"I don't care what anyone says, I say, do it now!"
I grab his arm. He wriggles free and ducks under one of the bars of the jungle gym and then scrambles to the top of it. Aware that we are putting on some kind of show for half the school, I try to cool down. "Okay, Billy. Who says no?"
"Him. You know him. He says you go way back."
"When did he say this?"
Billy, clinging to the metal bars, glances to his left and then to his right, and whispers, "He just said it."
"Where is he? Tell him to come out. I'd like to meet him."
"You know where he is. He says you put him there."
"Billy!" My patience is wearing thin at this point. I'm positive that if I were a cartoon character, steam would be blowing out of my ears. "Did you write on the blackboard this morning?"
Billy shakes his head.
"Come on now, Billy. I know you did it. 'He says you cheat.' What was the meaning of that?"
He starts to sob, and wipes his nose with the sleeve of his shirt. "You know. He says you know."
"Who, Billy?"
"Him. Mr. Nobody. I dunno. He says it's true. You. You cheat."
"Who?"
"You. You. You."
"Stop it. I am going to count to ten."
By the time I get to five. Billy jumps to the ground and tears off for the building. I watch him enter, and wave to those students and teachers who are still watching me. Then I walk as calmly as possible back to the school.
When I enter the building through the back double doors, Amy Meader, who teaches kindergarten, greets me with, "I think he went thataway," pointing to the janitor's door leading to the basement boiler room. "And I don't envy you the privilege, Cup. The Radish was out here a few minutes ago asking if I thought you had control of the situation."
"Fuck her," I say, and then notice a few five-year-olds standing in Amy's doorway. I pray that they don't go home and repeat this new word they learned today from the fifth-grade teacher.
I go down into the boiler room. "Billy?" The room is a charcoal gray—the only light filters in through three opaque glass windows. I switch on the overhead light. There, next to the furnace, sits Billy Bates, sucking his thumb and crying. "Are you all right?"
Billy catches his breath. He speaks in gasps, "He says you killed him."
"Who, Billy? Who says that?"
"Bah-Bah-" But he starts coughing before he can finish it. It's funny, but I don't even connect with what he is saying. I figure he's been watching too many Amazing Stories or Twilight Zones.
"Whoever he is," I slowly move closer to him, trying not to alarm him, "he must be a liar."
"I dunno."
"Look " I am close enough to reach down and offer him my hand. "Let's go back upstairs and talk this thing out, man-to-man. Everything'll be all right."
He shakes his head violently, and draws back from me like I am a rattlesnake coiled to strike. "He says you you you "
"When did he say this?"
"Now."
"Is he here? Down here?"
Billy nods. He is calming down. His face is wet from tears. I'm thinking, Jeez, I wonder if the old man took a belt or worse to him last night. What kind of hell do some kids have to live through?
"We'll just go back upstairs."
He thinks about this for a moment. "Lemme go first."
So I step back, allowing him free access to the stairs. He goes around me, his eyes never leaving me. When he gets to the first step he turns around and flicks the light off. I can still see him, but it's through a hazy gray cloud. "Billy, turn it back on."
He does turn it on, then off, then on, then off. The effect is something like lightning flashes.
I move quickly to the stairs. "Stop it, right now." And as I get closer, I hear him whisper a chant, "He says you cheat, you cheat, you cheat." The strobe effect of the flashing light hurts my eyes. When I am standing right in front of him I grab him and shake him. "Just shut up."
The voice that comes back at me through that gauze darkness is not a little fifth-grader's, not Billy Bates's soprano. This voice belongs to a much older boy. And I smell smoke. Whom I think I hear and see is Bart Kinter who died when I was sixteen. "I know what kind of monster you are, Coffeyass," this voice says, and without thinking about what I'm doing, I draw my left hand back, still clutching a little boy by his collar with my right, and bring that hand down hard onto the side of his face; so hard that it practically whistles through the air, and when the palm of my left hand touches Billy's face, it makes a loud whack!
