Hummingbirds

by Joshua Gaylor

  “You don’t care who looks up your skirt.”

  Caroline just shrugs.

  “Anyway,” Dixie continues. “Uncle Peter the drunk stayed with us for four days.”

  “Wasn’t he the one that liked to give you pony rides on his knee?”

  “Yeah. Until I was like thirteen—and then my dad had to tell him to stop it.”

  “Ick.”

  “No kidding. And he’s got this big Adam’s apple. It’s gross. Like he swallowed a pair of scissors or something.”

  The other girls cringe.

  “So on Christmas Eve we had a big dinner and Uncle Peter the drunk got drunk of course. They couldn’t stop him because it was Christmas Eve and everything. Even after I went to bed I could hear them arguing with him in the living room. And then in the middle of the night I wake up and guess what.”

  “Oh no.”

  “He’s standing there in my room. Right over my bed. And he’s kind of swaying back and forth like this.” Dixie mimics the motion; she looks like someone on the deck of a small boat.

  “What did you do, Dixie?”

  “Well, he’s just an old drunk. I wasn’t afraid of him. I knew he wouldn’t do anything. So I just said, ‘What do you want, Uncle Peter?’ And do you know what he said? He said, ‘I want my life back.’”

  “What does that mean?” Caroline asks.

  “That’s sad,” Andie says under her breath, but none of the other girls pay attention to her.

  “So what did you say, Dixie?” Beth says.

  “Well, I just told him that I didn’t have his life and I didn’t know where it was and I didn’t know who took it. And then I told him he better go back to his own room before my dad found him there.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then nothing. He just called me a name and left. Well, he did do one more thing. On his way out he picked up Sizemore, my stuffed pig, and threw it at me. But it was just a stuffed animal, so it didn’t hurt.”

  “That’s kind of scary, Dixie,” Beth says, with a face like she just drank sour milk.

  “He’s just a drunk.”

  “But he’s so old.”

  Dixie looks toward the windows of Carmine-Casey—the third row up, about where the teachers’ lounge is. “It’s not about age,” she says. “He’s not old old.”

  “Whatever,” Beth says.

  Dixie continues gazing upward, her eyes narrowed in thought. The girls kick at the concrete and begin looking up and down the street. Finally Dixie emerges from her reverie and looks around as if surprised that the others are still there.

  “What are we doing?” she asks. “What are we waiting for, anyway?”

  “Aren’t we waiting for Jeremy?” Caroline asks. “That’s what you told us.”

  “That’s right,” Andie confirms with a raised eyebrow. “Your boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Dixie says.

  “Then what is he?”

  Dixie doesn’t answer. Caroline goes back to picking at her scab, but bends over this time instead of raising her leg. Andie leans back to make sure she isn’t exposing her underpants again.

  Finally Beth spots Jeremy Notion coming down the block. “There he is.”

  He’s wearing pants that are spattered with something like paint and a polo shirt two sizes too big for him. His hair and face look like he’s been bobbing for apples in vegetable oil. The closer he gets, the wider Dixie’s frown spreads across her face.

  “You’re ugly as a dog,” she says to him.

  “Hey,” he says, taking exception. “I thought we were friends again.”

  “I don’t have any friends that dress like that.”

  “Jesus. Why do you have to be sour all the time?” For a second it looks like he’s going, but then he seems to decide against it. He’s going to stick it out.

  At that moment, the big glass doors of the building open and Dixie spots Liz Warren and Monica Vargas emerging, pale and unimpressed, into the stark afternoon light. They are debating something, and their gestures, Dixie notices, are magnificently theatrical. Dixie wonders what they could be talking about with such passion. What topic would she herself argue about with such bodily vigor?

  “There they are,” Beth says, directing everyone’s attention to the two girls. “Mr. and Mrs. Warren-Vargas.”

