Life Is Fine

by Allison Whittenberg

  I felt the rain on my bare head and through my sneaks, which leaked. My drab-colored shirt and my jeans went slick-bright with this wet, and I felt a strange boost. I was through the looking-glass, down was up, up down.

  I lit a smoke.

  When I got home, I expected to see Q with his supersized mistress, but that day Q’s only companion was that Texas Justice judge and the smell of fried beef and popcorn (Q’s late lunch?). I walked behind the couch, nearly tripping on a Pringles can. (What an oddity, the way they package those potato chips. It’s like they really wanted to make tennis balls.)

  I marched to my pathetic room still wringing wet. The walls’ ugly paneling was showing its age. The wood was splitting. The rug was worn in spots, especially at the opening of the closet. I searched for some dry clothes.

  I took off my soaked jeans and top and threw them in the hamper, which was overflowing.

  I changed and still felt miserable.

  As the afternoon wore on, I decided to make myself some dinner, but the fridge was a nightmare of rotting, spilling, stinking messes. Q had a habit of sticking anything in it, any way he wanted. There was a plate of unpopped popcorn kernels, and stale greening bread in loose plastic, and half a lemon meringue pie with a napkin draped over the top of it. There were five jars of peanut butter, two of which were empty. I swished the milk carton only to find its contents had turned to yogurt. I closed the door in disgust. I tried the cupboard on the back porch and pulled the string for the light. The bad bulb flickered, struggling to live. Going. Going. Gone.

  I pulled the string again and the string broke.

  Then and there, I decided to call it a day.

  nine

  A few days later, when I didn’t see Flanders first period, my heart began to pound, pound, pound. I feared the worst and wouldn’t you know it: the worst walked in.

  I must be on God’s hit list. Why else would he torture me like this?

  Mr. Brook strolled in all purposeful and sharp.

  A few people clapped.

  Steph’Annie elbowed me.

  Mr. Brook explained that Flanders would be taking the next couple of weeks off, due to her recurring rash. He went into the introduction business, as if any of us could forget he was Mr. Jerome Halbrook. That voice. That carriage. That handsome face with the aquiline nose. He was so distinguished. Mr. Brook had straight, thin lips, too, which made me think even more of some sort of English nobility. But his best feature was that skin. It had such deep brown dignity. Despite my resistance, I was still into him.

  He went on about someone named Emily Dickinson. He told us that back in the mid-nineteenth century the Civil War broke out, Lincoln was shot, and Edison invented the lightbulb, but Dickinson left her Amherst, Massachusetts, house only twice in thirty years. She never got married or had any kids. She used all her time to write more than a thousand poems.

  “I would like to share her with you,” he said.

  He ran through some of her titles, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,” “I Like a Look of Agony,” and “I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died.”

  Death, funeral, agony, and more death. I rolled my eyes. I bet Dickinson was a lot of fun to be around.

  As if reading my mind, Mr. Brook told us next that Miss Dickinson often stayed in her room all day, choosing to write letters rather than brave face-to-face communication.

  “How did she feel about e-mail?” someone in the second row asked.

  “She went through her whole life, and she never fell in love with anyone?” someone in the third row asked.

  “There are rumors,” Mr. Brook told us. I couldn’t help perking up.

  “Rumors that she might have had a forbidden love,” Mr. Brook said.

  The class oohed and aahed.

  “Some say she was helplessly in love with a married man named Thomas Wentworth Higginson. He was a major literary critic of the time. Others say she was a lesbian.”

  “A lesbian? You mean like with women?” the AP wannabe asked.

  Steph’Annie rolled her eyes and told Mr. Brook, “He was absent that day in health class.”

  “I’ve never heard that Emily Dickinson was a lesbian,” the AP wannabe insisted.

  “This is all speculation. No one will ever know for sure.”

  “What do you believe, Mr. Halbrook?” Steph’Annie asked.

  “I believe she was in love with the greatest love of all: herself.”

  The class really laughed at that.

