by Dan Josefson
Doris made her way down to New Boys’ Cottage carrying an armload of phonics workbooks. It had rained that morning, and the warm air smelled of wet pavement. Doris was careful and stopped to rest frequently. She thought of the novel she had just been reading. There was a woman in it who was obese and who walked with a cane. Doris had never read a book with a character who in any way resembled herself, and it had come as quite a shock. Doris couldn’t help imagining herself in the role of this character, whose name was Eunice and who was rich and lived in Morocco. She drank gin all day and hired a young Moroccan prostitute to be her companion. Usually Doris preferred scotch, but making her way down to the Cottage she would have loved a glass of gin.
Doris hadn’t liked how the book ended. Eunice had been by far the most interesting character, but she had disappeared from the story about halfway through. It was strange, Doris thought, how the story just dropped her and moved on. Doris arrived at the Cottage. Jodi let her in, and Doris sat down to catch her breath.
While we finished the breakfast dishes Doris went through the workbooks she had with her. The previous day’s fight had ended our brief sojourn on campus, and New Boys were once again on restriction. It was surprising, though, how quickly things were calm again. Doris had work from the other teachers to hand out to us and a checklist of homework she was supposed to collect. For herself, she was going to spend the period working with Han Quek and Gary Gudzenko on their English. She looked forward to her sessions with them. Supervising the teachers and assisting Aubrey was baffling and exhausting work, but the Cottage was quiet and she was confident that she could help the two boys read.
Jodi told Doris that we just had to use the bathroom and then we would get to work.
“Fine, fine.”
“And I’m going to leave you with them for a while again. That’s not a problem, is it? You know there was an incident yesterday.” Jodi was neatening up the bookshelves and not paying much attention.
“These boys? No problem at all,” Doris said and laughed. “They’re good boys.” Doris knew we weren’t entirely good boys, but she had never had any problems with us. She always told us she thought we were one of the most pleasant dorms to be with. Doris “enjoyed our society” was how she put it. That seemed a bit generous to me, but I knew what she meant. The intricate rules of the dorm, enforced by Jodi, somehow took the place of formal manners so that there really was something old-fashioned and polite about how we behaved with her and with one another. Not always, but sometimes.
In the bathroom, we took turns, four of us sitting in the doorway while the rotating fifth used the toilet. This way we were technically still grouped since we were all in the same room. When I had my turn, I took my time. Those were the only moments of the day I could be almost alone. The toilet was next to a window; I leaned my elbows on my knees and watched the pink-striped curtains move in the breeze from an air vent in the floor. In that morning’s meeting, Jodi had tried to get William and Gary to talk about what happened the day before. She was wearing her Phoenix Suns hat, which she once told me was her favorite. She asked whether William had any resentments or if it had scared Gary to see how easily he could hurt someone. But they said they were fine, and they really did seem to be, so Jodi dropped it.
That was what I liked about New Boys. Maybe that’s why I had let myself get sent down. In Alternative Boys, they were always trying to get me to talk in meetings and to begin following the process. It’s not that I had any secrets; I just didn’t have anything to talk about. And thinking about myself that way made me uncomfortable. I didn’t like the feeling of separating myself in two: the Benjamin who was doing the thinking and the Benjamin that was being thought about. It made my head fuzzy and reminded me of the way I used to think about killing myself. Me killing myself. The made-up song I hummed to myself when I used to think about it: You go first, I’ll follow you, I’ll go first, you follow me.
In New Boys, Jodi’s only concern was with keeping us from getting violent or running away. No one bothered much about what I was or wasn’t thinking. For a moment the vent blew the pink curtains aside, and I saw two birds pecking at a squirrel that had gotten onto the bird feeder outside the window.
We finished in the bathroom. Han chased Ross around the living room with an open plastic garbage bag, threatening to catch him in it. “But see how well behaved you are,” Doris said. “When Jodi told you to stop, you stopped. And apologized.”
We took our school things from the shelves and got to work. We said good-bye to Jodi. Doris handed out the work the other teachers had sent down and realized that she had nothing for me and nothing for William, because he had just been moved down to New Boys.
Doris told us that for that period we could just read books. Gary had a copy of The Decameron from Dedrick’s Cooking with Butter class, but William wanted to read that. I took Ross’s Daniel Deronda, which he’d been assigned because he’d been at the school so long that he’d finished all his academics and no one knew what else to do with him. Doris said she would talk to my teachers about making sure they sent assignments to the Cottage.
Han and Gary sat down with Doris, and they spent some time talking. There was some sort of mix-up that led to Doris working with the boys on English as a second language. While it was true that Han and Gary had each spoken another language before learning English, they both spoke English as well as any of the other students at the school. Which meant far from perfectly but much better than Doris believed. They were happy to play along until they were found out and forced to do something more challenging than phonics worksheets.
Doris asked Han how he was adjusting to his move down from Alternative Boys. Did he regret trying to run away? She asked if he was making friends with the other boys. Then she asked Gary if he was helping Han. How was he helping?
