Ebenezer had very little criticism and no remarks at all on "the plague of American consumerism," "corporate gluttons and their Botswana-sized bonuses" (not even a passing allusion to one of his choice social theories, that of the "Tinseled American Dream") when I detailed how lavishly St. Gallway was celebrating the season. Every banister (even the one in Loomis, Hannah's banished building) was wrapped in boughs of pine, thick and bristly as a lumberjack's mustache. Massive wreaths had been posted Reformation-style with what had to be iron spikes to the great wooden doors of Elton, Barrow and Vauxhall. There was a Goliath Christmas tree, and, looping around the iron gates of Horatio Way, white lights blinking like demented fireflies. A brass menorah, staunch and skeletal, flickering at the end of second-floor Barrow stalwartly staved off, as best it could, Gallway's Christian proclivities (AP World History professor Mr. Carlos Sandbom was responsible for this brave line of defense). Sleigh bells the size of golf balls fell around the handles of Hanover's main doors and they jingle-sighed every time a kid hurried through them, late for class.
I believe it was the sheer force of the school's festivities that allowed me to set the uneasiness of the preceding weeks a little bit off to the side, pretend it wasn't there like a largish stack of unopened mail (which, when finally confronted at a belated date, indicated I'd have to declare bankruptcy). Besides, if Dad was to be believed, the American holidays were a time for "coma-inspired denial" anyway, an occasion of "pretending the working poor, widespread famine, unemployment and the AIDS crisis were simply exotic, tart little fruits that, mercifully, were out of season," and thus I wasn't completely responsible for letting Cottonwood, the costume party, Smoke, the unusual behavior of Hannah herself be upstaged by the encroaching cloud of Finals Week, Perôn's used clothing drive (the kid who brought in the most trash bags of clothes won a Brewster's Gold Ticket, ten points added onto any Final Exam; "Hefty Cinch Sak Lawn and Leaf Bags," she roared during Morning Announcements, "Thirty-nine gallons!") and, most dizzying of all, Student Council President Maxwell Stuart's pet project, the Christmas formal, which he'd rechristened "Maxwell's Christmas Cabaret."
Love, too, had something to do with it.
Unfortunately, little of it was my own.
The first week of December, during second period Study Hall, a freshman entered the library and approached the desk in the back where Mr. Fletcher sat working on a crossword.
"Headmaster Havermeyer needs to see you immediately," the boy said. "It's an emergency."
Mr. Fletcher, visibly annoyed he'd been pried away from The X-word X-pert's Final Face-off (Pullen, 2003), was led out of the library and up the hill toward Hanover.
"This is it!" shrieked Dee. "Fletcher's wife, Linda, has finally attempted suicide because Frank would rather do a crossword than have sex. It's her cry for help!"
"It is," cooed Dum.
A minute later, Floss Cameron-Crisp, Mario Gariazzo, Derek Pleats and a junior I didn't know the name of (though from his alert expression and soggy mouth he looked like some sort of Pavlovian response) entered the library with a CD player, a microphone with amplifier and stand, a bouquet of red roses and a trumpet case. They proceeded to set up for a rehearsal of some kind, plugging in the CD player and microphone, relocating the tables in the very front to the side wall by the Hambone Bestseller Wish List. This included relocating Sibley "Little Nose" Hemmings.
"Maybe I don't want to move," Sibley said, wrinkling her perky, symmetrical nose, which, according to Dee and Dum, had been handcrafted for her face by an Atlanta plastic surgeon who'd fashioned a host of other high-quality facial features for some CNN anchors and an actress on Guiding Light. "Maybe you should move. Who are you to tell me? Hey, don't touch that!"
Floss and Mario unceremoniously picked up Sibley's desk scattered with her personal belongings—her suede purse, a copy of Pride and Prejudice (unread), two fashion magazines (read)—and carried it to the wall. Derek Pleats, a member of the Jelly Roll Jazz Band (with whom I also had AP Physics), was standing off to the side with his trumpet, playing ascending and descending scales. Floss started to roll back the cruddy mustard carpet and Mario crouched over the CD player, adjusting the sound levels.
"Excuse me," said Dee, standing up, walking over to Floss, crossing her arms, "but what exactly do you think you're doing? Is this an attempt at anarchy, to like, gain control of the school?"
