The Secrets Men Keep

by Mark Sampson

  And yet look who boards the train a couple stops later. Look who sits in the very seat next to mine. She full-out grunts when putting her weight down, as if emitting flatulence from the wrong end of her body. For a few passive seconds, there is a generous silence between us as the train nudges and then sails along the rails. My guts are lumpy and my head pounds with disquiet. Please just this once, I think, leave us be. Don’t ask where we are. I squeeze my eyes shut. Brace myself.

  Sum-thin strange . . . in your neighbourhood . . . Who ya gonna call?

  Flip. “Hello . . . What? . . . I just got on the train now . . . No, I didn’t!”

  The only thing that keeps me from violence is that I know such an indulgence might be recorded and reported to the world. It could float somewhere in the ether for anyone’s eyes—her eyes—to see. Might it even end up in Alumnotes?

  TIM PHELPS (BAH ’97) was arrested in Australia after bludgeoning a stranger to death with her own cell phone. Tim would love to hear from other alumni while in prison. You can email him at . . .

  No, of course it wouldn’t. Not when I control the message.

  ~

  I am moving back home, defeated, and she is publishing a children’s book.

  She broke the news on her blog—sorry Alumnotes, you’ve been scooped again. The story is (allegorically?) about a grumpy giraffe born with a neck of below-average length. She has always been one of these obnoxiously talented people able to both write and draw (and speak, and live) with aplomb. The tone of her blog has taken on a newfound pride, but not too much pride. She acknowledges the modest impact of her achievement.

  At home, I am greeted by streets moist with snow and a harbour that smells of a different ocean. There are fewer buffers here to protect me from friends anxious to know if I’m doing okay. I’m getting good at shaking off their concerns. Meanwhile, she’s confirmed the date of her launch. I know the children’s bookstore downtown where she’s holding it. And I know I will go, and buy a copy of her book, and ask her to sign it, and smile my jealousy at her and tell her how glad I am for her success. But I must also be careful not to reveal that I know more about her than I should. I mustn’t let on that I’ve been spying.

  MY SEASON OF EASY VICTORIES

  It was the summer from hell but I handled it. He handled it, they’d say. O my brothers. That summer culminated with me catching Harley, my former student who rents out my basement suite, having sex with a 14–year-old. I was lugging another load of Erin’s sweaty bedclothes down to the laundry room, which is right outside Harley’s door; and just as I began shoving sheets into the washer, he came out with his arm draped around the girl, his hand practically cupping her ass. The two of them froze when they saw me there. Like I said, the girl was young—super young. My face must have registered disapproval at the fuckknots in her hair, because the first thing she said to me, all snotty like, was: “I’m fourteen you know.” Well. Harley’s arm flew off her like a startled bird and he yelled, “You told me eighteen!” She laughed right in his face, as if she’d pranked him or something. But then, she put a gentle hand on his chest and cooed, “Oh baby come on. Come on. Don’t worry.” I barely heard her as I waddled over. “You—back in there. You—come with me.” I took him over to the stairwell, said, Harley, you can’t just go having. I said, Harley, you know that I teach at. I said, Harley, you’re 23 years old, man, you gotta start taking. Worst thing was, if word got upstairs to Erin that this shit was happening, the summer from hell would have gotten even worse.

  Harley and I went back into his suite to have a chat with the vixen. She now sat scowling on the edge of his pullout, her knobby knees touching, the floor at her feet littered with his motorcycle magazines and empty Pringles cans, the bed sheets behind her all tangled and stinking. “You can’t keep us apart, you know,” she whined at me. “We fucking love each other.” O my brothers—such adolescent certitude! I was about to launch into a rant about Rushing One’s Sexuality, about Finding a Boy Your Own Age, but there was something about the girl then, as she cast her iceberg eyes up at me, that stuck in my craw. I had this sudden, irresistible sense that I had seen her someplace before. Those high cheek bones, that artificially darkened hair, those small, rapacious teeth—they all conspired to burn big bright troughs through my memory. I thought, Where do I know you from? I began grilling her about various particulars: What’s your name, where do you live, who are your parents, and (most importantly) where do you go to school? But she answered none of these—just giggled like I was the biggest schmuck she’d ever seen. I offered to drive her from my place in Westdale to wherever she needed to go, but then Harley said, “Look dude, I’ll take her home, no worries. Can I borrow your car?” And I said okay. Because I’m a stand-up guy. Richard Appleby III is a fucking stand-up guy.

