The Great Perhaps: A Novel

by Joe Meno

  W. When Madeline finds Jonathan sitting in the den—the professor scanning a map of the ocean—she slips off her shoes and places her hands over his eyes, standing behind him.

  “Hello there,” he says.

  “Hello there,” she says.

  X. When they begin to kiss, Madeline remembers why she loves her husband in the first place. It is precisely because he is a mess, because he is a dreamer, because he is afraid. It is because he needs her so badly, that he kisses her so softly: it is because he doesn’t want to lose her. She has almost forgotten how it feels to be touched so gently, to be treated like something surprisingly precious, knowing, in the end, that this other person needs you just to keep on living.

  Y. This is a good enough reason to keep kissing.

  Z. As they keep on kissing, and kissing, things do not seem all that complicated.

  Twenty-eight

  IT IS WEDNESDAY MORNING, IN THE MIDDLE OF THIRD period, when Amelia realizes her history project is due tomorrow. She has absolutely no idea what she is going to do, only that it will end up being the most mediocre history project of all time, ever. Standing at the front of the classroom, Mr. Anson, her history teacher, declares that each student will be required to present their projects to the class, and they will do so alphabetically, starting tomorrow, Thursday morning. Amelia frowns, her neck beginning to itch, already feeling nauseous. She glances around the room and sees that there is only one boy with a last name that starts with the letter A—Bob Antwerp—and only two kids with the letter B. Amelia closes her eyes, sulking, as Mr. Anson, his brown mustache twitching, reads off her name. “No more than ten minutes for each project, ladies and gentlemen. I want focused, thoughtful responses to the historical issues you’ve decided to explore. Think about how that particular historical issue affects the world you know today.” Amelia considers her awful first attempt, the cruddy movie she made, then her second, the cruddy protest with the cloud costume, and sighs, more hopeless than ever.

  AT LUNCH, Amelia sits alone, gazing down at her vegetable enchilada, wondering how she’s going to come up with an acceptable history project in only a couple of hours. Shit. As she’s contemplating the grotesque food in front of her, William Banning takes a seat across from her and says, “Not too appetizing, huh?”

  “It’s the only vegetarian dish they have. It tastes like ass.”

  “It’s probably pretty bad for you.”

  Amelia nods, sighing again.

  “I really liked the piece you gave Mr. Wick this morning, about the election. I liked the part about people voting for Bush because he avoided being too complicated. Like how he just kept repeating the same things over and over again and that’s what people really wanted to hear.’”

  Amelia grins, quoting from her column: “‘People don’t want answers, they want bumper stickers.’”

  “Yeah. That was really sharp.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was wondering…you know, the student council has elections coming up. Maybe…would you be interested in like running for something?”

  “I don’t think so,” Amelia says with a frown.

  “Oh, well, I just wanted to ask. I mean, I’m sure you’re busy with a bunch of other things. I just wanted to…well, thank you for like…not…well…for being cool about the newspaper. I mean like I’m sure somebody else in your position would have probably quit, and you’re the only one writing anything of any value and so, well, I just wanted to say thanks…and if…well, I dunno. Good luck with your…enchilada.”

  Amelia, blushing, looks down at the awful assemblage of folded tortilla and cheese. “I have to do a project for my history class,” she mumbles. “It’s due tomorrow and I really don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Whoa,” William says with a smile. “I didn’t think you were one of those people who waited until the last minute to do anything.”

  “I’m not,” she says. “I just…I wanted to do something really awesome. But it was like…everything I tried seemed so obvious and dumb.”

  “What is your project about?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to do it about communism. And like how capitalism is like ruining everything. I wanted to make a movie but it came out like shit.”

  “Oh.”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to get the people in my class to think about being consumers and everything. And like how it’s like affecting all these other things. Like pollution and global warming and all of that. But it just seems too preachy, I guess. Like there was all this voice-over and it was way too obvious.”

  “Yeah,” William says with a nod. “I get it.”

  “I wanted it to be all arty, you know. Like subtle, but I don’t know how to do that.”

  “What if you just showed pictures?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like what if you made a movie without any sound or anything? Or maybe just some music and you just showed pictures.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know,” she says, but already the great wheels in her mind have begun turning.

  “Well, I’m supposed to be in Latin,” William Banning says. “See you later.”

