by Judith Guest
But she is tired. She curls away from him; pushes him gently from her, in sleep. He rolls to his back, hands under his head, staring upward. Other Saturday nights, lying, waiting after sex, for the comforting sound of a car door slamming, and whispers of laughter under the windows. And earlier, at the beginning of the evenings, the endless jokes, the hassles over clothes Hey, that’s my sweater! The hell it is, possession is—hey, Dad, what’s possession? Possession is gonna get your head broke—now give it to me! And sounds of a struggle and fiendish, sadistic laughter Take it, fag, it’s a fag sweater, you’ll look great in it and more laughter You oughta know!
He will not be able to sleep tonight for hours; another side effect of drinking too much. It condemns him to wakefulness. Without expectation of anything—of a car, of whispers or laughter. Resigned, he keeps watch and continues to listen.
9
A surprise quiz in trig. He takes his seat, the mimeographed sheet in his hand, his stomach pulling nervously. He wills himself not to panic. I know this stuff. I know it.
Across the aisle from him sits Suzanne Mosely. They have known each other since grade school. What is she doing in here? She must have flunked it, too, last year. He watches as her pudgy fingers grip the pencil. Her brow is furrowed; her mouth pinched. It makes him ashamed of his own fear. She has always had trouble in math, could take it from now until the world ends and it won’t help. He looks up. Mr. Simmons is staring at him. Guiltily he looks down at his paper.
Given: reduction formulas
sin θ = - sin (-θ)
cos θ = cos (-θ)
Stay calm. It will come don’t think about anything else just the problem easy does it confidence.
Halfway through the test his pencil point snaps. He straightens up; lets out his breath with a sigh. Not hard. It is not as hard as he thought it would be. His back is tense, and he rubs it, stretching. He goes to get another pencil from the box on Simmons’ desk. No pencil-sharpening during a quiz, that is one of the unbreakable rules.
Simmons looks up. “Everything okay, Jarrett?”
He nods, returning to his seat. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Suzanne’s paper. Cross-outs everywhere. The poor kid. He knows what that feels like. What did she take this course for anyway?
There are five minutes left in the hour when he hands in his paper. He leaves the room, taking up a spot against the lockers as he waits for the bell to ring. Down the hall, the smoking lounge overflows with people let out of class early. He does not go down there. He has nothing to say to anyone. Suzanne comes out and leans against the wall. Her head is bent over her books. She is wearing a dark skirt, a brown sweater that’s too tight. God, she’s so fat. Has she always been that fat? He doesn’t remember it. Hunched over, huddled against the wall, her hair stiff, like brown cotton candy. A lion’s mane around her face. Pretty. She was pretty in junior high.
She is staring at him now, and he straightens up Shit she is crying The tears are spilling down her cheeks. He stands there helpless, watching.
“What are you looking at?”
She clutches her books against her breasts as he moves toward her.
“Hey. It’s only a stupid test.”
She glares at him. “You can say that. You passed it. My dad’s going to kill me. God, why am I so dumbl I work and work at it and it’s all a jumble....”
“It’s just crap,” he says. “Tangents, cotangents, when are you ever going to use them? It doesn’t matter.”
The bell rings and she jumps. She turns away from him and he has to run to catch up with her. “Listen, if you want some help—”
She stops in the middle of the hall to stare at him.
“I’ll help you. I can explain it, if you want. In study hall. Or after school some night.”
“Why would you want to do that?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. “No. No thanks, it’s all right.”
The crowd sweeps them along in its flow, and a voice cuts across the hall: “Hey, Jarrett!” He looks over. Stillman grins at him. Suzanne has gone on ahead and Conrad stands a moment, looking after her, feeling relieved, and yet oddly hurt.
In the locker room that afternoon, Stillman lies in wait. “Hey, Jarrett, she busy Saturday? Hey, lemme know if she’s easy, will you?”
“Who?” Van Buren asks.