  While Harley went upstairs to fetch my keys, the girl pretzelled her arms over her chest and said, “I love him, you know. I will be back here.” I shook my head. “No, you won’t.” “Yes, I will.” “No. You. Won’t.” For a moment we achieved a silent, tetchy détente, but then she stood up and took one step toward me. O my brothers—she did look familiar. “Does it make you nervous to be alone with me?” she asked with this husky lilt, and my eyes nearly flew out of their sockets. Harley came bounding back into the suite with the car keys just as she gave me this look, her top teeth draped over her bottom lip. Fuck! She kept it up even as he took her by the arm in a completely nonsexual way and led her towards the door. It was the first time I’d ever seen that guy act parental.

  Then, a couple weeks later, the summer from hell was over. Most teachers dread the first day back at school, but not me. Our young scholars come in all bookbags and new clothes and running around looking for the right rooms, and that shit is like rocket fuel for my soul. In the classroom, I am Mr. Appleby, former Newfoundland Liberation Army foot soldier turned long-haired bohemian turned portly man of letters who now has the age (47! Rock on!) and life experiences to groom these kids for the prospects that await them. This was going to be a killer term. All the banners from last winter/spring were still up in the halls: THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION. Fucking right. I had gotten through the summer from hell, laying down the downstairs law on Harley and dealing with the upstairs issues with Erin, and now I was finally back at my whiteboard where I belonged. I had raced home every day last winter and spring to tell Erin about THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION, hoping that some adolescent sloganeering, a dram of school spirit, might just leaven her mood. But o my brothers, try again. You say: Let’s take this comforter off you, it’s 38 degrees in here. And she says: No. You say: Let’s raise the blinds and let a little sunshine in. And she says: No. You say: It’s a beautiful day, Erin, for christsake would you just. And she says: Rich, I can’t even sit up enough to.

  But the kids, man. Those amazing kids. Young scholars with their futures laid out for them like mountains needing to be skied. Nothing beats the first day of school, where I am a fucking god at this whiteboard. Kids literally plead with admin to get into my English and theatre classes. And who can blame them? I get a good bead on everyone who comes through my door. I say: Hey there, angry bookish girl with the religious parents—let me introduce you to Miriam Toews. Her first two books are worth reading for the titles alone but I think you’d really dig this one. You there, 15–year-old boy who won’t take his hat off and thinks poetry is shite—let me acquaint you with the works of Al P. and Charles B. and Paul V. Yoo hoo, chubby shy girl who doesn’t even realize what a talented actor she is—those lines in your hands belong to Shakespeare, so don’t read them like they came off the back of a cereal box. Read them like they were cast in molten gold. Darling, I won’t allow anyone to laugh at you if you reach for the brilliance I know you have. And that goes for the rest of you. This is your moment, people. THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION. You are all geniuses. You are all fucking gods.

  I should say, I don’t always get on with admin. They’re like: We appreciate the
enthusiasm Mr. Appleby but they’re Grade Nines so you need to take it down a notch. I occasionally get my ass fried by their short-sighted strictures and underestimations of the young, but I fight back. Yes, I do think Grade Nines can handle The Tempest . . . No, I’m not sending the loner at the back of the class to the office just for reading Stephen King’s Rage. I know what I’m doing. I mean, I am Richard fucking Appleby. I lived a thousand lives before I came to work here 15 years ago. I once was a world traveler; I once ran my own theatre company in Toronto (Flophouse Productions!) and got my own plays professionally produced; and I now write regular theatre reviews for the Spec—for the Spec, goddamn it! So who cares if I show up to work a bit shambolic? I bring a living, breathing world to the feet of my students. I know what I’m doing.

