Calling Home

by Michael Cadnum

  “That guy’s a peckerhead. A jerk.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s a very brilliant guy. He probably—” Mr. Lindner nodded to me as he passed. I lowered my voice. “He probably hates teaching high school students. He probably would rather be in some school out in the middle of a green field, where there is moss and ivy on the walls, and people actually speak Latin to each other, even over breakfast.”

  “He’s just overcompensating because he’s black. He wants to prove to everybody how perfect he is.”

  “So what? Everybody has reasons for being what they are. What difference does that make?”

  I passed a trash can that was overflowing and I picked up an empty milk carton. This, I thought to myself, is Mr. Lindner’s head. I squeezed it hard and crushed it in an instant, only it was much too easy; I wanted something much harder to crush that I could imagine was Mr. Lindner’s head. A spot of milk shimmered on the back of my hand and I licked it off, thinking how little all the people in the world knew about me, and how appalled they would be if they knew how much contempt I had for them. I kicked a hole in the wall a little bit bigger, and then kicked a new hole. My shoe got stuck in the plaster, as if the building were trying to hang on to me while someone ran for the police.

  Angela linked her arm with mine like she was proud to be seen with a destructive person, and I took her outside. We strolled along Lake Boulevard, and I kicked the empty Coke cans out of our way, one of them spinning into the center of the street where a pickup truck squashed it flat.

  “They’re coming back tonight,” she said, tossing her hair and leaning her head on my shoulder. “I wish the plane would crash.”

  “You shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not? Saying it won’t make it happen.”

  “It’s a bad wish. Bad wishes might not make things happen, but they’re bad anyway. You ought to watch what you say. It’s just a policy a person ought to adopt.”

  Her arm was still linked to mine, but it was a dead thing; the affection wasn’t in it, and I could tell that she was going to take it away if I said anything else critical about her.

  I continued, “You’re awfully careless about things you say. Calling people names, wishing them dead.”

  “Fuck you.” Her arm was gone.

  “That’s very mature. Very articulate. You should be on talk shows.”

  “You’re a prick, you know that?” She was, as they say, beautiful when she was angry, but also vacant, like being mad sucked up all of her natural vivacity and made her stupid.

  She flounced away, and the way she flounced said, “Catch up with me and apologize so we can get something to eat,” but I let her flounce diminish to a regular walk and didn’t even make a move to catch up with her. I saw something in Angela then that I didn’t want to see. I saw that the thing that would keep her from amounting to anything as a person was that she was too perfect. I don’t mean too admirable; I mean too perfect, the way a goldfish is perfect.

  Lake Boulevard was thick with a sudden herd of AC Transit buses, delivery trucks, and Cadillacs. The sun was tarnished; an ugly haze was over the sky, a kind of smog that no one gets excited about because it probably isn’t that bad for a person’s health, it only makes things look ugly and boring and cheap.

  I walked up the steps to the school very slowly, like my body was thickening into a robot even as I reached the top step, and there, looking like a runaway from his own funeral, stood Mr. Tyler. I turned to face Tyler as I passed, and eyed him up and down just to teach him something, but to my surprise, he did not flinch. He smiled in a way that made me queasy and said, “Just the man I was looking for.”

  Whenever a stinker like Mr. Tyler calls you a man or “mister,” you’re about to be had. “What for?” I said, trying to yawn.

  “Vice principal wants to see you.”

  Had Mr. Lindner complained that I was bombed in his class? No, that was impossible. Mr. Lindner hated the administration as much as he hated students, and he also would think that his little talk was effective enough to settle the problem for the time being.

  The hall was empty, and Mr. Tyler followed me as I put my hands in my pockets and strolled toward the brown door with the translucent glass which read, in flaking black letters, VICE PRINCIPAL. Every step was difficult because inside me, I felt the urge to flee immediately, to go anywhere, to run and never come back and turn into someone else, someplace else, with a different name and even a different face; these things can be done, but I don’t know enough about them.

  Mr. Tyler opened the door for me, actually turned the knob and held it open with a slight smile, the inside of his lower lip coated with chalk from his ulcer medicine. I put out one hand to the doorjamb and stepped into the office, letting my features float, for a moment, like petals on a pond while I chose the correct expression.

  Mr. Williams, the vice principal, was there, a fungus who shuffled papers and stood. “Peter Evers,” he said as if he couldn’t quite be sure I was the right person. I kept my mouth shut, and my features, in an act of genius, found the exact expression of puzzled irritation that I needed as I glanced around and saw the tallest Chinese man I have ever seen, and stout, too.

  “This is Peter Evers,” said Mr. Tyler from behind me, and I mentally squeezed his neck in my hands until digested Rolaids ran down my hands from his gaping mouth. “Peter,” added Mr. Tyler, a surge of authority enriching his voice, “this is Inspector Ng.”

  “Just a few quick questions, Peter, if you don’t mind, so we can get some things squared away in a little investigation we have to do,” said Inspector Ng in one breath. His words were so fast I needed a moment to think about them, but he slapped more words in my face so rapidly I had to sit down, and did, feeling my bones turn to piss.

