December 17
There was only the one question on Pete’s religion exam.
Choose a virtue; discuss what it means in a modern world, and how you work to incorporate it into your own life.
His own life? Pete stared at the exam paper with his mouth open. The directions said that extra paper was available if the sheet provided was not enough. That meant Mr. McAllister expected an answer that covered more than a page – front and back. How could anyone be expected to write more than one sheet of paper (front and back) on a question like that? And what was Mr. McAllister talking about, his own life? The class was supposed to be about Concepts in Christianity. Not about his own life. That was the title: Concepts in Christianity. Not: Peter Meren -- Exposed. He had gone over the virtues last night, but his own life? What on earth could he write about?
Without raising his head, because he didn’t want to look like he was trying to cheat, he let his eyes circle the room. Everybody else was writing! Even George! As if they had something to say about the question! Did every single other person in the entire class think this was a reasonable question? Was he the only one who was completely clueless? What was he going to do? He couldn’t fail religion. Absolutely couldn’t. Nobody failed religion.
Did they?
Pete tried to focus.
He had gone over the list of Christian virtues last night. He ran through some in his mind, wondering if he could write about them in this context. Not in the context of old Saints or prophets, which he was perfectly prepared to do, but in the totally unexpected context of his own life. He had studied about the old Saints and prophets. He hadn’t studied about himself.
OK. He tried to pull himself together. He tried to concentrate. He tried to concentrate on virtues.
Faith? Faith was a virtue. Faith in what? He didn’t even know what he really believed in. How could he know about faith? He didn’t even think he was supposed to know what he believed in yet. Isn’t that what a class like this was supposed to be all about? He was only fourteen! What did Mr. McAllister expect?
Charity? His parents sent money every month to a little poor girl in the Philippines. Could he talk about his parents? Would that count as his own life? His parents were part of his life, weren’t they? Even if he thought he could get away with it, he didn’t think he could come up with more than a paragraph about the little girl, and even that would be fluffy description of the drawings and the letters she sent them twice a year.
Hope? He hoped he would do well on this exam. He hoped there would be a fire drill, or a bomb scare, or anything to make it go away for a while. That probably wasn’t the kind of hope St. Paul had been talking about in the first letter to the Corinthians. Why couldn’t he just talk about the First Letter to the Corinthians? He had studied that. Why couldn’t he talk about what hope meant in the Corinthians’ lives. Right now he wished he were an ancient Corinthian. Then he would be off on a fishing boat, floating on the Mediterranean, thinking about faith, hope and charity – if he wanted to think about them, which he might not. He might just want to think about the fish he was going to catch, or about the weather. He wouldn’t be trying to write more than a page (front and back) on a stupid religion question about his own stupid life.
He tried thinking about the contrary virtues – the ones that if you practiced them were supposed to help you avoid the seven deadly sins.
Temperance? Temperance was the opposite of gluttony. He didn’t eat too much, and he didn’t drink, or do anything in excess, did he? Maybe he could talk about that. But how could you write more than a page about something you don’t do?
Chastity? No way. Absolutely not. Way, way too embarrassing.
Pete looked up to see Mr. McAllister sitting at his desk. Watching. Pete shrugged, and began writing a loosely rambling narrative about how difficult it was to apply these concepts to his own life, hoping that he would at least demonstrate an understanding of what the concepts were, but knowing that he was probably failing the exam, which could mean failing the semester, which would make him the idiot of the world.
* * *
I can’t believe I’m still writing. How many pages does it take to say goodbye? How many pages to put a final end to so many hopes and dreams? We were so young then – when we made up our minds to share the same path forever – with only the dimmest notion of what lay ahead on that path. In my ignorance, I imagined that the globe would be our playground, and you alone would be my home – the rock to which I would cling.
It’s the best thing, really. After I’m gone you can rest, and rest, and then you can rest some more. It will be a feast of resting. I won’t be there to insist that we look for fairy rings in the woods, or that you dance with me in the living room. You can eat your monotonous three-part dinners with your hunk of meat, and your starch, and your vegetable. All of Gaul was divided into three parts, and so will be your dinner plate. Forevermore. No more bothersome ethnic cookery. No more complaint-inducing tofu, or eggplant.
