Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet

by Joanne Proulx

  I stuck a handful of rice cakes in my mouth and started munching. “So,” I said. Filtered through the mouthful of fake chips, it came off very casual. “Is it the whole deal in Iraq?”

  My mom’s face pulled into a stiff grimace, as if she’d just stubbed her toe or something, but she shook her head. “No. It has nothing to do with Iraq.”

  “You mad at Dad?” This time my question was quieter, less crunchy.

  “Yes,” she said with emphasis, and then a noisy sniffle, “but it’s not that.” She rattled out a long, quaking sigh. “It’s the lake.”

  “The lake?”

  “You know, the lake.” She waggled her hand in the general direction of Erie. “It’s dying. Again.” The “again” was very sad and dramatic-sounding. “Only this time they don’t think it can be saved. I was at a meeting last night and Helen Shaunessy, our president, presented this EPA report. And today … at work, I don’t know what happened.” She stared at me desperately. Her eyes and nose were all red and sloppy. “I was at my window, handing money across the counter to some customer I hardly knew, and it just hit me. The lake is dying. It’s dying. I had to leave.” Another quivering sigh escaped her. “The dead zone in the middle of the lake just keeps getting bigger and bigger …”

  “Why?” My hand was motionless inside the bag.

  “The goby. The zebra mussel. The Quagga mussel. Pesticides. Aging sewage treatment facilities. Dropping water levels. Acid rain. Fertilizers. Global warming. Who knows?” She shook her head at the anoxic list. “I’m sure you probably think I’m nuts sitting here crying over a lake. I know it’s not a person. It’s not Stan. It’s just that we’re so careless, and … and …” She dabbed at her eyes. “I feel so powerless.”

  There was a bit of an uncomfortable silence then, and I wasn’t sure what to do with my distraught mother and her dying lake. I suggested calling Dad, but she gave that a quick thumbs-down, saying he was “too busy” for her. And when she snagged another tissue, I told her, “Hey, go easy, it takes ninety years to grow a box of those babies,” one of her favorite stats, but she didn’t even crack a smile. Flailing for something, I poured a glass of milk and set it in front of her, but I didn’t join her at the table. I did pick her coat off the floor and hang it on a sturdy wooden hanger in the front hall closet. And I did stop in the living room to dig out our O Brother CD. I skipped right to track four. A chorus of healing voices accompanied the soggy “Thanks” that wavered from the kitchen as I headed for my tear-proof refuge upstairs.

  When the war started up a few days later, we were all there, watching from the comfort of our living room, along with the rest of America. As the line of tanks started rolling across the screen on its way to Baghdad, neither my dad or I were really surprised when my mom said, “You’d think by now we could come up with something better than … than this,” before she got up and left the room.

  TWENTY- ONE

  Something in the Spirit of One T. Williams

  to Break the Monotony of War and My Mother’s Shit Mood

  A Play in Three Acts

  Written by: Luke Hunter

  * * Based on a True Story * *

  (A heads-up here: Any misrepresentation of conversations or characters is entirely the fault of the author, who, seriously, did his best to get things right.)

  Setting: A table in a nondescript high school library.

  The Players

  Faith: extremely beautiful, racially mixed, 17-year-old girl who Luke dreams of nailing (let’s be honest) despite the inappropriateness of such, given the recent passing of Stan, a good friend to Luke and, more importantly, a boyfriend to Faith

  Luke: a bit of a loser teen; for specifics, see above. Close to six feet tall—okay, five ten and a half—with good, straight teeth thanks to some expensive dental work. Luke has longish, wavy blond hair that curls out from beneath his baseball cap, which is always worn backwards. Faith, conflicted by the death of her boyfriend, has confused Luke for someone special.

  Act 1

  At the rise of the curtain, Faith and Luke are onstage, seated across from each other at a book-stacked table.

  Faith: Hey, did you ever see that movie Stigmata?

  Luke: Yeah, a couple years ago. I loved the part on the subway. The whipping scene.