  “I understand that you are a friend of Mead Litton, and I’m sorry to say that Mead has been reported missing so I have to ask you one or two questions in hopes that we can find him,” said Inspector Ng.

  I swallowed. “Mead is missing?”

  “That’s right. This is a routine investigation we do in all cases such as this, contacting friends and acquaintances to attempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing person.”

  “So they can find him,” said Mr. Tyler. “Runaways.” Mr. Tyler shook his head. “Runaways in a world like this.”

  “Mead ran away?” I asked, hurting my neck to look up at Inspector Ng.

  Inspector Ng opened a notebook. “We don’t expect any foul play because he has called home to reassure his parents that he is all right, and we have no reason to believe that he is in any kind of actual trouble.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “You are a friend of Mead Litton’s, aren’t you, Peter?” asked Inspector Ng, sitting down. We were all sitting, except Mr. Tyler, who guarded the door like he expected me to bolt, even though I could have tossed him aside as easily as a hat rack.

  “Oh, sure. We hang around together. You know.”

  “When did you last see him?” In an eerie way, this was the first thing that Inspector Ng had said slowly, and the words were heavy. I hefted them, unable to think.

  Mr. Williams lifted a hand from his desk. “Anything you can think of that can help, Peter.”

  Inspector Ng nodded. “Anything at all. Did you see the subject accept a ride anywhere, or speak to anyone you did not recognize, or do anything else that might not at the time have aroused suspicion but which might, in looking back—” Inspector Ng leaned forward. “Anything,” he said slowly, “at all.”

  Mr. Williams turned his hand palm up. “Mrs. Litton is tremendously upset. The poor, tormented lady.”

  “It’s awful,” I squeaked. “I had no idea.”

  “You had no idea at all that Mead Litton was missing, none whatsoever, until this moment as you sat here in this room?” asked Inspector Ng.

  “No,” I said, and the lie of it, knowing that it was a lie, climbed up my head like a monkey and tried to peek out at Inspector Ng through my eyes. I took a d
eep breath and told myself that if I had ever, in my whole life, shown any composure, this was the time to bring it back; this was the time to be a genius, this was the time to let my face lie for me so well that I could stand among these enemies like Daniel in the Den of Lions and walk free, completely unharmed.

  I looked to the floor, at Inspector Ng’s black shoes, noticed that they needed to be polished but that his pants wore a hard crease, and looked up, the perfect liar. “No, I didn’t know anything about it. We hung around a lot, but he didn’t tell me any of his plans.”

  “I can believe it. That Litton kid is very low IQ. A behavior problem from nursery school,” said Mr. Tyler.

  I looked into Mr. Tyler, seeing inside Mr. Tyler’s intestines ropes made of IQ tests, and all the other tests students take by marking spots on pieces of paper they will feed into a computer. I shot the thought into his dried-up guts that what Mead had was something Mr. Tyler would never understand, and which all the computers in the world could not detect. But the face I showed Mr. Tyler was one of concern and humility.

  Inspector Ng shrugged his shoulders. “We have to follow up on every possibility in a case like this, even when it is purely routine and the subject in question has probably, in all likelihood simply—” Inspector Ng closed his notebook—“taken a hike.”

  “But,” said Mr. Williams, “if you hear from Mead in any way, you will please let an administrator know. His poor mother is so distraught. My word, it is a trial to be a parent.”

  “The young have no comprehension. None at all,” said Mr. Tyler.

  Inspector Ng said nothing. He tucked his notebook into his pocket, and clipped his pen into his shirt, and smiled at me, suddenly. He believed me, the smile said. This was all purely routine. I was a good, slightly mixed-up kid, who was, basically, harmless. But also, far inside the smile, I saw another Inspector Ng, an Inspector Ng who crouched, holding a thirty-eight with both hands, and shot holes in people he didn’t like.

  I found Lani sorting through books in her locker. For someone who was so healthy and sure of herself, she had a very messy locker, all trash and shoved-in books. Lani liked to read, and her locker was a jumble of mystery stories and inspirational biographies of famous athletes.

  “I heard you were in trouble,” she said, looking at me carefully.

  “No. No trouble. I want to go to the zoo. Want to come along?”

  She showed very slight surprise. “I have softball practice, Peter, and it’s late in the day to go to the zoo, isn’t it? We could go on Saturday.”

  “I feel like seeing some animals in prison. I feel a great kinship with them.”

  She studied me and, as always, I had the sense that she really saw me, the actual human, and not simply what she expected to see.

  The zoo was nearly empty, but warm and sunny in the late afternoon. We stood before a weedy plot of dirt, and an aqua-green pool of peeling paint and water. Two alligators lay before us, torpid as lengths of meat.

  “I hate seeing animals penned up,” said Lani. “It makes me so sad.”

  “Mead is missing,” I said, staring at the gigantic reptiles.

  “What happened!”

  “They think he ran away.”

  “Why would he run away?”

  “He just ran away. Who knows why? People do things for strange reasons.”

  One of the alligators shifted his muscular, broad head. Then he stopped, and held the new position for a long time.