* * *
“What virtue did you choose?” Pete asked George, as they walked out of the classroom, but he didn’t really expect an answer. He wasn’t at all surprised when his query was met with a blank stare, but he was surprised when the blank stare was followed up with actual words.
“Virtue?” George blinked a few times, as if he needed to process the idea. “It wasn’t about virtue. It was separation of church and state.”
Now it was Pete’s turn to blink. “Huh?”
“Moral dilemma. You’re leader of a country. Law says death penalty. You don’t believe in it. What do you do?” They continued silently down the hall. Pete didn’t say anything, because it looked like more ideas might be forming behind George’s eyes. It was already more than he had said at one time in what seemed like forever, but it looked as if there might be more – as if he might be pulling his thoughts together to tell about his answer, or to tell what he thought of the question, or maybe just to tell what he thought about the weather. Something seemed to be going on in George’s head, and Pete would be happy with anything. By the time they reached the staircase that led to the cafeteria, George had formulated his idea, but all he said as they descended was “Kind of interesting, actually.”
“Oh.” Pete grabbed a tray and some silverware. “Mine was about virtues.”
* * *
An interesting thought occurred to me just now. Perhaps you were that rock after all, but not as I expected. Not a rock to which I could cling, but a hard, uncompromising boulder. Not a shelter, but a shackle. And the constant rain trickled down your granite surface with a steady drip. . . drip. . . a never-ending drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . a fire extinguishing, soul smothering drip . . . drip . . . drip . . . drip.
Now I have reached the eleventh page. And what is that – the eleventh page? Is it like the eleventh hour? I can tell you this – no cavalry will come charging to rescue this farce of a marriage.
No. Not a farce. Farce is the wrong word, because farces are funny. Farces leave the audience laughing. There is no laughter here. Only the bitterness of mangled dreams. Only the sourness of a marriage gone rotten. Sourness? Rot? Now I’m mixing my descriptors. Now it really is time to stop.
But I’m not yet ready to stop. I haven’t explained myself, though I’ve spent nearly eleven pages trying.
But why am I leaving, you might ask? You have a right to ask. It’s your life too, after all. Your life that I’m leaving. Isn’t that what I have spent ten and a half pages working up to? But if I couldn’t tell you in all our seven years together, why do I think I can tell you in eleven pages?
Why will I leave? In the language of the mystics, I am suffering a dark night of the soul. I lack the courage to continue. You lack the creativity to perceive my desperation. That seems a good place to set down my pen. A noble exit line.
And yet, it’s difficult to do. Difficult to stop writing. Difficult to stop. Difficult to perceive what my world will be without you and the boy. I used to know what I wanted. I’m not sure I know any more. Have I lost my identity to love? Only to gain a pale shadow of it back again, amidst dishpans and dusters? Am I losing heart? Losing courage? Will I tuck this letter away, and go back to sweeping the floor? No! I will not! I say, let the dust come!
And what will I do when I leave? What will I do that I couldn’t do here at your side? What will I do when the world opens itself up before me again? Will I travel to India, and study yoga at an ashram? Will I go to a city, and play Titania in a community theatre? Will I finally see Paris? Will I climb the Eiffel tower?
* * *
“Bonjour, ma belle mére. Comment allez-vous? Va comment Oncle Duane?” Pete asked the minute he walked through his front door. It was later than usual, because he had been at a study session with a group of friends preparing for tomorrow’s French exam, but there was a bounce in his step, because he was feeling pretty much ready.
His mom sat at the computer, looking worried. “How were your finals today?”
“Computer was fine, and I don’t want to talk about religion.” Pete threw his backpack as far as it would go across the living room. It didn’t go very far, because it was filled with textbooks and binders (science and French exams tomorrow). It actually landed only a few inches from his left toe, but he imagined that it did so with a flourish. “How’s Uncle Duane?”