  So there I was, welcoming our new crop of young scholars to this great school. It was going to be a tremendous semester: I had my Grade Nines and one Grade Twelve to teach. THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION. First period was near transcendental—within minutes I had those kids eating out of the palm of my hand. Second period was a free one for me, so I sauntered toward the staffroom for a coffee and to make my daily call home to check in on Erin.

  But on the way, I came upon a commotion near the boys’ bathroom. A not-small crowd of students had gathered there, looking distressed. I wandered over into a coppice of whispering: Oh my God, did they. She took him into the stall to. Jesus she gave him a. She gave him a. Right in the stall! I pushed through to find Mrs. Gahan, our Vice Principal, yanking a girl by the elbow away from the boys’ bathroom door. “I didn’t do anything!” the girl screamed. “We were just talking. We were just talking.” Jesus. Please don’t let it be. Please. Don’t. Let. It. Be. But then the girl turned my way, a flip of that dark hair and a flash of those iceberg eyes.

  Oh fuck.

  I glided over with an air of masculine authority. “Do you want me to take her to the office?” I asked Mrs. Gahan, and they both looked up at me. Mrs. Gahan’s stare was full of her usual bafflement at my existence. The girl’s, on the other hand, flared with instant recognition. Oh, I didn’t know you taught here. If Mrs. Gahan caught this, she didn’t let on. I eyed up the girl, and again experienced my own moment of familiarity, the same one that I’d had in my basement. I’ve seen you before, I thought. I know you from somewhere, I thought. I feel like you once walked these hallways, years ago. But how can that be?

  “No. Go back to your classroom, Mr. Appleby. I’m handling this.”

  “It’s just that I have a free period and I could—”

  “I said I’m handling it.”

  “We were just talking,” the girl repeated, though more by rote now. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “You were in the boys’ washroom,” Mrs. Gahan barked, her face a rictus of sanctimony as she led her away by the elbow.

  “I was not!”

  “Young lady, do you even know how inappropriate you . . .” They walked out of earshot. But as they did, the girl turned back to look at me briefly. Threw a sultry grin over her shoulder that lasted just an instant before her expression returned to defensive indignation.

  The bell rang and the crowd slowly dispersed. (The boy, whoever he was, had made his getaway, and was probably thinking this was the best morning of his life.) I trundled off to the staffroom, where the atmosphere was one of heated curiosity as word trickled in about what had happened in the washroom. I said nothing—just fixed myself a coffee and listened to the rumours and conjecture spin around in little vortexes. I waited for someone to turn my way, to ask what I thought. And while I waited, while I listened, I forgot to do something very important. I forgot to make my daily call to Erin. O my brothers—what else is my free period for?

  This was the worst day to make such a blunder, being the first day back at school after the summer from hell. Things had started so well, back in June, on that first morning off when I’d managed to get Erin as far as our front stoop, the suburban world outside our door alive with sunshine and birds and photosynthesis. C’mon dummy, just a few more steps, I had said with a smile, my intention being to get her into our Honda and take her for a leisurely spin around Westdale. She hadn’t been out of the house in months, maybe a year, and I thought, This is progress. But the sight of our street, the middle-class homes all packed closely together, had caused her to seize up. She started to shake, to retract into the thick brambles of that place where I could never reach her. So after much cajoling, I gave up and led her inside, steered her toward our bedroom. She climbed back under her comforter and began to cry quietly to herself, at her failure. I thought, Who lives like this? The answer being, of course, that I did. This is how I lived, and had for a long time. I’d made many sacrifices because of Erin, had given up so many ambitions and taken on so many inconveniences, just to keep our lives together. Renting out our basement to Harley was a big one. Of course I wouldn’t have done it had I known he’d commit statutory rape down there. But despite being a fuckup in various aspects of his life, Harley was mostly pretty good at paying his rent, and we needed the money. I mean, that’s how I spun it to Erin, especially after she decided she just wasn’t going to work anymore. Now, three years later, I had gotten into a decent groove of keeping Erin’s upstairs world and Harley’s downstairs world separate.

