Teach Me

by R. A. Nelson

  Still they haven’t touched. What are they talking about? I can’t stand it anymore—my miserable curiosity overcomes my terror. I extend my arm under the grill to the nearest edge of the slider. An imperceptible pull and it gives. With obscene patience, I tug it open a few inches, then take my hand away again.

  “Wish it could be another way,” Mr. Mann is saying. The words roll through me like medicated steam.

  “But I’ve always had my own account,” Alicia says as she pushes things around on the stove. “I’ll go first thing in the morning and set it up. You’ll see. It’ll be easier to organize that way.”

  Mr. Mann’s shoulders sag. “Your mother—” he starts, but stops himself. “But I like to keep things together. It’ll be so complicated to keep up with it if we divide them up that way. I have enough trouble balancing one. Won’t it be too complicated?”

  Alicia turns, spatula in the air. “No, silly, it’ll be easier. I promise. You just have to be sure to use the right checkbook. We’ll get them in different colors. Color coded! Green for you, blue for me. And maybe a third account—we’ll make it red—only for yearly expenses. You know, onetime things like car tags.”

  I watch them eat.

  My heart drops into my stomach—I’ve never had a real meal with him, something cooked and put on a table. Just like that, she’s that far ahead of me already. It looks like stir-fry. Alicia rakes vegetables from a black pan onto a couple of plates. Mr. Mann sits. As he dips his fork to the plate and lifts it to his mouth again, I study the muscles moving in his back. I’ve tasted him there.

  Alicia eats across from him. She stabs and eats her food with the fork turned upside down. Efficient and European. My fingernails dig into the wormy deck. I didn’t expect this. The domesticity of the scene is worse than catching them in bed. Worse because it shows they have all the time in the world for making love. It has its place in their lives, can be as huge or small as they need, not the central axis on which everything turns.

  “So are you sure you want to switch majors again?” Mr. Mann says.

  “I’m sure,” Alicia says, collecting the plates. “I’ve tried it for three years. I’m sick of all the math and chemistry. I’ll never get through it. I’ve got enough credits to be a junior, but it doesn’t add up to anything.”

  “But nursing? Won’t it be like starting over?”

  “A lot of what I already have can be used as electives. Plus I really think I’ll like it. I’ll be happier, I really will. I like people, not numbers.”

  Something inside me, a throbbing, insistent fear, eases a bit—so she’s been to three years of college. That puts her in her twenties, at least. I feel guilt wash in with the letting go of the fear—there is something so amazingly wrong about overhearing a conversation like this. It’s harmless, but it’s not harmless. But I can’t stop, not now.

  They clean up, load the dishwasher; she pops him with a dish towel while he pretends not to notice. If they turn on his music, I will set fire to the building.

  They flick off the kitchen light, head up the short hall. All is quiet, show over.

  Now.

  I turn my entire body into an Ear and listen for several more minutes. Nothing. Then, just when I’m about to give up and leave—as if on cue—I hear Alicia giggle horribly. A black fury rises up in me, overwhelming anything else.

  I brace for sexy laughter. Nothing. I can smell the heartbreakingly familiar cheap carpeting in the exhalations of the room mixed with a hint of ginger. And Him. His scent is there too. I can never forget it. I close my eyes a moment and let the air from inside wash over my face.

  Big thump.

  I tense, scurry back on my heels. Was it the bedroom? My face feels as if it has been injected with novocaine. I’m not sure I can move the muscles that control my lips, my eyes. I get closer again and force myself to wait. The numb tightness travels down my shoulders to my arms and hands.

  Are they? Could they?

  No. Not with me here. It’s too evil.

  The bathroom door suddenly swings open, throwing a rhombus of yellow light across the hall. I’m frozen. I hear the oceanic sound of flushing. Mr. Mann pivots on his heel, still zipping up.

  “!”

  He doesn’t say a word, but he’s seen me through the door.

