That's Not a Feeling

by Dan Josefson

  Tidbit nodded. “RO-bots,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Roaring Orchards–bots.” Tidbit rolled up her jeans and started untying her sneakers.

  “Did your parents come up last Sunday?”

  “My mom did. And my cat.”

  “What’s her name?” Tidbit had pulled off her socks and stood up. Her feet were pale and looked soft.

  “His name,” she said. “Fatface.” She waded a few paces into the puddle and gasped. She began swinging the rake underwater in the general vicinity of the pump, occasionally raking back and forth. “Come on,” she said. “Help.”

  I hurried to take off my shoes and roll up my pants. When I walked into the water I could feel the chill grass beneath my feet, but the water was icy. I took two steps and stopped, concentrating on catching my breath. “You getting anything?” I asked.

  “No. I don’t think this is going to work.” She handed me the rake and let me try. I swung the rake against something under the water. I couldn’t manage to displace any leaves. Pulling my pants higher I stepped farther into the puddle. It was wide, but not very deep. “If it gets any colder this water’s going to freeze.”

  “We’ll be stuck in here until spring,” Tidbit said.

  I tried again with the rake, but still had no luck.

  “I’ve seen that happen,” Tidbit said. “To the ducks on the pond near my house.”

  “The ones you made your mask like?”

  “What?”

  “That’s what you told Brenda. I’m in that class. You told her all about it in Expressions.” I handed Tidbit the rake and began rolling up my sleeves.

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot that. I was just bullshitting Brenda. But the ducks would sometimes get frozen into the pond if it got cold really early. My friend Eli used to go out on the ice with his hockey stick and try to decapitate them with a slap shot. Sometimes he just broke their necks, but when they came off it was crazy. You’d see these duck heads sliding across the ice or find them later in the weeds.”

  I reached down where the pump was to pull out handfuls of wet black leaves. I saw the scars on my forearms and was suddenly ashamed of them. I was not unaware of the perverse attraction they could have, especially at Roaring Orchards where pain took on an aspect of glamour. But I didn’t want Tidbit to see them. I couldn’t really stop pulling out leaves or roll down my sleeves now that I’d started, so I just moved and tried to turn my arms so that my forearms were hidden. The clumps of leaves I pulled up looked like seaweed. They were partially decomposed and torn to shreds. I tossed them onto the grass, then walked around to the other side of the pump and continued working there.

  “Is this thing supposed to start working, or are we just supposed to stop once we get rid of all the leaves we can?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I can’t feel my feet.”

  “I know. My hands are getting numb, too.”

  “Hey, look.” Tidbit pointed up the hill to where a wild turkey had stopped to watch us standing in the puddle.

  “What the fuck?”

  “You see them all the time on the other side of campus. We put food out for them by the bird feeders.”

  I threw a clump of leaves in the turkey’s direction. It didn’t move. “Get out of here,” I shouted. “Hey, give me the rake.”

  “Why?”

  I picked up the rake and waved it in the direction of the turkey, but that only made it come closer. “Shit.” I threw the rake at it and missed. The turkey came closer still and began investigating the tines with its beak.

  “You stay there and keep it occupied.” Tidbit walked out of the puddle and in a wide arc circled behind the turkey. Then she started running. Waving her arms and yelling, she ran right at it. The turkey looked over its shoulder and scrambled for a second, and then it was running. I stared at its legs as it ran. They were like real legs, I thought, until I noticed it was running at me. I ran out of the water and turned to see the turkey working its wings. It cleared the puddle in an impossible leap. After two more long strides on the other side, it hopped the fence and was flying. It flew low at first, over Route 294, and then straight up, over the telephone wires on the other side of the road. It descended, and I lost it somewhere in the woods across the street.

  “Holy shit! Did you see that?” I was jumping up and down. “Fuck! Did you even know they could fly? I didn’t know they could fly. Holy fuck!”

