Under the Sea

by Mark Leidner

  I was suddenly put off by my own self-righteousness, and tried to rein it in. Whoever this girl was, I didn’t know if she was garbage or not; and whoever this pair in front of me was—wasn’t puffing myself up like some kind of heroic judge of their behavior a quintessentially repugnant quality? Whether they were right or wrong in their evaluation of someone I didn’t know, who wasn’t present, was none of my business, and while they easily could have shit-talked her less conspicuously, what right did I have to lord my superiority over them, even in my own mind?

  Maybe garbage girl had punished them in countless ways over the years, separately, so that the abuse she unleashed was unique to both, and maybe this was their first meeting—and what I was witnessing was an awkward accord between two strangers who were victims of a common villain, and lacking the common ground I might have otherwise wished them to have, their alliance had cohered around the one epithet they could both agree on—garbage. Who was I to critique that? And were there not a hundred other possible explanations for their behavior that didn’t merit the bilious condemnations of a misanthrope like me?

  No sooner had I anointed the two girls saints and re-confirmed for what felt like the hundredth time that I was the most superfluous person in the café, than they both, without warning or indication as to why, exited the line. Watching them walk away, I wondered what I’d missed. They hadn’t discussed leaving, so how did they know to leave the line at the same time? Not even a simple “Let’s get out of here?” Maybe they knew each other well, actually, so well that they could communicate basic ideas without words. The theory that their endless repetition of ‘garbage’ was evidence of a brand new friendship suddenly seemed naïve, and my attempt to arrange the world into an order that enabled me to feel redeemed for rejecting my earlier, harsher judgments seemed suddenly just as vain. And yet this attempt to arrange the world blew on like wind in my head, dying down to nothing in one instant only to swell back up in the next.

  I envied how easily they navigated the tiny tables on their way to a large checkerboard setup near the back that was half-obscured by a column covered in art. There they conferred with an older woman who could’ve been a relative, a boss, or a coworker, but surely, I thought, not garbage. She was too old. I don’t think people refer to old people as garbage. It would be like calling an old person uncool. It’s redundant because all old people are automatically uncool, at least in the estimations of the youth-drunk young. Plus no one would be that openly mean to someone they were actually here with. The slanderers seemed to be acting friendly toward the older woman, but they were too far to overhear. I shrugged the whole thing off and turned back around. At least they’d removed themselves from the line, I thought, looking back at those behind me. We seemed like pilgrims to me, and now we were all obviously better off. I started to like the pair again in their absence. Maybe they really were angels. We usually only imagine angels as agents or harbingers of epochal change, but is it any crazier to believe they would work tiny miracles, like, say, removing roadkill from freeways, causing you to find your keys when you’d lost them, or moving a line forward by leaving it? Why not, I thought. And suddenly even the bearded poet I’d observed earlier seemed like he could be heroic. The strollered mother’s belabored juice selection seemed suddenly sweetly motivated, and the puddles underneath the fantasy-lovers’ snowboots glimmered with promise, if not outright magic. I love this café, I thought.

  The barista took the money from the rumpled boy who’d been in front of the now beatific girls, then glanced at me through the gap. I stepped into it. I prepared to order. “Large coffee,” had barely left my lips when I saw in my peripheral vision the girls—bangs sashaying, blue comet blazing—dashing through the café to reclaim their spot. Now, the three of us were standing at the counter more or less equally, and they were looking at me like I’d committed the ultimate crime by stepping into the gap they’d vacated. I was just about to step backward out of it on instinctive politeness when the one with blue hair tilted her head at me imperiously and said, “Rude, much?”

  She stared at me like I was nothing, like I was sub-human, like I was garbage. Her voice—“Rude much?”—ringing in my head. I felt like everyone had heard her and was watching. It was more humiliating than the girl with blue hair could have known. Hate welled up within me like magma ascending the central shaft beneath a volcano, but I kept it under control. I simply stared back with my mouth hanging open. The effect, I knew, was like being looked at by an inbred or a ghoul. Then, when she blinked, I mimicked her inflection and said, “Maybe not ruder than what you did?” I indicated her friend with my head so that they would know I was using the ‘you’ plurally.

