Pete and Brittany met at the bench before school on Monday. They weren’t especially early this morning. They didn’t rush for the notebook with quite the same excitement, or even the same trepidation as they had at the beginning of December.
Pete wasn’t particularly focused on the wiener dogs this morning. He had other things on his mind. He was on his way up the many brick staircases to take semester finals in Geometry and History – two really hard classes on the same day. He had been up until after midnight studying. It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to know what would happen to the wiener dogs, and he did know, deep down, that he would do OK on the tests, but he still wasn’t looking forward to them, and he wasn’t enjoying the distracting knot of anxiety in his stomach.
Brittany wasn’t distracted from the wiener dogs by anything in particular.
Because the semester was drawing to a close, she would probably have at least one test today too, but she couldn’t remember which class the probable test would probably be in, so she wasn’t thinking about it.
Boys might be another typical thing for a girl her age to be distracted by. Her friend Renee, for example, was very interested in whether or not a certain boy named Ken Wilson would sit with them at lunch again today, but Brittany didn’t spend much energy thinking about Ken Wilson. When she did devote a moment or two to contemplating him (as she had been forced to do more and more lately, as Renee seemed to be becoming what Brittany could only describe as obsessed) she concluded that he was a little bit of a pretty boy. His hair was too perfect. His clothes were too expensive, and all the girls liked him.
No. Brittany wasn’t thinking about tests, and she wasn’t thinking about boys. To be honest, she wasn’t really thinking about anything at all.
They opened the notebook.
December 16
"Daisy? Da-aaisy? Penelope?" A mallard approached, calling loudly. "Oh. Hello. Dogs. How about that? Oh, pears! I love those!"
"Wait!" shouted Fred. Those are--" he had been going to say "enchanted," or "poisoned," but the duck had laid into them with the agility of a running back, and the gusto of a linebacker. Perhaps the animals' affinity for them was part of the spell.
As you might have predicted, the mallard lay down promptly in satisfied slumber.
"This seems kind of bad," said Malchisedech.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Pete and Brittany sat quietly for a minute, on the bench, watching the buses pull into the Middle School parking lot. Pete broke the silence to observe that nothing really seemed to be happening.
Brittany asked what he meant.
Pete sighed. He drummed his fingers on the notebook. He sat there, on the bench, next to Brittany. Brittany supposed he must be thinking. She sat quietly, giving him space to think. Then he answered. “Well new animals just keep showing up, and eating the pears, and falling asleep. Maybe we’re supposed to notice that the author is suddenly using football metaphors, but the plot isn’t exactly advancing.”
“We’re not doing much either.” The corners of Brittany’s mouth were turned downward in a way that Pete wasn’t used to seeing them. Usually, she looked intense. Intensely happy, intensely concentrating intensely worried. Today she didn’t look intense at all. Just sort of vaguely glum.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Brittany tried to put the unaccustomed dull, low feeling she was experiencing into words, but it wasn’t easy. “We learned about the stock market, and we learned about Hitler, and we ate cinnamon rolls, and we drank espresso, but it doesn’t feel like any of it matters. It doesn’t feel like we’re really doing anything.”
And, just as she feared, Pete was offended. “Speak for yourself. I’ve been studying for finals. They start today. I could tell you anything you want to know about determining the area of a circle, or the decline of the Roman Empire. I could compare the Roman Gods to the Greek Gods. I could explain the feudal system, and the battle of Hastings, and the Magna Carta, and the rise of Christianity, and -- ”
“OK. OK. You’ve been busy. Meanwhile, I can build an aqueduct out of sugar cubes, and I can turn a bed sheet into a toga. So what!”
“You’re not giving yourself credit. I hear you make a mean Roman burger.”
“Yeah, right. I was chasing the remains of chopped green bean around the kitchen for hours the next day.”
Pete laughed. He seemed to be done being offended.
Brittany wished him good luck on his finals, and headed off towards school, still feeling like something wasn’t quite complete.
They had started accepting the mysteriously appearing story installments as if they were completely normal, instead of a metaphysical impossibility. Her brother’s extended poopy fit had also turned into part of their standard day to day landscape. She had stopped worrying about the fabric of the universe, just like she had long ago stopped worrying about global warming. Potential global annihilation had become humdrum.