His mom sighed. It was a heavy, dramatic sigh. The kind of sigh that made Pete think the fog was descending, and that somebody had better do something pretty special to keep the world from spiraling into disaster. Her answer, however, sounded like good news. “The drama thickens. He’s out of jail, and he didn’t rob the flower stand after all.”
“I knew it!” Pete beat a happy little drumbeat on the throw pillow as he sat down on the couch, leaning over the arm, waiting to hear more.
Mom: It wasn’t him; it was his car.
Pete: His car robbed a flower stand?
Mom: His car was the getaway vehicle, but he wasn’t in it.
Pete: Who was?
Mom: His little girlfriend.
Pete: The twenty-something year-old Cindi woman?
Mom: It turns out the Cindi woman has something of a past. A past that involves drug addiction.
Pete: We kind of figured that from what she wrote yesterday.
Mom: Right, and she borrowed Duane’s car, saying she wanted to take her two friends to the beach, but instead of going to the beach, she and her friends went to the flower stand – the one in the parking lot of the strip mall – and proceeded to rob it.
Pete: What, like with guns and stuff?
Mom: It was closed. You don’t need guns to rob an empty building.
Pete: It isn’t exactly what I’d call a building.
Mom: More like a shack, isn’t it? But it closes up and locks, but somehow they had a key, so they used the key to enter the flower shack, and steal the cash box. Apparently, they didn’t think to wait until the sun went down, so her friend showed up oh so well in his bright orange sweatshirt, on more than one set of security cameras, as did Uncle Duane's car. They then put the bright orange sweatshirt in a child’s backpack, if you can believe it, along with some books and clothes appropriate for a first grader, and took the backpack to Cindi’s ex-husband, who seems to have custody of one of her young children. Luckily, the police believe that Uncle Duane had nothing to do with it, but Cindi herself has gone into hiding, even though one of the friends has turned himself in, and sung like a canary.
Pete finally gets to talk:
Maybe he better not lend her the car any more.
Mom: Gee, you think? Believe it or not, I actually made that suggestion, and he wrote back right away (despite the fact that the fifteen hour time difference made it, oh, a little before one in the morning). He wrote that he had already thought of this.
Mom getting really worked up now:
But, he wasn't so ready to accept that particular recommendation. “What if she needs the car?” He writes back. He then goes on to say that he feels taken advantage of, and that he feels like he had been duped.
Pete: Well, yeah.
Mom: I know. What do you say to that? I mean, I could tell him that it was the drugs, not really her. That she probably wouldn't have behaved this way if she were in her right mind, whatever that is.
Pete: That should give him some comfort.
* * *
“Will I go to Paris and climb the Eiffel tower?” That’s how I ended the letter. If you can call it an ending. There was no conclusion, no zinger of a parting statement. When I finally forced myself to finally stop, I merely stopped, putting down the pen mid-thought on our rustic pine tavern table. If I didn’t stop, I wouldn’t leave, and I had to leave. I miss that table, though.
So what did I do after I escaped? What did I do that was wonderful and exotic? Did I go to Paris and climb the Eiffel tower? Did I do any of the things I had once imagined doing with you at my side, back when we planned, in that once upon a time?
Did I, for example, go back to college and learn to speak Italian? For the record – for anyone who might be reading – for anyone who has stayed with me through this rambling journal – that was the plan. I enrolled in a community college in a town by the ocean. But I got as far as “Sono Topolino. Ho uno zaino” (look it up if you don’t happen to know Italian. It sounds exotic, but it’s really pretty useless. Pitifully useless, if you want to know the truth) and then I suffered an epic failure of imagination. I found a swashbuckling, but pathetic loser, and helped him take care of his messed up life, and his messed up little girls.
I forgot about my dreams.
* * *
Pete had been so distracted by his finals, and by Uncle Duane’s drama that he nearly forgot to read about the wiener dogs. Well, he didn’t actually forget. He just kept putting it off. First there had been the last minute worrying about the religion exam that morning (not that the worrying had done any good). Then there had been the study session after school that had gotten him ready for French, but not for science, which he would have to review before going to sleep. And then there had been the Uncle Duane drama, and then Singapore noodles for dinner (It was the maid’s day to cook). Once dinner was over, he had been seriously tempted to go upstairs to his bedroom, and crack open his biology book right away, without even looking at the Wiener Dogs.