  “We?” said her friend.

  “Us?”

  “What did we do, lady?”

  “Held up the line,” I said, “yakking with your step-mom over there. I don’t know if you two have noticed, but you’re not the only people in this café.” I gestured theatrically. “In fact, if you look around, you’ll see that it’s actually quite busy. Bustling even. It’s cold outside, and everyone’s come here for refuge.”

  “She’s not our step-mom,” said the blue-haired one, ignoring the latter half of my commentary.

  “She’s our friend,” confirmed the other.

  “We were getting her order.”

  “But we’re sorry if you’re in such a hurry.”

  They were a formidable tag-team. Then the blue-haired one gave me the look. Most people avert their eyes when we interact closely, but when they truly look at me, it’s almost always only a prelude to war. Her eyes seemed to tremble in her skull, almost as if my humanity—the fact that we were the same species—was too much for her. I saw she too was terrified, and as lonely as me, and in her own version of this story, she was the stalwart protagonist bravely facing down the belligerent other.

  I felt like I had no choice, though, so before she could do anything to humiliate me, I faked a sneeze. The trick is to lift your cupped hands a split-second too late, so it spritzes your aggressor. It’s surprisingly effective for making people flee, as the fear of contamination, I believe, is one of the few primal impulses stronger than the desire to dominate those of low status who dare challenge yours.

  “Gugh!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just allergies.” I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my sweater. “And, no, I’m not in a hurry.” I gestured at the pilgrims. “But maybe they are.” I looked back at two moms in whose legs were intertwined toddlers, a trio of musicians holding guitars whose brain-dead expressions probably weren’t being faked, and a gangly comic-book-nerd-looking guy who was kind of like of a male me—with rosacea splashed across his cheeks and chunks of dandruff in his sideburns. In an alternate universe where I was an Empress, he would’ve made an excellent sycophantic advisor. In any case, I was hoping for more solidarity than I got from the crowd.

  The blue-haired girl tilted her head at me, like the silence of the line had made her point for her.

  “Okay,” I said, gesturing with my hand. “You can have your spot back. But can I tell you a secret? Do you know what I do when I see a long line like this? I get my order ready before I get in it.” I bit my lip as if in deep thought. “Or like, I think of what I want, or what my party wants, while I’m in it. That way, when I arrive at the counter—if I’ve timed it correctly, of course—I can order what I need without causing any delays. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, lady, what if I’m at the front of the line already, and I still don’t know what I want? Well, in such situations, I just step aside, out of courtesy, say, for the other human beings in the line, because they have humanity. Because they matter. Because they might be having a bad day. And then I’ll just slide back into the line whenever I’m ready, and it’s all done really organically, without making a big fuss or calling attention to myself, or without calling anybody rude like you did, because I don’t know what kind of bad day—or bad life—the people waiting behind me might be hav
ing. And you know what’s really weird? Everyone else in the line almost always understands. The barista understands, the other barista understands if there’s two—every-body understands. It’s almost magical how no one has to have this explained. It’s almost enough to make you think there’s some kind of hidden pattern that emerges when human beings decide to be decent to one another. I think it’s called a social contract, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word for it. Have you ever heard of a social contract? Or if you haven’t, have you ever heard of the Golden Rule? It starts off ‘Do unto others,’ and then it goes on to say, ‘as you would have them do unto you.’ It’s funny, I’ve never actually said it out loud before. I guess I’ve never had to. Isn’t that funny? Isn’t that just odd? That something that’s never needed to be said before suddenly needs to be said out loud? Anyway, I’m sorry I got snot on you if I did, and now I’m sorry for what I’m sure feels like a waste of your time. Let me try to summarize what I’m saying because I know it’s Sunday, and I know you probably have fun, important memories to craft and activities to delight in before the work week kicks in like I do. The summary, I feel, is necessary for the rest of the world’s sake, because I want to make sure you don’t go on not understanding how lines work on a basic level, but also, if you already do understand it from what I just said, I don’t want to waste more of your time on a Sunday, so that’s why it’s just a summary rather than a laundry list of increasingly vivid examples of the particular principle I’m compelled by conscience to clearly articulate. Basically, when you’re in a line, with a lot of other people behind you, instead of calling someone ‘garbage’ over and over who’s not even here to defend themselves, think about what you might want to order.”