  I scramble away in horror. In two steps I catch my leg over the rail and I’m spinning in space, free falling. I land on my side with a terrible whump on the soggy squares of unanchored sod. Then I’m up, limp-running toward the swamp.

  I don’t remember getting into Wilkie Collins, starting his popping engine, driving away. I remember Mr. Mann’s face. The shock and hatred on it.

  Why, why, why?

  MUCH madness is divinest sense

  To a discerning eye;

  Much sense the starkest madness.

  ’T is the majority

  In this, as all, prevails.

  Assent, and you are sane;

  Demur, — you’re straightway dangerous,

  And handled with a chain.

  I’m horrified that I am. One of those people—you can see it in their eyes. You might be doing something simple, just going through the grocery store; you come to the next aisle, and there they are, not ready for you. The way they are torn up inside— they’ve let it show on their face, even if only for a moment; it pops out, and you just happen to accidentally be there to see it— the way they feel deep inside, completely open and exposed. How ripped apart they are, how close to death or even worse than death—close to losing their minds. It is pushing right up to their eyeballs and leaking out, so that the only way to get relief, the only way, is to let it all come screaming and tearing out sometime when you think nobody is looking, right here, right now, in the goddamn cereal aisle at the grocery, but when you do—

  Am I madness? Do I need to be chained?

  big black blue

  Home.

  In the driveway, I can’t get out.

  I’m shaking all over, lying on my hurt side, my face on Wilkie’s dusty seat. Land of a Thousand Butts.

  I realize with a plunging horror I’ll never be one of those Great Souls you hear about. Like Mother Teresa. I’ll always be a girl who can be just as good as the world is to her. Like Bill Clinton or Madonna or Sammy Sosa or my next-door neighbor.

  For the first time I see nothing ahead, not even the chance to hurt him. As dull as it sounds, I see blackness. Not an absence of light, but an absence of a path, a direction. The blackness is a barrier. A blockage, a foulness in a pipe.

  This is not the Nothing that exists before everything or the Nothing that exists after all is gone. This is a definite Something, but it comes from somewhere outside my experience. This is what people must feel when they enter the hospital for the last time or take too many sleeping pills.

  A noise.

  I can’t let my parents find me like this; what will they think?

  I pop up painfully just as a black car passes, menacing, interminable, the interior lights blinking goofily on and off. Surely no car can be this long. It’s a limousine. Some of the windows are rolled down. Screams of laughter.

  Prom night.

  How could I forget?

  I stumble into the house, slip into my room, and change my wet clothes before Mom can see me like this. She’s watching Wheel of Fortune in the den. I want to lift the TV and throw it through the window.

  “I thought you were at work,” she says.

  “No.”

  “Nine, come here.”

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong, honey?” She forgets the clacking wheel, clacking contestants, ageless Pat Sajak.

  “Nothing, Mom.”

  “Schuyler called.”

  “Great.”

  “Aren’t you going to call him back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “And what’s wrong with Wilkie? Doesn’t that boy ever want to come meet us?”

  I laugh, and it’s an awfu
l laugh. Mom looks at me and blinks.

  “I made him up, Mom. I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “Wilkie Collins is my car. I got tired of you asking about boys and the prom, so I made him up.”

  “Well.”

  I can’t tell if she wants to laugh too or maybe just cry.

  “Well,” she says again. By then I’m moving to the bathroom. I haul my jeans down and check my hip in the mirror. In the morning it’s going to be black and blue.

  Dad meets me in the hallway when I come out:

  “One week to go,” he says. “Countdown. Final sequence check.”

  He says this as if sensing something. Only Dad can’t sense. He can watch and estimate and measure, then make an educated observation.

  “I guess,” I say.

  “Can you believe it?”

  “I don’t know what to believe these days, Dad.”

  He doesn’t seem to be listening, but sometimes that is when he is listening the hardest.

  “Today, at work, a single man lost the entire CRPS database,” he says.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Nearly a year’s worth of NASA budgetary figures.”

