Long Division

by Jane Berentson

  60 Earlier this winter I made elaborate plans to purchase a sewing machine and make sheets for all my friends and relatives for Christmas. This did not happen. Obviously, I would have mentioned it. Gus gave me crap and still reminds me that he wanted lumberjack plaid flannel for his. Not every idea is a good one worth follow-through. George W. Bush and I have already gone over this. I would have ended up throwing a three-hundred-dollar sewing machine into my television and ruining two perfectly good grown-up appliances.

  61 Seriously. I thought Gus was smarter than this.

  62 Note to self: Research the guy who invented the rubber chicken. What was he thinking? How did rubber chickens make their way into mainstream culture? Why are they so sleek and aerodynamic? Why do they look nothing like actual chickens but are then absolutely recognizable as chickens? So much.

  63 Very few things take my breath away.

  64 Not the one Edward Harrington recommended, but the staff was still quite helpful.

  65 “Good morning, little pretty feather lady.”

  “How’s my precious baby omega-3 producer?”

  “Let’s eat some of this yummy-yum-yum grainy grain.”

  “Look at you, feather princess. What a good girl—what a pretty beak.”

  “Come along, hen of mine.”

  “Helen of Tacoma, the world is waiting for you. Time to conquer breakfast!”

  66 There was a split vote on having them be ninjas or pirates. So we decided Why not both? Multitalented criminals.

  67 I used glitter!

  68 Marco Antolini (such a yay-hoo) starts a slimy high-five movement that really catches on. The slappy sounds of the small, moist palms is particularly satisfying as it thu-wacks above the giggling voices.

  69 You try singing in a surgical mask!

  70 Eating by the computers is usually strictly prohibited. I made Garrett pinkie swear to never ever tell.

  71 Today I’m calling my book Caution: This Book Has a Surprise Middle Part, and the cover is traffic-sign yellow with a drawing of me baring my teeth. Maybe I’ll even have fangs.

  72 Actually, like most modern classrooms, mine has a dry-erase whiteboard. The fake classrooms they use for the filming of the movie aren’t quite up to date. The dull green chalkboard doesn’t glare in the lights like the whiteboard does. This is total bullshit. Annie, you’re losing it.

  73 Perhaps I should call them blahgs.

  74 I’m not lying. Freedom is a precious three-year-old in Maryland with dark, curly hair and a severe peanut allergy.

  75 Can you tell I recently went fishing? Teacher Gone Wild: Spring Break Camping Trip. Tonight on The Annie Harper Show!!!

  76 See, that’s what I thought then, when I quit writing after V-Day. But my my my how things have changed, boys and girls. This is one fucked-up world. Something happened that I would never have guessed. It was flying low and sad, below the radar, below the range of my classroom, my telephone, my chicken coop. Even in my disgusting self-absorption, I couldn’t have made this up to amplify the interestingness of my story. It just happened. So here I am. Back at the keyboard.

  77 It’s this danglin’ line of mine

  and some good ol’ concentration

  a danglin’ lure,

  the fishies’ cure

  for overpopulation!

  78 Stephen lives in Boston. He does not know my friend Michelle, a nurse, who also lives there. I’m considering setting them up.

  79 Gus and I have always been big on lying to each other. In college we had this weird game where we made up fake news about our former class-mates to see how crazy a detail we could get the other to believe. I hear Jennifer Rendell is acting in a toothpaste commercial. Oh yeah, Mark Picha lost a finger in a construction accident. The lie had to strike a balance between absurd and mundane in order to be reasonably received. A story worth telling, but not one that’s obviously contrived.

  80 Well. Helicopters, technically.

  81 Freshman year of high school. Before the big yoga comeback.

  82 I was really into those contests Crayola had in the midnineties where you could make up the names of the new color crayons. I still can’t believe that “Macaroni & Cheese” beat out my obviously superior “Speckle of the Poison Dart Frog” for the new bright orange. I suspect a sizeable chunk of $$$ from Kraft Foods had something to do with it.

  83 A reference to an incident where I accidentally ate a mysteriously crunchy bug and earned the nickname “Bullfrog.”

  84 My neighbor had actually just fed her that morning—hopefully using the two pages of instructions I left on how exactly Sweet Precious Love Baby Helen likes her grain to be scattered.

  85 Or Stephen and Gina, who were likely still around.

  86 Possible book title.

  87 Please turn the page right now.

  88 Blue corn, honey swirl, jalapeño, and ricotta corn bread pancakes.

  89 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (for the first time) and Remains of the Day (for the second time).

  90 A magenta color officially called “Out on the Town,” which I have renamed “Bleeding Heart.”

  91 That’s the problem. I don’t. I know that he is busy. I know that showers don’t happen often and that his sleeping hours are weird and shift all the time. But I don’t know any concrete details about how the hours of his workday are truly passed. In my head I have all these visions of him looking at green and black monitors, flipping switches and talking into a headset. I can see him polishing his weapon with a soft rag and sprinting across a patch of sand and flinging himself heroically into the back of a moving jeep. But these aren’t images from stories David has told me; they are probably just of a mix of stupid scenes from movies and military recruitment ads I’ve seen on TV.

