Big Mouth & Ugly Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  They found nothing. Which proved nothing.

  They took Matt Donaghy to Rocky River police headquarters in an unmarked police vehicle. He wasn’t handcuffed. He was accompanying the detectives “voluntarily.” They’d allowed him to telephone his mother, and she would be joining them downtown.

  Fortunately, Matt’s father was away for another night.

  “Matt, there isn’t any”—his mother was blinking rapidly, wiping at her damp eyes—“truth to this charge, is there?”

  “Mom! For God’s sake, no.”

  They were alone together, briefly. At police headquarters. In a windowless fluorescent-lit room. On a Formica-topped table were Styrofoam cups with the dregs of coffee in them, an ugly black plastic ashtray heaped with cigarette ashes and butts. Matt hurriedly explained to his mother what had happened. What a misunderstanding it was. Just a joke, and he’d been overheard and misunderstood. Some “witnesses”—he didn’t know who they were—were claiming he’d said something he hadn’t. His mom wasn’t absorbing much of this, wanting to embrace him, tears brimming in her eyes. “These—‘witnesses’—who are they? Why would they be spreading lies about you, Matt?”

  To this question Matt had no answer.

  It was a shock to him, to see his mother so agitated. And knowing he was to blame. His dad would never forgive him. He’d need to keep her at arm’s length; the last thing he wanted to do was break down like a baby.

  Wordlessly, he shook hands with Mr. Leacock, “his” attorney.

  And he shook hands with the middle-aged, kindly-faced female-from-Westchester-Family-Court, too.

  “Matt Donaghy. I’m here to protect your rights.”

  All so crazy, like a dream. One of those exhausting dreams that go on and on. And maybe (Matt didn’t want to think) it was just beginning.

  Mr. Leacock advised him to tell “all that you know” but to speak cautiously and never “incriminate” himself in any way. Matt was definitely not under arrest—yet—but it was urgent that the situation be resolved within a few hours so that everyone could go home.

  So Matt told. Again.

  He hadn’t done anything wrong. He hadn’t said anything wrong.

  Please ask his friends to corroborate his story! Russ and Skeet and Neil and Cal and . . . he was forgetting who else had been there, at lunch . . . Denis Wheeler? They would clear Matt of all suspicion.

  He tried not to speak sarcastically. He tried to hide the rage he was feeling. Explaining to his silent audience (the detectives, the court-appointed female, his teary mother, and his attorney): Why would he, of all people, want to blow up Rocky River High? He liked school. A lot. He liked his classes, and he liked lots of people, he’d been elected vice president of his class. And he’d never owned a gun, never fired a gun . . .

  Matt began to stammer. He began to cough, and someone handed him a cup of water. He drank—the water was tepid. His hand was trembling. His eyes snatched at his mom’s. They were both remembering how, at his uncle Jax’s summer place in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he’d fired a .22 rifle. This was a few years ago; Matt might’ve been thirteen. Uncle Jax had wanted to teach him, and Matt had wanted to be taught, it seemed a thing a guy would do, and talk about back east with his friends. What Matt mainly remembered about the rifle was its surprising weight, and the loud jarring crack! when he pulled the trigger. He’d never come anywhere near hitting a target.

  He looked away from his mom. He didn’t want to know what she was remembering, and what she might be thinking.

  Who were the “witnesses” who’d gone to Mr. Parrish’s office to report Matt Donaghy?

  Their identities were being protected at this time.

  Mr. Leacock objected that his client had a right to know who was accusing him.

  Matt was saying again, patiently: Whoever they were, they’d heard him wrong. Whatever they thought they’d heard, they’d gotten it wrong.

  Or somebody was deliberately spreading lies to hurt him.

  But why? Why hurt him?

  When he was just . . . Matt Donaghy?

  Sixteen. A junior at Rocky River High. A steady A-minus student (except for English, where he received mostly As). He wrote for the school paper and literary magazine, he’d been elected vice president of his class (by just eleven votes), people seemed to like him all right, he wasn’t the best-looking guy at Rocky River but with his freckled face and quick smile he was OK, but there was a deeper seriousness, an edginess, he kept to himself. He wasn’t weird. He wasn’t a loner, a computer freak. He wasn’t into sick stuff on the Internet like some guys. He’d had a lot of the same friends since grade school, and his friends were terrific. His teachers had always liked him. . . .