  “No backups, huh?”

  “He lost the database performing the daily backup.”

  “Oh.” My eyes can only see what’s in my imagination: Mr. Mann. Accusations. Shame. Disgrace. “I hope they fired him. I hope they threw him out on the street.”

  “No,” Dad said. “He still has his job. He’s a good man.”

  “And you’re telling me this because?”

  “Because everybody can make a mistake. Sometimes very big ones. You don’t throw a good man out because of that. Then people get afraid to take risks.”

  I don’t know what to say. Is Dad channeling my teacher? Or is he talking about me? I start to speak, close my mouth.

  He smiles and touches my hair. “I’m so proud of you, honey.”

  “I don’t deserve it. Seriously, I don’t. I’m no better than anybody else.”

  “Modest, too. What’s for supper?”

  “I’m not feeling all that well. I don’t know.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m tired, Dad. Just let me go.”

  “Okay.”

  I turn on my computer and watch Niagara Falls at night. Nothing but darkness flecked with a few tiny lights.

  But the falls are still there, roaring.

  zeb in mourning

  It’s Senior Skip Day.

  I skip it.

  Meaning, I go to school instead. The halls feel like arteries on a powerful blood thinner. Hub Christy’s seat in human phys is blessedly empty. Ms. Larimore looks at me oddly. What am I doing here?

  Maybe I had to say goodbye on the last day to say goodbye. I would’ve missed this, whatever it is. Certainly not a ceremony.

  Pussy Pancreatic is tucked in her bag for the final time. What do they do with all the dead, carved-up kitties? Do they remain in the Closet of Death from one year to the next, piling up, unchanging? Is there no method for burial, no decency, no release to a better world?

  Why is this hitting me so hard?

  The smell of stoppage as I handle the bag sends the room spinning around my head. Maybe if I leave Pussy Pancreatic’s bag unzipped, the air will take care of her, carry her away in microscopic bites where at least she can go to ground again, become something useful.

  “Carolina.”

  My head is down, but I see Ms. Larimore’s stringy shanks and sensible shoes. I wonder, Does her husband adore her? Does he smile when she comes home at night? Does he dream about holding her, kissing her, when she’s away?

  “Carolina.”

  Something is required of me. Why don’t I answer? What’s wrong? I’m a First-Born. I take care of my responsibilities.

  Booyah.

  “Huh? Um—yes?”

  “I guess you didn’t hear the speaker, Carolina.”

  “Huh?”

  “The counselor’s office; they just called you.”

  “Oh. Oh. Tell them I’m attending a funeral.”

  “What?”

  The eight other heads who decided to come to class all turn in my direction, the morning suddenly interesting.

  I’m damaged. Crashed, wrecked. I don’t know how to fix myself.

  I look at the Closet of Death, close to tears. “We should have done something for them. Why didn’t we do something for them?”

  “I don’t understand,” Ms. Larimore says.

  “I know.”

  I leave. I’m halfway to somewhere when I realize I’ve forgotten my destination. Lunch? Too early. Home? Why would I go there?

  His room.

  Maybe his class is out swimming, little kois getting ready to join the big ones. Get eaten. Maybe he’s sitting at his desk, no one to teach, washing the blackboards for summer. We could close the door, I could kiss him again, awaken from this dream.

  “Need help?”

  A big man wearing a dark suit and a tie the color of bile is blocking my way. He’s bald without appearing bald—the slope of his forehead combined with a few wispy hairs creates this happy illusion. Long nose, skanky nostrils, yellow teeth. He smells of Wal-Mart musk.

  “Hello, Zeb,” I say.

  It’s Zeb Greasy. Our illustrious principal. A person who is first, highest, or foremost in importance, rank, worth, or degree, according to Dictionary.com. Zeb Greasy is none of those things. He’s simply Large and in Charge.

  “Excuse me?” Zeb says.

  “There is no excuse, really.”

  “Carolina?”