Billy screams and cries, and I switch on the boiler room light. I throw my arms around him and I am crying, too, telling him how sorry I am, how I didn't mean to do it, not at all, I wasn't myself. He is pushing me away, crying, and I am hugging him tighter and tighter to me while he claws at the air for escape. I look at his face, and there is a giant red handprint across it like a scar. I hear some noise on the stairs and I look up to see Mrs. Radish, my boss, staring down at me and the fact of my losing my job, while implicit in her glance, is momentarily the least of my worries.
4
From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:
The next morning I am in Mrs. Radisson's office.
I can't even bring myself to look at her as I sit in a large, uncomfortable leather chair across the desk from her. My hands are trembling. I glance down at my lap—even my knees are knocking. I haven't slept all night. Afraid of those dreams.
She starts telling me that she's received several calls already from parents who heard about yesterday's incident. But, aside from that, there've been complaints since September concerning my lack of discipline in the classroom, my overall laziness. How she has asked to see my lesson plans every week, and I have not turned them in. She reminds me that there is only one week before vacation. She has already lined up a substitute to take over my classes. She is worried, she tells me, that Billy's parents might bring a lawsuit against the school. How my slapping Billy Bates dislodged one of his teeth, and even though it was a baby tooth
I nod. God, I nod so much I feel like one of those dogs in the back windows of cars; up and down with the head, up and down. I agree with every last thing this woman I despise tells me. Because it is the truth. I feel right now like dirt under her feet.
I walk out of her office at ten o'clock in the morning, out of that school forever. I hop the Metro back to Foggy Bottom and from there, walk to Sign of the Whale, a bar on M Street. Just before noon on this lovely mild day in December, I order a beer.
After my sixth Heineken Dark (but who's counting?) I decide to give Tess a call. I forget about Mr. Lemon Tie at the Ingmar Bergman festival, and I tell the bartender what a sweet girl Tess is. "I don't blame her," I raise my bottle in a toast, "not after weed whackers and days like I've been having." The bartender agrees with me, and I go to the payphone and dial the number of the shop she manages in Georgetown.
"Hello, stranger," she says, and then whispers, "There's a customer in here right now, can't talk long."
"It's important." I'm thinking it would be funnier to say "It's impotent," but I'm afraid she won't see the humor in it.
"Where are you?"
"Sign of the Whale."
"Why aren't you at work?"
"Long story. Why don't you come by here?"
"It's getting busy. What are you calling about?"
"Ingmar Fucking Bergman."
"Look. We'll talk later. I don't have time to hold your hand right now."
I hang up the phone. I am at that wonderful drunken stage when you just want to say "To hell with it" and tell bawdy stories to the bartender.
But the bartender doesn't laugh at any of them and makes some excuse of not being himself today. "Well, who are you, then?" I finish off my beer and go out on the street to hail a cab.
When I walk in my apartment it dawns on me that I've forgotten to get in touch with the one person who might shed a little light on this depressed state of mind. My therapist. I dial h
is number. I'm going to tell him I need an emergency session. But that afternoon, the day after Hell Day, his secretary answers and informs me that the good doctor is out of the office for a few days and won't be in until Monday.
When you call your therapist's office and receive a message like that it seems like the ultimate rejection. I mean, you're paying this guy to listen to your problems; he should always be there! I say to his secretary, "Would you mind listening to me for a few minutes?"
She declines.
I hang up on her, the loudest, most phone splitting hang up I've ever done, as if everything that happened this week was entirely her fault and damn it, I want her to know it.
I pick the phone up again and slam it down hard into its cradle.
And again.
Finally, I lift the whole damn phone and throw it in the sink with the dirty dishes (but I unplug it first—I am angry, not stupid).
I look back across the kitchen counter for something else to demolish. What do I see but my answering machine, its belligerent red light blinking.
I push the play button. I am looking forward to listening to whatever message is on the tape. It's probably Tess offering her sympathy, but—too late! I am going to rip that microcassette out of there and shred that sucker.