"Because we'll tell you right now," said Dum, striding over to Floss, crossing her arms next to Dee, "it's not going to work. If you want to start a movement you'll have to plan better because Hambone's in her office and she'll summon the authoritates in no time."
"If you want to make a strong personal statement, I suggest you save it for Morning Announcements when the whole school is all in one place and can be held captive."
"Yep. So you can make your demandations."
"And the administration knows you're all a force to be reckoned with."
"So you can't be ignored."
Floss and Mario acknowledged neither Dee nor Dum's demandations as they secured the rolled-back rug with a few extra chairs. Derek Pleats was gently shining his trumpet with a soft purple rag and the Pavlovian response, tongue out, was absorbed with checking the microphone and amplifier: "Testing, testing, one, two, three." Satisfied, he signaled to the others and all four of them huddled together, whispering, nodding excitedly (Derek Pleats doing fast flexing exercises with his fingers). Finally, Floss turned, picked up the bouquet and without saying a word, he handed it to me.
"Oh, my God," said Dee.
I held the flowers dumbly in front of me as Floss spun on his heels and jogged away, disappearing around the corner in front of the library doors. "Aren't you going to open the card?" Dee demanded. I ripped open the small, cream-colored envelope and pulled out a note.
The words were written in a woman's handwriting.
LET'S GROOVE.
"What's it say?" asked Dum, leaning over me. "It's some kind of threat," said Sibley. By now everyone in second period Study Hall —Dee, Dum, Little
Nose, the horse-faced Jason Pledge, Mickey "Head Rush" Gibson, Point Richardson —swarmed around my table. Huffing, Little Nose grabbed the card and reviewed it with a pitying look on her face, as if it was my Guilty verdict. She passed it to Head Rush, who smiled at me and passed it to Jason Pledge, who passed it to Dee and Dum who huddled over the thing as if it were a piece of WWII intelligence encrypted by the German Enigma Cipher Machine.
"Too weird," said Dee.
"Totally-"
Suddenly, they were quiet. I looked up to see Zach Soderberg bent over me like a windswept rhododendron, his hair plummeting dangerously across his forehead. I felt as if I hadn't seen him in years, probably because ever since he'd talked to me about A Girl, I'd gone out of my way to look zealously preoccupied in AP Physics. I'd also strong-armed Laura Elms into being my laboratory partner until the end of the year by offering to write up her lab reports as well as mine, never copying or even using an identical turn of phrase (in which case I'd be suspended for cheating), but faithfully adopting Laura's restricted vocabulary, illogical mind-set and blubbery calligraphy when I wrote the report. Zach, no longer wanting to partner with his ex, Lonny, had to partner with my old partner Krista Jibsen who never did her homework because she was saving for a breast reduction. Krista worked three jobs, one at Lucy's Silk and Other Fine Fabrics, one at Bagel World and one in the Outdoors department at Sears, the minimum-waged drudgery of which she felt pertinent to the study of Energy and Matter. Thus we all knew when one of her co-workers was new, late, sick, stealing, let go, jerking off in the storeroom, also that one of her managers (if I remember correctly, some poor overseer at Sears) was in love with her and wanted to leave his wife.
Floss reached down and pressed the Play button on the CD player. Robotic sounds from a 1970s disco exploded out of the speakers. To my infinite horror, while watching me (as if on my face he could see his reflection, monitor his tempo, the height of his kicks), Zach began
to take two steps forward, two steps back, pulsing his knees, the boys shadowing him.
" 'Let this groove. Get you to move. It's alright. Alright," Zach and the others sang in falsetto along with Earth, Wind & Fire. " 'Let this groove. Set in your shoes. So stand up, alright! Alright!' "
They sang "Let's Groove." Floss and the boys shrugged, snapped and foxtrotted with such concentration, one could almost see the moves running through their brains like Stock Exchange ticker tape (kick left front, touch back left, kick left, step left, kick right front, knee right). "I'll be there, after a while, if you want my looove. We can boogie on down! On down! Boogie on down!" Derek on his trumpet was playing a rudimentary melody. Zach sang solo with the occasional side step and shoulder lunge. His voice was earnest yet awful. He spun in place. Dee squeaked like a crib toy.
