The Gray House

by Mariam Petrosyan

  This time Ralph was alone among the counselors in having been through a graduation, and it struck him as curious that the pregraduation month had passed quietly, almost peacefully. A single visit from the supervisory committee. No parents except those explicitly invited. Several docile Managers, no Contacters at all, no inspectors, no reams of reports. The committee arrived and departed without a single comment. All that despite the House being completely, comprehensively in tatters. Shark was singularly inept at being a principal, and the state of records and accounts could only be described as disastrous.

  Ralph had thought about that and soon figured out the reason for the unexpectedly forgiving attitude. The House was on its last legs. No one cared anymore about its overall dilapidation, the falling chunks of plaster and the condition of the fire extinguishers. The fire and sanitary inspectors could not be bothered about a building slated for demolition. It would have been silly to insist on repairs and check the safety procedures. Ralph, with a sadness that surprised even him, realized that in the Outsides world, the House already had been struck from the registers. All that remained was for it to die.

  On the day of departure of the last successful test takers, he managed to push out the troubling thoughts. That day even resembled the previous graduations somewhat. The parents of the four smarty-pants had arrived simultaneously and before the announced time. The active Manager among them, Booger’s father, caused a gorgeous scene that lasted a good half of the morning. Bedouinne’s parents weren’t into scenes, but their daughter did everything in her power to make this day memorable for them and succeeded brilliantly. Chickenpox’s mother fainted when she discovered that her daughter’s body had been adorned with no fewer than three separate tattoos, a parting gift from her loving friends.

  Tradition dictated that the counselors see off the students from their groups, so Ralph was free to be engaged in the role of a guard. For two hours straight he chased away from the reception area the gawkers who desperately desired to join the fun, listening to the screams behind the door until the crowds finally dispersed. Not two minutes after the hallway cleared, Homer emerged from the reception, and two Pheasants wheeled after him. Homer was a wreck, Pheasants beamed.

  Ralph waited for Shark to come out, reported that his hallway shift had been uneventful, and inquired why the farewells took so long.

  “Good thing they happened at all,” Shark said. He had a guilty look.

  From the reception came the sound of breaking crockery and someone bawling. Ralph guessed that this was Darling unwinding after her encounter with the parents and decided to leave it at that. A counselor who’s just gone through the ordeal of spending time with the departing students and their parents was, to one who hasn’t, as a soldier who has returned from a skirmish to one who’s stayed back in the trenches. Seeing Ralph in the room could push them over the edge.

  He wasn’t visiting Smoker but did inquire after his well-being every day. Not because he felt concerned about his health, but because of a guilty conscience. Besides, he was afraid Smoker might sink into an even deeper funk. Spiders respected Ralph’s wishes and hadn’t invented any mysterious disorders to explain Smoker’s stint in the hospital wing, saying to him instead that they were simply concerned with his blood work, but the hypochondriac boy had freaked out anyway. This needed to be resolved soon, one way or another. Ralph couldn’t insist on keeping him for more than ten days, but on the other hand he didn’t want to return Smoker to the group from which he was clearly being squeezed out.

  He went into the staff room, to make the requisite call about Smoker, and ran into Godmother. She was one of the few who really used her desk there as a work space. She was behind that desk now, sorting some papers, nodded curtly in response to his greeting, and then asked if he could spare her a few moments. That didn’t surprise Ralph. As the graduation crept closer, the counselors started asking him about his experience with the previous ones. By now he was used to the questions, which were always the same, and they kept asking them over and over again, as if they didn’t hear his answers, or couldn’t understand them.

  Godmother collected the loose sheets into a file and only looked at Ralph after making sure the surface of the table was clean. She folded her hands on top of it, neatly, palm to palm.

  “I remember you saying once that at the time of the last graduation the situation in the House was less stable. If I’m not mistaken, you were referring to the ongoing confrontation between two belligerent groups.”

  “Yes,” Ralph said. “It had been much worse then.”