Oh, she knew that global warming was real, and she turned off the lights when she left a room, just like she was supposed to. Nobody could accuse Brittany Weaver of not doing her part to avoid unnecessary use of fossil fuels, but when she had heard on the news, just that morning, that the summers were going to keep getting dangerously hotter, that it would be worst in Asia, and that more people had been killed by extreme heat in the past few years than had been killed by hurricanes or tornados, which was really pretty scary because the NBC nightly news that came live on channel 3 every morning before they left for school had been full of really bad storms in the last few years, so the idea of heat being worse than those storms was a really bad idea. But when she heard it, she had just thought, “Yep. Knew that was coming.”
And she was interested to discover, upon reflection, that she really did accept the possibility that the fabric of the universe might be in trouble. Look at everything that was going wrong with the world: Global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, the nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan, the constant snow and ice storms in the Eastern United States, nearly a billion people starving somewhere in the world, bankruptcies, foreclosures, miners being trapped in some mine or other every month or so, Lindsay Lohan. Something had obviously gone awry somewhere pretty fundamental. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it other than read about one whimsical animal after another eating pears, and falling over asleep.
What was wrong with her? Her life was finally getting interesting, and it was still boring.
She was having a moment.
A moment of soul-searching introspection.
She was looking into her soul, and discovering that it was boring. And how was she supposed to fix that? How was she supposed to fix the tear in the fabric of the universe? How was she supposed to sew up the one little rip that might lead to the black hole she had dreamed about? Dreamed about? Nightmared about was more like it. Why wasn’t there a verb for “had a nightmare?”
A word popped into her mind: Integrity.
Integrity? Like the award Joey won in school? Integrity like Hitler, and probably that Jennifer girl didn’t have? Was she supposed to do the right thing, even though no one was looking? How was she supposed to even know what the right thing was?
That answer was obvious, once she thought for about thirty seconds. Hadn’t she read something about a “highest, truest inner self” when she was looking up Buddhism. A Buddha self? Maybe that was the answer. She was confronted with hundreds of choices every day. All she had to do was to listen to her highest, truest self. If her true love was painting, for example, then she should paint, not try to rule a country – even if she didn’t appear to be having any success at it. She didn’t know what you were supposed to do when you were reduced to starving, and trying to support yourself by shoveling the snow off of rich people’s streets, but she did know that you should do the right thing, even in adversity. It’s just that this was easy to say when you were only in the seventh grade, and your parents fed, clothed and housed you. Did boredom count as adversity?
But how was she supposed to listen to her highest truest inner self, when she didn’t even know who that was? Wouldn’t even recognize her on the street?
Because one thing she did know, she wasn’t being true to that highest inner self now. Even if she didn’t know anything else, she was absolutely certain of this one thing: her highest, truest inner self was not boring!
* * *
So boring! Is it any wonder I can’t endure? Day after day – plodding along. The same as yesterday. The same as every yesterday. Yesterday, and yesterday, and yesterday. Get out of bed. Make the breakfast. Fix you sandwiches for lunch. The same sandwiches. Every day. Do the laundry. Sweep the floors. Clean the bathrooms. And it’s never good enough.
That day you came home – the day that was supposed to make all the difference. Turn it all around. Did you see the sparkling windows? The clean surfaces? The fuzzy cashmere? No. What you saw was a line on the floor. A line where the Swiffer left behind a trail. A line of dust that I had overlooked. And you bent ninety degrees to examine the floor. You never looked at me. Your right angle purged me of all vanity. I could not compete, even in my Christmas tree splendor, with the possibility of a mar on the tile.
Doomed to a life of boredom. A life of dusting, and sweeping, and all the while yearning, struggling, fighting. Fighting to find some fun. Some excitement. Some joy. Anything beyond the plodding day-to-day existence that you seemed to be in love with.
And your answer was always the same. “Rest,” and “rest,” and “more rest”, “Can’t we just rest now?” and “Why can’t we ever rest?”
* * *
The boy put the mallard duck into its spot on the cardboard diorama. He laid it down on its side, as if it were sleeping. It wasn’t shaped right to lie on its side, but he put it that way anyway. It rocked back and forth a few times, before coming to a rest.
“Dad,” he asked, “is anything ever going to happen?”
The man looked at the eight unopened boxes left on the advent calendar. He didn’t answer.
* * *
Jennifer found Ilo Senza in a cubicle at the back corner of the school library behind a stack of books, reading what looked like class notes.
“What are you doing here?” Her arms were folded in front of her chest. Her platform shoes were planted hip width apart on the carpet.