  92 This is one of those things that I’m trying to stop saying. A professor of mine in college told me once that the women of my generation are going to have difficulties transitioning into adult speech patterns. He said that in twenty years there would be a whole lot of lawyers and doctors and teachers and social workers tossing “like” and “no way” into their professional vernacular. And I guess it is a bit embarrassing that I can occasionally drop the “Oh my god” bomb with that ridiculously immature lilt in my voice.

  93 Would Loretta Schumacher ever say “TP”? No way, José.

  94 I was right about this. The sandals did just that.

  95 Gus is super tall. Six-three, I think.

  96 There’s one hunt for ages five through nine where the eggs have actually been hidden in the nooks of the playground, the surrounding trees, and shrubbery. And then there’s the four-and-under egg hunt, which is more like an egg-gathering free-for-all where the Rotarians have taped off a rectangular piece of lawn and all the toddlers have to do is stumble around and pick eggs off the ground and put them in their baskets/buckets/plastic shopping bags. Mothers crouch around the sides of the tape peering into the screens of their digital cameras and shouting, “Jeremy, get the blue egg, sweetie. Right there!” It’s almost like a sporting event.

  97 Changes in state testing. Whose classrooms might move to portable buildings next year. Mrs. Janklow’s early retirement. An upcoming assembly about fire safety. The fact that the Coke machine has been out of Diet since before Christmas. It’s all very important and interesting.

  98 At first I hated using this phrase as a teacher. We’re always having to “switch gears,” and it sounds so cliché and stupid, but there’s really no way around it. Switching gears is a fundamental part of instruction.

  99 I should probably point out here how wrong my instincts were with the chicken fingers thing. But fake-outs happen. Just because our guts occasionally fail doesn’t constitute reason enough to completely disregard them.

  100 Change the letters around and you get VILE!!!!

  101 How wicked do I sound? Deceptively coaxing someone I love into admitting that his friend was blown into chunks less than two weeks ago. I wish I could explain it. I really wish I could.

 
102 Not about Oprah’s voice, but about the suicide thing. Counseling? Is it time yet? Does my insurance cover it? Oh, Georgie? Oh W.? Please help!

  103 Everything minus the Alden bits. I don’t really know why I’m avoiding that with her.

  104 We’re talking about the IN THE DARK/SECRET KEEPER/BORING CORRESPONDENCE ISSUE here.

  105 We’re finally learning about the water cycle (the bulletin board’s been up for months), and they each must draw an example using real-life things like mud puddles and sunshine or boiling water from macaroni and cheese. They must also memorize how to spell “precipitation.”

  106 Gus and I had this canon of expressions in high school that were like silly, pat movie lines that we liked to say because it felt like people didn’t say them enough and finding the perfect context to say them was somehow a really beautiful moment. “There’s only one way to find out” is one of those lines. Others include: “Mark my words!” “Stranger things have happened,” “Wouldn’t you like to know?” “It’s gonna be a great summer!” and my personal favorite: “It just might be crazy enough to work!”

  107 Its name is el Che.

  108 EIGHT MONTHS!!!

  109 As in I’ve discovered how to turn a perfectly nifty premise for a feel-good, wholesome memoir into a fucked-up, goofball, tortured confessional. Just you watch.

  110 Her budding teacher personality is quite apparent.

  111 It’s always bus 29 because the driver, Rhonda, always takes a smoke break behind the Dumpster.

  112 And that its next occupant has a basic understanding of arithmetic and can read at grade level!

  113 First name: Jennifer.

  114 Oysters, pizza, lamb chops.

  115 But I’ve never told Gus that I’m writing about it.

  116 ISBN: 0-910655-01-4, edited with Introduction and Notes by Jeannie Marie Deen.

  117 Eerie coincidence: You may remember that Francisco/Ray Flores was from Denton, Texas. Was! Oh, the bitter sadness of the past tense!

  118 It’s barely mid-June, but he has to start preparing for the Fourth of July beer season by making tons of vinyl signs.

  119 This market has a goat cheese vendor who I made friends with last year. She’s this old hippie named Doris, and she’s always trying to convince me to start my own goat business. She said that there’s so much cheap land just east of Puyallup that’s perfect for them to graze. And if I sell my goats’ milk to her company, I should be able to support myself off of a mere seventy-five goats. And I’d only have to spend five to six hours a day milking!

  120 BINGO!

  121 “Were” is actually the proper conjugation.

  122 Wait. No one is getting pregnant while the sperm’s away. Duh.

  123 How come he never asks about Helen?

  124 If you thought the Girl Scouts were a dying breed, you’re wrong. There were five (5!!) of them in Miss Harper’s 2003-2004 class. And I ridiculously purchased four boxes of cookies from each scout. That’s twenty boxes at four dollars apiece. An easy and absurd math problem. Luckily, I prevented a summer of serious cookie gorging by foisting three boxes onto my parents, one onto Loretta (for diabetic lows), two onto David, and two onto Gus. How many does Miss Harper have left, boys and girls? Still, a lot.

