by Sarah Bannan
Catcher in the Rye was an important book for Dad and his class. Dad said, “It was one of the first books that we read in school that everybody responded to. Probably because it was about a young person and told from his point of view and in his voice, and many of us related to Holden Caulfield.” Dad explained to me that the book seemed very relevant to him at that time because he thought most adults were “phonies” and he wanted to be authentic. Dad also went to New York City a lot with his family, so he recognized a lot of the places named. This was exciting for him and their class took a field trip to the Natural History Museum as part of their course work for the novel.
My dad pointed out that he has read Catcher in the Rye many times since high school and that every time he reads it, he sees something new, which he thinks “is a sign of a very good novel.” The first time he read it, he thought it was about being “authentic” and not being a “phony.” When Dad read the novel in college he thought it was mostly about sex and coming of age. When he read it a few years ago, he said he realized it was mainly a book about grief, and Holden coming to terms with the death of his brother.
Overall, Catcher in the Rye was a very important book to my father and to his classmates. High school was different in many ways when he was a teenager, and it seems as if kids our age have more freedom than he and his friends did. That being said, it also seems like kids back then had closer relationships with their parents and extended families. Dad said he really related to the book and that it was really different and it shocked a lot of people. I have to say that I didn’t find it shocking at all and I doubt any of my friends would.
When my father and I finished our conversation, at around 9.30 p.m. that evening, Dad suggested that we go the Natural History Museum the next time I visited, where he took me when I was seven years old. I could not help but feel that I would have the same experience as Holden if we ever made it there again: struck by how everything at the museum had remained the same, while my father and I have changed tremendously in the meantime.
Grade: A
While I am disappointed (mostly for you!) that you could not conduct the interview in person, this is a strong piece and I’m impressed with the level of observation of both your father’s surroundings and the text itself. I would have liked slightly more context as to why you chose your father, but I understand the limitations of the word count and think this is another very good essay. I would strongly encourage you to consider taking creative writing next year as an elective, particularly since you have shown a strong aptitude and interest in poetry.
FEBRUARY
Chapter 21
Brooke hated Carolyn. We knew that much. In Spanish class, she talked loudly about Carolyn’s crappy clothes and her probable STDs and her annoying accent. She did the same in English class, which was awkward, we said, ’cause Carolyn was actually there. In the halls, Brooke would walk into Carolyn as she tried to pass. Deliberately, it had to be. In the cafeteria, she would laugh in Carolyn’s face and then stop abruptly. And Shane went along with it all, maybe even made it worse. The reasons for Brooke’s behavior were pretty obvious – she was jealous, felt threatened, all the usuals. As for Shane, he was just trying to support his girlfriend, we guessed. And he was probably pissed Carolyn was so into Andrew after everything. Shane had, in fact, seen her first. He had called dibs.
Carolyn didn’t react, not that we could tell, but it would have been impossible not to let it bother you. Now that Taylor and Tiffany weren’t her friends, she walked through the halls on her own, mostly, if Andrew wasn’t there.
Gemma moped around school at first, didn’t say much about Carolyn out loud. We thought she might take things a little better. But Brooke brought her around in the end, and Gemma did her own little things: she moved if Carolyn sat anywhere near her, stopped talking if Carolyn got within ten feet. She talked about how she hated the sound of Yankee accents. In church, when Carolyn and her mom shook Reverend Davies’s hand, Gemma stood next to her dad, staring at her feet, never looking up. She never said anything directly about Carolyn, not in the beginning, but she made her feelings clear. Brooke did most of the yelling, but Gemma was effective too. She was just a little quieter.
In English, Miss Simpson put Carolyn into a group with Gemma and Brooke, to critique each other’s interviews about Catcher in the Rye. We thought this was a stupid idea – it was pathetic how badly Miss Simpson wanted everybody to get along – and we watched the three of them while we were supposed to be reviewing our work. Brooke and Gemma moved their desks so that they faced each other, Carolyn’s coming into theirs at a perpendicular angle. Brooke and Gemma locked eyes with each other and Carolyn kept her eyes on her paper. We heard Miss Simpson talk to them.
“How are my favorite girls getting along?” She put her Diet Coke on Carolyn’s desk.
“Fine, thanks, Miss Simpson.” Gemma was always so polite, even when she was being a bitch. She probably knew she had no right to be in Honors English, given her test scores. She was only there cause Mrs Davies had complained and made a scene.
“Do you understand the assignment?” Miss Simpson was hovering, she always did.
“Yes, ma’am.” Brooke smiled up at her. “We were just telling Carolyn how good hers is.”
Carolyn looked up. We thought she might have rolled her eyes.
“Well, she IS the daughter of a famous writer.” Miss Simpson ran her hand over Carolyn’s hair. Lesbian.
“Oh, that’s RIGHT,” Brooke said, smiling. Carolyn reddened. “Didn’t he write some book about girls who like to get raped? Or was it incest?”
Miss Simpson stepped back. “What?”
Gemma nodded. “Yeah. My dad says it was banned in, like, twenty states.”
“That’s not true.” Carolyn spoke loudly. Like the words came from her gut.