  “’Bye,” Amelia says and doesn’t like how giddy she feels.

  AFTER SCHOOL, Amelia once more finds her way to the university parking lot, searching for Professor Dobbs. Immediately she sees he is not alone again. There he stands, flirting with a bevy of bright-eyed coeds, answering all their questions with a smile, winking at them, his hands touching their arms and their shoulders and their backs. Fifteen minutes later, Professor Dobbs says goodbye to the last of them. A girl with braces practically gushes as she holds her class notes against her chest, skipping off.

  With his arms full of student papers, Professor Dobbs struggles to open the driver’s-side door of the Saab. Amelia, ducking between two parked cars, watches as the young academic accidentally spills his classwork, cursing to himself, dropping his keys beneath the car. “Schadenfreude,” Amelia whispers, nodding to herself, then wonders if that’s the right word for the situation. It doesn’t really matter. She walks over to where Professor Dobbs is kneeling, collecting his fallen papers. When he sees her shoes, he looks up from them to her legs, to her waist, to her chest, to her neck. When he reaches her face, recognizing the disappointed frown, he quickly becomes panicked. He holds the manila file folders against his chest, scrambles for his keys, trying to smile, trying to disappear into his sedan as swiftly as possible.

  “Amelia, what a surprise, I didn’t, well, I didn’t see you in class again today and, of course, I was afraid—”

  “I’m not in your class,” she whispers.

  “Oh.” This information seems to momentarily relieve the young professor, who carelessly tosses his students’ work onto the passenger seat. “Well, I was just hurrying off to a meeting again. It was nice running into you like this but—”

  “I want you to know that I think what you did to me was wrong. I’ve thought about it and I think you should know that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Amelia. I mean, of course you’re entitled to your beliefs and feelings, but both of us are adults and no one forced anything upon anybody.”

  “I’ve decided you’re part of the problem,” Amelia says with a frown, her black beret casting a strange shadow over the professor’s feet. “You and everybody like you. Just because you have a little power, you think you can treat people like…things. But you can’t.”

  “I’m very sorry you feel that you’ve been mistreated, Amelia. Perhaps I misjudged you. I thought, of course, that you were adult enough to understand the nature of the relationship. If I’ve done anything to—”

  “I was standing over there, thinking of maybe fucking up your car or something,” she murmurs. “But now I just feel sorry for you.”

  The professor, unsure what else to do or say, nods, then climbs into his vehicle. He starts the car and begins to back out of the lot. Amelia stands there, staring sadly as he goes, before
she simply turns away.

  WHEN SHE GETS HOME, Amelia finds her younger sister in her room again, lying on her bed. She’s too tired and too depressed to even yell at her. She throws down her book bag and mumbles, “Move over,” before crashing onto the mattress.

  “Your bed is so much better than mine,” Thisbe says.

  “It’s like the same exact bed,” Amelia mutters.

  “Well, it feels better.”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “I dunno. Just thinking.”

  “Why can’t you do that in your own room?”

  “I need to ask you a favor.”

  “What is it?” Amelia asks.

  “It’s kind of crazy.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to go to the retirement home tomorrow with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I need your help to do something. I can’t…you’re just good at dealing with people.”

  “But what do you want me to do?” Amelia asks. Her younger sister turns and whispers her plan in her ear. It is a secret, Thisbe says, then, when she is finished whispering, she climbs out of her older sister’s bed.

  THE MOVIE AMELIA makes for her history class that night is called The History of Clouds. Like William Banning suggested, it’s mostly just single images, some still images, some moving, with a simple sound track over them. Amelia picks a song from an American band with a French-sounding name, Le Tigre, “Cry for Everything Bad That’s Ever Happened,” and edits the images to the instrumental track. The film is pretty simple: it begins with a long, single shot of a cloud, which turns out to be a brightly lit galaxy swirling in the ocean of purple-black space, then cuts to a cloudy shot of earth, closing in farther and farther until there’s an amazing wide shot of a bank of clouds over the Arctic, which she steals from Koyaanisqatsi, and then it cuts to some other borrowed footage, of clouds pouring out from a steam train, then a shot of a field of black clouds above an old coal factory, then a series of shots of clouds from various power plants, then the clouds above the Los Angeles skyline, hazy and dim, and then there are several shots of clouds of black and gray above a bombed-out Baghdad before, finally, the short film ends with a shot taken from Amelia’s front yard, staring up through the trees at the sky overhead. When Amelia finishes editing the final sequence, she starts the movie over and watches it again. It’s okay, not great or perfect or anything, nothing too spectacular, but at least it’s something. At least, instead of just repeating the same old stupid history report, instead of doing the same old thing, she has tried to do something serious, something with some kind of meaning.