  “I hope he’s all right,” she said.

  “I hope so, too,” I murmured, feeling terrible about lying to Lani.

  I wanted to tell her everything.

  9

  We sat on the lawn watching the light break and form on the surface of Lake Merritt. A duck waddled to the edge of the lake and shook himself. Then he was suddenly on the water, sailing forth into the white, broken fragments of sunlight. He reached the place where the broken light was brightest, and vanished, covered over by the glare that eyes could not stand to look into.

  Angela slipped off her shoes. She wiggled her toes and leaned forward and said to them, “I decided you were so rude because you’re under a lot of pressure.”

  “I’m not under any pressure.”

  “I think you are.” She looked at me, then massaged her toes with both hands. “I think you are under some kind of stress.”

  “I’m just bored. Everything is so tedious.”

  “You’re always bored. There’s something different.”

  I snorted.

  “Anyway, I forgive you for snapping at me.”

  “I was irritated because you say things and don’t even think what they mean, like saying that you hope that your parents’ plane crashes. What an evil thing to say.”

  She stiffened, then stretched, and was plainly not going to be drawn into an argument, and I understood that she felt good about forgiving me. It gave her power over me, and I disliked her for her understanding, but accepted it because it was the easiest thing to do. I made up my mind, though, that I would try to be meaner to people in the future; it’s so much more fair than to forgive them.

  “I was just talking. Anyway, there’s no such thing as evil. Just people and things they do. You know that.”

  I leaned back on the lawn and covered my eyes from the afternoon sun. Lake Merritt is surrounded by buildings and streets, a lake in the middle of life. It’s ugly when you get up close to it and see the scum-black rocks and algae-greasy beer cans, and when you get farther away, you see how gray and building-colored the lake is, even on a bright day, and how unlike a real lake it is, one that is surrounded by farms or mountains, and that people can stoop down to and touch and drink from. I didn’t want to see the lake anymore, and I didn’t want the light to needle my eyes, so I lay there and listened to the whir and moan of traffic.

  “But there is something wrong with you. There’s something in your eyes. I can see it. Anyone who really knows you can see it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it’s not. There’s something the matter with you.”

  I listened to the city grumbling around me. A truck growled its gears and coughed a huge, phlegmy rumble as it took some load of something across the edge of everything I could hear and, gradually, diminished. I could hear Angela’s silence, too, as she sensed the things about me she imagined herself able to sense.

  “Yes,” I said, finally. “There is something wrong with me.”

  “What?” she breathed.

  “I find it very difficult to talk about. It’s not the sort of thing I can share.”

  “You can share it with me,” she said, hungry for it. And she cared, too, concern making her voice syrupy and smooth, as she leaned closer to me and murmured, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I can’t get it out of my mind. It eats away at me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “What?”

  “My father asked me to come live with him.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “Why not? He’s my father.”

  “You don’t want to, do you? It would be awful if you moved away.”

  “No, I don’t want to. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  “His feelings.” She said it with contempt, but then she was quiet.

  “Yes. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Newport Beach.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In Southern California someplace. I’m not sure where.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Southern California. I’d kill myself if I had to live down there.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never been there.” I hesitated. “I’ve never even flown.”

  “It’s no big deal. None of it is. Travel is boring.”

  I sat up and blinked against the brightness. She put her arm around me, very tender now that she had a secret out of me, and whispered into my ear in a way that made my penis turn around and listen, “We ought to run away
together.”

  I smiled, because what could anyone do in a situation like that? She was the sexiest girl in California at that moment, and she knew it, and she wrapped herself around me and lay me down on the grass and stroked my lips with her tongue, controlling me and warping me this way and that, and I had the feeling that sharing something intimate with Angela made her feel like the most powerful woman in the world.

  I struggled to my feet like a person climbing out of a sleeping bag, and she stood with me, her arm around me like she didn’t want me to run away. And I didn’t want to run, either, because I felt that nothing could happen to me as long as I was with her; she was that powerful.

  A pudgy man held an object in his hands and teetered on the edge of the lake, working his feet into the gray, crusty rocks for steadiness. He kneeled and placed the object he held into the water. He stood again and looked down at it lovingly, and for a long time he did not do anything.

  “A grown man,” Angela said.

  The man stepped back and took a box the size of a small book from his pocket. An antenna quivered from the box, and the man pushed the box gently with one finger, as if he was dialing a phone.

  The object began to move, and as it moved it bobbed over waves in the water that I had not noticed before, and rocked, and the small ripples of water broke over it and wet it. It made a purr that increased as it reached the quiet stretch of water and turned toward a duck. The duck swam hastily away from it.

  The man watched it, not with a playful expression, but with a very serious expression. The antenna quivered as he manipulated dials in his hand.

  “A grown man playing with toys.”

  “It’s wonderful!”

  “What’s wonderful about a grown man playing with a toy speedboat? He’s older than my father.” Angela brushed a dried blade of grass from her pants, and it was obvious that the withered-up little blade of grass was supposed to be me.

  “Mead ran away,” she said.