  Mr. Brook held up his hand to calm us and said,

  “ ‘The Soul selects her own Society—/ Then—shuts the Door.’ She did what she wanted when she wanted.”

  While he passed out a sheet of paper he told us that in some countries poets were persecuted. “In Russia, Stalin targeted artists during the Great Purge and shipped them off to labor camps. In America, poets have it even harder. Here, we ignore them. . . . Who would like to read this for us?”

  There were twenty-eight other people in that English class. I felt sure he wouldn’t call on me, but I avoided his eyes all the same.

  “Samara will,” Steph’Annie called out.

  I sank down farther in my seat.

  Mr. Brook looked at me a long time, and his eyes shone. “It seems you’ve been volunteered. May I trouble you?”

  So he did it. What nerve! A new weakness overtook me, then an expanding anger. Why didn’t he just tie a rock around my neck and drown me in the Schuylkill River?

  “Samara,” he repeated, “would you please read for us?”

  Steph’Annie peered at me with big, anxious eyes. Other necks were swiveled toward me.

  Enough of this shameful cowardice! I thought. All right, Mr. Brook, you’re the boss. I took the sheet of paper in my hands and held it at a proper distance.

  I began reading good ole number 341. “After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes.” I comprehended each word of Dickinson’s keen, melancholy verse. The last two lines brought the meaning home. “As Freezing persons recollect the Snow—/ First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.”

  I returned the paper to my desk and looked directly into the blue eyes and black face of Mr. Brook. Dickinson was right; we do tend to cling to things, like trees cling to the last of their leaves.

  “Thank you, Samara,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Thank you.”

  More oohs and aahs from the class.

  The bell rang. I, like the rest of the class, bustled out the door with a sharp right into the hall. I could hear Steph’Annie say my name behind me, but I didn’t slow down. I made it to Rosetti’s Algebra II, which was two flights up, in one minute, thirty-five seconds. That had to be some kind of Olympic record. My customary seat was three rows down, and I again ducked deep into obscurity.

  I detested this class. Mr. Rosetti flipped when anyone got the wrong answer. He’d explode, telling us how wrong answers inflamed his hot Italian temper.

  Is it politically incorrect when you’re insulting yourself?

  Mr. Rosetti also had an unfortunate shape. All his extra weight went directly to his abdomen. My teacher for the next period, Mr. Scafonas, had exactly the same body type. He had a normal head, legs, and arms. All his weight centered in his torso. Mr. Scafonas, however, was more jovial, I guess because there were more jokes to be made about psych. That day, he lectured on anomie, a state of anarchy, not to be confused with that Japanese form of animation.

  Ha, ha. You see, I was over Mr. Brook. Way over him. I could laugh. My mind was clear. I had completely let go.

  Of course, Steph’Annie didn’t know that. Before fourth period, she caught me by my locker and tried her best to keep the pot churned.

  “Boy, that sub really digs you. I felt it in the air. The electricity.”

  I frowned. “Then it must be about to storm.”

  “You are so cool in front of him. You don’t let on at all.”

  “There’s nothing to let on, Steph’Annie.”


  “Oh, I could listen to you two read all day. Tell me when you’re going to burn your first CD. It’ll be better than Jack Kerouac.”

  “Who?”

  “He was a beatnik.”

  “A whatnik?” I asked.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” She smiled her blue painted smile. “You know, those people in the cafés who played the bongos.”

  “I’m not with them, Steph’Annie,” I said, closing my locker. “I don’t even own a beret.”

  “You’re always cutting yourself down. You are way cool. You have to come hang out with me this Friday.”

  “This Friday?” I asked.

  “Yes, are you busy?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t have to think about it. I was never busy.

  “Then come hang out.” Her blue hair gleamed.

  I found myself saying, “Sure.”

  ten

  At night, South Street always had a thriving crowd. Most people were heavily tattooed with snakes and birds and circles and squares. The heavily-pierced-and-estranged were huddled in the alleyways with signs. Most of them were male. I have heard a theory that many homeless kids are gay, and that their parents have tossed them out, choosing to have no child rather than a gay one.

