It occurred to me, lying there, that maybe God had seen me that night on the hill with Margot, her sniffing her finger. There had to be some reason why this was happening to me. I mean this business with Rachel. I swear I could feel the hand of God in it. Like he’d taken time off from his other duties this fall to really stick it to me.
Late in the afternoon one day, I was walking along the fence near the south playing field, sun going down, and I was feeling sad but in a poetic kind of way. I could see myself out there, walking alone, and I kind of liked the picture. Anyway when I got back to my room I sat down at my desk and I started writing it down, all the things I felt, all the things that made me different from the other boys in the school. I put it all in a letter and I sent it to Arthur Deacon because, well, he was going into the church, he seemed like a kind guy, he never took a pat of butter before the little kids and so on. So I slipped it under his door.
Next morning, I saw Deacon on the way to French lab. He dropped his eyes like he hadn’t seen me, and I thought oh-oh.
Maybe that day, maybe the next, I forget, fucking E. K. wandered into the room and told me he’d just heard Arthur Deacon telling some guy in the tuck shop that I was a pseudo-intellectual. But hang on. It gets worse. I didn’t know what pseudo meant, I thought it was a degree of intellectual, you know like Esso Extra. I just blushed with pleasure, you know, like the word’s out, I’m a brainer, everybody knows it.
So when E.K. went out again, I snuck over to his big dictionary and took a peek. And that’s when I found out it’s a phoney intellectual. Well, it was a blow. I mean I sat down on the bed, the dictionary still in my hands, and stared out the window. Just sick with it, man, just sick with it.
After that, everything pissed me off, even the smallest stuff, like a guy walking down the same aisle in the library or standing too close behind me at the tuck shop at recess. Like back the fuck off man and stop breathing all over me. Or E.K. talking to a couple of Bishop Strachan girls on the front steps one day. He was coming on like the big man on campus, a real know-it-all, and I just couldn’t help myself.
“Hey E.K., is your sister still doing that trick with the donkey?” Picking on E.K, that was the bottom of the fucking barrel. But you got to be careful with guys like that, you know? I mean they seem all weak and eager to please and really fucking goofy but I’ve discovered that if you push them they can go off in your face like a hand grenade; it’s not just rats you don’t want to corner. So back in my room, E.K. came striding in like he was a prefect or something, looking dashing in a little brownsuit, hair combed neat and black, glistening, and he said, get this, “If you ever do that again, I’m going to beat you to death.”
Weird thing is, I knew not to smart-ass him back. He was at that nothing-to-lose place, and I flashed for a second on his body at nights getting into bed, all tense and muscular, not an ounce of fat on it. But I couldn’t let it go by either.
“Do you mean philosophically or literally?”
“I mean get yourself another scaramouch,” he said, sort of spitting it at me.
“What’s a scaramouch?”
“It’s somebody who makes people laugh.”
And in that second my opinion of E.K. changed completely. It’s too bad he had to scare me to make me stop fucking around with him. But that’s what happened. I mean for awhile, after he stormed out of the room, I found myself talking in my head about what an asshole he was, how I’d given him a break nobody else would, how I wasn’t going to be his friend any more, him snapping at me like that. Fuck him. Now he didn’t even have me for a friend. I found myself rehearsing things to say to him, how cold I was going to be. But when he came back into the room after announcements, still giving me the silent treatment, I could feel myself coming around, wanting to make up. I can’t stand tension, it makes my stomach go into a knot. So I apologized.
“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry for saying that thing about the donkey, but I don’t like being threatened, okay? It makes me very violent.”
I think he knew I just had to get something in there, otherwise it’d look like I was scared of him. And after awhile we started to shoot the shit about the usual stuff. But it stayed with me a few days, him scaring me like that. Sometimes I just felt likebursting into tears, all the upset, and now this. Getting backed down by E.K. I mean, what’s next after that? Cleaning out urinals with your tongue.
Never mind church, I hate Sundays anyway. No matter where you are, even the country, you can smell a Sunday, everything dead and still, not a fucking soul in the streets. So to keep from shooting myself, I dropped down to see Harper in residence at Trinity College. It was just the neatest place, green ivy on the walls, kids walking around the quad talking about stuff, just exactly what you have in mind when you think about going to university. I went up the stairs into the hall porter’s office. He was going to give Harper a buzz but I asked him not to, I wanted to surprise him.
I didn’t knock. The door was a little bit open and I stuck my head slowly around it like a giraffe. He was lying on his bed reading a book and he just about croaked when he saw me. I mean he jumped like I’d shot him.
“Jesus H. Christ,” he said, “you scared the shit out of me.”
I went in and sat down at the foot of the bed. We chatted for awhile about this frat house he was getting rushed for, but he started picking at a piece of dry skin on his lip, something he always did when he was worried.
“What’s up?” I said.
“They invited me over there for lunch yesterday. But afterwards nobody talked to me or anything. I just hung around for awhile, feeling like an asshole, and then I split. I think I blew it. Fuck.”