  WHEN AMELIA WAKES UP Thursday morning, she takes a shower, brushes her hair, gets dressed, eats breakfast, puts her books in her book bag, double-checks that she has the DV tape, then grabs her black jacket and beret. All at once, looking down at the simple circle of fabric, she decides she does not want to wear it. Instead, she brushes her light brown hair once more, then grabs the beret and tosses it into her bottom dresser drawer, placing it on top of all the other mass-produced junk she has collected. She stares at the beret lying there for a moment. Everything is quiet. Everything is still. Everything is perfectly silent. Amelia then closes the dresser drawer and hurries down the stairs, feeling a little unsure without the beret on top of her head, but why not: it’s just for today.

  Twenty-nine

  BEFORE SCHOOL ON THURSDAY, THISBE IS EATING HER cereal and staring out the kitchen window, at the sun, at the sky, at the world quietly beginning its day while she has to get ready to go to the worst place on earth: school. Across the table, her older sister is munching loudly, scanning the morning paper’s headlines for something to be mad about. This morning Thisbe is too tired to gloat about the results of the recent election. She stabs at the remaining golden puffs of starch getting soggy in the golden white bowl of milk, wondering what she is going to say if she happens to see Roxie today. Maybe Roxie will act like nothing is wrong. Maybe she will rush up to her in the hall and smile and tell her what her crazy mother made for dinner last night or go on about some silly idea for a song. Or maybe not. Maybe, with the rest of the school hurrying along, the bell for the next class echoing above their heads, she will rush right past Thisbe, acting like she doesn’t even know her. That would be the worst thing in the world, Thisbe decides. If she came up and said something mean, that would be okay. If she acts like I don’t even exist, like she doesn’t even know me, well, that would be the worst thing ever, of all time. As Thisbe considers this, she notices a flash of white slowly moving across the sunlit grass of the backyard. It is her neighbor’s cat, Snowball. Thisbe smiles suddenly, setting down her spoon, then hurries to the door with the cereal bowl full of graying milk in her hand, stepping outside as quietly as she can, while Amelia, still reading the paper, continues mumbling to herself. Squatting down on the back porch steps with the bowl, Thisbe makes a few soft kissy noises, clapping her hands against her thighs. The cat freezes where it stands, sniffing a wilted azalea bush. Thisbe gives a short little whistle, then snaps her fingers. Snowball squints its bright blue eyes, suspicious, but, smelling the delectable bowl of sugary milk, the cat creeps along the border of the backyard, tense, its tail raised, its pink nose twitching. Thisbe makes a few more kissy noises, though at this point it’s unnecessary. Snowball stalks through the grass, sniffing, until its mouth is gently lapping at the rim of the bowl, and Thisbe, so gently, so carefully, begins to run her fingers along the back of the cat’s soft head. Snowball does not seem bothered, now completely entranced by the bowl of milk. Thisbe softly caresses its pointed white ear.

  Dear Heavenly Father, Thisbe says silently, closing her eyes, let the world be as nice to me today as this cat. Please do not let anyone utter a harsh word or give me a dirty look for being a spaz. Please do not let me drop anything while I am walking down the hallway. Please do not let certain people pretend that I do not exist. And please do not let anyone I love die anytime soon, at least until I am in my thirties. Through Christ, Our Lord, amen.

  The cat, having finished the milk, its rough tongue flicking against the empty bowl, glances up at Thisbe as she scratches beneath its chin. Then it is off, just a quick flash of white fur disappearing behind a thornbush, and Thisbe can hear her sister shouting.

