by M. O. Walsh
And so another day began.
Jacob put his backpack on top of the desk and laid his head on it. Each day that passed in this stretch of life seemed to be filled with new forms of misery and, as far as school was concerned, Jacob dreaded first period most of all. It had nothing to do with the course or the teacher, both of which Jacob liked in his own quiet way.
It was instead centered on the broad-shouldered girl who sat like a catatonic in the row by the window. This was Trina Todd, who many might now peg as Jacob’s closest friend, if not something a bit stranger. Even Jacob, despite constantly trying, could not define their relationship. She’d been his brother’s ex-something, one of Toby’s many ex-somethings, and was with him on the night that he died. Not with him in the car, though, Jacob knew. Since then, she’d latched on to Jacob in curious and troublesome ways. She’d called and texted, cryptically hinting that Toby’s accident was not an accident at all. People, she said, were to blame. Toby’s friends, she’d told him, all the dickheads at their school, every single one of them, but offered no real evidence to back this up. It was just another binge-drunken night of high school, people said, and Toby never should have turned the key and driven.
That was everyone’s story but Trina’s.
Still, Jacob had listened those nights on the phone as if for no other reason than to hear his brother’s name again, as if for no other reason than to continue talking to a girl who wanted to continue talking to him and, in this time, confessed to also hating the dickheads, because he did. In the weeks after Toby’s wreck, he’d hated everything. But recently, Jacob felt, Trina had turned his simple confession into an alliance. She was hatching a plan, she’d said. She would take care of it. She told him they were in it together.
They’d stopped talking to each other at school nearly entirely the past two weeks, though, instead doing most of their communication through folded notes slipped into the slats of their lockers, via text message, or out in the open as they ambled the woods of Deerfield, killing the hot hours between school and dinner at the respective houses that they didn’t want to return to. This was where Jacob spent as much time being interested in Trina, and as much time feeling sorry for Trina, as he did being terrified of her. She had a look that unsettled him, as if she knew so many truths he did not, and this was not a comfortable feeling. Was it really friendship, then, that put them together? Was it obligation? Was it attraction? Was it loss? Was it something else entirely? Jacob did not know. Most important to Jacob was another question, the one that clouded nearly all of his thoughts lately:
Was there a way out?
Jacob sat up when he heard the door to the classroom shut, thinking it was his history teacher, Mr. Hubbard. This guy was an unabashed pop-quiz junkie and the way he had rambled on for the last twenty minutes of yesterday’s class about the possible political ramifications of the bald eagle’s inevitable extinction, or something to that effect, something about things seemingly beyond our control actually being in our control and forcing us to change our national symbology or systemology or some sort of -ology, had Jacob guessing there’d be a quiz.
It wasn’t Mr. Hubbard, though, who was now uncharacteristically three minutes late. It was instead Rusty Bodell, all five feet eight and near three hundred pounds of him, with his pasty white skin and ample breasts, who strutted into the classroom in the same peacockish manner he had done for the last week. He had the collar of his white uniform polo popped up to his earlobes, his shirttail untucked over a pair of navy blue Dickies shorts, and pink sunglasses on. He wore fluorescent blue Nike sneakers with ankle socks, and his legs were the color of cream cheese. His thick and freckled arms were also remarkable in their total lack of definition or even elbows, it seemed, and yet they appeared operational as Rusty lifted them to prop his red hair back into its improbable and aerodynamic shape. This was a new coif for Rusty, undoubtedly inspired by the page of a magazine at Supercuts or from some movie he’d seen, and its odd cylindrical attitude reminded Jacob of a snail shell. Regardless, there were no two ways about it. Rusty looked ridiculous.