  He sat down, feeling somewhat uneasy, as he always did in Godmother’s presence. This woman had an ambiguous effect on him. Yes, she was undoubtedly good at what she did, effortlessly handling the problems that would reduce Darling to a sniveling mess, she was smart, responsible, and rational, and the girls respected her. At the same time, her aloofness was off-putting. No one in the House liked her. To Ralph it looked like she had no feelings at all for her charges, that she was comprehensively impersonal. He tried to convince himself that this was just a professional deftly hiding her emotions, but it did nothing to dispel his prejudice. Godmother was too icy for her job. Or too old. Trim and straight, like a retired ballet dancer, invariably in the same gray pantsuit, white cuffs gleaming, she appeared fifty while in reality pushing seventy.

  “I would be interested to know if that remark hasn’t been simply an attempt to calm down the principal,” Godmother said.

  Her eyes behind the glasses glinted severely and accusingly. The cold, round, staring eyes, the hooked nose, the long neck—they all combined to make her look like a bird of prey. But despite all that, anyone talking to her got the impression that she had been a great beauty once.

  “No,” Ralph said after a pause. “I don’t remember exactly the conversation you’re referring to, so it is possible that I was trying to calm him down, but the last time the situation really was much less stable.”

  “Are you concerned at all that as of today there are again two belligerent groups in the House?”

  It took some time for Ralph to understand what she meant, and when he did he almost laughed out loud.

  “No,” he said. “I am not concerned. I do not consider this conflict to be serious.”

  Godmother’s fixed stare became unblinking.

  “Why?” she said.

  “You see,” he said, feeling awkward for intruding on her turf with his musings, “this so-called war is entirely the girls’ invention. I think it’s their way of coping. They are aware that graduation is coming whether they like it or not, and with it the separation from the boys with whom they have established relationships. They also see no chance of those relationships continuing beyond the gates of the House. So, what’s easier: accepting the separation or convincing themselves that those who they’re being torn from are the enemy? They chose the latter. On balance, it would mean less pain for them overall. The war may look silly, but it appears to be an effective technique.”

  “Do you consider yourself an expert on female psychology?” Godmother said.

  What infuriated Ralph wasn’t the question itself but that it made him blush.

  “No,” he said drily. “I do not. I was merely expressing an opinion.”

  “An opinion that deserves the highest praise,” Godmother said even more impersonally. “I salute you.”

  Ralph again tried not to let his annoyance show.

  “Would that be all?”

  “Apparently,” Godmother said. “I would like you to keep one thing in mind, however. The principal does not share your optimism.”

  “I would imagine,” Ralph muttered.

  “And he is prepared to use all options available to him to ensure safety at the time of graduation. What would your attitude be toward that?”

  “One of understanding,” Ralph said, getting up. “If you’ll excuse me, I still have some unfinished business to attend to before the meeting.”

  Godmother nodded. �
�Of course. Should we be expecting any suggestions from you?”

  “Possibly.”

  As he left, she remained in her place, looking ahead at the wall, like a robot that’s been switched off. Sitting very straight, with hands folded in front of her.

  A round-faced, big-eared boy in a black skull-and-crossbones T-shirt peeled leisurely away from the door. Ralph closed it behind himself.

  “What were you doing?” he whispered.

  “Listening in,” the boy said earnestly. “I am well aware that I shouldn’t,” he added, preempting Ralph’s reaction.

  Ralph lightly massaged his eyelids.

  “Why do you do it, then?”

  “Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of my ethical values,” the boy admitted. “Has that ever happened to you?”

  Ralph leaned against the door.

  “Please leave,” he said. “Get out of my sight.”

  Whitebelly nodded eagerly and retreated.

  “Did you hear that?” Ralph mumbled, making his way toward the stairs. “And this one isn’t even a Log.”

  But in all truth, he was glad of the encounter. Charmingly insolent Whitebelly chased the image of the unmoving mannequin in the staff room from his mind’s eye. A frightening image, even if he wasn’t quite ready to admit it.