  I hadn’t known I was going to end there, but when I did, I knew I was done. Immediately, my back broke into a full summer sweat. I heard the echo of my own voice in the sudden silence and realized it had gotten louder and louder. I usually fuck up when I try to be a smart ass, but the thickness of the silence sold me on the likelihood that I hadn’t.

  “Oh my God,” said the one with bangs said. The other one just teared up. Before I could backslide into sympathy, I stepped to the counter, perfectly prepared to nudge either of them aside with my hip, but they both moved.

  “Large coffee, please” I said to the barista, who had just watched the whole thing and done nothing. “And can I get some skim in it?”

  It took him a moment. “M-milk’s over there.” He pointed to the side table. I didn’t look because I knew where it was.

  “There’s only half and half and soy,” I said.

  I felt the girls’ eyes on my back. The sweat was already cold under my shirt. My armpits were dripping. I pointed to a sliding-door fridge below the espresso machine. “There’s skim in that fridge.” The barista turned. He squatted and opened it. When he found the carton he looked at me and smiled, impressed, but then he started to pour way too much into a silver pitcher, and I stopped him and told him that all I needed was a little.

  RETURNING TO THE DRAFTY WINDOW seat with my coffee, I noticed again the five-person table with the open seat, the seat I’d assumed someone was saving with the mug and the New York Times Book Review, and which was still vacant. That didn’t make sense at all, since everyone in line when I’d walked in had gone through it by now, and it was an unusually long time for an intellectual who would’ve been reading the New York Times Book Review to stay in the bathroom. So, out of curiosity, I detoured and peered into the mug and saw that it was bonedry. A rookie error not to have checked that more thoroughly earlier. Whoever had left this mug, I realized, hadn’t been claiming anything. They were simply gone and had left their mug un-bussed and their illustrious reading material behind, possibly as a gift, but in a placement they didn’t understand would be interpreted as a staked claim by someone far away who had just entered the busy café. They’d probably been here earlier this morning when it wasn’t as busy, when a mug and a New York Times Book Review wouldn’t have been interpreted the same way.

  I felt almost victorious, as if this was my prize for making the garbage-haters cry. I claimed the seat with my own full, steaming coffee mug, bussed the empty one, retrieved my scarf, hat, and phone from the sub-optimal window seat, and then worked my way into the new one. The intellectual to my left, who I’d also noticed upon first walking in, looked at me and smiled, then she slid the book she was reading over an inch. Perhaps I was emotionally raw from my earlier confrontation, or simply weary from life, but her gesture of hospitality struck me as profound. It was like I’d arrived in a little pocket of heaven. There was no draft, the seat was comfortable, and the company was utterly kind. Had she slid her textbook over further, it would have indicated a fear of contamination. Had she not slid it at all, it would have indicated a stubborn territoriality. Sliding her book toward me would’ve been downright aggressive, intentionally crowding me out. That she’d slid it just a centimeter, though, toward herself, was unambiguously a gesture of welcome. She’d made more room for me, or maybe more importantly, she’d wanted me to know she would give me room if I needed it. I knew instantly that she was a good person, and my pride at triumphing over the people in the café I could not stand softened somewhat into gratitude for those I admired. I wanted to tilt my head into her view and say hello, and tell her thank you, and describe all I’d been through, or at least compliment her kindness or something, but as soon as I thought about doing this, I was pulling out my phone and opening my favorite game, a kind of high-speed Boggle. When the game screen loaded, though, I felt like I was dying. I felt all the hours I’d poured into the game instead of living life, and I swiped the game away. I stared at all my other apps on the screen, then at my neighbor. She had wispy hair pulled in a bun through which you could see her pale, purplish scalp. This made her even more wonderful to me. Slightly thinner hair than normal was a memorable physical quality for a generous person to possess, I thought. She had a tiny diamond stone in her nose, too, and her ear was riveted top to bottom. She had had loving parents, I believed without knowing why, maybe the way she seemed so calm. She was going to be a doctor, it seemed, from the drawings of organelles and cells I could see in her book, or she was a doctor already, an admirably ambitious one, at the peak of her powers and still unsatisfied with what she knew of biology.