“Hey, c’mon, Jarrett, I’ll let you know about Pratt, if you let me know about Mosely.”
“Mosely?” Van Buren echoes, “Mosely?”
He slams his locker closed and their laughter follows him up the stairway to the pool. Pricks. To hell with them forever.
In bed he waits for sleep. He cannot get under until he has reviewed the day, counted up his losses. He must learn more control, cannot allow himself the luxury of anger. He has seen it happen before. Guys become easy targets for the Stillmans of the world. Next time laugh when he needles you.
What about the test? Did he pass it? He thinks so but something else—what had he said to Suzanne? It doesn’t matter and suddenly it clicks into place: why Simmons had kept such an eye on him all through the hour. Oh God, that was the class. Last year. A quiz being returned. Across his paper in red pencil Incomplete. See Me. He had stared at it all through the hour while the rest of the class discussed and made corrections. No use listening, none of it meant anything to him. He sat there, his eyes slowly filling with tears, trying to blink them back but they would not stop, and Simmons bending over his desk, asking Jarrett, are you sick? Nodding, stumbling up the aisle, facing the blackboard as Simmons wrote out a hall pass. An electric wall of silence behind them. Out of the classroom, heading not toward the nurse’s office, but toward the double exit doors. Into the parking lot to find a car that was unlocked. Him on the floor in the back seat, crying, leaning out to be sick in the snow. He had left school that day, walked around uptown, looking in windows at the Christmas displays. When it was time he went home. And the next day, the last before Christmas vacation, his homeroom teacher had called him up to the desk.
“I got a skip notice on you this morning. What happened?”
“Nothing. I didn’t feel like going to class.”
“Were you sick?”
“No.”
The teacher had looked at him. “Okay. Let’s forget it. We’ll talk about it after the holidays.”
The holidays. Christmas in Florida. Lying on the bed at the Sonesta Beach in his bathing suit, staring at a mosquito above his head, its tiny body pressed against the rough plaster ceiling, spreading a half-inch gray shadow on the stark white. The only memory he has of that period. That, and the ceaseless, remorseless blue of ocean.
Brightness surrounds him. No shadows but it must be night the sand is stiff and cold squeaks under his feet a breeze bends the spiky beach grass double to the sand.
He walks. The moon is above him and to his left. Miles and miles the sand stretches in front of him a cool smooth highway and the mouth of the tunnel appears a metal cylinder curving ten feet over his head the lower rim buried in the sand.
He enters it. Brightly lit inside its walls a polished silver-gray like the inside of a galvanized pail girders forming the rib cage that supports its walls. A sharp right-turn ahead obscures his view when he turns the corner there is disappointment the tunnel continues on no end in sight only the dimensions have shrunk. He can touch the walls now the ceiling too smooth and cold against his hands. The backs of his legs ache. He kneels down to rest sifting the fine sand from the tunnel floor through his fingers it blows away from him taking the shape of the wind like pictures in a fairy-tale book but there is no wind in the tunnel and no wires where does the light come from?
He stands discovering that the dimensions have shrunk again and now he must move forward on his hands and knees but even then his head brushes the ceiling the light is less bright and he cannot see clearly just shadows on the sand and ahead of him another turn he moves eagerly toward it.
A makeshift rectangular chute beyond the turn the sides are shored with two by fours
. He is perplexed vaguely angry what crumby workmanship how will he maneuver here he must crawl on his stomach scraping piles of sand toward himself he is too tired for this game would like to quit but still he keeps going wriggling past the first set of shorings before he rests again. He puts his head down and the cool sand feels pleasant and grainy under his cheek. When he raises his head he sees nothing. Only darkness. He is convulsed with panic begins to work himself backward and his feet strike the wall of the tunnel he shifts his position and tries again solid wall no matter where he moves his head wedged against the ceiling his chin touching the tunnel floor Oh God he is sealed in this metal tomb and the walls press upon him from all sides he cannot breathe cannot move must must twisting violently onto his back he screams
It wakes him. He can hear the echo of it inside his head. Did he scream out loud? He listens for some sound in the house, for someone pounding out of bed and down the hall toward his room. Nothing. The blood tingles in his veins, hot and then cold. His heart is pounding painfully.