  125 Honestly, because he was away in Dominica, Gus and I hadn’t spent much time together since summers during college. Very little overlap with my David phase too. But we did always keep in touch. He sent me funny postcards about his island antics and this piggy bank he made from a coconut shell.

  126 ?????????? ? ? ?

  127 She hid it well with the sweatshirt and the packaging tape. When she told us about the baby, I said “Cool!” So dorky.

  128 I forgot to get stamps.

  129 Helen really loved her corn.

  130 ABORT MISSION EVERYTHING (see how easily this is done, George?). Memoir is out. Raw, uncut journal is out. Writing to produce a product is out. New goal: Write myself back to sanity.

  131 Cheesefest 2004, but I do mean it.

  132 By “both” I think she means me and Helen.

  133 We’re actually quite good at this now. It’s not as distracting as you’d think.

  134 I am feeling really bad that I haven’t told Loretta anything about Alden. But is it really that big of a deal? Of course, I’m thinking about him as we talk about spicy death salsa. Oh my.

  135 I am only using this word because it’s Loretta. No one except people like Loretta can do things gingerly.

  136 Gus doesn’t have many possessions. This blue flannel beanbag used to occupy the basement of his father’s home.

  137 Gus has a lot of things that were his mother’s. Since she left when he was just a few months old—and I guess in some sort of fury—she didn’t take much. Gus has always liked to use her things though. “It’s nice that she has given me more than just a life,” he often says, which I’ve always thought was a very mature take on it.

  138 It’s a Spanish film called Hable con ella (Talk to Her) about a comatose female bullfighter, her boyfriend, and this fucked-up nurse who is obsessed with another comatose woman: a beautiful ballerina.

  139 For some reason, while walking the Freedom Trail, I couldn’t shake this preoccupation with literally walking right on it. Like a kid who mustn’t step on a crack for fear of severely injuring his mother, my gaze was constantly being pulled down to my sneakers, striving for careful heel-toe placement on the narrow stripe. Narrow = about eight inches in most parts.

  140 Only if I actually had a fanny pack. I am kind of the type.

  141 I was really expecting his name to be Marco or Luigi or Frankie. Tyler? It just didn’t fit.

  142 I know. I know. There are many twenty-five-year-olds pursuing undergraduate degrees, but I always feel so much older. Maybe because I like gardening and wearing bathrobes around the house. Also: College just feels so long ago.

  143 Though we are not yet great friends, Stephen’s and my experience of fishing together created the ability to share long, comfortable silences early on in our friendship.

  144 My birthday is tomorrow. Wahoo-twenty-five.

  145 Well, that’s good that I talked to David because now I probably won’t need to talk to him until the end of the trip and I don’t have to worry about keeping a close eye on my cell phone and I can just enjoy myself.

  146 I actually wrote down the entire subway terrorist fantasy before we even took off.

  147 A teenager reading Rolling Stone and a middle-aged woman with chin hairs.

  148 What kind of girl breaks up with a man in a war zone? I mean, I know that women have been doing the Dear John thing since the beginning of wars, but how do they muster up the ovaries to break someone’s heart while he’s so horribly busy doing horrible things? This is why I should have taken up with the Knitters. Surely they know someone who’s gracefully done it. If two people aren’t right for one another, why should a war be a reason to keep them together? What if David dies tomorrow in a moment where I don’t actually love him like he thinks I do? And earlier that afternoon he had a chance to have steamy, rich, passionate, danger war sex with Jayna Hotstuff Austin. And he didn’t do it because he loves me and because he believes I love him. And in that case he would be dying in a blanket of delusion. TO DIE INSIDE A LIE. That’s what I should call the heavy-metal symphony I should compose about my life. What’s worse: To continue under disingenuous auspices? Or to kick someone who is already down? But then, there is also the escape clause note. He wrote it. I didn’t write it. It was all his idea. His words. A permission slip. A coupon. A coupon he left on a pillow. On purpose. He gave it to me. I swear.

  149 Consider taking out the word penis.

  150 Why am I waiting and hoping for David to seriously wound me so I can have a way out of this? That is fucked up, Miss Harper. I’ve got to bare my fangs and accept my role as the wounder. At least this time.

  151 This month’s pairing: A South African sauvignon blanc and a chunk of Ossau-Iraty (oh-soh ee-R AH-tee),
a semisoft sheep’s milk cheese from the French Pyrenees. A cool, crisp wine meets the toasty, nutty cheese in a somewhat jarring, but ultimately satisfying juxtaposition.

  152 I used to do this all the time before Helen moved in. It spooked her. It’s nice to do it again, though. I have different point levels for getting through different holes on the fence. The siblingless are great at making up one-person games.

  153 This is really how people talk in these mega intense situations. I always thought it was a movie thing where the revelation is reiterated just for the sake of audience comprehension.

  154 Not true. It was actually sweat on the glasses, I believe.

  155 But what is there really to say? My parents still have one child. Gus still has no mother. Alden is still dead. Nothing is different except for this connection that we know exists, and we now can get drunk and bask in the eerie shadow of its reality.