  I started weeping and hid it with my hands like I was rubbing my forehead like I was tired. I thought it was going to be only a moment of emotion, but when it didn’t stop I pulled the New York Times Book Review under my face and turned the pages in rhythm to muffle my sniffles. I could have asked her what she was reading, what she was studying and why. I’m sure she would’ve answered me as kindly as she’d slid her textbook over. I didn’t feel like I would have been bothering her at all. We could’ve talked about her scientific expertise, and maybe I could have learned something. But where was the will to initiate that conversation? I felt like it was in me, like pieces of my mother are in me, or how pieces of all people are all within everyone—just buried. I slurped my coffee quickly, and then, jacked on caffeine, noisily folded the New York Times Book Review in half and slid it to the center of the table so that future patrons who wanted to peruse it could do so without confusing it for a claim on the seat I was leaving.

  On my way out of the café, I bussed my mug, and I passed the pair to whom I’d read the riot act, recovering with their older third party, and I think I said I was sorry, but it was a blur.

  The sun was shining when I walked outside. It was still cold as hell but felt at least ten degrees warmer. The sun on the snow looked like melted butter on mashed potatoes, and I wiped my tears and realized I was hungry. Underneath the snow all around, I could hear the meltwater starting to trickle. “It’s Spring!” I thought to myself as a joke, since it was still the middle of February.

  I think I went to a diner next. I don’t remember. In any case, as I was walking wherever I went, I kept wondering, every time I saw someone else outside, whether they were
garbage, and each person I passed, I decided that they couldn’t have been, no matter how rotten their pasts. I even passed some actual garbage—big black bags leaking egregious shit, tossed right out onto the snow—and decided that it wasn’t either. Maybe I even passed you.

  K-4

  KINDERGARTEN

  MRS. CARSON WAS TALL AND broad-shouldered and kind. She could’ve been a frontier schoolteacher.

  All the girls in my class had a crush on Dusty Lang. He had lipstick stains on his face every morning from where his mother kissed him when she dropped him off in her T-top, and a bumper sticker on his Trapper Keeper said ASK ME ABOUT MY EX-WIFE, I swear. Candace Fisher had a crush on Dusty too, but she was my best friend.

  Early in the semester, Candace and I bonded over our shared love of Charlotte’s Web, the cartoon not the book. On the playground, Candace pretended to be Fern, the human girl, and I was Wilbur, the pig. We never found anyone to play Charlotte, not that we tried. I think we were too young to confront what it would have meant to want to play Charlotte. Hell, maybe we’re all still too young.

  In any case, I’d crawl on all fours across this row of spray-painted tires half-buried in the sand, oinking and grunting, and Candace would walk behind me, whipping me, petting me, calling my name, etc. I remember being embarrassed every time we played Charlotte’s Web, but I also remember how much I loved it, and how happy it made me that Candace enjoyed it too. I remember every day walking out to the playground, feeling shy, overcoming it, asking her if she wanted to play Charlotte’s Web, and she always did, and it always surprised me.