  But then an indulgence in vanity did me in. About a week after the botched attempt to take Erin for a drive, I got an offer from the Spec to go to Toronto and review a show, some godawful shitty musical playing on King West. I took the assignment, mostly for shits and giggles; and I invited a couple of brethren from my Flophouse Production days, Ludwig and Cameron, to take in the musical with me on a larf. They agreed, and we spent the entire show making fun of it and the petite bourgeoisie dimwits who go in for that sort of shit. Afterward, we repaired to a nearby gastropub to get caught up, to reminisce about our old theatre days and remind each other what amazing fucking geniuses we all were. Both Ludwig and Cameron had gotten bald, gotten fat, and married women they shouldn’t have. But they were still my brethren, my men. And what a night we had! Between the three of us, we consumed 41 pints of beer and closed the gastropub out. Obviously, I had missed my last bus home. I figured: I’ll just sit up in Union Station and catch the first one out in the morning. It wouldn’t be that bad—I’d only be gone less than 15 hours.

  But o my brothers, how wrong I was. I walked in the door the next day to find a maelstrom of catastrophe. Every dish and cup we owned was shattered on the kitchen floor, with Erin coiled up and hysterical by the cupboards with the palms of her hands bleeding. Harley, the moron, was fending her off with a chair, like she was a circus tiger or something. Idiot, why didn’t you call 911! I went to her then but she was all Don’t touch me with that and How could you do and Don’t you ever call me a. And so the summer from hell just sort of commenced from there. O my brothers. Looking after Erin became more work than teaching full time and leading the drama club and reviewing for the Spec combined. And so when Harley brought that little strumpet into my house, I nearly snapped. I should have evicted him. I might just yet.

  Back in the staffroom, I drank my coffee and continued watching my colleagues speculate about the altercation in the hallway. I didn’t participate, even though I’d been right there. I was scared I might blurt out that I’d had an encounter with the very student in question earlier in the summer. Or worse, that I was convinced I knew her from someplace before. Finally the bell rang and I headed back to my room. I proceeded onward with my classes, and was victorious in a thousand small ways with each crop of young scholars. Their eager eyes bloomed with anticipation at the intellectual riches I would lay out across this great and glorious season. THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION. I converted the doubters. I engaged the uninterested. And I soared like a giant beanstalk over them all. Climb me! Climb me, young scholars, to get at the golden eggs of literature birthed by the geniuses who came before us. And all the while I thought: This is so amazing.
Can you believe that they actually pay me to do this?

  But then. That last period. One final Grade Nine. I was nearly home free. But dammit—dammit to hell!—didn’t she come sauntering in, my knobby-kneed Lolita, and slink into a seat right in the centre of my classroom. She looked up at me with her small, knowing face, as if nothing had happened hours earlier. She had clearly gotten away with a stiff warning from Mrs. Gahan—it was the first day, after all—and was now smirking at me as if to say, All right you fat fuck, teach me something. I gave her but a quick glance, struck once again by how familiar she looked to me. Other kids filed in and then the bell rang. I began, determined not to let this girl throw me off my game. I took attendance—she had a name; it was Lily Dobson—and then began to unfold the coming term to the kids and outline my expectations.

  But it’s all shtick, right. Surely you have figured this out by now, brothers. These grooves of familiarity, this wisdom, these jokes, the praise not yet earned. It all required a suspension of disbelief on the part of these young scholars, an enamouring of the institution they had achieved, this High School, and of me. But as those minutes passed, I could tell Lily saw right through it. She radiated a deep, ageless incredulity at my antics, her arms folded over her chest there in the centre of the room. Is this what you do for a living? her forked eyebrow said. And o my brothers, it did throw me off a little. There was something in her malicious skepticism that made me feel like I was back in my first year here, a tentative rookie unsure if his words had impact or if they were sinking like a stone to the bottom of the sea.

  I pressed on. You will not recognize your brains at the end of this term, I told them. I told them, You will master the thesis statement. You will be able to write in full and proper paragraphs. You will learn correct grammar, because using correct grammar is so friggin’ cool. I told them, You will work in groups, to explore your ideas collectively. I said, We will read plays aloud so that you may know what it’s like to present yourself to an audience. And then I walked them through the semester’s reading list, the works of genius that would culminate with Romeo and Juliet, that immortal tale of teenage lust. They would—