It was dinnertime pretty soon and he fished a black gown out of his cupboard, just like the one Psycho Schiller wears, and took me over to the dining room, this great big wooden place with a high ceiling. Some of the guys, their robes were like in tatters, it was almost a prestige thing, like who could have the most fucked-up robe and still have it qualify. I met a guy over there, a divinity student with a long face. He was a big deal in residence because he was fucking a girl who was going out with some guy who was going to be prime minister. Which, let’s face it, is a big deal. I felt like I was talking to a celebrity, you know, very keen that he like me. I asked him all sorts of questions, which usually makes people like you. And another guy, with curly black hair, red lips, he looked like a fucking orangutan. But he was light-bulb smart, by which I mean that sometimes you meet somebody in the world and you feel yourself in the presence of a light bulb brighter than yours. I sort of like it, really, I mean it’s a little tiring, all that reaching up, but it sure keeps you on your toes. Best thing with those people is not to talk too much, that way you don’t commit yourself. One thing about being with smart people, though, is you never want to be anywhere else.
All in all, I had a pretty good time at dinner, these guys talking about girls and God and Matthew Arnold in the same sentence. And then we did that thing where everybody goes for coffee and tea down the hall. Sort of formal and old-fashioned, but I dug it. I thought to myself, man if I went here, I’d be completely happy. I just liked the feel of the place. It was like you were in the house of God where you just knew to behave.
Anyway we went back to Harper’s room. We were sitting around listening to the stereo when the divinity guy came by. He started rolling a joint.
“I don’t know,” Harper said, sort of frowning.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m a big boy.”
So we lit up a big joint. First time ever. Smoke drifting around the room, smelling like hay. Course to tell you the truth, nothing happened. I mean like we smoked the whole thing, right down to burning my fingers and then I sat back, the other two going pretty quiet on me, so much so I was reluctant to speak.
“Like am I supposed to feel anything yet?” I asked.
At which the divinity student laughed. But they didn’t have a whole lot to say.
So I stared at the candle flame and w
aited for something to happen. And nothing did. So since it looked like nobody was going to say fuck-all and nobody was going to get up and do fuck-all either, I stretched out in my chair, my head going about two hundred miles a minute, and rubbed my eyeballs. You rub your eyeballs and some pretty wild geometric stuff starts happening, like exploding triangles and pentangles coming out of other pentangles and I thought to myself, boy, somebody should invent a camera that would project this stuff onto a screen because there’s no way I’m going to be able to describe this to anybody. Which I was about to comment on when I started thinking about something else. Problem is, no matter what I thought about, it always ended up sort of a bummer, like it always landed on the wrong foot. Like I was thinking about our summer cottage. I was thinking about Sandy Hunter walking along the street that first day we drove through Huntsville, this pretty girl at the side of the road, her blond hair moving just a bit in the wind. And then I started to miss it, like miss that very moment of me and my mom and Harper driving through town, like it was gone forever, like I could never have it back again. And it hurt me so much, I mean I could feel it, like a sinking in my stomach. Quite involuntarily I let out a groan.
“What is it?” Harper said.
“Nothing,” I said and then I moved onto some other stuff. But it didn’t matter where I went that night, it always hurt me,and after awhile I sat up in this room full of fucking zombies and said, “I have to split.”
There was this kind of stoned laughter from across the room. I got to my feet, which took a long time indeed, and then I got to the door, which took about a summer and half too.
Harper walked me downstairs to the main door. We shook hands, which was a bit solemn but seemed like the right thing to do. And then I was out in the night air, the stars very bright over my head, going up through Philosophers’ Walk. I just walked and walked, I had this terrible ache in my heart, it was like I was so unhappy I could just burst. Everything seemed so sad and everything I’d ever done had fucked up and I just felt like I was a tiny, squeaking mouse in a big cold house.
I walked up onto Bloor Street and I went west, under the high walls of Varsity Stadium, university kids bouncing along the sidewalk toward me, all noisy and scary and extremely insensitive. Me hoping that some pretty girl would come along, she would see in my eyes all the wonderful things I am, she would just know. And she’d take me to a cottage in the woods, a small wooden cottage with a stone chimney where she lived with her father and I’d go inside, you could smell the wood burning in the fireplace, and I’d sit down by the fire and I’d be warm and safe forever and ever.
Instead of which I suddenly realized I was famished. It was like I hadn’t eaten for fucking days. I was so hungry, so desperate for a hamburger that my heart just leapt with excitement when I realized I had enough money to get one. I hurried across the street into Harvey’s. There was a guy in front of me wearing one of those team baseball jackets. Had his girlfriend with him. A real hairdresser. Teased hair, fuzzy blue sweater. Excellent at a drive-in with her jeans around her ankles but you don’t wanther writing your law boards. Anyway I was too fucking hungry to wait my turn so I sort of threw my order over this guy’s shoulder just as he got to the counter.
“A cheeseburger and a glass of milk!” I hollered.
Nothing happened for a second, but then the guy turned around with an expression on his face like he’d just stepped in a dog turd.
“Fuck you,” he said. And waited for me to say something back.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t notice you there.”
A bit feeble, I know, but better than a punch in the mouth, which was just around the corner.