  I looked at them with a kind of hunger, a need to know what had been the tipping point.

  Had they been thrown out headfirst, or had they maintained some dignity in the matter and left of their own accord?

  The wind whirled like crazy. I read their sloppily scripted signs: HOMELESS, HUNGRY, FAR FROM HOME. PLEASE GIVE MONEY. WHATEVER YOU CAN. . . .

  I wondered, did they ever look back? Long for living indoors and having three square meals a day? Did they miss it enough to beg back in?

  I spotted Steph’Annie and her friends on the corner of Seventh and South. Steph’Annie had on her customary gear. Her pals, however, were dressed maddeningly ordinarily, almost Beyoncé style. Their coats were open, revealing low-rider jeans and half tops. Instead of blue, both of them had red lipstick on.

  Steph’Annie introduced Roxanne and Kath. Roxanne had a long narrow face and a long narrow frame. She kept her somewhat large nose pointed at her cell phone as she frantically text-messaged her ex-boyfriend—ex as of two days ago, that is. The body wasn’t even cold. She said a “Hi, Samara” with a slight lisp, then went back to texting.

  I could only wish that the other girl shared her penchant for brevity. The other girl, Kath, was small but chesty. Faster than the speed of light, her lips moved. Her voice sounded high and squeaky.

  “So where are we going? What are we eating?” she asked. “I hope not pizza. I had pizza for lunch. Not the round kind, the square. Is the square kind still considered pizza?”

  I knew I shouldn’t make snap judgments. But I couldn’t help thinking it was going to be a loooooooooong night.

  Steph’Annie planned for us to go to the Rocket. She promised it would be just like that old seventies TV show about the fifties. I expected the waitresses to have poodle skirts and swishy ponytails, but I had no idea what the men wore during that time period.

  Inside, the jukebox played a tune called “Trickle Trickle.” As far as I could tell, the song was about rain and a boy who wanted to kiss a girl. But we hadn’t come for the doo-wop. We’d come to get our arteries clogged with whole-milk milk shakes and one-hundred-percent-pure-beef burgers, heavy on the onions.

  We sat in the booth for a while before anyone waited on us.

  Finally a young man came in. He unfolded his apron and carefully put it around his waist; then he neatly fit his cap over his dreadlocks. I figured it must be some sort of shift change because he came right over and distributed four glasses of ice water and four jumbo-sized menus.

  I knew him from somewhere. It wasn’t school, I was sure of that. It was strange; he was like someone I had seen in a movie. That face, that slight frame. But what sense did that make, a movie star waiting tables?

  While the rest of us perused the menu, Steph’Annie announced that she’d have a burger.

  “I thought you were going veg?” Kath asked.

  Steph’Annie smiled. “It’s Friday. I’m only veg on weekdays.”

  “Friday’s not a weekday?” Kath persisted in her tiny, squeaky voice.

  I looked over at Roxanne, who was text-messaging so frantically she looked like she was defusing a bomb. Instead of fiddling with the red wire, blue wire, she was punching those assorted keys till her fingers burned. I felt like I was watching an episode of 24.

  She held a message out for us to read. Her ex had written, “I’m at Burger King.”

  “So, we’re here,” Steph’Annie said. “Tell him to get lost.”

  The waiter came back to take our order.

  Kath began. “I’ll have a sweet roll and coffee and a milk shake.”

  The waiter nodded.

  “Aren’t you going to write that down?” Kath asked him. “You know what they say—the weakest pen is better than the strongest memory.”

  “I think he knows his job!” I said, hoping my words didn’t make me sound as fed up as I really was. I would never know, because the waiter snapped his finger and pointed at me. “The zoo. I remember you from the zoo.”

  Kath laughed loudly.

  “It was a few weeks ago. Remember?” he asked.

  It all came together. Of course, I nodded. This was that weirdo who tried to get Dru into a fit.

  “I’m Jeff.” He held out his hand.

  I shook it quickly. He gave me a long, searching look.