  When Liz notices the cadre of girls at the bottom of the steps, she stops talking in mid-sentence and her arm, arcing with a large sweeping gesture, drops out of the air like a shot bird and falls limply at her side. The look she gives to Dixie and Jeremy is one of complete antipathy and condescension—as though it hurts her even to have the two of them populating the same city as she. What a shame, Dixie imagines her thinking. What a sad, pathetic, stupid little shame.

  “Look at that look she just gave you,” Beth says, grabbing Dixie’s arm. “Did you see that look, Dixie?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Are you going to let her give you a look like that?”

  Dixie thinks that she would like to see those magnificent Liz Warren hand gestures again. She does a little version of one with her hand at her side. What words could she say to accompany a gesture like that? What words would be big enough to justify it?

  Then she realizes that Beth and Caroline are looking at her, waiting for her to do something. She gathers herself up.

  “Hey, Liz,” she calls for the sake of appearances, even though her heart’s not in it, “what’s the matter? Are you scared of boys now?”

  “Shut up, Dixie,” Liz says as the two get to the bottom of the steps and begin walking quickly in the other direction.

  “He told me how you couldn’t do it. He told me, Liz.”

  Everyone stops. Jeremy sits down on the pediment with a deflated thud. All the girls have stopped breathing. Dixie suddenly finds herself in the middle of a void, falling directionless, like a dream, unable to get herself back upright. She hears herself saying these things, but they have no meaning. She’s thinking about those hands of Liz’s—but when she opens her mouth strange words come out.

  Liz stops and looks back. “Your boyfriend is an imbecile, Dixie. And I think you know it.” Then she shakes her head poignantly, and she and Monica begin to walk away again.

  “Well,” Dixie calls after her, “if you’re so smart, why don’t you go find a bank president to fuck.”

  Now Jeremy is up on his feet. He didn’t like that imbecile comment, so he’s yelling after Liz too. “Yeah,” is all he can muster, “a bank president.”

  But the two girls don’t turn around again.

  “Oh, shut up, Jeremy,” Dixie says, disgusted. “Sit down.”

  Liz and Monica reach the corner a few moments later and turn out of sight. Dixie, emerging from the rabbit hole into which she had stumbled, wonders if she managed to hurt Liz. Is she hurt by anything? If so, where does she hide her scars?

  Suddenly, like tripping over your own feet, it occurs to Dixie that she doesn’t actually hate Liz Warren. The fact is surprising to her, and she turns it over in her mind like a child’s toy puppet—something that’s cute and scary at the same time.

  She thinks about Liz’s world, what it must be like. A world where everything means something. A world where big hand gestures aren’t just play but are actually necessary to unlock secret truths that other people don’t even know are there. Like she has magic sunglasses or something. Everything Liz sees is right and relates to the big world that, truthfully, frightens Dixie a little bit.

  It would be all right to be Liz Warren, Dixie decides. It must be a thing like being rich or beautiful—but possibly even better.

  She looks over at Jeremy, who looks defeated, though unsure of how it happened.

  “You’re an imbecile,” Dixie Doyle tells him. “And you’re ugly as a dog.”

  chapter 33

  Liz Warren looks askance at Mr. Binhammer’s choice of Hemingway for the Women in Literature class. Not because The Sun Also Rises is written by a man, but becau
se everything in the book seems contingent on the rise and fall of maleness.

  Other girls in the class dislike Hemingway for different reasons.

  “I don’t get this book, Mr. Binhammer,” says Marilyn Lepke, whose father has connections to the mob. “All they do is drink Pernod and ride in taxis.”

  Liz wishes Mr. Binhammer wouldn’t pander to students like Marilyn Lepke and Dixie Doyle. But instead he seems to possess a fond affection for them—and that’s disappointing. If that is the kind of girl who impresses Mr. Binhammer, then there is no place for herself in this classroom.

  But every now and then, she has to admit, he will say something that sticks and turns like a blade in her gut.

  “But isn’t it romantic?” he says in response to Marilyn Lepke’s observation.

  “Romantic?”

  “Sure. Isn’t it romantic how much Jake loves Lady Bret Ashley?”