As if trying to outdo her glowering look of disdain, (and Ilo Senza could out-glower anybody) Ilo felt his forehead furrow, and his eyebrows draw closer together in the ‘don’t bug me if you know what’s good for you’ expression he had practiced so often in the mirror, it had become instinct. “Nothing,” he snapped.
Jennifer exhaled a scoffing little exhale, to show that she recognized an obvious lie when she heard one. “Nothing? You do nothing on the roof, or in the gym, or by the fountain. In here, people study. Are you studying, Ilo?”
How could she cram so much contempt into that word, studying?
“Nothing wrong with studying. Maybe you should try it.” He felt his fists clench. He felt himself going into self-protection mode. He recognized the closing up, the anger, the faster heartbeat, the hot face. He took a deep breath, and spread out his hands, palms down, on his notebook. He couldn’t hit Jennifer.
“Then why are you hiding?” She looked at the top two books on the stack next to his notebook and read their titles: “The Riverside Shakespeare? The History of Art?” They had clearly been chosen for their large size, and usefulness as a barrier. “Really, Ilo, are you reading these?”
“I wanted some peace. Is that all right with you? What do you want?” He wasn’t whispering because it was a library. He was whispering because he found that whispering often frightened people when shouting didn’t.
Jennifer shrugged. She didn’t look frightened. She wasn’t going away. Instead, she was leaning against the cubicle in a way that was probably meant to be seductive.
Ilo had seen it before.
She smiled, showing off very straight teeth that looked very white against her tanned skin. “My dad still isn’t back, and I thought I might have a little party tonight.”
“You’re kidding. Tonight?”
“Why not?” Her dark brown eyes got very wide; as if she couldn’t imagine that she could possibly do anything that anyone would ever consider a problem.
It was Ilo’s turn to make the scoffing exhale sound. “Look, I don’t know what your story is, but I don’t want to get kicked out of school right now. I like it here.”
“This dump? What’s to like?”
“It’s not so bad. I have a life here. Did you know I’m in a band? Did you even know that I play trumpet?”
“You can bring your trumpet over tonight.” Her eyebrows moved a little, in a way that was probably meant to be inviting. Again, Ilo had seen it before. He had seen all her tricks. They had worked on his friend Dillon because Dillon had been playing tricks of his own – on her. They worked on people who didn’t know her, like that geek George at the beach the Friday night before the school suggested that Dillon pursue “other academic alternatives.” They might have even worked on Ilo, if he had been in a different kind of mood. If he had been bored, for example. Instead of worried. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Jennifer. It was just that he could see through her tricks, and he wasn’t in the mood.
Her eyebrows were still doing the ‘I’ll show you a good time’ dance. Her smile widened. Her voice was soft, and purring, “It’ll be a very small party.”
“What do you want?” Ilo repeated.
“I don’t know. We could talk about the Spread Sheet final tomorrow – If you want.” She leaned forward to stroke his dark curls.
Ilo shook his head. She probably thought she was being subtle. He wasn’t the go-to guy for academic help, and Jennifer knew that. If Lars had been around lately she would be talking to him. He was the one who could hook you up with a good “study guide” – like a copy of the test, for example. But he tended to miss school when things got difficult, like when a friend or, as Lars would put it “known associate” got counseled out, or like when he didn’t want his “outside associates” – the ones who weren’t in school – to be able to find him too easily. Ilo knew that he wasn’t Jennifer’s first choice as a source of illicit answers, but he also knew that he was the only one currently available.
“I already gave you notes for your history paper.”
In the blink of an eye, alluring Jennifer morphed into angry Jennifer. Ilo winced as she jerked her hand away from his curls, but he only winced a little. He winced because of the surprise, not because of the sudden, sharp pain.
“You didn’t give me notes.” She put strong emphasis on the word give. “I paid good money for them. And they were crap, by the way. I got the paper back this morning. Red ink bleeding all over it.”
“I got them from my little brother. You were supposed to adapt them.”
“I never had to adapt stuff Lars gave me.”
“I’m not Lars.”
“Your loss.” And she tossed her own dark curls, and stormed out of the library. But she stopped before she was out of his line of sight, and whispered over her shoulder. “Don’t turn on me, Ilo.” She rolled her thumb over the dark, curly strands of hair in her hand.