  “Shh.” Tidbit laughed. “Keep your voice down.” She rubbed her right foot against her left shin to try to get the leaves and dead grass off. “That was pretty great.”

  “Yeah.” I was still looking at where the turkey had disappeared. “Did you know they could fly?”

  “I think I knew,” she said, “but I forgot.”

  We grabbed our shoes and ran back to the Mansion barefoot. I followed Tidbit up the stairs and around a number of hallways to a small room where she found some fresh towels. I still had no idea where anything in that monstrous building was.

  We collapsed onto the floor and began to rub our feet dry. “So what did you do to get sent here?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “To get sent here. You said you had a self-afflicting personality, but you must have done something.”

  “Oh.” Tidbit put down her towel and brushed the hair out of her face. “I was doing a lot of drugs. Meth, mostly. There were these older guys who would always let me have some, and they were really sweet, I’d known all of them since I was little. They’re the ones who gave me the tattoo on my neck. Of my name.” She turned quickly and pulled back her hair to show me again. “And they’d let me hang out and get high, but they always made sure I’d gone to school that day; they wouldn’t let me have any if I’d skipped. They would always ask me what I learned that day. And even if I’d gone, you know, I’d usually have to make up something that I learned because how often do you actually learn anything? But these guys didn’t know the difference, it was kind of cute how dumb they were.

  “But I started kind of dating one of them, and he’d give me some extra because I told him I couldn’t get through a day at school without it. Which was kind of true. But I started doing this thing at school where I’d get into a fight every day. Fighting on that stuff feels amazing. At the beginning of the day, when it was still gray and foggy out and everyone’s hanging out in the cafeteria waiting for the bell to ring, I’d decide who I was going to fight with later. Just any random kid. And then the rest of the day, it was like I was this superslick machine, you know? I’d look for that person and it was like I was on rails. And as soon as I found them, I’d start in on them like crazy. Can you imagine what it feels like to fight someone you hardly even know, and know you can’t lose? That you can’t even get hurt?” Tidbit’s eyes were bright.

  “You’d never lose?”

  “Well, I might get beat up, but I couldn’t feel a fucking thing. Of course that didn’t last long. After about a week and a half of getting into a fight a day, the principal told me not to come to school anymore. So I’d just stay home and get high and play with my cat. And then they told me to come here, and my mom was driving me so nuts it sounded fine.”

  I put down my towel and started putting my socks and sneakers on. “Was that Fatface or another cat?”

  “That was Fatface.”

  “D’you miss him?”

  “Yeah, even though I just saw him Parents’ Sunday. I hope my mom brings him next time. I’m gonna stuff his whole head in my mouth and just suck on it all day.”

  “What?” I laughed.

  “I just love him so much. I want to cut him open and kiss him all over his slimy insides.”

  “Yeah, I bet he’d love that.” I felt she was teasing me, but I didn’t know why.

  “I’m gonna make him give me a hug and tie his arms in a big bow right around my neck.”

  3

  Aubrey stopped on the stairs to catch his breath. One hand rested on the banister and the other on his knee. He hated this. Fro
m where he stood he could hear the ladies in the office typing and talking on the phones. Sun glinted off the polished floor of the Great Hall. Through the windows in the Meditation Room he saw a dorm of girls walking across campus together. Aubrey stared at his hand clutching the banister. The black hairs sprouting from his knuckles were like spiders’ legs, he thought. He shook himself loose and continued up to the therapy rooms.

  He couldn’t allow himself to think of these as things he would miss. Aubrey felt very much that he was the only one holding Roaring Orchards together, not so much in what he did, as in how he thought about it. The school, he felt, existed in his head as much as it existed in the world. Or, rather, it could only exist in the world because it first existed in his head. If he began to indulge his melancholy, to think of all these things as drifting away from him, the school would indeed begin to spiral out of control. He could already feel it pulling apart. He had to keep it together.