"Hello, this is Cup. I can't come to the phone right now, but I'd like you to leave a message after the electronic beep. Thank you."
Beep.
I love those beeps. It gives your answering machine this Three Stooges touch, like you can have the most dignified message possible and there's Curly, Moe, and Larry going "whoop-whoop-whoop" just at the end to throw the caller off.
At first I'm thinking whoever left this message is an obscene phone caller because I hear a lot of heavy breathing and faraway moans mixed with crackling static on the line.
A breathy female voice finally says, "Hello Cup? Is it you? You'll die when you find out who this is."
5
From The Nightmare Book of Cup Coffey:
AFTER HELL DAY
That same afternoon I'd gotten fired, dumped my girlfriend (or was dumped by her, I still don't know which), lost my therapist (good riddance), I played that answering machine message a dozen times. Over the next several days I played that message so many damn times the tape finally became garbled and I had to throw it out.
Each time I played that message, though, before it became unintelligible, I thought I caught subtle nuances of desperation and even love.
She said:
You'll die when you find out who this is.
But I did not die. In fact, I felt more alive hearing that message than I had in twelve years.
I knew who the caller was immediately.
Lily Cammack.
"Remember?" she asked.
How could I have ever forgotten her? Lily haunted my waking hours. Every time a girl passed me on the street, no matter how lovely or self-possessed, that girl was nothing compared to my memory of Lily. Lily's graceful walk, her white-blond hair cut to her shoulders, those translucent blue eyes, bee stung red lips, her breasts, slender waist, the way she used to turn her head to the side in mock-dramatic longing. The way her nose wrinkled just before she'd laugh. How many arguments could I then recall with Tess, ending with Tess saying, "Why don't you just go back to your goddamn goddess! Just ring up your old girlfriend!"
My old girlfriend. Lily Cammack was never my old girlfriend. We never dated. I only knew her for a few years, and in those few years I had imbedded her image in my mind forever, and those memories of my youth that include her are the ones I cherish above all others.
When I thought of Lily, I knew that Tess, and every other girl I'd ever been attracted to, was nothing to me. Tess was too coarse, she didn't have the ironic detachment from the world that Lily possessed, her hair was unkempt and Raggedy-Annish, while Lily's was always newly brushed, sparkling. Tess was too direct in her movements; she always had some place to go, a destination. But with Lily you had the feeling that there was no place to go, and so she moved almost dreamily, like a spirit, and wherever you were with her was destination enough.
No wonder Tess thought I was such a schmuck.
But the worst of all this, before Lily left that message on my machine, was that I could not just ring Lily up, as Tess had so archly suggested.
Because since that night, when I was sixteen, I'd had no contact whatsoever with Lily Cammack. After that night, everything in my life changed. I underwent a kind of brainwashing by my parents. They wanted me to put all that behind me, and "all that" included Lily. "Bury it," they suggested. I spent the next semester in a school in Baltimore, Maryland, not speaking to any of my new classmates, feeling like a leper.
I pretended to forget about everything that happened that night in Pontefract, Virginia. It seemed so far away from Baltimore that pretending was an easy thing to do. I even started telling lies about my past when anyone brought it up. I never told the truth to the new friends I eventually made.
And here was Lily again, December 18, 1986, her lovely voice captured on my answering machine:
"It's been a long time, Cup. Can I still call you 'Cup'? Too long a time. And things have happened "
Then she seemed to brighten. "I'm still living down here in Pontefract; no matter how hard I try to leave, I can't. It's home forever. I'm married, Lily Whalen now, and living over on Howard Avenue, 4221 Howard, if you care. And I wanted So funny talking to this machine " Then, as if she realized she was being evasive, she said, in a desperate sounding succession of words, "I'm in a kind of trouble, Cup, and it's all about that night, you know what I mean, it's all coming back now, Cup, if I told you everything you'd think I was crazy, and I can't tell anyone down here, even my husband, because they're involved in these things. Things that are happening here. Things I don't understand. About that night. You're going to hate me for this, Cup, but you just have to come down here, and you made a promise that night and it's mean of me, but I'm going to hold you to it. I need you to slay my dragons. If it wasn't a matter of life and death I wouldn't—"
And here her voice was cut off by the damn machine, because I'd only programmed it for a few minutes of message time. I called Information in Westbridge County, got her number (listed under Warren Whalen), called it, no answer, dialed her father's number, no answer, and finally fell asleep, again, on my old sofa in front of the television.