He sits up; turns on the light, but slowly, slowly. No sudden movements. He feels as if he could shatter into a million pieces if he is jarred.
“I don’t hold much stock in dreams,” Berger says. “In fact, I don’t hold stock. Of any kind.”
He is annoyed. “What the hell kind of psychiatrist are you? They all believe in dreams.”
“Do they? Goddamn, I’m always outa step. Do me a favor, will you? Lie down. On the floor, that’s it. I want to try something.”
“Christ! You’re nuts, you know that?” Still, he obeys, lowering himself to the carpet and stretching out, ankles crossed, hands behind his head.
“Change of perspective,” Berger says. He likewise lowers himself. “Steadies the blood.”
“Steadies the blood,” he scoffs. “This is stupid. Besides, I lie down all the time at home. It doesn’t help. Maybe I need some kind of tranquilizer.”
“Tranquilizer?”
“Yeah. What d’you think?”
“I think,” Berger says, “that you come in here looking like something out of The Body Snatchers. It is not my impression that you are in need of a tranquilizer.”
“I feel nervous all the time. I can’t sleep.”
“Maybe your schedule’s too heavy. You’re trying to do too much. Maybe you oughta drop a course or two.”
“No.”
“No. Why not?”
“Because. I’m behind already.”
“Behind what? The Great Schedule in the Sky? The Golden Gradebook? What?”
“God, you’re preaching again. And your ceiling’s dirty.”
“So, sue me. Listen, kiddo, I lied. I believe in dreams, and I especially believe in yours, they’re fascinating as hell. Only sometimes I like you to tell me about what happens to you when you’re awake, okay? Something is bugging you, something is making you nervous. Now what is it?”
He sits up; reaches for his coffee. “Okay, I know what it is. I don’t want to swim any more. I look horrible, my timing is for shit. He’s got two guys who are better than me swimming the fifty, and, anyway, I don’t give a damn about those guys, they’re a bunch of boring jocks. And I can’t stand him, he’s a tight-ass son of a bitch—” He breaks off, clamping his teeth over the rest of the words, gripping his knees, his stomach in knots.
“Well,” Berger says, after a moment. “Well, why don’t you quit, then?”
“I can’t. It’d look so stupid. I go to him and beg for one more chance. Then, I swim for two months and quit again. Can’t you see how stupid that would look?”
“Forget how it looks. How does it feel?”
He shakes his head. “No. That’s what happened last year. It’s the same damn thing I did last year.”
“Forget last year. You think you’re the same person you were last year?”
He shrugs, lying down again, staring upward at the ceiling.
“So, tell me about the coach,” Berger says. “How come he’s a tight-ass son of a bitch?”
He smiles faintly. “I don’t know. He’s a jerk. He says to me—this is typical—‘Jarrett, I had a friend who was hospitalized for this same thing, five years ago. Been in and out of institutions ever since.’ Now what the hell am I supposed to say to that?”
“What did you say?”
“I told him I wasn’t planning on going back. He says, ‘No, I don’t suppose you are.’ ”
“Sometimes,” Berger says, “people say stupid things. They feel like they gotta say something, you know?”
“Sometimes people say stupid things, because they’re stupid.”
A wooden clock on the wall behind his head ticks away loudly, and it is relaxing to lie here with this placid man beside him, talking of anger and of change, without being irrevocably committed to it. He could go to sleep here; right now he is yawning, pleasantly tired, but it is five o’clock, time to go home.
“This problem, kiddo,” Berger says, “it’s real, you know. A good, healthy problem needs a good, healthy solution. Point of separation. Between the sicks and the wells. Real problems, real solutions, you get it?”