  Aubrey paused outside the door, then walked in. Doris was already sitting on the couch and talking with Frances, who was also my therapist for a time. Frances was probably the kindest adult I met at Roaring Orchards, if only intermittently attentive. She would stare out the window as I spoke and twist one of her long curls around her finger, and with each twist it made whatever problem I was talking about seem less important. Aubrey sat down next to Doris. Frances was telling Doris about her youngest niece, who had just begun nursery school. The therapy rooms were simply furnished. A desk with a computer for the therapists, a couch that converted into a bed for when visitors to the school stayed over. This room had a framed print hanging on either side of the door. One was of a painting by Balthus, the other a Maxfield Parrish.

  “Well, let’s begin,” Frances said.

  Aubrey lay his head down in Doris’s lap. With a jolt she slid away from him, and Aubrey sat back upright. “See, that’s the problem,” he said.

  “What’s the problem,” Frances said.

  “I have no partner. I am completely alone.”

  For a while they sat. He could feel Doris’s anger but wouldn’t be the first to speak.

  Doris said, “You’re not alone.”

  “I feel alone,” he said. He turned to her. “When I hired you for this job it wasn’t just to be an administrator. This campus is a family. We all act out family roles here for one another and for the children. And how are the children supposed to trust us to take care of them when we won’t take care of one another?”

  “I just don’t want you to lie down on my lap is all,” Doris said.

  Aubrey sighed. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”

  “Do you hear what Doris is saying, Aubrey?” Frances leaned back in her chair. “She’s claiming a boundary. You need to respect that.”

  “I’m not transgressing anyone’s boundaries. I’m sitting here very nicely. But I think I have a right to discuss why that particular boundary. Why Doris refuses to allow any degree of intimacy to develop between us.”

  Doris began to stutter a response, but Frances held up a hand to stop her. “You said you felt alone, Aubrey. Why don’t you say a little more. What do the doctors say?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with this.”

  “Aubrey, you’re sick. You should talk about how you’re feeling.”

  “Sick isn’t a feeling,” he said. “Exhausted isn’t a feeling, and dizzy isn’t a feeling, and harried isn’t a feeling either. It never stops around here. Everyone wants something and no one ever thinks about what I might need. I go to breakfast, I go to Campus Community meetings, to meetings with Regular Kids or whoever, it’s always the same. The other day I thought it would be nice to read something to everyone in the Campus Community meeting. I wanted to share something that we could discuss, some way for me to give my own personal angle on what it is we’re all trying to accomplish together. I thought maybe a passage about the proper and improper use of anger from Seneca’s De Ira or Philodemus on the importance of confessing our failings. Just so the students can feel that they’re part of a tradition of therapeutic thinking that goes back thousands of years. I spent the morning flipping through texts, and I found so many wonderful passages I couldn’t decide. I was so excited. I brought a stack of books with me to breakfast, and I thought I would decide when I got there, when I saw how things felt in the room. But when I got to Campus Community, I looked around the room and I thought, Oh God, what’s the point? No one wants to hear anything from me. They resent me, all they want are more reasons to justify their resentment. So you know what I did? I lectured on the rules. I was what they needed me to be: the father. It’s not what I ever wanted to be. It’s not why I built this place. Rules, rules, rules. But who’s going to clarify the process when I’m gone? Her?” He nodded toward Doris.

  “Well, that’s a somewhat hurtful way to put it, don’t you think?” Frances said. “Doris, what do you have to say to that?”

  Doris said nothing. She just slowly shook her head.

  “They’re just waiting for me to die,” Aubrey said.

  Because of the ongoing case against Ellie and a number of other complaints and cases pending against Roaring Orchards, Aubrey’s lawyers thought it would be a good idea for the staff to be trained in restraint techniques. They didn’t want anyone to be able to claim that the school employed unqualified people.

  The dorm parents had been trained first so that they could take over activities in the Classroom Building while the teachers took their turn. They would be substitute teachers for the day. The novelty of this had everyone a bit keyed up.

