The Universe in Miniature in Miniature

by Patrick Somerville

  The Center was downtown, a flat one-story building with tan walls and dark red window shutters that looked like it had been imported from 1905. There were three bars across the street from the parking lot—one of them had a line of motorcycles out front—and the library was next door. The parking lot looked full, and as I walked toward the door, I wondered how many other kids from class would come. It seemed possible that Mr. Carpenter would do something dramatic, especially if enough of us were there for him. I imagined him giving a speech from the crowd, standing up, a strong voice of reason, cutting through everyone’s greed. I imagined him bringing in video of elk in the wild to give an example of another version of elk-life. I imagined us all standing up, one by one, and booing to drown out the voice of Mr. Krueger and his sons. I didn’t even know if he had sons, but if he did, I thought that they would be evil, and albino, and twins.

  People were bustling and talking; there was tension in the room. The lights were up high and I could smell popcorn and coffee. I saw Mr. Carpenter sitting by himself in a middle row. I could see the back of his head. His blond hair looked like it was combed for once, and he was wearing a nice shirt.

  There was no one else from class.

  After a few more minutes of crowd murmurs, two members of the County Board brought the meeting to order and a man wearing a toupee expertly operated a gavel and then thanked us all for coming. “And I know that most of you are here for the same issue,” he said, “so we’ll get to that immediately, and then any other topic we can address after a break.” My heart was crazy now; it’s too complicated to know what it was beating for, and how much of it was him and how much of it was the hunting—I think I cared about the deer that got shot—but it didn’t matter then. Something was there and its source was irrelevant. It was so easy to feel nothing, all the time, and I held on as hard as I could, because the worst thing, I thought, now, would be for it to go away.

  “I think Mary Geller here in the front row would like to say a few things about her proposal to make quite a few interesting changes to the public pool,” said the toupee.

  There was silence from the crowd as he looked around. Everyone was finally settled into their seats.

  “Without further ado, then, I’ll let Mary have the floor. She can make her case.”

  I didn’t quite understand what was happening until a half-hour had passed. There was applause, and then a woman proceeded to speak about the tiles, changing rooms, fence, depth, diving boards, lawn, concessions, tickets, fees, special days, lifeguard coverage, chlorine, filters, and leaf removal at the swimming pool in Abraham Lincoln Park.

  She had data with her. Data she had collected over the summer. She told us that she had finally tabulated it all. She held up a graph. She had recommendations.

  Another half-hour passed, filled with questions from the crowd and conversations about what moneys were available. I remember hearing somebody say, “Yes, but what about other inflatable options? Are we being myopic?”

  Eventually the group reached a consensus on the pool, and one of the council-members said, “Well, thank you, thanks everybody. We have a few other issues that we can get to after a short break. Looks like we’ll be discussing”—he looked down—“the bike trail, and we have a man from ComEd here to talk about new electricity policies.” He looked up, smiled. “Then we’ll have an open floor. Thanks.”

  When Mr. Carpenter stood up, it didn’t look as dramatic as I wanted it to look; everybody else was in the process of standing, too, milling about, chatting, gathering their purses and jackets and hats. We were our town being our town. It was obvious to me that they were all leaving, and that nobody was even going to stay for the second half. I felt it coming—it fit so well. He didn’t know because he wasn’t from here.

  “Sir,” he said, raising his hand.

  He said it loudly, but still, my heart almost broke.

  The toupee man noticed, nodded at Mr. Carpenter. People continued to trickle.

  “Can we talk about the wholesale slaughter of caged wildlife that goes on at the Krueger Park every day?”

  Some people stopped talking, but not everyone. Toupee nodded and held out his hand, and I guessed that his thought was: We’ve got a crazy.

  “That can be addressed when the floor is open,” he said.

  “Shaun Carpenter,” said Mr. Carpenter. “Local biology teacher.”

  “We received the letters, we are aware of your class’s concern. We have you slated for 8:45.”

  “No one will be here at 8:45, sir,” he said a little louder.

  We were sitting in a community center in a small town with local politicians, and it was over, wholly, before it had ever started, and I saw Mr. Carpenter standing there, shaking his head a little, obviously enraged, and I watched everyone continue to filter out of the room, a few of them looking back over their shoulders at him as he made his way down his aisle and then up to the front table. I was elated, seeing him fail. I can’t explain. He leaned in close to the toupee man and I could see him speaking passionately, and I could see the man absorbing every bit of passion with condescending nods, even as he packed papers into his briefcase, and I thought of Mr. Carpenter stuck in his kayak, underwater, sitting upside down, holding his breath. How he had won then, in his way, and now something that looked so small was so much stronger than him. He could maybe have done more. He might have stayed longer. But when the conversation ended, I watched him stand, look up at the ceiling, return to his chair, get his jacket, and storm out. He never looked at me.

  I followed him outside. I thought he might go lean against his car to cool off. Then he would come back and wait for his time.