  Ralph climbed up to the third floor, to the break room where the meeting was scheduled for three o’clock. Originally this was supposed to be a home away from home for counselors, but the drab institutional furnishings and rickety tables piled with dog-eared magazines invited the ghosts of a dentist’s waiting room, so there never had been any volunteers to spend their free time here. Finally the administration hauled in three desks and a slide projector, put up a dry-erase board, and designated it a meeting room. This breathed new life into the space, and soon counselors claimed parts of it for storage, divided up the chairs, and declared the tiny balcony to be the smoking area, and Sheriff even brought his favorite boombox. Now at any time of day or night someone would be in, even if most often that someone was Homer, dozing on the sofa.

  Today the room reeked of menthol and medical alcohol, again reminding Ralph of the dentist.

  Homer and Raptor, slumped in chairs, had all the appearance of victims of a natural disaster. Homer’s balding dome was crowned by an enormous cold pack. Raptor stared fixedly at the ceiling. Their ties looked like they’d been used recently in vigorous attempts to strangle their owners. Their jackets were nowhere to be seen.

  One desk was occupied by Darling, applying a fresh coat of paint to her face; another, by downcast Sheep, preparing a new cold pack. Sheriff crowded the door to the balcony. The smoke from his cigar wafted into the room, and that concerned him not a bit: his body was safely in the smoking zone, and where the smoke chose to go was its own business. Sheriff wasn’t about to miss a single detail of what was going on in the room.

  Ralph sat on the sofa between the two chair dwellers, moaning Homer and ominously silent Raptor. Sheep tiptoed over to Homer, changed the cold pack, and shot Ralph a reproachful glance. “Where have you been hiding while we were in agony here, desperately in need of your help?” was the approximate message of that glance. Or maybe she was just chiding him for staying silent. Or for lack of compassion. Or maybe neither. Sheep’s watery stare seemed always on the verge of tears and always accusing of something. The playful curls of her hair and the girlish ruffs of her dresses clashed with the permanently sour expression on her face.

  “Thankfully I was able to refrain from throttling anyone today,” Darling muttered through clenched teeth, studying her reflection in the compact’s mirror. “An amazing feat of self-control . . .”

  “Ha, ha,” Raptor said grimly, as a reminder that he was still alive.

  “And to think, I assumed Lenses had set the bar impossibly high,” Darling continued. “But that oversexed cow Bedouinne managed to top even her.”

  “How can you say things like that about a child?” Sheep exclaimed indignantly.

  “A child?” Darling almost dropped the compact in surprise. “A child? The dumb little slut looks older than her mother!”

  “Language,” Sheep squeaked.

  This was obviously far from the worst language that had been uttered in the room recently, and Sheep’s indignation somehow lacked conviction. Ralph again congratulated himself on not coming up here earlier. The hysterics seemed to have died down, and he wasn’t enough of a sympathetic listener to precipitate another round. He had no doubt, however, that all the sordid details of the indignities suffered by each of them would be rehashed anew before the meeting started.

  “What is it you’re trying to see there?” Homer said caustically. “New lines that appeared since morning?”

  “No!” Darling snapped the compact shut. “New gray hairs in my nose!”

  They exchanged looks full of deep mutual loathing. Homer self-consciously probed his own nose. There was plenty of hair in it, gray as well as other colors, projecting happily far beyond its confines, so he could only take Darling’s remark as a personal jab.

  “Look who’s talking! Like he’s the one aggrieved,” Darling sneered. “After everything that we had to listen to on his account!”

  Homer moaned, jerking his legs in untied shoes, and hoisted the cold pack higher.

  “He has the temerity to portray himself a victim!”

  Sheep, seemingly to cool down the room’s overheated atmosphere, switched on the fan standing in the corner. Sheriff stomped to the windowsill and mounted it.

  Darling, unexpectedly pretty in anger, her eyes shining and even her nose appearing somewhat shorter, addressed Ralph directly.

  “Now you tell me, whatever has he been thinking, dragging three Pheasants to meet with the parents of one of them? I wish someone would explain that to me!”