Throughout the Christmas holidays, I found myself more often than not in bars, either in downtown DC or in Georgetown. I called Tess once when I was very drunk, and she hung up on me. I slept off all the subsequent hangovers while the rest of the world caroled and shopped and shared in the holiday spirit.
But I was reveling in beer and long walks in the cold with my self-pitying loneliness. My Uncle Phil and Aunt Lisa invited me up to Silver Spring, Maryland, to spend Christmas Day with them, and I went but did not talk much. I had about three hundred dollars in my bank account after setting aside January's rent. I didn't know if I would be working in the next few months, so I gave Phil a bottle of cologne I'd been given last Christmas and hadn't opened, and I gave Lisa some paperbacks I picked up at the drugstore. Phil, from the brilliant financially successful side of the family, wrote me out a check for a thousand dollars to tide me over, he said, and to not worry about paying him back.
"Go visit your mom and dad," he commanded.
But I didn't intend to face my parents again until I was back on my feet. I had rarely experienced Shame in my life, if you don't count that other winter episode when I got caught cheating (He says you cheat, and how in hell could Billy Bates know that?), but getting fired from my teaching job, hitting a student, all that was pretty shameful business.
So Christmas came and went, a gloomy holiday for me as always. I sent three letters in quick succession to Lily both to her father's address and to her more recent residence—no reply. I called her house several times, no one answered, and finally, in desperation, I called at two in the morning after returning from
my nightly bar hop. Her husband answered the phone (at least, I presumed it was her husband).
"May I please speak to Lily Whalen?"
"Who the hell is this?" His voice was edged with sleep, but he didn't sound angry, just surprised.
"If she's asleep, I'll call back," I said.
He started laughing, like I'd just told him the best joke in the world.
"Yeah, you do that, you just call back. I wouldn't want to wake up sleeping beauty right now, who knows what kind of fucking mood she'll be in." And then he slammed the receiver down.
The next day I called her father's house.
I recognized Dr. Cammack's voice immediately, bronchial, southern, charming. "Why yes, she's right here," he said, and I felt a wave of relief go through me—I was afraid I would never locate her.
Then a woman's voice, "Hello?"
"Lily?" I asked.
Her voice turned very cold. "No, this is not. Just who is this, anyway?"
But it was Lily, I was convinced it was her. Her voice had deepened a bit with age, did not sound quite so hesitant as it had when she'd left the message, but it was her voice.
"It's me, Cup."
"I'm sorry? Who is this?"
"Lily, it's me. You called a couple of weeks ago and I—"
"What kind of joke is this? I don't know anyone named Cup, and if you intend to make calls like this I will have to get in touch with the phone company."
I hung up the phone. Phones are miserable things to talk to people on, so exasperating. I didn't know what had gotten into Lily, but I knew that she had called me with a plea for help, and I had made a promise to her twelve years ago. I was out of work, out of shape, depressed, nowhere to turn, felt like I had no friends. If I wasn't afraid of pain as much as I am, I'm sure I would've considered suicide.
But instead, with that Christmas present from my Uncle Phil and nothing keeping me in Washington at the start of the New Year, I considered a trip to Pontefract. Because I felt somehow, in that weird, romantic way that only men who have not completely surrendered their adolescence feel, that Lily and I were destined to be together. To say that I had kept a torch burning for her would not be wrong.
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