He rolls onto his stomach, his head buried in his arms. “Sounds like a chapter heading to me.”
Berger sighs. “I hope to hell you’re writing this stuff down. It’ll be a shame if it’s lost to the future generations.”
“I’ve got it taped up over the back of the john.”
10
Laughter drifts upstairs from the locker room, loud and raucous. From the top of the stairs, he can hear Stillman, his voice raw with complaint: “Lazenby, Jesus, why you so nervous about making a commitment, just yes or no!”
“It costs money, that’s why. For three bucks, I like to know what I’m seeing.”
“Hell, it’s a goddamn French sex film, what more do you have to know?”
More laughter, and he starts down the stairs, rubbing his head with a towel.
Lazenby says, “Okay. How about if I ask Jarrett?”
And he stops; loops the towel around his neck, listening.
“You ever think about doing anything without Jarrett?”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means what it says. I just wondered.”
Genthe says, “Hey, what’s with him anyway? How come he gets all the extra practice time? Hell, I could look better if I had extra practice time—”
“Genthe, you couldn’t look better if you were a girl,” Truan jeers. “That’s the goddamned truth.”
He stands outside the open door, smoothing his hand lightly along the polished wood frame, slowly, slowly.
Lazenby says, “I just thought we’d ask him, Kevin.”
“You know what happens when you hang around with flakes,” Stillman says. “You get flaky.”
“Man, d’you mind?” Lazenby asks mildly. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“He’s a flake.”
“You oughta get off his back, Kevin,” Van Buren says. “The guy’s got enough problems.”
“He sure has.”
More laughter and he does not wait to hear the rest, but turns abruptly, heading back up the stairs. Nothing touches him on the way, not even the air in the hallway. Salan is sitting where he left him, his head still bent over the clipboard. He listens, his mouth a taut line, as Conrad explains. That it is something he has been thinking about for a long time, and he is sure, now, he knows he is doing the right thing.
At last, he says, “Jarrett, you gotta be kidding me. I don’t get it. I excuse you from practice twice a week so you can see some shrink. I work with you every damn night at your convenience, now what the hell more am I supposed to be doing for you?”
“Nothing.” Shrink. Hate that word coarse ignorant just the kind of word you’d expect from stupid bastard like Salan will not get mad control is all just someday come down here tell him what he can do with his goddamned ignorant opinions.
“A bright kid like you,” Salan continues, “with everything going for him. I don’t get it
. Why do you want to keep messing up your life?”
He says carefully, “I don’t think it’ll mess up my life if I stop swimming.” Stay calm stay calm this is not a spastic leap this is a well-thought-out sane and sensible decision. A real solution to a real problem.
Salan says flatly, “Okay. This is it. You’re a big kid now, and actions have consequences. I’m not taking you back again. You remember that.”
Fucking swell I’ll remember all right. Aloud he says, “No, sir. I won’t ask you to, sir.”
The locker room is empty. He showers, dresses, packs his athletic bag, making sure all his stuff is cleaned out of the locker. Stalling, but he knows it’s no good, Lazenby will wait for him. He doesn’t want to ride home with them, doesn’t want to see them again, but it would look stupid, letting them sit there, sneaking out the back door, and why the hell should he walk? Why should he freeze his ass off because they are jerks and pricks?
He heads for the car. The smell of snow is in the air. Early this year. It is still a week before Thanksgiving. Truan, Van Buren, and Stillman are in the back seat. He gets in front, setting his bag on the floor. Lazenby asks if he is interested in going to the show tonight. He declines. He has to study.
“You oughta lay off studying, Jarrett,” Stillman says. “Screws up your mind. Keep all the channels clear up there for heavy thought.”
They laugh. To his ears, the sound is forced; false.
“We’ll be back by eleven,” Lazenby says.
“No. I can’t.”