They did some reading work next, which went fine until Doris chose to work on some irregularly spelled words. Han got stuck, or rather he pretended to, on “iron.”
“No, I know it looks like it would be pronounced ‘i-ron,’ but it’s an irregularly spelled word. We say ‘i-urn.’ ”
“I-ron.”
“I-urn.”
“I-ron.”
“Can you help him, Gary?”
Gary moved his finger under the word slowly. “I-ron,” he said.
A bird flew into the Cottage through the window. It was just a shadow flickering in the corner of Doris’s eye until Ross jumped off the couch screaming.
We all jumped up and began running around, some of us away from the bird and some trying to catch it. William had a broom and was swinging it through the air. I grabbed the garbage bag Han had been chasing Ross with and held it open.
Doris sat where she was and told us to calm down, though she was not remotely calm. She had picked up her cane and was holding it tightly. The Cottage had low ceilings, and the bird was flying into walls. If it came at her she could hardly move out of its way in time. “Boys, listen to me,” she called again and again. Finally we did. “Everyone sit down a minute. Let the bird rest.”
We sat down, and soon the bird alighted on top of the bookshelf, its head twitching.
“Good, now quietly open all the windows.”
“More birds’ll fly in!” Ross said.
Doris shook her head. “No more birds will fly in, Ross, I promise. Now open them.” She pointed with her cane. She was less sure of her next idea, but she was enjoying the sense of authority we had granted her. “Now let’s prop open the front door and do the rest of schooltime on the porch.” She stood up. “Will someone please carry my chair? Take your work.” Doris stood aside as we collected our things and dragged chairs out onto the small porch. It was cool outside, but the sun was shining. I read to myself from Daniel Deronda, and William read The Decameron. Han and Gary filled out phonics worksheets. Ross was drawing with colored pencils. From time to time we heard the bird moving around the Cottage. Doris looked around and enjoyed the breeze, and before too long the bird flew ou
t the door, over our shoulders, and into one of the pines across the gravel road.
When she walked back to the Classroom Building, enjoying a well-earned sense of exhaustion, Doris said out loud to herself, “No one ever said it would be easy.” But at the same time she was glad. We had had a little fun.
10
Aubrey had been away for a few days and had missed the meeting where New Girls announced that they had cornered Tidbit for the painting incident in Expressions. During the first Campus Community meeting he attended once he returned, he made them take it back. “I don’t understand why you’re always so eager to put everyone in the corner,” he said. He wore a black turtleneck sweater tucked into gray pants that were belted high around his paunch.
“Every time anything happens around here,” Aubrey said, “someone ends up in the corner. I have no idea where that comes from.”
Marcy hurried to explain herself. “Tidbit knows the rules,” she said. “She sliced up a painting, which is campus property, and destroying property is violence. Tidbit knows the consequences for breaking the rules. She’s the one who made the decision to act out. We can’t send her to another dorm because we’re the lowest functioning girls’ dorm, but my girls don’t have to be scared that they’re going to be attacked every time they confront—”
“Those are just arguments. This school is not a place!” Aubrey slapped his hand against his armrest. “That’s one of the things I’ll be talking about to the new parents on Parents’ Sunday in a couple of weeks. Roaring Orchards is not a place. It’s a series of places. That’s what makes it different from other schools and hospitals. We assign students to different places on campus based on where they need to be. Tidbit is in New Girls because she demonstrated to us that she needed to act out. So we put her in a place to do that. And now that she does it you want to punish her? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you want me to do,” Marcy said. “Shouldn’t there be any consequences for Tidbit? She destroyed her painting, and she had to be held down for ten minutes before she was calm enough to be let up. What are we supposed to do?”
“That’s an honest question,” Aubrey said, “and the honest answer is that I don’t entirely know.” He looked around the circle. “But she’s had her chance to act out, and I think she’s done enough, so I’m going to move her up into Alternative Girls.”
There was some grumbling from Alternative Girls.
“What about Laurel Pfaff?” Aubrey asked. “Isn’t she in that class as well?” He had turned his attention to a plastic container of yogurt he was eating.
“Laurel Pfaff?” Marcy asked. “She wasn’t really involved in this.”
“Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?” Aubrey said. He looked down at Laurel, sitting on the floor. “How long have you been here, Laurel?”
“About four years,” she said quietly.
“What’s that?”
“Four years,” she said, louder this time.
“And you’re embarrassed about that?”
“A little.”
“Bullshit,” Aubrey said, eating a spoonful of yogurt. Everyone waited as he swallowed. “You’re completely humiliated, aren’t you? And maybe you should be. To still be in New Girls after all this time? Girls who you think are so inferior to you come here, move up, graduate, and you’re still where you were.”
Laurel nodded. She looked at the floor and her back shook.
“Well, you’re not going to go anywhere until you get used to the idea that you’re not better than them! Do you understand that?”
Laurel nodded again.