“Right, well . . .” Miss Simpson crinkled her forehead.
“Miss Simpson?” Brooke had turned around. “I think that Dylan needs you.”
Dylan Hall winked at Brooke. Put his hand in the air.
Miss Simpson pivoted. “Oh, right.” She started to walk away. “Okay, then. Well, keep going, girls.”
And as Miss Simpson walked over to Dylan’s desk, at the other side of the classroom, Brooke picked up the Diet Coke on Carolyn’s desk. And she poured it in Carolyn’s lap.
“Whoops,” Brooke said. Gemma laughed.
Carolyn stood up, knocking her desk over with her. “Oh my god.” Coke streamed off her top, onto the floor. Her shirt clung to her stomach.
Dylan Hall laughed. “Carolyn has an outie.” He put his hand over his mouth, cracking up.
Tears filled Carolyn’s eyes and she looked up, trying to blink them back.
Miss Simpson walked toward her. “Oh . . .”
Carolyn ran out the door, slamming it behind her. Miss Simpson’s eyes rested on Gemma, then Brooke.
Brooke looked straight back at her. “What? It was an accident.” And she smiled.
There were things we would always remember about that year: Homecoming, of course, and swimming practice and the story about the hospital. But there were other things, too, things that one of us would remember but the others wouldn’t, and we would try to cobble everything together, to make it fit, to make sense of it all. We remembered the texts, and the Facebook feeds, and the time in the bathroom. Remembered Brooke telling Carolyn she had herpes. Somebody remembered that Carolyn’s tires had been slashed – and another remembered her house getting rolled. Somebody remembered her with a cut on her lip – other people said that was the herpes. Somebody remembered that her hair got thinner as the year went by, and somebody else remembered her shaving an eyebrow off, and singeing her eyelashes with a lighter. We didn’t keep journals and we didn’t write things down: we thought we would remember it all, and that the memories would be safe in our heads. But our minds do funny things sometimes, and we only realized this later: they mix things up and switch things around, and sometimes what we dreamed about eventuall
y happened, and what really happened ended up in our dreams. An official record eventually formed, though, in the news, on TV, on a thousand blogs across the world. We weren’t the authors of those stories but, in the end, what right did we really have to object to them? We hadn’t written things down, or even said them out loud, when it mattered, when it could have changed the course of events. We were part of history but we sat and watched. Like a movie. Only worse.
Miss Simpson probably knew the most, out of anybody. Our five-hundred-word themes, our responses to critical reading, our prayers in her room, our behavior in class, at chaperoned events. And then there was Mrs Matthew, who called Carolyn to the office maybe once a week. Mr Ferris watched the whole thing closely, too, although we didn’t really notice him at the time. His observations to the newspapers weren’t that insightful, but they did reveal that he’d been watching us, much more than we ever would have known. In the end, he knew the least, we thought, but he seemed to care the most.
We grew up too fast, that’s what they told us. We moved too quickly. Had too much sex, took too many drugs, drank too much. They didn’t have a clue, we said, but we looked around, and wondered if what they said was true. We knew everything about everyone, and it was hard to outrun our childhoods, hard to do enough stuff to make people forget about the time you peed your pants in second grade, the time you cried when your mother forgot to pack your lunch, the time you puked at the end of PE. We did what we could. We tried to make people forget. But with Andrew Wright, that was always hard.
Andrew was afraid of the dark. It started when he was four or five, but kept on into his teens, and when church youth group went to Six Flags, or white-water rafting, or any other event where we had to stay overnight in a motel, Andrew’s fear would become a discussion point. He carried a nightlight with him – shaped like Woodstock from Peanuts – and we heard that even with that plugged in, he still insisted that a bathroom or hall light remain on for the whole night. When he was twelve and we were eleven, on a trip to Nashville for a chorus concert, Blake Wyatt and Shane Duggan had stolen the nightlight out of his backpack, and threw it around the school bus for an hour. Andrew’s face was a mixture of distress and irritation, and he tried to intercept the thing as it flew across the rows. He was so tall, even then, and it was weird how he couldn’t quite seem to catch it – his arms were as long as some of the guys’ whole bodies. Our teacher – Mrs Thompson – had fallen asleep in the front, and so it wasn’t until we arrived at the Holiday Inn that she realized that something was going on. Andrew was crying – just a little – and she asked him to explain the problem. He said nothing and pushed past her, out of the bus. Later that night, he called his parents to pick him up – he didn’t even stay over. Stories circulated over the years that he still kept the nightlight, and he always got a single room for overnight games. People laughed about it a little, but after his mother died this changed. It wasn’t mentioned. When things got serious with Carolyn, though, a rumor went around that he could only have sex in daylight – he was the opposite of a vampire, people said, and we laughed.
We heard that Andrew had cried openly the year before, in English class. We had written essays about that weird poem, the one about the wheelbarrow and the rain and the chickens, and when Carolyn’s locker was cleared out at the end of the year, one of her notebooks was filled with William Carlos Williams’s work. She had copied out the wheelbarrow poem at least a dozen times, and Andrew’s handwriting was all over the margins. Saying what, we weren’t sure. The news made a lot out of this – the poem – but we never really understood what they meant. It was weird.