He stared at me for a second longer, just to be sure I got the message, and then cooled it. But I’ll tell you, it rattled me good. Made me feel sort of sordid, like I’d done something really bad, worse, like I was somebody really bad, some kind of creep covered in dog poo and spider webs. I mean that was the thing about that night, after I smoked that shit. It felt like everything I’d ever done in my life was like completely insane, like some guy going across a checkerboard and every other fucking square except the one he’s on is just nuts. Like how could I have been such an asshole for so many years? Jesus, it was too much. I ended up back at the dorm holding my head, rocking myself back and forth, just wanting the whole fucking thing to stop.
CHAPTER NINE
THANKSGIVING I went up north to the cottage. You could feel the snow in the air, the leaves had fallen off the trees, summer looked like it was never coming back. There was a strawberry bush out back all bare and shivering in the wind. It was really something.
I got the same cab driver I had that time I came home from Scarlet’s. That sort of set me off because I burst into tears when I got in the front door of the house. My mother put her arms around me and I sobbed away, bubbles coming out of my mouth like I was a little baby.
“I’m going to kill myself,” I said, “I’m going to take a big piece of glass and cut my throat with it, I am,” which was definitely not a cool thing to say to my mother, things being what they were.
“Promise me,” she said, sitting me down at the kitchen table and looking right into my eyes, even holding my chin to be sure I looked at her, “Promise me that if you ever even think of doing something like that, you’ll call me. Promise me.”
“I will,” I said.
“No, promise. Cross your heart. Let me see you.”
“I will,” I said, sort of weary and worried that I’d upset her. I mean she had her own problems up there with the old man, who stayed in the living room, by the way, reading a book.
So we sat around in the kitchen and talked about Scarlet. Sometimes I felt really good, like all the poison was gone from my body and I’d say, “I feel a lot better now,” and my mother sort of smiled, but carefully like she was holding onto something, and about twenty minutes later I’d start feeling shitty again. It was like dirty water seeping back into the tub. And then I’d start all over again, going around and around in my head until I thought I’d turn into butter just like those tigers I read about when I was a kid.
Once I went for a walk down by the ravine, all the grass grey and flattened. I went down to our little creek, I stood there for a moment looking down into the water thinking about Scarlet, thinking about her coming back to me and when I did, I felt this gust of exhilaration. It just went straight up through me.
That night when I went to bed, I lay there for a long time in my room, the blue one with the cowboys on the wall, listening to the floors crack and squirrels and mice running around behind the walls. It was like a great big living thing, this house. And then the furnace went on. You could hear it go click and then it was like the whole place was breathing, breathing and looking after me. When I was little my mother never wanted me to go to sleep unhappy, even if we’d had a fight, and sometimes, even behind my father’s back, she’d creep up into my room and give me a kiss and tuck me in. Which is what she did that night. I rolled over and looked at her in the dark. She stroked my face.
“My darling,” she said, “if there was only something I could do. Something to help you.”
She looked at me for a moment.
“I love you so much,” she said. “I love you so much it scares me.”
I took the train back to school on Monday night. I was in the compartment alone. Opposite me was a photograph but for a long time I didn’t notice it. I was kind of wandering around in my head as if there was a problem I could solve, if I just looked at it the right way. But it was the same old maze, same old rat track and I never got anywhere new. Scarlet was gone, that’s as far as my thinking ever got me.
Anyway, you know how you can look at something without seeing it? I was thinking about that time when Scarlet stood on her tippy-toes and her shirt came out. I should have kissed her stomach, I thought, I should have done more with Scarlet, kissed her more, felt her up more. I mean I thought she was going to be around forever, so there was no hurr
y. If I had her now, boy the stuff I’d do to her.
So there I was, wandering around in never-never land when the fog cleared and I found myself still staring eye level at this photograph. It was a picture of a beach with a yellow hotel way in the background. And something about it, the feel I guess, reminded me of that time when I went on a holiday to St Petersburg with my mother. We rented a house by the sea. Tall grass, sand dunes, sea gulls flying around overhead and there’s a picture of me, I don’t know who took it, I’m out on the beach and I’m feeding the seagulls, there’s a whole bunch of them around me, one just taking a piece of bread out of my hand and I’m kind of laughing and cowering all at the same time, my mother in the background, lying on a deck chair, sunglasses on, her shirt tied at the waist. And looking at that picture, it made me miss those times so much it was like the bottom of my stomach fell out. I was just aching for it all, to be back there, the sun on my head, feeding the gulls. And it seemed like such a long, long time ago, sort of cruel that it was all so gone. And I thought to myself, if I can just get back there, back to that beach and standout there again in the sand, I’ll be happy. I can have it all back again. And then it occurred to me that I could, that I could run away and go all the way down there. I could do it on my own. Just like that night when I came down to see Scarlet. And just thinking about it filled me with this sort of strange excitement. It gave me something to look forward to, something to stop me thinking about Scarlet the whole time.
By the time I got back to my dormitory that night, I knew what I was going to do.
“You know what?” I said to E.K.
He was reading in his bed, propping that small perfect head on his hand while he flipped through a Life magazine.
“What?” he said, not looking up. E.K. was getting used to me by now.
“I’m going to run away.”
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