A sizable crowd of sophomores and juniors gathered in front of the library doors, watching the Boy Band with their mouths open. Mr. Fletcher reappeared with Havermeyer, and Ms. Jessica Hambone, the librarian, who'd been married four times and resembled Joan Collins in her more recent years, had emerged from her office and was now standing by the Hambone Reserves Desk. Obviously, she'd intended to shut down the disturbance because shutting down disturbances, with the exception of fire drills and lunch, was the only reason Ms. Hambone ever emerged from her office, where she allegedly spent her day shopping www.QVC.com for Easter Limited-quantity Collectibles and Goddess Glamour Jewelry. But she wasn't coming over to the scene with her arms in the air, her favorite words, "This is a library, people, not a gym," darting out of her mouth like Neon Tetra, her metallic green eye shadow (complimenting her Enchanted Twilight Lever-back earrings, her Galaxy Dreamworld bracelet) reacting against the overhead fluorescent lights to give her that explicit Iguana Look for which she was famous. No, Ms. Hambone was speechless, hand pressed against her chest, her wide mouth, deeply lip-lined like the chalk outline of a body at a crime scene, curled into a soft, wisteria-fairy-pin of a smile.
The boys were diligently Lindy Hopping behind Zach, who spun in place again. Ms. Hambone's left hand twitched.
At last, the music faded and they froze.
It was silent for a moment, and then everyone —the kids at the door, Ms. Hambone, those in second period Study Hall (all except Little Nose) — erupted into mind-numbing applause.
"Oh, my God," said Dee.
"That did so not happen," said Dum.
I clapped and beamed as everyone stared at me with big astonished faces as if I were a Crop Circle. I beamed at Ms. Hambone dabbing her eyes with the frilly cuff of her Rococo poet's blouse. I beamed at Mr. Fletcher who looked so happy you'd think he just finished an exceptionally grueling crossword, like last week's Battle of Bunker Hill, "Not Waving but Drowning?" I even beamed at Dee and Dum, who were staring at me with incredulous yet fearful looks on their faces (see Rosemary at the end of Rosemary's Baby when the old people shout, "Hail Satan!").
"Blue van Meer," said Zach. He cleared his throat and approached my desk. The fluorescent lights made a soured halo around his hair so he looked like a hand-painted Jesus one finds hanging on clammy walls of churches that smell of Gruyère. "How about going to the Christmas formal with me?"
I nodded and Zach didn't pick up on my acute reluctance and horror. A Cadillac-sized smile drove away with his face as if I'd just agreed to pay him "in cayash," as Dad would say, for a Sedona Beige Metallic Pontiac Grand Prix, fully loaded, two grand over sticker price, driving it off the lot right then and there. He also didn't pick up on—no one did—the fact that I was experiencing a very severe lost Our Town feeling, which only intensified when Zach left the library with his Temptations, a supremely satisfied look on his face (Dad had described a similar look on Zwambee tribesmen in Cameroon after they'd impregnated their tenth bride).
"Think they've had sex?" asked Dum with slitty eyes. She was sitting with her sister a few feet behind me.
"If they had sex, you think he'd be skadiddiling over her? It's publicized knowledge the nanosecond you have sex with a guy you go from being a headline to being all blurbatized in the obituary section. He just Timberlaked in front of our very eyes."
"She must be insane in bed. She must be man's best friend."
"It takes six Vegas strippers and a leash to be man's best friend."
"Maybe her mom works at The Crazy Horse." They began to laugh shrilly, not even bothering to quiet down when I turned around to glare at them.
Dad and I had seen Our Town (Wilder, 1938) during a torrential downpour at the University of Oklahoma at Flitch (one of his students was making his Flitch stage debut as the Stage Manager). Although the play had its share of faults (there seemed to be great confusion with the address, as "In the Eye of God" came before "New Hampshire") and Dad found the carpe diem premise much too syrupy ("Wake me up if someone gets shot," he said as he nodded off), I still found myself more than a little moved when Emily Webb, played by a tiny girl with hair the color of sparks off railroad tracks, realized no one could see her, when she knew she had to say good-bye to Grover's Corners. In my case, though, it was skewed. I felt invisible though everyone had seen me, and if Zach Soderberg and his mantelpiece hair were Grover's Corners, I could think of nothing I'd rather do than get the hell out of town.