Yet, Jacob had to give it to him. Here was a high school kid who had done the impossible. He had reinvented himself right in the middle of a semester. Not two weeks ago he was sitting alone at a lunch table using his fingers to shovel Nutella into his mouth, and now, here he was, still a kid by himself at a lunch table, sure, but dressed to the ludicrous nines and remarkably confident. So, what was the change? Jacob supposed it was all mental, in the same way other desperate kids of that age suddenly decide that they can’t stand another day in the skin they’re in. So, they join a new clique or try out some new sport or make up a rumor about sleeping with a substitute teacher and hope that it sticks, which it never does. Whatever Rusty’s reasoning, though, he looked to be all in.
He stood at the front of the class and took off his sunglasses. “I’d like to make an announcement,” Rusty said. “I want all the females in this room to know that I am currently untethered by any serious relationships. I am therefore available for long walks in the park, canoe rides at sunset, and sex marathons. But, please, ladies. One at a time.”
Somebody from the back of the class threw a wad of paper at him and, in the front row, Becca Colbert said, “My God, Rusty. What is that fucking smell? Did you bathe in cologne?”
“That, dear Becca,” Rusty said, “is the smell of your future in paradise.”
“Disgusting,” she said.
“I’m serious,” Rusty said. “That’s the name of it: Your Future in Paradise. It cost me twenty bucks.”
Jacob heard a strange buzzing behind him. It sounded like a June bug or some fat mosquito going by at close range, but when he ducked to the side to avoid it, he saw that it was a small drone the size of a coaster flying by his desk. This was a remote-control job, about five inches wide, with a prop like a tiny helicopter, and it made its awkward sojourn to the front of the classroom. Jacob looked back to see Jerry Whitehouse working the remote, his backpack opened on his desk, from where he unleashed the drone. He flew it up toward Rusty and then backed it away when Rusty took a swat at it. He laughed and floated it over his head in a circle as Rusty Bodell, in his predictable way, made a few awful jumps to snag it.
“Look!” Jerry said. “It’s King Kong!” and the class let loose.
Even Jacob smiled, though he was not proud of this. Still, it had become so easy to laugh at Rusty in their years since grade school that it felt like a form of therapy. The way his cheeks went bright red as he hopped and swatted at the thing. The way he climbed onto a chair, the skin of his gut poking out beneath his shirt. No one was immune to the cruel humor, nor would the moment be lost, as half the kids in the room began recording the action on their cell phones and uploading it to the larger world. Such was Rusty’s fate.
Jacob stopped smiling when Mr. Hubbard walked in. Instead of immediately taking control of the situation, however, Mr. Hubbard simply strode up to his desk and set down his satchel and trombone case. He wore the same silly hat he’d been wearing the past week and was looking at a couple of small slips of paper in his hand, receipts maybe, shuffling through them. “Have a seat, Rusty,” he said without looking up.
“Mr. Hubbard,” Rusty said, and climbed off the chair. “I feel like I am being discriminated against.”
Mr. Hubbard continued going through the receipts and said, “What’s the charge this time?”
“It’s my animal magnetism, sir,” Rusty said. “My classmates are having a hard time controlling themselves.”
Mr. Hubbard folded the pieces of paper and put them in his pocket. He looked up at Rusty and, finally, the drone. “Have a seat,” he said again and watched the drone follow him as he made his trek over the outstrewn legs of his classmates. When he sat down at his desk, the drone did a wide circle above his head.
“Look at it,” somebody said. “It’s like a fly on a turd.”
>
“That’s enough,” Mr. Hubbard said. “Who’s controlling this thing?”
“I am,” Jerry said, remote still in hand. “I was thinking about yesterday, Mr. Hubbard. You know, how maybe this could be our new symbol if the bald eagle goes extinct.”
He then made the drone fly up to the ceiling and do a few expert loops around the class. He started making jet noises with his mouth, letting out a whistle now and again as if it were firing off missiles. “Paint a flag on it,” Jerry said. “Put it on the dollar bill.”