  “It’s so nice to see some of our young people interested in the goings on in the government,” I heard someone say. The toupee man was behind me.

  I kept watching Mr. Carpenter. He did go to his car, for a second. But only to check to make sure his doors were locked. Then he put his hands in his pockets, crossed the street, and started beating up a garbage can.

  I continued to watch as he punched the metal can right in the face and got it onto the ground, then mashed it from the top with stomps. The trash all spilled out onto the sidewalk around his feet. It was loud; I could hear him swearing, too. He jumped onto some fast food leftovers.

  He kicked the barrel one last time with a huge football kick, then walked into one of the bars.

  “I know,” I said, turning to the toupee man, who had just watched the same thing I had. “I couldn’t stop thinking about that pool.”

  He was still looking across the street, at the garbage Mr. Carpenter had attacked.

  I shrugged. “We have to keep cool in the summer.”

  I waited. I didn’t go back inside for the second half. There was nobody there, anyway. They’d all come to talk about the pool. I could hear a few voices droning through the door behind me as I sat alone on a bench, watching the front of the bar.

  It was past 9:00 when he came out. The meeting had ended, and toupee man had offered me a ride home when he saw that I was still outside.

  “No,” I told him. “I have a ride coming.”

  He looked at me curiously and said goodbye, and I hugged myself on the bench as the cars all pulled out, and I was left alone with Mr. Carpenter’s vehicle. It looked dumpy. It looked like the kind of thing a clown might drive, except in real life, after finishing a shift of clown-work.

  He crossed the street head-down, hands in his pockets, hair hanging over his forehead.

  He was trying to get his key in the door when I said, “Hey, Mr. Carpenter.”

  He looked up, and his eyes were glassy. He squinted toward me and said, “Who’s that? Gina?”

  “It’s Courtney,” I said. “From school.”

  “Courtney?” Just as he said it he wobbled a little bit and reached for the top of his car to hold himself up.

  “Hey,” I said, standing. “Yeah. Your student.”

  “Were you at the meeting?”

  “I
screwed up the time,” I said. “I was like an hour and a half late. I only saw the end.”

  He squinted. “Did they talk about Krueger?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No one else from class? No one came later?”

  “No.”

  All through this conversation I half-strolled my way toward him.

  “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m a little disappointed at the moment.”

  “I know,” I said. “Totally. That sucks.”

  “Are you waiting for a ride?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s coming.”

  He nodded for a long time with his serious teacher face, as though he were thinking of something he could write on the chalkboard.

  “I can drop you,” he said finally.

  For the first time since I’d known him, something told me to move away from him, not toward him. But I was nervous, too. I said okay and went around to the passenger door of his clown car and waited for him to unlock it. Keys in the lock, he looked at me over the roof, and I looked back at him, this time meeting his eyes and not looking down or away, like I usually did. I felt like we might be on a date.

  “I’ve never seen you anywhere but inside your biology lab,” I said.

  “That’s where I spend most of my time.”

  “My door’s still locked.”

  I don’t know why, but this made him stop rattling his keys. His head was still down and I could see the look on his face for a few seconds. I could see him rubbing his eyes. When he looked up I could see how red his cheeks were.

  “Courtney, hey,” he said. “You know what? I had a couple of beers over at that place. I actually don’t think it’s a good idea for me to drive you. It’s probably not a good idea for me to drive at all, actually.” He raised his eyebrows. Responsible again. He was looking at the top of his car.

  “Oh.”

  “Do you live close?”

  “Not far.”

  He breathed once, through his nose, like he was choking back a burp of puke, then looked over his shoulder.

  He burped again under his breath.

  “Are you okay.”

  He burped once more. “How far away?” he said, through the exhale.

  He said it still looking over his shoulder, and he sounded like he was in pain.

  “I don’t know. Less than a mile.”

  “Do you want me to walk you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Okay.”

  He walked beside me, hands in his pockets, up on people’s lawns even though I was in the street. We didn’t talk about Krueger. He told me about a book he was trying to write, about wildlife and how it didn’t fit into the human world, how it had been doomed from the moment we evolved past a certain point. The Terminal Line. That’s what he called it. He told me there were some scientists who wanted to bring elephants and lions to America. This amazed me. I imagined them walking down empty highways.

  He was talking softly; I could hardly hear him, but I could smell beer and cigarettes and bar smells even though the wind was blowing—it was just oozing off of him. It made me feel like I had been in the bar with him, or that I was a river guide in Idaho, casting about after college, lost like him. He said, after a little speech about the grasslands in the Midwest, out of nowhere, “I actually don’t have many friends anymore,” and laughed. “Which is funny, if you know me.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Teaching is a funny thing,” he said. “In a way it’s the noblest thing to do. But you can also end up in strange places. Like here. In this fucking place. For example.”

  “But what about those who can’t do, teach?” I asked, smiling.

  “Right,” he said. “Funny girl.”