  Faith (shaking her head): Really? I liked the part right at the end of the movie. That quote from the Gospel of Thomas. I checked it out on the Web afterwards—this at the height of my spiritual conflict with Stan’s parents. Apparently Thomas had some really twisted ideas, but I did like the quote from the movie: “The Kingdom of God is within you, not in temples of wood and stone. Touch a piece of wood: I am there. Turn a stone, and you will find me.”

  Luke: Oh, yeah. That part. That part was good too. Definitely a close second to the whipping scene.

  (Faith laughs.)

  Luke (smiles, doing his best impression of charming): Actually, it reminds me of this thing Steinbeck wrote.

  Faith (obviously impressed): Really?

  Luke (cool, but secretly pleased with himself): From Cannery Row. He revised the first bit of the Lord’s Prayer to “Our Father, who art in nature …”

  (Faith beams, no doubt weighing the probability of ever being lucky enough to bed the genius across the table.)

  SHOCK AND AWE were already playing on the night skies over Baghdad by the time my mom unplugged the television. In fact, she not only unplugged the set, she rearranged the entire living room, pushing all the furniture into the center of the room, covering it with old blankets and bedsheets, so that from a certain angle it looked kind of fort-ish and fun, really, like the whole space had been taken over by some sturdy, industrious kid. When confronted, my mother claimed she was planning on repainting and, while she was at it, having the couch recovered as well. She said she wanted my help picking out the color for the walls and doing the work. I said sure, but I never saw any paint chips, let alone a can or a brush. The living room sat empty, with a big ghost of furniture crowded in the middle, and whenever I passed by, I imagined the severed television huddled somewhere in the scrum.

  We have a little set in the office at the back of the house, and if I’d been really eager I could have gone in there to claim my frontrow seat for the war. Instead, I gave up watching altogether, which was a bit of a relief really. When I had been partaking of the action, it had been sort of difficult for me to pretend there weren’t any musical people underneath those smart, falling bombs, and I’d had trouble convincing myself all the exploding buildings were vacant. I couldn’t even imagine how the rickety insulin bucket might be faring.

  My dad was still tuned in, however, playing sofa soldier from the pullout in the office, the one with the metal bar underneath the seat cushions, specially designed to ensure maximum discomfort. He’d limp out of the office, rubbing his ass, to provide updates on the 507th Maintenance Company mishap or the new POWs or the unorthodox guerrilla tactics being used by Iraq’s Elite Republican Guard. My dad fed me all the highlights, really, so I figured I wasn’t missing anything but the pain.

  Act 2

  Faith (looking particularly gorgeous, but slightly melancholy): You know, until Stan died, nothing really bad had ever happened to me. I had this perfect life. Nice family, nice boyfriend, nice life. I really believed the world was good, people were good. But after Stan died, I sort of lost sight of that. Everything got very dark and confusing. For a while I hardly stepped out of my room. I had, like, zero energy. But now (pauses to give Luke a smile, although later Luke thinks he may have imagined it) I can kind of see the goodness again. I think I have to. It’s who I am.

  Luke: It’s who you are? You’re goodness?

  Faith (taken aback): I didn’t mean it like that, I mean I see the—

  Luke (interrupting): It’s okay. You don’t have to be embarrassed. (Joking, to mask his seriousness) It’s okay to be good. Personally, I think I’m something a lot closer to indifference or ineptitude or, I don’t know … slime mold.

>   Faith (raises her eyebrows): You’re slime mold?

  Luke: Yeah. But the good kind. The kind they make penicillin from.

  Faith (laughs): Well, at least you’re useful.

  Luke: I don’t know. I think the antibiotics are all synthetic these days. I’m probably obsolete.

  Faith: Well, can’t you be synthetic slime mold?

  Luke (considering): I don’t know. It feels kind of cheap.

  Faith: How about botulism, then?

  Luke (feigning shock): Botulism? Man, you really have a low opinion of me, don’t you? Botulism. Now there’s a force to be reckoned with. Perhaps I should switch tables.

  Faith (teasing, hopefully): I don’t think anyone else would have you.

  Luke (quickly shaking off the truth behind Faith’s last statement): And you’re not worried about the possibility of contamination, O Goddess of Goodness?