  “If he loves her so much,” Dixie Doyle asks, “then why isn’t he with her?”

  “He can’t be with her.”

  “How come?” Dixie says. “Oh, you mean because of his penis problem?”

  Liz is embarrassed for her, and the other girls in the class chuckle—but her question is a sincere one.

  “No,” Mr. Binhammer says. “Well, sure, but it’s more than that. He can’t be with her—because she’s not real.”

  Liz sits up. This is something new. And he says it in a way that intrigues her, as if he were discovering the meaning of the thing for the first time.

  “What do you mean?” Dixie asks. “You mean like she’s a ghost or something?”

  “No,” he says. He leans against the desk and looks down at his hand as though he’s trying to solve an invisible puzzle with his fingers. “It’s—it’s like—haven’t you ever been in love with—no, wait, forget about love. Haven’t you ever been fascinated by someone? I don’t mean liking them, it doesn’t even have to do with liking or hating. I mean fascination—like everything they do seems to be a secret key to something important. You want to follow them everywhere because even…even what they order on their sandwich at the deli could be a clue to some treasure. You know what I mean?”

  There is silence in the room. Liz’s imagination begins to bubble and pop.

  “Except,” Mr. Binhammer says, and she has already figured out what’s coming next, “except that as hard as you try, you can’t seem to get any closer—it’s like a mirage, or a horizon. Because the person you’re really looking for isn’t in there. The person you’re looking for is someone you made up in your head.”

  The room is quiet like after a church service. School can be like this sometimes, at its best. So monastic that the still air wouldn’t make a candle flicker.

  “That’s sad,” says Caroline Cox.

  “Maybe,” Mr. Binhammer says. “Or maybe it just means we’re our own secrets.”

  Liz wonders about the people around her. Who has she invented in her own head? Mr. Hughes? What about Dixie Doyle—that ideal fluffy pink arch nemesis? How does one tell the reality from the invention? She imagines Carmine-Casey as one big masquerade, everyone wearing the masks other people have put on them. And she wonders this, too: Of whose mind is she herself the invention? Who here makes her more than she is?

  Binhammer himself has gotten lost in contemplation. He’s thinking about glowing, flowering incarnations—and about the poor fragile things crouching behind them.

  The clock on the wall says it’s fifteen minutes before the end of the period. Time to give up.

  He says, “Let’s call it a day.”

  He sits and holds his head in his hands while everyone files out. He can hear their shuffling feet, the zippers on their bags, the tittering voices that seem lethargic at the end of the day. The last class. Time to go home. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and hears the door close behind the last of them.

  Except when he looks up there’s one left. Dixie Doyle, sitting there in the front row. Smiling at him.

  “It’s me,” she says.

  It’s a funny thing to say. As though she were identifying herself on the phone or behind a door.

  “Hello, Dixie.”

  “Can we talk about something?”

  This is the second time today someone has wanted to have a talk with him. Earlier it was Ted Hughes, coming up behind him in the hall and grabbing his elbow. It was late in the morning, and Binhammer was pacing the empty halls during one of his free periods when Ted Hughes found him.

  “Follow me,” Ted Hughes said, pointing up and away as though they were embarking on an expedition.

  “Where?”

  “Up. And don’t tell me you’re busy. I know your schedule. You’re not teaching again for an hour.”

  They rode the elevator to the top floor, and then Ted Hughes led him to the stairwell, where they climbed one more flight and opened a door onto the roof. The black tar was flat and seamed and had metal blocks and pipes sticking up here and there like settlements in a desert.

  “I didn’t know you could come up here,” Binhammer said.

  “This is where the girls come to smoke,” Ted Hughes explained, pointing to the cigarette butts collected in the corners where three-foot parapets edged the roof.

  “How did you know that?”

  Ted Hughes shrugged off the question. “Listen,” he said. “We’re going to talk. Whether you like it or not.”

