoes and hoped that he was dressed all right for working in the dorm. His shoes were new and still squeaked when he walked.
From the hill where the Mansion sat, Aaron could see the afternoon light reflected across the gentle slope of the snow. Brief tapping and scraping sounds floated through the air. Groups of students clustered together in front of the various buildings, shoveling snow. Doris led him down toward one of the buildings. Aaron noticed that the sounds of the students’ work were badly synchronized with their movements; the sound took some time to travel to him through the cold air. The effect was slightly disorienting. He turned away and focused his attention on the blue shadows cast by the trees and the hill across the snow.
Doris stopped and drew Aaron’s attention to Aubrey, who was walking their way. He was wearing an enormous parka with a fur-lined hood. He was rubbing his hands together and smiling.
“Doris, who’s this you’re shepherding around my campus?” He held out his hand, and Aaron shook it.
“This is Aaron, the new dorm parent I was telling you about. Aaron, this is Aubrey.”
“It’s an auspicious day to start, Aaron. Something about this strange weather’s made our students briefly content to behave like the children they are. It’s really wonderful—those two magical words, ‘snow day.’ You should see how excited they are when I invite them to come inside for hot chocolate.”
Aaron looked at Doris, and when she laughed politely, he did, too.
“Doris is answering all of your questions, I hope?”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, absolutely.”
“I’m glad. I have a tremendous amount of faith in Doris. She has a great personal power, Aaron, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. Some people find that sort of humility a virtue, but I think it’s her only flaw. When she finally chooses to be as strong and insightful as she actually is, she’ll be a force of nature.” Doris was leaning on her cane. Whether she was blushing or her face was simply red from the cold, Aaron couldn’t tell. Aubrey grabbed Aaron’s arm gently just above the elbow. “She’ll take this place over when I’m gone. I’ve poured everything into this place, my whole life. So you can see that I must feel she’s special.”