Andrew loved Carolyn. That much was clear. When they started hanging out, he met her after each of her classes. You would see him running from the English building, through the Math building and into Science, and back again, just to make sure she didn’t walk for two minutes on her own. They held hands. If you walked behind them, you couldn’t help but stare at his knuckles, red and calloused, intertwined with her pale, bony fingers. His hands would be white from the pressure of holding onto hers, and she folded her body into his. They looked like they fit.
At that time, we felt softer toward her – a little envious, maybe – wondering why we hadn’t noticed how hot Andrew was, how strong and smooth his arms looked underneath his polo shirts, how the freckles around his nose were like little stars, how his eyelashes were longer than ours with falsies. We hadn’t noticed any of this, not really, until he started walking the halls with Carolyn, whispering in her ear, smiling only when he was with her. We wondered what it was that she had that we didn’t – what she had that could make him run through the buildings, make him write notes, make him hang around after swim practice, waiting on her to finish, so he could drive her home.
Andrew hadn’t looked right that year – all that stuff with his mom – and he still didn’t look right, didn’t look like the boy we had known from the elementary-school playground, from church, with the fireflies at the country club. But when he was walking with Carolyn, when he was holding her hand, holding it so tight he must have been cutting off her circulation, he looked happy. Well, maybe not happy so much as okay. He looked okay.
Later, when the school year was all over, we thought it was unfair that he was lumped in with all of them, that he was considered part of the same pack. He had been friends with Shane, that was true, but his time with Carolyn was different – it seemed so real. We wondered afterward what would have happened if she had dated him first, if she hadn’t gotten caught up with Shane and with Brooke – would it all have been different? Probably not, we told each other, probably not.
Carolyn started to gain a little weight – we saw it first in her face: it looked rounder and her eyes looked brighter and all of a sudden she had a chest, something people had made fun of before. She looked better, if we were honest, a little more human, less like a Skipper doll. We were secretly pleased this had happened, too – maybe it would keep going up and up, and she would get chubby and then actually fat. We liked that she wasn’t as perfect as we thought. Lauren Brink tried to find her jeans in her locker during swim practice – to see if she still had a twenty-two-inch waist – but once we’d gotten into the locker, and we found the jeans, the numbers were all worn out on the tags. We couldn’t make them out.
We heard that Carolyn and Andrew skipped lunch in the cafeteria every day, and every day instead they went to a different place: some of the fast-food places we had in Adamsville that Carolyn had never been to, that were specific to the South. She had never had a Hardee’s biscuit, had never had Whataburger, had never had gravy that was actually gray. Andrew thought this was hilarious, in a cute way, and everybody would see them around town, eating, reading, holding hands. Carolyn showed him stuff, too: she gave Andrew music, music he had never heard before, or stuff that he had heard, but not really heard heard. She lent him books, too: philosophy, poetry, experimental fiction. She inhaled fried pickles and stuffed potato skins, and Andrew inhaled the Beats, Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath. They were caught making out in the AV room, in the dressing room next to the auditorium, in Janitor Ken’s closet. All PG, all over the clothes stuff, that’s what we heard. Andrew was still mourning his mom’s death – that was the official line for no sex – but people said he was afraid of all of her STDs. In court, later, it was never established that they had slept together. People talked about that blow job in Nicole’s pool, but we were all too drunk to confirm anything. And nobody even knew if that counted as sex anyway.
Transcript
(Transcript of guidance counseling session between Carolyn Lessing and Carole Matthew. Tape is not dated, and appears to be a continuation of an earlier conversation, but the session took place sometime in the second half of the 2010–2011 academic year.)
Mrs Matthew: You’re close with your father?
Carolyn: What?
Mrs Matthew: You mentioned calling your father. That seems important to you.
Carolyn: Yes – why, is that unusu
al or something? God.
Mrs Matthew: How are things at home?
Carolyn: This is moving around a lot.
Mrs Matthew: Excuse me?
Carolyn: You just seem to be hopping from one subject to the next. Like, really, really quickly.
Mrs Matthew: I’m just trying to hit on something you feel comfortable talking about.
Carolyn: Because there’s nothing wrong with me.
Mrs Matthew: Nobody’s saying there is.
Carolyn: But I’m the one who’s seeing you.
Mrs Matthew: Yes.
Carolyn: Not Brooke. Or Gemma. Or any of the others.
Mrs Matthew: Well, I can’t talk about other students.
Carolyn: Doctor–patient confidentiality? I get it.
Mrs Matthew: Something like that.
Carolyn: Only you’re not a doctor.
Mrs Matthew: Pardon me?
Carolyn (laughing): It’s just you’re not actually a doctor. Or a psychologist. I’m not even sure they should be letting you do this.
Mrs Matthew (clearing throat): No, I’m not a psychiatrist. Or a psychologist. I’m just here to help.
Carolyn: Right.
Mrs Matthew: There’s no need to be rude, Carolyn.
Carolyn: Ma’am?