  I caught my breath. “I’ll have a Coke and a burger, well done.”

  Steph’Annie ducked her head between us. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ll have what she’s having.”

  Roxanne looked up from her phone quickly to say, “Ditto. And with cheese.”

  He collected our menus. “Coming right up,” he said, and walked back to the kitchen.

  “He likes you!” Steph’Annie exclaimed as she gripped my knee. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”

  “What a spaz,” Kath said.

  “He’s cute,” Roxanne said, looking up from her cell momentarily.

  “He’s a cute spaz,” Steph’Annie said.

  “He seems like a geek,” Kath said. “I bet he listens to Clay Aiken.”

  I glanced his way and watched him fill the sugar bowls. Sure, he had soulful eyes and an easy smile, but who was into that?

  He jogged over to our table and asked me, “Did you want something?”

  “Samara wants to give you her phone number,” Steph’Annie told him.

  “She does?” I asked.

  “Samara. That’s a pretty name,” he said. “I’m Jeff.”

  “You told her that,” Kath said.

  Steph’Annie dug in her purple pocketbook and revealed a slip of paper and a pen.

  Jeff took them and started writing. “Here’s mine,” he said. A bell rang and he was off again.

  “What is he doing working here? I don’t think they had dreadlocks in the fifties,” Kath said matter-of-factly.

  “Maybe they did—in Jamaica,” Steph’Annie said.

  “I heard that seventy different species of insects live in hair like that.”

  “What?” Steph’Annie and I asked.

  “Microscopic bugs. Seventy of them,” Kath repeated.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t have bugs in his hair,” I said. I was beyond the point of hating her. Her voice was like a knife scratching on glass to me.

  “How does he wash it?” Kath asked.

  “Everybody washes their hair, Kath,” Steph’Annie told her.

  “Yeah, but how?” she asked with a flick of her store-bought ponytail.

  When our plates came, Kath offered me some of her sweet roll.

  “No, thank you,” I said with a phony smile.

  Roxanne took a bite of her condiment-laden hamburger and the ketchup dripped onto her cell phone.

  I turned to Steph’Annie. “Wha
t am I going to do with his phone number?”

  She took one more bite of her burger, then answered. “The way I see it, you have two options. You could either call him or you could call him.”

  I nodded. “I see I have a lot of options.”

  “That’s what friends are for,” Steph’Annie said. She seemed so satisfied with herself. I should have known she liked meddling and matchmaking.

  I glanced over at Jeff, and he winked at me.

  “Oh my God, did you see that!” Steph’Annie yelped.

  “Are you going to date him?” Kath asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

  “You don’t know?” Steph punched my arm.

  Kath frowned. “Dammit, now we have to leave a tip.”

  eleven

  “Kath and Roxanne think you’re way cool!” Steph’Annie told me the next day.

  Really? I couldn’t stand either one of them, I thought. Steph’Annie and I walked along the cobblestone walkways of Old City. It didn’t take long to get on the topic of Mr. Brook. All roads led to him. I told her how I had run into him in the bookstore.

  “I really ought to start reading. I mean really reading—get away from the magazine rack, you know? . . . I don’t think they really want people to buy books anymore. It’s all chai and DVDs. . . . That is one hot old dude, and he took you to lunch.”

  “We had lunch—it’s not like he asked me out. It was a chance encounter.”

  “Yeah, but you got there. He likes you,” she squealed. “He is so handsome. He’s superhandsome. He’s like Denzel Washington and Richard Gere handsome—they’re in their seventies, right?”

  I shrugged. I really didn’t follow heartthrobs. Why should I care about all the ins and outs of those celebs? Did they care about my goings-on?

  We were headed uptown toward where Mr. Brook lived.

  “You know where he lives. He took you to his pad.”

  “I never went to his pad. I just stood outside it.”

  “That is so cool. You had a vigil. You have to show me where he lives.”

  Next thing I knew, we were camped outside his apartment.

  She asked for my lighter, and when I gave it to her, she flicked it and held it up and swayed.