Mr. Hubbard sat on his desk and watched the small machine make several sorties over the students’ heads, to which they applauded. Then he looked over at Jacob. And it was this recent habit of Mr. Hubbard’s that had begun to aggravate Jacob. The way he tried to make eye contact at the pinnacle of each lecture. The way he looked to Jacob as if only he might know the answers to the rhetorical questions he posed about history and meaning. Jacob couldn’t stand it.
Why did Mr. Hubbard assume that he knew something the other kids of his age did not? Was it because he had become so predictably, so excruciatingly, Jacob wondered, the A student in all of his classes? Was it as benign as that? Or was it something else? Was it about his brother? His mother? His father? The interior walls of his life? Regardless, the manner of searching connection Mr. Hubbard had been making with him the past two months inevitably made Jacob want to tear up, which inevitably made Jacob embarrassed, which inevitably made Jacob furious.
So, he did what he often did, and broke off the gaze. He instead looked down at his desk as the other kids had their fun. They shot paper clips up at the drone, cast paper airplanes around the room, and began, under Jerry’s lead, a full-throated rendition of “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder,” which the choir had been practicing for the bicentennial. Their concert was to kick the whole thing off tomorrow night, along with an award ceremony for the football team, who had made the state playoffs that fall, and Jacob knew this not because he had any desire to go, but because Trina had recently mentioned this as a place where nearly every single one of them would be, all the dickheads she blamed for Toby’s death. All of them gathered there, she said, like “sitting ducks.” Jacob shook this thought from his head as his classmates beat their desks like drums, paradiddled their pencils on their laptops, and constructed for themselves a lasting memory. When Jacob finally raised his head, he made the mistake of looking over at Trina, his new best friend, he supposed, his dead brother’s ex-something, his partner in mysterious sadness, his problem, who was staring right back at him. Her eyes were clear and gray and devoid of humor or even passion as she mouthed a string of words to Jacob beneath the noise of the classroom. Jacob looked back at her and furrowed his brow as if to say, What? As if I to say, I can’t understand you.
But he knew what Trina was saying. She was repeating, over and over:
Every single one of them.
3
Douglas
After lunch, Douglas had a break.
First period aside, the rest of his day had gone sanely. No more drones, military songs, or overt animal magnetism. Still, Douglas hadn’t taught well. He felt barely there. He’d lost his train of thought during lectures, let kids get away with their obnoxious snickering behind his back, and didn’t think to give a single quiz. This type of mental malleability, he knew, was the ruin of any good teacher. Still, he couldn’t help himself. Instead of reinventing the past for his students, Douglas had spent his morning reimagining his own recent history, at first headlined by his failure to produce the sexual encore Cherilyn had requested the night before. He’d tried, all right, as the last thing he ever wanted to do was disappoint his wife, but after positioning himself between Cherilyn’s legs for the second time in thirty minutes, his body, ever so pitifully, succumbed to his mind.
What were the reasons?
Cherilyn’s desire for something a bit rougher was out of character, sure, but Douglas wasn’t one to be selfish. He considered himself pretty open-minded in the grand scheme of things, although life in Deerfield rarely required him to prove it, and would like very much to provide any sexual attitude Cherilyn desired. After all, Douglas figured, he was still the person she was asking it from, and that’s what mattered. Yet this, the very fact that it was him she wanted it from, in its own way, became the problem. When Douglas looked down at her for the second time that night, the long, thin hairs he normally kept combed over the crown of his head fell before his eyes and he was reminded, resolutely, of his baldness. Mustn’t he look silly in this pose, he thought, like some desperate traveling salesman? When he tried to forget about this and focus instead on the pleasures available to him, to look down at steady parts of Cherilyn that always kept him able, he was again distracted by the unfortunate parts of himself, the paunch of his hairy stomach, the slight sag of his middle-aged breasts, and this also discouraged him. So, despite his best intentions, Douglas had to wonder if he was the type of man who could even do it a bit harder when called upon. Now, there was a depressing thought. This made him wonder if he was able to do anything differently than he had previously done. And, if not, then what kind of man was he? And who would want to be with a man who, at forty years old, doesn’t even know who he is? These worries, Douglas understood, were not very sexy. Yet around and around the pity pot he went until it became clear that he had nothing more to offer.