  Aaron filled in for Dedrick, who had left him a desultory series of notes for each class. In Cooking with Butter, they were to discuss Walden. I wish I had been there instead of on Reciprocity Detail, but I only heard about how it went later. Aaron waited for everyone to sit down. “All right class, settle down,” he said and waited. He smiled. “I’m Aaron and I’ll be your teacher for today.”

  “We know who you are, Aaron,” Pudding said.

  “Good. Now everyone take out your books.” So far, so good. Aaron looked at the page of notes Dedrick had left. He looked up to make sure that everyone had a book open. He read off the page, “Discuss the pond as a metaphor for the soul, especially in relation to the sounding of the pond in ‘The Pond in Winter.’ ” Aaron looked out at the class and waited. There were about eight students staring back at him, most of whom he knew well. But Aaron couldn’t tell if they were looking at him eagerly or anxiously.

  “Anyone want to discuss that? Which pond do you think he’s talking about?” The clock on the other side of the room clicked loudly, the minute hand slipping back and then jumping forward. “Pudding?”

  “Walden Pond?”

  “Okay. Does anybody else have any other ideas?” He looked back down at the sheet of notes. “Okay, good. Let’s go to the next one. Discuss the classical allusions in ‘The Bean-Field.’ ”

  The students shifted in their seats and looked around. Aaron was beginning to get nervous. There were only a few more discussion questions left. He saw that Beverly Hess had her head down on her desk. At least this he knew how to deal with.

  “Bev, could you stand up please?”

  Bev stood. “Sorry,” she said. She shook her head back and forth.

  “What did you think of Walden? Did you like the book?” he asked.

  Bev looked around. “I smell cookies.”

  Aaron nodded. “So the classical allusions. What do you guys think he means by ‘classical allusions’?”

  “I have a question,” Carly Sibbons-Diaz said.

  “Good,” Aaron said. “Go ahead.”

  “What’s the deal with the pumpkins? I mean”—she paused to flip through her copy of the book—“hold on. Here it is. Page one thirty-two. He says, ‘I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.’ But later—.” She went back to flipping through her copy of Walden. The other students watched her. Aaron had hurried to find th
e place on page 132. He left his thumb there as he now flipped ahead to find Carly’s next citation. “On page one fifty-four,” Carly said, “he says, ‘None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. This is shiftlessness.’ So which is it? Is he in favor of sitting on pumpkins or not?”

  Aaron was scanning page 154 to find the section she had read. “That’s a good question,” he said. “I guess it depends on what ‘shiftlessness’ means.” He turned to check Dedrick’s notes for anything about pumpkins. There was nothing. “What do you guys think about Carly’s question?”

  “Maybe somebody popped his furniture,” Pudding said. “So he had to sit on fruits.”

  “Yeah, and then they popped his pumpkins,” Bev said.

  Aaron laughed. This was exciting. He hoped they would continue.

  “Look,” Eric Gold said. “After what you read on page hunnerd fifty-four. He said, ‘Blah-blah, pumpkin. This is shiftlessness.’ Then ‘There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture!’ Is he talking about stealing furniture?”

  “That’s why it got popped,” Pudding said.

  “I think he’s saying,” Eric said, “that if you’re really poor you could sit on a pumpkin but then you could always just go and steal a chair.”

  “Yeah,” Pudding said, “he definitely likes chairs better than pumpkins.”

  “But he likes pumpkins better than velvet cushions,” Carly said.

  Aaron was amazed. He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board,

  Chair

  Pumpkin

  Cushion

  He stepped back and looked at it. It seemed they had figured something out. “So that’s his order of preference,” he said.

  “Then why doesn’t he just come out and say it?” Carly asked.

  They were all looking at him again. “I don’t know,” Aaron said. He looked again at the notes Dedrick had left. “That’s a very good question.”