This grim feeling reached a record high when, that same day, as I walked to AP Calculus in Hanover I passed Milton walking hand in hand with Joalie Stuart, a sophomore, one of those highly petite girls who could fit into a carry-on suitcase and look at home on a Shetland pony. She had a baby-rattle laugh: a jelly-bean sound that irked even if you were minding your own business about a light year away. Jade had informed me Joalie and Black were a magnificently happy couple in the Newman and Woodward tradition. "Nothing will come between those two," she said with a sigh.
"Hey there, Hurl," Milton said as he passed me.
He smiled and Joalie smiled. Joalie was wearing a blue icing sweater and a thick brown velvet headband that looked like a giant woolly worm was rummaging behind her ears.
I'd never contemplated relationships very much (Dad said they were preposterous if I was under twenty-one and when I was over twenty-one Dad considered it Fine Points, Minutiae, a question of transportation or ATM location in a new town; "We'll figure it out when we get there," he said with a wave of his hand) and yet, in that moment, when I moved past Milton and Joalie, both of them smiling confidently in spite of the fact at distances greater than fifteen feet they looked like a gorilla walking a teacup Yorkie, I actually felt awed by the remote possibilities of the person you liked ever liking you back a corresponding amount. And this mathematical conundrum started its long division in my head at breakneck speed, so by the time I sat down in the front row of AP Calculus and Ms. Thermopolis at the dry-erase board was trying to wrestle to the ground a robust function from our homework, I was left with a disturbing number.
I suppose it was why, after years of playing the odds, some people cashed in their measly chips for their Zach Soderberg, the kid who was like a cafeteria, so rectangular and brightly lit there wasn't a millimeter of exciting murk or thrilling secret (not even under the plastic chairs or behind the vending machines). The only saturnine miasma to be found in him was maybe a bit of mold on the orange Jell-O. The boy was all creamed spinach and stale hot dog.
You couldn't make a grisly shadow on his wall if you tried.
I suppose it was just one of those December Dog Day Afternoons, when Love and its wired cousins—Lust, Crush, Eat Up, Have It Bad (all of whom suffered from ADHD or Hyperkinetic Syndrome) were on the loose and in heat, terrorizing the neighborhood. Later that day, when Dad dropped me at home before heading back to the university for a faculty meeting, I was only five minutes into my homework when the telephone rang. I picked it up and no one said anything. A half hour later, when it rang again, I switched on the answering machine.
"Gareth. It's me. Kitty. Look, I need to talk to you."Click.
Less than forty-five minutes later, she called again. Her
voice was cratered and barren as the moon, exactly as Shelby Hollow's voice had been, and Jessie Rose Rubiman's before her, and Berkley Sternberg's, old Berkley who used The Art of Guiltless Living (Drew, 1999) and Take Control of Your Life (Nozzer, 2004) as coasters for her potted African violets.
"I-I know you don't like it when I call, but I do need to speak to you, Gareth. I have a feeling you're home and choosing not to pick up. Pick up the phone."
She waited.
Whenever they waited, I always pictured them on the other end, standing in their yellowed kitchens, twisting the telephone cord around an index finger so it turned red. I wondered why it never occurred to them I was the one listening, not Dad. I think if one of them had said my name, I would've picked up and done my best to console them, explained that Dad was one of those theories you could never know for certain, never prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And though there was a chance you could be struck by the lightning of genius it took to solve the man, the odds were so infinitesimal, so unbearable, the act of trying only had the effect of making one feel very small (see Chapter 53, "Superstrings and M-Theory, or Mystery Theory, the Theory of Everything," Incongruities, V. Close, 1998).
"Okay. Call me when you get a chance. I'm at home. But you can reach me on my mobile if I go out. I might go out. I need eggs. On the other hand, I might stay home and make tacos. Okay. Forget this message. Speak to you soon."
In a seemingly astute statement Socrates wrote, "The hottest love has the coldest end." By these words, by their very definition—because I'm sure Dad never lied to them, never pretended his affections were anything not perfectly encapsulated by the words lackadaisical and lukewarm—every one of Dad's ends should have been a sun-drenched, rosy affair. They should have been polo matches. They should have been picnics.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics Page 23