by J. Warren
“Ordinary, I guess.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Did you play a sport in school?”
I nodded and told her about football, then soccer. I told her about all the guys I used to know and hang out with when we were kids.
“Why did you stop?” she asked.
“Just didn’t like it anymore.” I wasn’t lying. I didn’t want to lie to her. I just didn’t tell her all of it. I don’t think I could have at that point.
She nodded. “I bet you were really outgoing as a boy.” That struck me as odd. I don’t think someone looking at me now would think that.
“No,” she said, squinting a bit as if looking at something far away, “no, I take that back. I bet you were the quietest boy you knew, weren’t you?” I couldn’t look away from her eyes. You hear it all the time, someone talking about how it seems like someone else is reading their mind. It didn’t seem like that. It seemed like she was in my mind.
“I rode my bike a lot,” I said. It seemed to make perfect sense to say that to me. She nodded as if it did to her, too. Looking back on it, though, it seemed a pretty nonsense answer.
I used to ride my bike all over the town at night after I was supposed to be in bed. After Randy disappeared, though, I stopped. Before that, I hadn’t ever gone very far. I don’t know why, but one night I did go much further than I ever had. I went out past the stop sign on Whistler road. I had no idea what was out there and, at the time, that seemed like a good reason to go.
I found a field out there that belonged to a nursery in Eukiah. They grew their plants out in that field, and trucked them away every week. I spent a lot of time there, daydreaming at night. I came to think of it as a place that was mine. I thought of myself as one of the people who took care of the place. They probably never knew I was out there, though.
The first time I went there, it was September. It wasn’t cold yet, but the crisp in the air said soon. The light made the undersides of the plastic sheet domes look like candles or something. I wish I was a poet, then maybe I could find a better way to describe it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, though. Acres of those domes, lit like Japanese lanterns. My feet seemed loud across the dirt.
When I got up close to the dome, I noticed the water beaded up on the surface. It was like a bottle of soda, slick with its own shed water. I put my finger on the plastic and traced a line. The tip of my finger came away wet. I put it to my tongue. The water tasted warm and fresh. The plastic was thick, though, and tough to see through. There were rows and rows of green inside.
That’s when I heard the music. It sounded warm. I looked back over my shoulder, and the road was deserted still. I crept around until I found an opening. The plastic was cut about six feet up from the ground. I pulled it back and found another flap of plastic underneath, with a similar cut, just further to the left. When I stepped inside, I figured out why: whoever built it was trying to keep the heat in as best they could.
Inside there were five rows of plants. They had barely shot above the ground, some still mostly just bulb-like sprouts. The smell was thick and sweet and good. I smiled and knelt down. and put my thumb and forefinger around the leaf of one. The dirt was dark brown with patches of lighter brown scattered throughout.
I noticed that there was a small transistor radio in the middle of the tiny field. I moved closer to it. It was playing classical music. I picked it up, and the reception went fuzzy. I set the radio back down. I noticed all the leaves that were sprouted already pointed toward the radio. They were growing toward it. The warmth felt nice on my skin, and the music was soft. I found a patch of ground near the plastic where nothing was growing and sat down. I daydreamed for a while about what it would be like to sprout, to grow out of the ground. I stretched my hands slowly out toward the radio.
I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I woke up and knew it was late. I didn’t want to leave that tiny greenhouse, but I had to. I carefully closed the flaps back to make sure the warmth stayed inside, saying “Goodbye,” out loud as I left. My bike was still where I’d left it, and I pedaled home, humming. I think it was Carmina Burana.
About halfway home, that night, I got the feeling I was being followed. I looked back to see if anyone was there, but the road was empty except for me. It was creepy, though, and it made me pedal faster. The whole time I kept repeating those first few minutes of Carmina, and it felt like something was chasing me. It was exciting, and I got goose bumps.
The next day, after school, I went to Thompson’s record shop. I asked him if he knew this song, and I hummed it for him. He smiled that sly smile adults do when they don’t want a kid to know that they’re being adorable. He said “That sounds like Carmina. I have a tape of that,” and took me to a place on the wall. He handed me the tape, and it had a picture on the front.
“Who is she?” I asked
“The goddess Fortune,” Mr. Thompson said. I didn’t want to let him know I didn’t know who that was, so I nodded. I paid for it with the last of my allowance, and pedaled home, humming.
I listened to that tape all the way through, and tried to think about the warmth of the night before on my skin. I tried to remember the smell of that soil. I wanted to feel growing. I fell asleep and dreamed of coming up through the soil. When I had grown in the dream, my dad came along with a hoe, and hacked me up. I woke up cold and my heart thudding like a hammer.
After dinner that night, I waited with the lights out. My parents went to bed, and I climbed down to the garage. I rode back to those fields. I was constantly afraid that my father was going to come along in the car and make me come home.
Every night I went to a different plastic dome. Each one had different plants in it. I’d sit with them and try to imagine being them and listen to the music. The next day at lunch, I’d go to the library and look that plant up. I learned a lot about plants that year. I also learned a lot about classical music. I’d listen to the announcer when he said the name of the piece they’d just played.