Douglas rolled over apologetically and made a few awkward attempts at pleasing Cherilyn with his hands. This well-intentioned groping only seemed to embarrass them both, though, and Cherilyn pulled the covers up over her breasts. “It’s okay, honey,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I would have waited,” Douglas told her. “I mean, if I knew you weren’t ready. I could have waited longer.”
“Shh,” she said. “Just turn around. Let me hold you.” Cherilyn scootched up to Douglas from behind, and the heat of their bodies beneath the covers, the stick of their sweat, was almost too much for him to bear. He kicked a foot from under the blanket. He fluffed the pillows under his head.
“You know,” he said. “Biologically, men aren’t really built to go twice in a row.”
“I know,” Cherilyn said, and gently ran her fingers through the patch of hair above his ear to calm him. “I was just enjoying it. Take it as a compliment.”
“Our hormone levels drop pretty drastically is all that I’m saying,” Douglas told her. “It’s not about interest. You know that, right? It’s about science.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said.
Douglas closed his eyes as Cherilyn traced her fingertips down his neck and to his back, where she began drawing unknown shapes along his shoulders. “How about this,” Cherilyn said. “Pop quiz. Are you ready?”
Douglas sighed. “I’m ready.”
“Did you know,” Cherilyn asked him, “that those Arabian kings, like we saw in that book, have these things called harems? And that all those women are kind of like royalty, like princesses?”
“I did know that,” Douglas said. “Though that definition may be a bit problematic.”
“I was wondering,” she said. “How does a person get chosen for something like that?”
“You know,” Douglas said, “maybe if I just got a drink of water.”
“Oh, Lord,” she said. “You did great. Let’s get some sleep.”
The two of them lay spooned together like question marks after that, each trying to match the other’s breathing while Douglas stared across the room, the flickering night-light in the bathroom looking to him like a lonely candle left to peter out in a cave. After a while, Cherilyn took a deep breath and said, “I do love you, Douglas,” and rolled over on her back to cool off.
Douglas did not reply but instead feigned sleep, slowing his breathing to become almost imperceptible. He continued to do this even as he felt the slight shaking of the bed beside
him a few minutes later, even as he heard the quiet sounds of his wife’s unmet desires that, for some reason, on this night, he did not feel the right to interrupt.
But these were yesterday’s problems.
Douglas had new quandaries to consider.
For one, when he tried to leave for work that morning, his car wouldn’t start. After he showered and got dressed, Cherilyn still asleep under a mound of pillows, Douglas grabbed the trombone for his lesson after school and went to put it in the back seat of his car, the door of which was ajar. He then noticed the overhead light was out. And, sure enough, when he sat in the driver’s seat, the engine wouldn’t turn. Crime was so uncommon in the heart of Deerfield that Douglas didn’t even suspect it, instead figuring that he’d likely not shut the door hard enough the evening before, another small failing to add to his ever-growing litany. Rather than waking Cherilyn up to tell her, Douglas took her keys and her Subaru.
On the short drive to school, Douglas smelled the faint odor of tobacco coming from his wife’s air-conditioning. They had both been social smokers when they met, mainly buying a pack on a whim after they’d had a drink or two and still felt young and invincible, but they’d decided to quit that whole business on their wedding day. Cherilyn was known to occasionally stray from this pact, and the scent that sometimes followed her actually comforted Douglas. It was a quick memory of their courtship, a reminder that his wife was a casual and imperfect being, complete with her own version of a small, secret life. A life similar, Douglas realized, to the one he himself had carried on in the form of a slick and golden trombone, his name on a flashing marquee. So, who was he to judge? Instead, he turned down the radio and took in the scent, recalling all the good things he felt about their lives together, and whistled to himself as he drove, a lesser-known composition by Copland.