  Faith (laughs): I think I’m immune, Botulism Boy.

  Luke: I hope so. For your sake (makes eye contact with Faith, face softens up, honesty reigns) … and mine, I truly hope so.

  TAKING A LEAD from me, which is almost always a bad idea, my mother was now spending a fair amount of time holed up in her room. I knew it was probably because of the war and the lake and a whole host of other catastrophic shit I didn’t want to know about, and really, I probably shouldn’t have cared. Still, with my mom flattened upstairs and my dad working all the time, the house did feel a tad quiet and the fridge a wee bit empty. It gave me some appreciation for what my parents might have been going through back in the fall when I’d spent a majority of my time in private retreat.

  I tried my best to coax my mom back into our lopsided family circle. My efforts at ferreting her out involved pounding on the door, yelling that there was no milk for my cereal and that I’d appreciate her getting her ass out here so she could start worrying about me again, thank you very much. It was no big surprise when my father, having the dough to throw at the problem, came up with a far superior strategy for getting some food back in the fridge.

  He arrived home one night, late again, but armed with plane tickets. He came and got me so I could watch him march into their room and drop those babies into my mom’s lap. She gave my nervous father, then me, a suspicious look before setting her book on the bed beside her. I didn’t even want to know what depressing thing she was reading, so I kept my eyes on my next vacation. She picked the tickets off the comforter and fanned them across one hand. My dad, doing his best imitation of firm and in control, stood beside the bed and said he didn’t want any arguments, didn’t want to know how many tanker trucks of fuel a plane burned during a transatlantic flight, they were going to Paris.

  My mom slapped the tickets against her palm. I could see there were only two. When she looked at my dad, a slow smile crept across her face. “Well, it’s not the hottest destination at the moment,” she said, no doubt referring to France’s poor showing in the recent Friends of America poll, which had resulted in the drastic renaming of the french fry here at home. “Still,” she said, her smile growing, “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.”

  My dad huffed out a big sigh and pursed his lips. And God, for a second there I thought he was going to cry or something. He managed to get a grip, but still, he sounded pretty choked up when he started talking. “I know you have. They’re for your birthday. In April,” he added, in case she’d forgotten when she was born.

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris too,” I said hopefully, from my third-wheel position just inside the door.

  My mom dropped her chin and raised her eyebrows. “Not everything’s about you, Luke.”

  Apparently not, I thought, but, remembering the Erie-inspired bawling scene I’d witnessed a few weeks previous, I stayed cool, didn’t say a word. I told them to have a great time and headed down the hall, thinking about the unsupervised opportunity coming my way. It was almost enough to block out the obscenely soft sound of my parents’ bedroom door closing behind me.

  And a week or so later, I wasn’t actually eavesdropping or anything, I was just passing by, really, when I heard my parents talking in their room. My mom sounded upset, again, which was a drag, because ever since the plane tickets arrived she’d been behaving so well. She wasn’t 100 percent or anything, I mean the TV was still buried in the fort, but at least she’d been keeping my cereal wet, going to work, preparing dinner, attending Friends of Lake Erie meetings without ensuing emotional collapse. So, it was really just concern for her that made me stop on the other side of her closed door.

  The first thing I clearly overheard was something about canceling the trip to Paris. That freaked me. Given my recent studdish streak between the book stacks, I was ready to take things up a notch and had been fantasizing about having Faith over while my parents were away. I figured once we were alone on my turf, she’d probably be all over me. To be honest, I’d sort of pictured us going at it in various locations in and around and on top of the house, and the fact that the imagined sex settings might not be available was very bad news. I pressed my ear to the door.

  “Everyone at work says we shouldn’t go.” This from my mom.

  “Why?” My dad, sounding tired, frustrated.

  “Why? It’s unpatriotic. French hostility toward Americans. Too many people taking time off in April. Our plane will be blown up by terrorists. I could go on.”

  “So … what do you want to do?”

  Long pause.

  “I say fuck it. Let’s go.” It shocked me to hear my mother use the word.

  “So … we’re going, then?” My father sounded unsure but not at all surprised by his wife’s foul mouth.