  Mr. Weinberg would vouch for Matt. Mr. Drewe, the boys’ track coach, would vouch for him. Not a star runner but a good team player.

  Suddenly it was like Matt was on trial.

  No, Matt did not do drugs. And he didn’t smoke. Maybe he had a few beers, sometimes. At parties.

  Well, he smoked . . . sometimes. But not really. He wasn’t stupid, he knew the health risk. He wasn’t into tobacco, nicotine. He’d actually chewed a plug of tobacco not long ago, a friend gave him, and it was a totally disgusting experience. He’d swallowed some of the juice and gotten the sickest he’d ever been, trembling and vomiting. And the guys laughing at him. He didn’t do drugs, either. Well, he’d tried some things. Everybody tried some things. He’d done “X,” Ecstasy, but it made his heart race and left him breathless, made him paranoid, which was scary. No, he didn’t hang out with a drug crowd. You heard of some of the older kids doing coke, heroin, but Matt wasn’t in that crowd. What he was guilty of, he guessed, was saying stupid things. To make people laugh. He was sure, that day at lunch, when Skeet had teased him about maybe not being picked for the Arts Festival when it meant so much to him, he’d said something like, “What could I do, blow up the school?” and when that got a few laughs, he might have said, “Massacre a few hundred people?” and Skeet was into it, typical Skeet, pounding the table, laughing, as if the idea of Matt Donaghy doing such a thing was hilarious, “Like Columbine! Viva Columbine!” and Matt jumped to his feet making machine-gun-spraying gestures, in a crouch, pretending to be opening a coat, “Vroom-vroom-VROOM,” and by this time all the guys at the table were into it, or most of them, Skeet, Russ, Cal, just showing off, wanting people to notice them. Girls at nearby tables, pretty girls like Stacey Flynn glancing over at them, smiling, with a look of You guys! Grow up. Or What’s so funny? Indulging the guys as they’d been doing since first grade. But it was crowded in the cafeteria, and other people were passing by their table, which was in the center aisle, and maybe somebody heard . . . or misheard. So if there was anything Matt Donaghy was guilty of, he supposed, it was acting dumb, juvenile. Lots of times like this he’d be ashamed afterward. Because he wasn’t like that really. He was a serious person really. He wanted to be a writer, a playwright. He wanted to perform in his own plays. That meant work, and brains, not goofing off like an asshole. The problem was, Matt had a talent for it: making people laugh. Even as a small kid he’d been mouthy, and funny. Adults had laughed at him. If people laughed, they liked being around you, it was a good feeling. They were apt to like you. Sure, Matt admired people who didn’t seem to care if anybody liked them—Mr. Jenkins, who taught calculus, for instance. And Mr. Rainey, the school psychologist, who had to meet with parents who weren’t happy that their children were having “psychological” problems. And there was that big girl with the fierce staring eyes: Ursula Riggs. A star girl athlete. Didn’t seem to give a damn whether she was “well liked” or not. Maybe because her father was a big-shot CEO. . . . Matt was different. He needed to be special. Somehow. To make people like him. So he’d hear his mouth go on and on like it had a life of its own. Like he was a ventriloquist’s dummy and didn’t know what he was saying, sometimes. Saying things he didn’t mean. Like on TV, the grossest stand-up comics saying things you aren’t supposed to say, late-nig
ht cable . . . like to do with sex, race, people’s bodies, going to the bathroom . . . school shootings, bombs. On TV you know it isn’t real, it’s just . . . comedy. A guy with a big mouth and a microphone. People laughing their heads off. Mr. Weinberg warned: It’s the violating of taboo, that’s why people laugh. Sometimes they’re shocked, and they laugh. But others will hate you and turn against you. So you have to be careful. Not that Matt was crude, much. He had a big mouth sometimes, but . . . how was that a crime? In the United States we have a Bill of Rights guaranteeing us freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

  Don’t we?

  SIX

  “URSULA, WHAT’RE YOU WATCHING?”