  Binhammer walked to the parapet and looked onto Fifth Avenue below, the front of the building where he could see a group of girls sitting on the steps. For a second he felt an attack of vertigo looking at the tops of their heads, and he had to pull himself back.

  “What is it you want?” Ted Hughes asked, raising his arms against the low horizon, the rooftops beyond. “A showdown? A face-off? Pistols at dawn? There aren’t going to be any fisticuffs, are there? Come on.”

  So this was what Ted Hughes wanted. To get it over with. Well, Binhammer wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, despite his own curiosity, despite his own desire to hammer everything back into shape. Forget it. Despite his wanting to put the man on the spot with questions. It would be petty of him. Beneath him. No, he wasn’t going to give—

  “How many times did you sleep with her?” he finds himself asking suddenly.

  “Three. No, four.”

  “Who ended it?”

  “She did.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  Ted Hughes, having taken two steps toward Binhammer and braced himself, set to answer any question posed, opened his mouth to respond but then said nothing.

  “Never mind,” Binhammer said. “Forget that last one.”

  Ted Hughes scratched his head. He paced back and forth for a minute and then stopped, looking down at the tarred roof.

  When he spoke, his voice took on a different quality altogether.

  “This is some job, isn’t it, Binhammer? Can you feel it? Six floors of girls beneath our feet, waiting to be read to. They come in tired, exhausted by their chemistry classes, their calculus classes. They open a book to a page, and all they see are stupid little black ants marching across—until you begin to talk about it, and then you can hear the bombs going off in their heads. You make that writing dance. And their eyes get all lit up with burning.”

  Binhammer thought about their burning eyes.

  “Listen,” Ted Hughes said, his voice palliative, “this isn’t about me. I don’t care about me. But the two of you…”

  “You’re very generous,” he said wryly.

  “Progressive.”

  “Yes, very progressive.”

  “Sophisticated.” Ted Hughes’s smile spreading across his face like dough rising.

  “Indeed.”

  Binhammer looked down again to the street below. He marveled at the turn of events, realizing, embarrassed, that he was spending just as much time thinking about Ted Hughes as he was thinking about his wife. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He was supposed to despise this man.

/>   “Okay,” Ted Hughes starts in again. “So now what? You want to tear off our shirts and wrestle? Will you feel better if you bloody me up some? How about we shoot pool for the prize of her honor? Or draw for the high card?” He walked over and stood by Binhammer, shaking his head in affectionate pity. “Look, you jackass. You already won.”

  From below Binhammer heard the sounds of girls’ voices.

  “It’s great being a teacher,” Binhammer said. “You’re right about that.” He walked toward the door leading back down into the building. Turning back once more, he said, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

  “For what?”

  “For this,” he repeated, motioning to the space between them. “For this conversation.”

  “Okay,” Ted Hughes conceded. “But let me tell you something.” The smile disappeared from his face. “You’re not interested in punishing her. So you better figure out what you did all this for.”

  Binhammer left him there and went down into the halls, where he had to squint to see because his eyes had become accustomed to the bright winter sunlight outside. He didn’t see Ted Hughes for the rest of the day, but he thought about the burning eyes of the girls he taught, and how sometimes they just smoldered slowly.

  And now Dixie Doyle sits before him expectantly.

  “I really can’t stick around, Dixie.”

  “I know. You don’t have to stick around. I just wanted to ask you something.”

  “About Liz Warren?”

  “No!” she says, looking a little outraged. Then she smooths out her skirt. “But since you brought it up…do you like her more than you like me? It’s okay if you do, I just want to know.”

  “Dixie….”

  “You know, she doesn’t do the reading for this class.”

  He looks at her questioningly, and she lowers her head, chastened.

  “Well, I don’t know that for sure. I guess she probably does. But if you found out she didn’t, would you stop thinking she was so great?”

  He notices the way she has her arms folded across her chest now and the crease in her forehead, as though she has him under an exposed bulb and is interrogating him. He would put his hand on her cheek if he could. He leans back in the chair and gazes at her across the desk.