  The prime criterion for a good principal: a prodigious memory for names and faces. Of course, mine is easier than some. Unnaturally tall girl with hair shaped like a Christmas tree. Ought to be playing basketball; why isn’t she? Couldn’t catch a man with track shoes and night vision goggles. So serious. What’s the matter with her? Thinks every other student is stupid. Well, who’s the dum-dum now?

  “Are you all right?” Captain Combover says.

  I don’t know what to tell him.

  I could just say it: Mr. Mann. He’s the one; he’s responsible. He made me not all right. Fire him, hang him, drag his carcass through the restrooms facedown. Here’s my opportunity.

  No.

  “I’m going to see the counselor,” I’m shocked to remember. “They called me.”

  “Oh. Well. You looked kind of disoriented there for a moment. And the counselors are on the upper floor.”

  “Right. I needed something down here.” Someone, actually.

  “All right, then. I’m going that way; I’ll walk with you.”

  Going what way? Maybe I haven’t gotten what I need yet?

  But I fall in step beside him, arms swinging. Our steps click in the emptiness. I notice that Zeb Greasy’s hands were built for opening water mains. Or strangling livestock.

  “Excited about college?” he says.

  “I was.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, yes, sir, I am.”

  “Good.”

  We climb the echoing no-slip stairs and don’t speak again until we reach the counselors’ door.

  “Here we are.”

  Zeb gives me a pat and I go in.

  Ms. Peggy Foster.

  It says so on her desk. I’ve seen her around, but I’ve never been to this one before.

  She’s not the academics counselor but the one for Student Issues. The one people like Kenny Atkinson get to know. What does she want with me?

  “Have a seat.”

  The room feels as if it’s on casters, rolling about. I have to hold my arms tight to my body, or they might flutter and gesture independent of my conscious thoughts. I sense my personality dissolving, disintegrating, actually. Expanding in all directions, fusing with the concrete objects around me.

  Focus, I tell myself. Focus or lose everything.

  Ms. Foster’s the first woman I’ve ever met with a well-defined Adam’s apple.
Her hair’s undone, glasses hideously large for her small face. Her left hand perches atop a skinny paperback, Spenser’s Epithalamion and Renaissance Pastoralism. As she speaks to me, she thumbs a corner of the pages again and again. It makes a miniature poker-playing sound, elves playing Texas Hold ‘Em.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”—She pauses to look at a folder—“Carolina?”

  “No.”

  “It was recommended by a member of the staff that you are having some emotional difficulties outside of school. Problems you need help sorting out.”

  I sit bolt upright. “Who recommended me?”

  “I’m not allowed to discuss that. It was thought—”

  “He did it, didn’t he?” The room is no longer rolling; it’s swimming. The hands on the clock tick like a wrench banged on a pipe in a prison camp. My fists tighten. “The son of a— He’s trying to make you think I’m crazy.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”—pause—“Carolina?”

  “No.”

  “I’m guessing it has to do with boys, am I right?” Ms. Foster smiles hyper-sympathetically, eyes huge behind her glasses. “I can remember when I was your age, I was in a similar predicament where—”

  “I can’t believe that bastard turned me in.”

  Ms. Foster’s hands jiggle over the folder. She swallows; her Adam’s apple plunges up and down like a scarab beetle traveling under the skin of her neck.

  “No, not at all. Recommended you as a student in need of counseling. A shoulder, someone to talk to. All confidential. It’s up to you. We have materials that can be”—she leans back hard enough to show every feature of her Granny-in-Training bra— “helpful. Here!”

  She slides across a brochure with a forest on the cover. THREE RIVERS COUNSELING CENTER. Ms. Foster waits for me to flip it open, gives up and does it herself. Inside, the happy faces of teens on powerful antipsychotics.

  “I’ve seen the facilities myself,” she says. “It’s impressive what they are able to do. Where does you father work? I’m sure the outpatient services at Three Rivers are covered by—”