“Now, what about the letters you were going to write me?”
Laurel looked up. “I wrote them,” she said.
“Well, are they not getting sent? Because I only got two.”
“No, I wrote two, but I thought …”
Aubrey turned to the rest of the room. He put his container of food down on his armrest. “A couple of months ago, almost a year ago now, Laurel sent me a letter asking for help. She was very frustrated that she wasn’t moving along through the school, her dorm mates had begun referring to her by a nickname that she didn’t like.” He raised his eyebrows. Students around the room giggled. “A nickname I won’t mention since I’m the one who popped it. And so on. I was very impressed by your letter, Laurel, as I told you at the time. I was moved that you thought of me when you wanted help. So I sat down with Miss Pfaff and we talked about how she could move ahead. And I put her on a structure where she would write me a letter each week telling me whatever she wanted to tell me. And I got two letters.”
“No, you just said to write anytime I needed to, not every week.”
The room was quiet. “So I’m lying about this?”
“No,” Laurel said. “No.” She paused. “I just don’t remember you saying to write you every week. I thought it was just when I wanted to write. I misunderstood.”
“You misunderstood.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You thought that I just wanted you to write whenever you felt like it, and I’d be there when you needed.” He waited for an answer, leaning out of his chair toward Laurel.
“Well, kind of.” She was crying.
“Does that sound like the sort of arrangement I’d make with a student, Laurel? Especially with a student as perpetually manipulative and selfish as you?”
“No.”
“But that’s still how you remember it?”
“Well—”
“Good. At least that’s honest.” He sat back in his armchair and picked up his breakfast. “The next step is for you to remember our conversation correctly. Marcy, I want Laurel to stay in her room until she better remembers our talk. Then she can figure out what she wants to do about it.”
“She’s roomed?” Marcy asked.
“Correct. Next.”
Aubrey went around the rest of the room quickly. When he got to Aaron, Aubrey asked to be reminded of his name.
“Aaron,” Aaron said.
“And how are things going, Aaron?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Don’t steal any of my suits.”
Before everyone left, there was a story that Aubrey wanted to tell. More and more lately, he said, he had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. “Two times, three times, four times a night,” he said. And it was strange, he told us, waking up so many times. It began to make the line between sleeping and waking less clear, especially since some of his dreams were now about waking up to pee. He was animated and smiling through this performance, encouraging the faculty members and students to all laugh along with him at the ridiculousness of his situation.
“And last night,” he said, his voice rising to a hilarious pitch, “at one point I actually fell asleep on the toilet. Because when you have to wake up to pee four or five times a night, you start to pee sitting down. And of course the only thing that eventually woke me up was that I had to go to the bathroom again! But because I didn’t realize that I was already in the bathroom, I walked back to my bedroom and figured out where I was just in time!” The room was roaring with laughter.
“But it made me realize something very strange,” he said through his own laughter. “We say ‘going to the bathroom,’ but where is it we’re going? I mean, you say you need to go to the bathroom. So you walk into a particular room called the bathroom. But even once you’re in the bathroom, you still need to go to the bathroom. And even when you’re doing what you do, you’re still going to the bathroom. And when you’re done, you’ve gone to the bathroom. But you’re never there. It’s like a place you’re always going toward, but you never get to. And then you claim to have returned from where you never were. I’d never thought of this before.”
And though the students laughed at his story, what we understood was that Aubrey was sick and that he wouldn’t be with us much longer. Somehow he had felt that telling this story would hide rather than expose the fact that he was dyi
ng, but we all understood right away. Even if we didn’t know that we knew, even if we would have reacted with some disbelief had someone told us Aubrey is going to die, at some level it would have accorded with what we now understood. Aubrey hadn’t meant to say anything because he didn’t want his students to worry. But we didn’t worry. We just knew.
PART TWO
Down the long green hill
1
Parents’ Sunday was dreaded as much as it was anxiously awaited. Everyone had a scheme, whether it was to convince our parents that the school’s program wouldn’t work for us or that it had already worked so well that we could safely return home or some equally transparent ploy. All these plans invariably melted away in the face of the physical presence of our parents themselves.
Laurel Pfaff stood at the window of her room, as she had for much of the past two weeks. It was a late autumn day, and the trees clustered across the broad hills on the opposite side of the valley were bright with dying leaves. Marcy usually came in at some point in the morning to make sure that she was awake and out of bed, but Laurel was sure she had other things to worry about today and didn’t expect her.
The first week she was roomed, Laurel had schoolwork to keep her busy, but when she hadn’t made any progress Marcy began taking away distractions. First her journal, then her schoolwork, and finally any contact with other members of the dorm. Now Laurel only saw Marcy when she brought meals, and her therapist once a week. Occasionally, other staff members passing through the dorm would stop in to check on her, but Laurel had begun to realize that people were forgetting she was there. Three times already, Marcy had forgotten to bring her a meal, and Laurel had to wait until Marcy returned to the dorm to remind her.