* * *
Pete sat at his desk in his room outlining answers to possible essay questions that might appear on tomorrow’s Religion exam. He could discuss various virtues using examples from the Old and New Testaments, as well as from the lives of Saints. He could explain the differences between Catholicism and various Protestant denominations. His only worry was that he would get some essay question he hadn’t anticipated, and therefore hadn’t prepared for.
His computer exam should be simple. He only had to give a ten-minute power point presentation that used the program to enhance the presentation, not detract from it. He had the presentation ready, and he would practice it on his mom or dad later. Probably his dad, actually. His mom had already given her history exam, so she had a new pile of grading.
Just when he was thinking about his mom, he heard her yelp downstairs. It made him jump, and his pen slipped, and drew a line of blue across his yellow notepad.
Maybe his mom had gotten to a really bad exam. Maybe she had gotten to Jennifer’s exam. Maybe she had been stung by a wasp. He had never seen a wasp in their flat. Maybe she had been bitten by a cockroach. Did cockroaches bite? Maybe she had been sucked through a tear in the fabric of the universe. He rushed downstairs to find out.
He met his brother on the stairs, and they shoved each other, and told each other to get out of the way, and not to be idiots. His dad must have heard the yelp too, because he was in the living room already by the time Pete and Joey got down there, still trying to out-insult each other about who was the biggest idiot, who was the most annoying, and who had the worst haircut.
They stopped when they saw their mother staring at the computer with a stricken look on her face.
“Uncle Duane is in jail.”
“What?” Pete couldn’t believe it. They didn’t arrest old guys on oxygen.
“For murdering the deer?” Joey asked.
“You’re such an idiot!” Pete whispered fiercely.
His father glared at him.
Pete went on the defensive. “Uncle Duane didn’t murder a deer. The deer fell into a hole in his yard, but Joey is too much of an idiot to understand the difference.”
His father’s voice was infuriatingly calm, and reasonable. “A hole which he dug himself, or rather, caused to be dug, and which, as your mother pointed out, very much resembled a Neolithic hunters’ trap. There are laws against hunting in the city limits.”
“Yeah!” said Joey, shoving Pete.
“OK, but they fine you; they don’t put you in jail.” Pete kicked Joey. In the shin. Hard.
Joey started to cry.
“Crybaby,” Pete muttered.
“He’s in jail for robbing a flower stand,” his mom interrupted, putting a stop to the bickering.
“He stole flowers?” Joey asked.
Pete started to once again point out how stupid his brother was, but his mom interrupted. “It seems more likely that money was stolen. The money with which people paid for the flowers.”
Pete couldn’t believe it. “Why would Uncle Duane rob a flower stand?”
“Why would he dig a hole?” asked his mother.
“Does he need money?” asked his father. “We could send him money.”
“What, for a lawyer?” asked Pete.
“Well, I was thinking so he didn’t have to resort to a life of crime.”
“Looks like he’s already chosen a life of crime,” said Joey.
“No, that’s really not like him,” Pete defended Uncle Duane. “He’s crazy, and mom says he gambles, and he may do some things that most people wouldn’t do, but he’s kind. And gentle. He cares about people. He wouldn’t take money that doesn’t belong to him.”
Pete’s mom agreed with him. “Pete’s right. If Uncle Duane thinks things through, he wouldn’t do something like that. He would never thinkingly hurt another living soul.” She swiveled her chair around and looked at her family helplessly. Pete was surprised to see his mom looking so vulnerable. It made him want to protect her. To make the whole mess go away so she wouldn’t look so sad. But there was nothing he could do, and his mom kept talking. “But Uncle Duane doesn’t always think things through, and he does do things just to see what they would be like. Digging a hole, for example.”
“So you think your Uncle Duane robbed a flower stand just to see what it would be like?”
“I’m saying it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”
Pete didn’t like the realm of possibility. He wanted to get back to the realm of the concrete. “So, he’s e-mailing you from jail?”
“No, the e-mail is from that Cindi woman.”
“What does she have to say?” asked Pete’s dad.
“She says the police came to the door and read him his Miranda Rights, and took him away in hand cuffs.”
“Oh boy.”
“She also says that she doesn’t know what she would do without him; that he was going to take her to a Twelve Step meeting tomorrow; and that she doesn’t think she can face the meeting alone.”
“Oh boy.”
Pete’s dad knelt beside his wife, and put his arm around her. What do you say to something like that? Pete and Joey slipped out of the room before they could find out, and so that Pete could explain to his little brother that Twelve Step meetings were for people with substance abuse problems.
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