  It was the local news, WWRR. Six o’clock. There on TV was the buff-colored brick facade of Rocky River High, and standing in front of it on the sidewalk, in a flurry of snowflakes, was a stylish female reporter with widened eyes and a microphone in her hand. “Rumors of a bomb threat and potential hostage taking at Rocky River High sometime this afternoon have not been confirmed, repeat: not been confirmed by either school authorities or Rocky River police.” Cut to a fleeting vision of Mr. Parrish, frowning and shaking his head—“No comment.” The reporter identified this elusive figure as “Harold Parrish, Principal of Rocky River High, Westchester County. Mr. Parrish is believed to have met with Rocky River police this afternoon, yet he denies reports of trouble at this highly regarded suburban school—” Disgusted, I switched to another channel. Here the news was about an actual bombing in the Mideast.

  Too bad—my sister Lisa had seen. She said, “Was that your school? What’s happening?”

  “No. It’s nothing.”

  “Why’d you turn it off? Turn it back, Ursula, c’mon!”

  “No. I said it was nothing.”

  “She said ‘Rocky River High’—I heard her.”

  Lisa tried to take the remote control from me, but I raised it over my head—which was far beyond my little sister’s reach. When she tried to get to the TV to change the channel, I lifted her by the hips, as in a ballet move, and carried her out of the room.

  Lisa batted at my hands, protesting. But she liked attention from me, her big Big Sis. Everybody in the family said Lisa “looked up to me” so I’d better be a good example for her, but I just laughed.

  Sure. Like Ugly Girl is a foot taller than Lisa, naturally the runt looks up to me.

  I was trying hard to stave off an Inky Black. Being depressed is boring. My knee was aching like hell, so I took three Tylenol as Ms. Schultz recommended for “minor” aches and pains. The knee was swollen and turning an exotic shade of purple-gold, like a tropical sunset. My right wrist and forearm were bruised too.

  Ugly Girl, warrior.

  So? You lose a few.

  Already the “news” was on TV. You’d really wonder what was going on at Rocky River High, the rumor was presented as so tantalizing. Like Mr. Parrish himself was involved in a cover-up. I was relieved that Matt Donaghy’s name hadn’t been mentioned. But it looked as if the rumor was correct—police had been at school. Everybody would be on the phone, or sending e-mails. Something was going on. . . .

  One good thing: Nobody would give a damn about the girls’ basketball team losing a game we should have won. Nobody would give a damn that Ursula Riggs had let the team down.

  “I didn’t! I didn’t lose on purpose.”

  I shut the door to my room. I sat at my computer, and quick before I changed my mind, I sent an e-mail message to Ms. Schultz.

  Thurs 1/25/01 6:15 PM

  dear ms. schultz—

  i am quitting the team. you know why.

  UR

  I thought this might keep away the Inky Black, but no, it possibly made things worse.

  When Ms. Schultz didn’t e-mail me back that night, or next morning before school, it definitely made things worse.

  Ugly Girl. Family scene.

  “Ursula, I hope you understand. I wanted so badly to—”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  “—Lisa and I, both—”

  “It’s OK, Mom.”

  “But by the time I picked her up from school—”

  “Right, Mom. Cool.”

  Mom was watching me with her worried-mom/guilty-mom eyes. We were all in the kitchen preparing dinner. Since I’d become a vegetarian in ninth grade, I prepared most of my own food. I had my own work space in the kitchen, at the butcher-block table. Meat disgusted me, especially when it was raw. Actual living, now dead muscle tissue! My mom and dad weren’t too happy that Lisa had become a vegetarian, too; she’s real thin, with a skeletal structure like a sparrow’s. Lisa and I were having tofu, soy sauce, green beans, mushrooms, chopped tomatoes, and unsalted brown rice. Mom was preparing something gross for herself and Dad, but they wouldn’t be eating until late, after Lisa and I were finished.

  For a while I’d refused to sit at the same table with persons eating animal tissue. Until my dad said he was hurt: He wasn’t home for dinner lots of nights, and when he was, where was Ursula?—upstairs in her room. So I relented. When Mom served fish or seafood, I’d eat with them. But at school I sat at a table by myself when Bonnie or Eveann were eating stuff with meat in it.

  Because it was vegetables, rice, et cetera, I ate a lot of it. And yogurt, and nuts. And coarse brown bread. I drank a lot of fruit juice, especially grapefruit. I wasn’t on any diet, for sure. Not Ugly Girl.