  “Absolutely. We’re going. We’re fucking going.” She laughed.

  I laughed. They were fucking going.

  Act 3

  Luke rushes into the library, then slows to a swagger and slides into his regular chair across the table from Faith, who is looking extremely happy and excited by his mere presence.

  Faith (as soon as Luke is settled): So, did you get it?

  Luke (confused, then—realizing what she’s asking—mimics the opening guitar riff of “Seven Nation Army,” the first single on the freshly released White Stripes album): Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba … (Faith smiles, then does a version which is way better than Luke’s.)

  Faith (laughing): Isn’t it great?

  Luke: Awesome. And Meg sings.

  Faith: Yes! Isn’t it sweet?

  Luke: Very.

  Faith: And you saw the video?

  Luke (nods): So cool. So red and white triangles.

  Faith (laughs): That’s what’s great about the White Stripes— they’re cool and sweet. Definitely not an easy combo. Especially when the flavor of the month is shock and awe.

  Luke: Yeah, no kidding. (Long pause. Luke and Faith look at each other intently. Smiles creep across both their faces. Luke is first to look away.)

  Faith: So, where were you, anyway? Lunch is almost over.

  Luke: Mrs. Hayward kept me after class.

  Faith: What have you done now? Made some crack about her rubber boots?

  Luke: Nooo. For your information, she gave me a present.

  Faith: A present? Really!

  Luke (pauses, then reaches for his backpack): Want to see it?

  Faith: Of course.

  Luke (pulls a leather-bound book from his bag and pushes it across the table): It’s nothing much, just a journal sort of thing. (Faith runs her hand over the cover, admiring the book.) You know … to write in.

  Faith: Yes, I know what it’s for. It’s really nice.

  Luke: So, ahh, Mrs. Hayward thought it might be good for me to write down some stuff.

  Faith (quietly, sincerely): People can be so nice, can’t they?

  Luke: Yeah, once a year or so. And only if they’re Seuss fans.

  Faith (pushes the book back): Come on. Just admit it, without any qualifiers: People can be nice.

  Luke: Okay, okay. People can be nice. There, are you happy no
w?

  Faith: Very. Very happy. (Gives him a sexy, satisfied smile. A bell rings. Luke and Faith stand to collect their things.)

  Faith (glancing at Luke): So … are you going to the dance?

  Luke (freezes): The dance?

  Faith: Yeah. There’s a dance this Friday.

  Luke (forcing himself to move again, he sticks a book in his backpack): I heard the dances are completely lame. The music totally sucks.

  Faith: I’m thinking about going.

  Luke: Yeah, well, I was thinking about, maybe, going. Too. Maybe. You know. For something to do. Maybe. (Faith and Luke move to the exit, rear center stage.)

  Faith: So, I might see you there?

  Luke: Maybe. Possibly. Probably.

  Faith: Good. Then you might, maybe, possibly, probably, see me there, too.

  Luke holds the door for Faith then follows her, heart tripping, offstage. Scene fades to black.

  THE END

  TWENTY-TWO

  The weather in February may have been brutal, but March rolled by as a bright and beaming thirty-one days. It hadn’t snowed the entire month and, seeing how we were well into April, I was confident the dreaded drink with the neighbor was going to be a no go. But that Mrs. Bernoffski, she’s a tricky old widow. It was way above zero and the skies were perfectly clear the day I turned unsuspectingly onto my street to find my Polish taskmaster daringly positioned at the end of her walk. Like me, she was still wearing her winter jacket, open down the front. She waved when she saw me, then shuffled up the porch steps and sat down.

  “Come,” she said loudly, patting the empty space beside her. On her other side sat a big bottle of something clear. “Today, we have our drink.” I moved slowly up the walk, watching as she fished two shot glasses from her pocket. She set them on a little silver tray and uncapped the bottle, which I could now see was some foreign-looking vodka. Surprised, I settled myself on the stoop as Mrs. Bernoffski, using two hands, carefully filled the small gold-rimmed glasses. As she passed one to me, I noticed how thick and red and sausagey her fingers were and wondered if that was a common Polish trait.