  THISBE WALKS DOWN the school hallway with her eyes almost completely closed. She is partly pretending she is a blind martyr, and partly trying to avoid seeing Roxie. As she is knocked about by the older boys and girls, excusing herself each time she bumps into somebody, she can almost feel Roxie somewhere among that mass of hurried, anxious bodies, watching her. She can almost sense the strange electric current traveling from the other girl’s eyes and mouth, her lips, careening down the hall to where Thisbe steps so clumsily, trying to avoid being seen. By third period, Thisbe realizes how dumb she looks, and as she hurries all the way across the building to her math class, it finally happens. Roxie, in a blue sweater, her blond hair looking styled and spiky, comes around the corner from the next hall, talking to some other sophomore, a girl with sharp features and gray bags beneath her heavily mascaraed blue eyes, just as Thisbe is rushing in the opposite direction. Every part of her body feels weak. Her breath falters, her heart betrays her, beating as loud as a plea. Thisbe almost stumbles, crashing into two older boys in front of her, as Roxie, definitely noticing her out of the corner of her eye, decides to pretend she does not, continuing to talk very excitedly to this new girl, this girl with the dark circles and makeup and slutty-looking blouse. Thisbe, fighting back a sob, feels Roxie’s shadow pass over her own; the entire world—of unnamable countries, of thousands of people, of millions of catastrophes, including all of the students at this lousy school—slows down for a single second as they pass one another, both of them silent, both of them pretending not to have seen the other’s stilted, awkwardly feigned nonchalance. These two bodies pass in such close proximit, elbows, maybe for a moment, coming within millimeters of each other, electrons, neutrons, p
rotons, things immeasurably small finding one another for that solitary second, then, having made contact, somehow changing, the larger world growing silent now as they drift apart, one moving down D hall to the east, the other moving down D hall to the west. In that painful moment, Thisbe searches for something in the other girl’s eyes, some glimmer, some glow of recognition, but finds only stony greenness. What does not happen in those following seconds is the end: Thisbe does not collapse, she does not die of an asthma attack, she does not faint or stab herself in the heart with a No. 2 pencil. For as awful as the moment is, it is soon over, and Thisbe, placing one foot after the other, finds herself still alive, still breathing, sad, heartsick, despondent—yes—but stumbling on weak legs to her next class.

  AFTER SCHOOL, Thisbe does not go to chorus practice. She explains to Mr. Grisham, in the hallway between sixth and seventh periods, that her grandfather is really sick. She uses the term “way sick,” as a matter of fact, and when the phrase comes out of her mouth, she smiles to herself, thinking she sounds exactly like her older sister. Mr. Grisham nods attentively, then, without any previous indication—no hand on the shoulder or further verbal cue—he throws a long, nervous arm around Thisbe’s neck and gives what is, surprisingly, a very gentle hug. “We’ll all be thinking of you,” he says and then releases her and strolls off to teach his music class, the awful echo of poorly fingered oboe notes already squawking from his room. It is not a lie at all, Thisbe tells herself. We are going to see him.

  WHEN THISBE OPENS the front door of her house, she finds her older sister is already home, already a little impatient. Thisbe reminds herself that what she’s planned is almost impossible to do alone. The two girls chat about school for a moment, Thisbe puts her book bag on the kitchen table, even though her mother has asked her not to do this a hundred times. She grabs a glass of water and gulps it over the sink, something her older sister, Amelia, thinks is uncouth, then finishes it with a healthy, “Ahhhh,” and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Without another word, the two sisters, separated in age by almost four years, the older girl, a little taller, a little more savvy, refined, her makeup simple but thorough, in a dark sweater and jeans, the younger, her brown hair darker in a ponytail, in her gray coat and gray skirt from school, a smudge of something at the corner of her mouth, no makeup, her eyebrows in desperate need of tweezing, or so the older one thinks, together, silent, not so much different at all, the familial resemblance in the color of the hair, in the shape of the nose, slight and narrow, the thin mouth, the rounded eyes, the two girls exit their home before either one of their parents returns from work, afraid of having to explain where they are now headed. Together, they walk briskly down to Fifty-fifth Street, find a cab, and take it south, passing the dreary-looking shopping centers and run-down homes until some twenty minutes later they are there, ready to lie, to do a strange kind of misdeed. They sign both of their names on the register of the retirement home, taking the elevator to the third floor, walking demurely down the hall, or as close to it as they can. They find their grandfather watching television in the quiet confines of his room.