  Nobody was planning to explain to her anything about Pheasants, Ralph least of all, but Darling wasn’t really in need of explanations. She wanted to spill out her frustration. A silent listener was perfectly acceptable. But she got some unexpected competition.

  “Damn Shark couldn’t be pried off the phone,” Raptor said to Ralph as if taking him into confidence. “Forty minutes! Booger’s daddy is eating me alive, and the old codger keeps babbling nonsense into the dead receiver. Ain’t that a riot?”

  “What did he want?” Ralph said, accepting that one way or the other he’d have to listen to the whole story.

  “Who?”

  “Booger’s father.”

  “A graduation certificate, what else! What do all of them want when they start that whole song and dance about quality of education? ‘I don’t care where you get it from, that’s your problem, you should have warned us that you were running a school for retards here,’ all that crap.”

  Raptor rubbed his forehead.

  “Boogy brought his old man a copy of the question booklet. So this buffalo keeps waving the goddamned sheet in front of my face, roaring so loud you could hear him two blocks away. Wants to know how come most of our students botched the answers to those questions. And what am I supposed to tell him? When the hardest one in there is ‘Austria is located in a. Europe, b. Asia’? And to top it off, those disgusting little Pheasants of his”—he nodded at Homer, who blinked guiltily—“are right there next to us, tossing out Latin proverbs and happily citing philosophers of antiquity.”

  Homer moaned, loudly and defiantly, sending Sheep scrambling.

  “Then,” Raptor went on, winding himself up, “Cupcake’s mom takes that splotchy little scrap from Booger’s daddy, acquaints herself with its contents, and starts an inquest, for what possible reason these boys here”—Raptor switched to a high-pitched voice—“these two gentlemen, who have just displayed an astonishingly high level of intellect, could have failed this, the most straightforward of tests.”

  Ralph couldn’t help himself and smiled.

  “So, how did they wiggle out of it?”

  “Wiggle out?” Raptor said. “Pheasants? They didn’t! T
hey just sat there ogling us and smirking! I was the one who had to do all the wiggling. For everyone, because Alf here decided to keel over and play dead!”

  “It was a heart attack,” Homer protested. “I really could have died. There was not an ounce of deceit!”

  “Yeah, right.” Raptor nodded. “Of course not. One’s clutching his chest, the other his phone. Guess who’s left to deal with the mess?”

  “If you ask me,” Sheriff growled from his perch, pointing at Homer, “it’s all his fault. There’s no call to be pushing his Pheasants everywhere. They’d give anyone the willies. Now take my Ratlings, they make sense whenever they open their mouths.”

  “I see, so that’s why their mouths are always hanging open,” Darling interjected. “And their eyes are closed. And their heads are twitching.”

  “Right, that’s what I’m talking about,” Sheriff said, unfazed. “Just the ticket.”

  Homer, wearing a deeply haunted look, swallowed a couple of pills and took a swig out of the mug brought over by Sheep.

  “Coffee? Tea?” Sheep addressed the assembly.

  Before anyone could answer, Shark came in. His suit was rumpled, the tie hung askew, but overall he was unusually bright and businesslike. Godmother followed right behind him.

  Shark went to the table, poured himself some water, drank it up, looked around the room with the air of a commander before the final battle, and announced, “The topic of today’s discussion is graduation.”

  Ralph thought that Shark couldn’t be anything but disheartened by what he saw. His hastily assembled putative army was in disarray. Homer, even after having pulled the cold pack off his head, cut a pitiful figure. Raptor, with his twisted tie and vacant stare, wasn’t much better. Sheriff, perched on the windowsill, brought to mind Humpty-Dumpty just before that great fall. Flustered Sheep imitated a pincushion. Darling, as always, overdid it while applying her makeup; the result was a teenager on her first trip to a nightclub.

  And still this motley gang, as idiotic-looking as it is, is my pack, Ralph thought. Or whatever can be called my pack. I am one of them.