Sometimes they would come on and talk about more than just the music; about art and things. I would look up the paintings and things they would talk about. The librarian and I got to know each other. She called me her bookworm. I think it made her happy. I’d look up from reading to rest my eyes and she’d be reading, too. She had a blue coffee mug that she always drank tea from. I wondered what kind of tea she had. I didn’t ever ask her, though. I didn’t want her to think I was stupid.
One night, I was pedaling home and I got that feeling I was being followed, again. I tried to see how long I could keep myself from looking back. I only counted to five before I had to look. The road was empty. It became a part of the whole thing; every time I got that feeling pedaling home, I would count to see how long I could go without looking back. The farthest I ever got was twelve.
My favorite piece of music was this group of pieces this guy named Holst made. He wrote one for each one of the planets in the solar system. On my way out to the fields, I would hum the one for Neptune. I liked that one the best. The plants kept growing and growing, and always pointing toward the radio. Some days I’d come in, and the radio was moved to a different spot. The next day, the plants pointed in that direction.
And Randy disappeared.
I stopped going out to the fields. I didn’t forget them, though. I would still put on my tape and imagine myself growing up through the dirt. I would still think about what kinds of dirt I would like to grow up through. What I would like to hear if I was a plant. But then, in the middle of that, I’d remember how Randy used to laugh after he came up out of the water. I’d think about what his mom must be feeling right at that moment. Then I’d get up off the floor, and go to bed. The tape would play on and on until I shut it off the next morning.
If my parents ever got tired of hearing it, they never said. Mom only asked me one time what it was, and I said “Carmina Burana” and she asked me who it was by, and I said “A guy named Orff,” and she nodded. We had been fol
ding towels that night, and every once in a while I’d hear her hum it to herself. That Christmas I was hoping for a lot of money to go buy some more tapes, but instead I got socks and a new sweater. My dad got me a new football. The old one dry-rotted, and had gone flat a long time back.
That second day, I had told Susan about all that without realizing what I’d done. I could see her listening to it and I could hear myself screaming at me to stop. I wanted to not tell that story, but it happened anyway. I couldn’t explain it, but I wanted to tell her things. And she listened the whole time, her body not moving.
“You probably think I’m crazy, now,” I said, expecting her to say yes.
She sat up on one elbow and looked at me again. I felt trapped. She said, “No, I don’t.” We ate and chatted about the weather and the lake. She said she didn’t know how to swim. I said I’d teach her if she wanted and she said “I’d really like that.” It got dark much too quickly.
She nodded when I told her that. “I want to see you again,” she said.
“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Do I have to have a reason?” She smiled. I shook my head no. We packed up the garbage and I walked her to her car. She moved up on her tip toes and kissed me. I knew I was blushing bad because all of a sudden I was too hot for the jacket I was wearing. She smiled, put her hand on my shoulder, then got in her car and left. I watched it leave all the way out of the parking lot, and down the street.
FOUR
Why is it that when you need go on a trip, you always have to call people before you leave? Why can’t you just pack and go? I needed to talk to Dr. Bledsoe before Susan. It’d be easier on me that way. Susan would make me feel better, maybe. I had already pulled out the suitcase but I couldn’t deal with that, just yet. I had walked to the phone and stood there with my hand on it, not picking it up, for about twenty minutes.
When I finally did pick up the phone, I wasn’t sure what to say. I set it back down. What was I going to tell him that would make him understand I had to go home for the holiday? I felt urgent about it, certain about it. I was also certain that if he knew that, he’d tell me not to go.
I picked up the phone again and dialed. I started to think, but the secretary came on and said “Dr. Bledsoe’s office, this is Mandy. Can I help you?” and I thought about maybe just telling her to give him a message. I thought maybe that’d be the way to do it. Just leave him a message and then go. By the time he read it, I’d already be gone. I thought for a second about what I’d do when I got back, though. “May I help you?” Mandy asked again and I started. I’d drifted into a kind world apart.
“Umm, yeah. I need to speak with him. Is he in?” I asked.
“He sure is. May I ask who’s calling?”
“Mike Kendall,” I said.
“One moment.” She put me on hold. Some slow piano thing, sounded sort of like Chopin, but not as good.
“Mr. Kendall?” Mandy came back on and asked. I said “mmmhm” and she said, “hold one moment while I transfer you.”
The phone line clicked and then he said, “Mike?” my name phrased as a question for some reason. He did that a lot, “How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“What’s up?” The doctor always tried to be hip or cool with me. I guess it was okay, though, because it didn’t make me mad. I noticed it, but it didn’t make me mad.
“Nothing, really,” I said.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your call today?”
“I guess--I guess I just needed to let you know that I’m going out of town for the holiday.”
“Really?” I could tell he wanted me to tell him more. After a minute or two when I didn’t say anything, he asked “What takes you out of town?”
“I guess I’ll book a plane, really. It’d be really far for a bus,” I said and on the other end he breathed out a few times quickly. I guess it was a laugh.
“Clever,” he said, and I didn’t know what he meant, “but what I was asking about, Mike, is what are you going out of town to do? Where are you going?”