Well, maybe not seriously tempted. Maybe only a little bit tempted. He didn’t really like biology. Then again, Brittany was right. More sleeping animals? Really, it didn’t seem worth the time away from the endocrine system, but he sort of felt like he had to go over to Brittany’s flat to read the story with her.
Who was he fooling? He didn’t want to review the endocrine system, or the plant and animal kingdoms, and he would rather contemplate the mysterious wiener dogs than the mysterious mitochondria.
* * *
And no, I didn’t understand at first that he was a chronic loser. I was fooling myself. I made the wrong choice. A stupid choice. He worked with his hands, not with his mind. He built furniture. Handcrafted furniture. When you finish building a rocking chair, you’re finished building a rocking chair. You don’t sand the rockers over in your head when you come home at night. You don’t agonize over did you give it a perfect coat of finish. This would leave him time for me, I told myself. Time to play. Time to dance. He was handsome, and rugged, and exciting. He knew exactly what to say, and what to do. He was intense.
Even the violence was intoxicating. He didn’t start out hurting me. When I watched how he interacted with other people, and with the world around him, it struck me as decisive. Strong. Exciting.
And I didn’t understand about the substance abuse. I knew he liked to drink. Well, what’s wrong with that? I like to drink. I like the bubbles in the champagne. I love a good margarita. I love the feeling you get when you start to float just a little bit – when you lose contact with boring. I just didn’t understand that all the little stuffed animals on his handcrafted bookshelves came to him from a lowlife pusher, with some kind of controlled substance inside. I thought they were whimsical. I didn’t get it.
* * *
Pete and Brittany took the notebook outside under a streetlight; they sat down on the sidewalk, and they opened it.
December 17
"We need to get them all to shelter, or they will freeze," said Fred.
"Had you noticed that big building over there?" asked Malchisedech. In the distance, to the left (it made little sense to speak of compass directions in this region) stood, indeed, a large building. Undoubtedly, Santa's Castle, or Workshop, or whatever it was supposed to be in the story. It looked rather like an older elementary school building.
"That must be Santa's Castle, or Workshop, or whatever. It looks kind of like an old school building, though," said Fred. It's too far to drag or carry them, even if we could lift them."
Two rabbits popped out of a hole near the base of the Blindmice's hollow log. "You might put them in our spacious and comfortably apportioned underground warren," said one in a male voice with a British accent.
"We have been watching and listening surreptitiously, and we believe we can help." Likewise, with a British accent, the female rabbit continued. "You are correct. You must speak with Santa, and with Manchester the Elf, as well. They must mend their fences, and perhaps some outside influence will do good toward that end. Further, the reindeer must be made to fly once again."
The masculine rabbit took over their narration. "Now, in addition to being flightless, the two lead reindeer are incapacitated by an unnatural sleep. This is a challenging situation, you intrepid solvers of mysteries, you dogs of another realm. May the wisdom of the great snowy owl guide you. Now, let's work together and get these poor and stricken creatures in from the elements."
"Do you think we can trust them?" Fred asked Akelmeyer softly. Fred was accustomed to giving the orders, and these rabbits, though seemingly reasonable and helpful, had taken over. Akelmeyer often had a sort of sixth sense, and Fred had come to trust it. If Akey thought the rabbits were okay, they were okay.
"The rabbits are okay," said Akelmeyer. "Besides, do you have a better plan for getting this slumber party in from the cold?"
TO BE CONTINUED...
“Well, that’s more like it.” Brittany said when she had finished reading aloud. “Somebody’s actually going to do something!”
Pete pointed out that if you looked closely, it was mostly just a re-cap.
Brittany didn’t care. She liked the rabbits. She liked British accents. She liked decisiveness. She liked somebody taking charge. Someday, she promised herself, she would take charge. Of something. She didn’t know what yet – but something.
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