  I had muscles, which you don’t get from dieting.

  Tonight in the kitchen Mom was saying, in this innocent voice, “Ursula, that looks good. Will you make a little extra for me, too?” I knew what she was doing but I said OK. I believed strongly in not eating meat and intended to convert the entire family, but I never said much about it because, if you do, people get defensive and say asshole cliché things. Like my own father, who’s an intelligent man, telling me like it’s some profound fact that carnivores are meant by nature to eat meat—“That’s why we have the teeth we have.”

  Right off I’d say, “Teeth, Dad? A man your age wouldn’t have teeth by now. If you’re talking a state of ‘nature,’ you’d be gumming soft mushy stuff like tofu.”

  Which made Dad wince. Of all the foods in existence, it’s tofu that really turns him off.

  I said, “The actual truth is, Dad, just a hundred years ago a man your age would maybe not be alive. The other day in biology I saw this chart, the average life expectancy for men wasn’t much over forty. And the cholesterol and stuff from animal fat would be blocking your arteries, and you wouldn’t have a clue what was happening.”

  Dad shuddered and said, OK, he got my point.

  I overheard Dad saying to Mom, in this voice like he was, in spite of himself, impressed, “Our older daughter is quite an idealist, isn’t she?” And Mom said, in this voice I couldn’t interpret, “She needs it, Clay. Let’s just hope it lasts.”

  I resented that! I didn’t understand it but I resented it.

  Sometimes I hated Mom. I hated her looking at me, and thinking her thoughts about me. Ugly Girl scorned the eyes of others, but if it’s your own mother looking at you close up, those eyes are hard to ignore.

  Now Mom was smiling this forced little guilty smile. “Ursula, you haven’t said a word about the game. I hope—”

  “We lost. That’s two words.”

  “Oh, Ursula. But was it—a good game?”

  I shrugged. I was spooning rice onto plates. Ordinarily by this time of evening after a game or practice I’d be famished, but tonight, the Inky Black creeping up on me like oil ooze, I felt funny. Not just because I was ashamed and angry about the game, but the rumor about Matt Donaghy was sort of sickening, too. The way, talking with those people at school, Ugly Girl who should’ve been superior to a lynch mob had kind of grooved with it at first, like the others.

  Liking it that somebody else was in trouble.

  “I wanted to see you play, Ursula,” Lisa said.

  I shrugged. I was pissed at Lisa, too. Evidently.

  My mother and si
ster exchanged a glance. Thinking I wouldn’t notice.

  Lisa was eleven, I was sixteen. When she was born I was five years old. I’d always been The Baby in the Riggs family, and it was a shock to discover that there’s a place for only one of these in a family. Lisa was The Baby from that day onward, and what Ursula was I didn’t know.

  I mean, eventually I knew. But not for a long time.

  Mom began again with some excuse, as if she hadn’t missed most of my games this season, and I said, “Mom, you didn’t miss a thing. Don’t obsess.”

  “Well, I hope you enjoyed the game, at least.”

  “‘Enjoy’? Losing?”

  “You know what I mean, honey. Sports aren’t just about winning, I thought.”

  I knew Mom was right. This was my philosophy too. But I said nothing.

  Mom never missed driving Lisa to dance lessons. And staying for the lessons, lots of times. Over the holiday break she’d taken Lisa to see the New York City Ballet twice. Of course, I’d been invited to join them.

  Did I mind that Lisa was everybody’s favorite? Truthfully I did not. I couldn’t stand prissy little ballerinas—the word “ballerina” made my lip curl—and prissy dance music like The Nutcracker and Swan Lake made me want to puke, but if other people adored it, fine. Girls with collarbones and pelvic bones poking through their leotards gliding and spiraling and leaping, trying not to grimace in agony when their toes are being crushed en pointe against a hardwood floor—fine. Anorexic eleven-year-olds—fine. Mom liked to tell us how she’d taken ballet lessons as a little girl, too. Mom was small boned, the kind of woman who likes to be told she’s petite. Like it’s a compliment. My Ugly Girl genes I obviously inherited from Dad.

  We were carrying dishes into the dining room. I must have limped a little, because Mom was on me like a hawk. “Ursula, were you hurt in that game?”