“Umm--I guess I’m going out of town to visit my parents.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, “Umm--my--my mom really wants me to come home for Thanksgiving.”
“Hmmm.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “Yeah. So, umm--I guess I’m going to have to cancel our-our appointment for then,”
“I hate to hear that you won’t make it, but that’s fine. When can I reschedule you for?” I heard him rummaging around on his desk. I closed my eyes and thought about what that desk looked like. The books stacked on the corners at odd angles, sheets of paper hanging out of them with his chicken-scratch handwriting all over them. I saw his nameplate dirty and scratched and felt the urge to ask him to clean it. I thought about his old computer, and the strange ways the keys sounded.
“I--see, that’s the thing, I don’t really know,” I said.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah. Umm--I just--I don’t know when I’ll be back. It’s sort of--sort of sudden, really.”
“Mike, I’ll be honest,” he said, which almost always meant he was about to lecture me, “I’m not crazy about you leaving and not rescheduling. Do you understand that I might have some concerns about that?”
“Well, I guess-I guess yeah. I can see where you might not like that.”
“But if you legitimately don’t know when you’re coming back, then you don’t know. We just have to work with that. Do you have an idea of when you’re leaving?”
“I don’t know. Today, maybe. I think I need to leave today.”
“Okay,” he said, “could I maybe see you today before you leave?”
I knew he was going to do that. I heard him exhale on the other end of the line. “I need to try to leave within an hour or so.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. I could hear him rummaging around on his desk again. “All right. Can I ask you how you feel about going on this trip?”
“I dunno, I just have to go.”
“Well,” he said, exhaling real deep into the receiver, “I hope you have a good trip, Mike. Try to give me a call when you get back in so that we can talk some.”
“Okay,” I said, and hung up. My hands were shaking. I felt hot and horrible to tell him that I didn’t want to see him today. I was letting him down. I wondered if he’d ever like me again. I couldn’t have told my mother that. I couldn’t ever tell my mother that.
The phone rang. It was my sister, Sarah. I knew it was before I even picked up the phone. When I did, I could tell she was smoking.
“Michael, why aren’t you coming home for Thanksgiving?”
“Hi, Sarah,” I said.
“Why aren’t you? You know it’ll kill mom if you’re away again. She wanted you there last year really bad, and—.”
“I didn’t mean to be gone, it just—.”
“Kinda happened, I know. Things always kinda happen with you and everyone else has to pick up the slack. It’d be nice if just once, just once you considered what I go through with them—.”
“I already told Dad that I can make it this year. I’m starting to pack—.”
“Good, because I won’t sit there and stare at them for twelve hours again. They hate me and they hate Diane worse. You know what dad thinks of her.”
I did. I don’t recall the words Dirty and Jew being put together that often before ever. My father had gone into a cursing fit the likes of which we’d only seen once before. To my father, the only thing worse than finding out his youngest daughter was a lesbian, was finding out that she had been involved with a Jewish girl for five years. I’d been there for that argument, and seen him do the math in his head.
What he was figuring out was that Diane and Sarah had met while Sarah was at college. To my father, that meant that they’d been living in what he would call sin while he was giving Sarah money for rent and groceries. To him, that meant Diane was t
aking advantage of him. I guess to someone raised with the idea that all Jewish people are money grubbing and doomed to hell, this was unfathomable: His money going to provide a love nest for two lesbians, one of which was his baby girl, the other, Jewish. He went out into the garage after speaking his peace and stayed out there until all of us had gone to bed that night. That had been the Thanksgiving four years previous.
He’d stayed in that garage until Sarah and I came in to say goodbye to him. He didn’t turn around, merely waved his hand with his back to us. She and I had looked at each other, and I don’t ever remember seeing her in so much pain.
“So, when will you be there?” Sarah asked.
“I guess today. I’m starting to pack, now. Is Diane coming?”
“Don’t be stupid, Michael.” She was the only person who ever called me Michael. Not even Diane did.
“When will you be in?”
“Tomorrow, early. You’d better be there.”
I promised her I would.
My nose started to bleed. In the bathroom I ran a cotton ball under some water in the sink, and jammed it in my nose. What had always amazed me is that the next year, she went back. Her devotion to mom and dad was so strong that even they openly disliked her being a lesbian, and hated Diane so much they never talked about her, Sarah went home every year for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I asked her every year what things were like at the McPherson’s. She said that they were always nice, and that their lawn looked good. She said “immaculate” though. I guess that’s a college word. I turned around to go back to packing.
Instead of packing, though, I decided to call Susan, since I was already there near the phone. I just wanted to get it over with, really. I pulled the cotton ball out of my nose, looking at the dark red blood smeared on it. Something very far up in my nose felt hard and jagged. I threw the cotton ball into the toilet, and walked to the living room. I picked up the phone and dialed her number, but it was busy. I sat down on my couch and dialed again. It was still busy. I turned on the television and watched part of a game show, then I dialed again. It was still busy. I set the phone down next to me and began to wonder why she hated me all of a sudden.