  “You can do, though,” I said. “How come people never say that teaching counts as doing?”

  “Excellent question,” he said. “I like that. But I think if you say that then you have to admit that there are different kinds of doing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I admit that.”

  “Doing,” he repeated. “This doing question is important.”

  “Instead of talking.”

  “People hold their anger about things,” he said. “That’s what stalls everything in the modern world. You know?”

  “Totally.”

  “I find it strange to imagine how briefly we’ve been here in terms of the age of the planet. Or just the age of life.”

  He looked at me, realized that he was floating away into his own place. He smiled and looked ahead again. “This stuff is a cliché to you. I’m a big cliché, right?”

  “No. I completely know what you’re saying.”

  “I think I actually might be.”

  “You’re not.”

  “What I’m saying is that we’ve barely been here and already we’ve come to a point where we only ever compromise.”

  “What about doing, then?”

  “That’s what I mean,” he said. “Doing is the opposite of compromise.”

  “What about destroying?”

  “Haha,” he said. “Funny girl.”

  I felt we’d reached a plateau. We kept walking. Eventually he asked me all sorts of questions about my family, and I told him about my parents, and he nodded and said, “That’s hard,” and I said, “Not really,” and he said, “Okay,” but then suddenly the lost moment was back and he was there, right beside me, and his arms were around me, and we were kissing sloppily in the shadows between streetlights. The kiss was wet with alcohol and peanuts—his tongue whipped in tight circles—and I could hear him breathing heavily through his nose, almost grunting, almost a gorilla, trying, maybe, to push me further back, back between the houses, and it was hard not to see him as an animal.

  I didn’t let him move me. I might have been stiff at first but after a few seconds of feeling his hands holding onto my ribs underneath my jacket I let myself relax more, even though, as it happened, I felt clear adult sense that it should stop for his sake, not for mine. Like he was maybe even younger than me. Like I was witnessing the real self-destruction of a person. Something I had not, up to that point in my life, understood could actually happen, except in books and movies.

  It ended as fast as it started.

  He stepped back.

  He said, “Oooohkaaayy. I am a pedophile.”

  We started walking.

  “We shouldn’t have done that,” he said.

  “I don’t think you’re a creep,” I said to his back. “Hey, slow down.” I touched his shoulder.

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean? Maybe you should turn around.”

  He did.

  “This isn’t normal,” he said. “Is what I’m saying. This is not what I would—it’s this fucking place.” He yelled the last word, and it echoed.

  “I’m not going to tell. It’s fine. Whatever.”

  We were quiet then. The wind blew a little and we both looked straight ahead and moved again. I told him when to go, a few streets later, just so he wouldn’t have to take me all the way to my door and keep feeling like a pervert.

  “How is your father?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “We’ve been emailing.”

  “Fine.”

  “He’s become very communicative.”

  “Fine. Then why did you just ask me how he was?”

  “It was last week. He gave me the update. It sounds like things are okay.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They are. You are correct.”

  “We discussed,” she said, “very briefly, the possibility of everyone getting back together for Thanksgiving.”

  I stared at her. “What do you mean by back together?”

  “Well, James will be back. We think it might be a good idea to have the family together this first time.”

  “Why?”

  “To help the transition.”

  “From what to what?”

  “From being toge
ther to not being together.”

  “That’s totally weird, Mom. It already happened. And that’s being together. You’re saying you want to be together to help not be together. Don’t you see the problem?”

  “It’s just a thought.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s a thought. Don’t you see the problem?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t. I see the solution.”

  It was a Saturday, November 13th, and it was 69 degrees outside. The sky was perfect. It had been like this for three days, and the people of Farrow had reverted to summertime behavior, strolling in the streets, mowing lawns—I even saw a boy eating melting ice cream. In class, Mr. Carpenter had made comments about carbon and Al Gore, but they felt flip and cynical, not wise, not deliberate, not guided, not teacherly—not containing anything about how it was possible for us to do things and change things, for it to not always be stuck this way. For there to be a chance at reversals. For people to actually use ideas to do something. We hadn’t talked about what had happened, we hadn’t even acknowledged it, but I could feel his attention in class, this new sexual part of him, and I was scared that everybody else could feel it, too. We had moved on to dissecting our fetal pigs; every day Holly and I would haul out our vacuum-sealed bag and we’d lay our pig out on our long tray and take it apart, piece by piece, and try to name everything that we cut out. I lost the pancreas. But I will be honest. Sometimes, in the midst of this cluster of flesh, as he paced around, I would be able to close my eyes and imagine sex. Far more than I had. Clear pictures in my mind.

  I looked outside, at the sun and the blue sky. I wanted to be able to love how beautiful it was, but really, according to science, the Earth was dying.

  “I’m going for a run,” I told my mother.

  “You and running,” my mom said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s an interest,” I said. When I turned back to her I saw that she was now staring out the window, too, but the look in her eyes made it seem like she was not allowed to go through to the other side.