by David Klass
My friend who is not a friend and I exchanged our first words since his basketball game arrest just before this math class began, and, it pains me to report, they were not filled with warmth and friendship. Among the Lashasa Palulu, when two young men are feuding and one is willing to put the ill will to rest, it is considered good manners and wise policy for him to approach his enemy with respectful formality, and to speak about matters such as the weather that are banal, whatever that means, and that cannot possibly give offense. “Good morning, William Beanman,” I said as we walked into the room and sat down side by side. “And how are you on this gray Tuesday?”
He did not reply to this first conversational salvo, except to grind his teeth together with sufficient force so that the muscles of his mandible stood out.
“I thought it might snow, but now it looks like rain,” I continued. “Or it could hail, or even perhaps sleet.” Having exhausted all the main meteorological possibilities, I sat back in my chair and waited for his response.
“You’re dead meat,” my friend who is not a friend finally spat back in my direction. “Dead meat, do you hear? You’re carrion.”
No one had ever called me carrion before, and I found I did not enjoy the experience. “Strong words from a two-time felon,” I told him. “You really must reform, forgive, and forget, or you may end up on death row.”
That was the extent of our conversation. But throughout the period, at well-spaced intervals, Billy Beezer has whispered ominously at me, “Dead meat, dead meat.” And on several of the many occasions when Mrs. Moonface has turned away from us to fill her three blackboards with algebraic hieroglyphics, Billy Beezer has physically assaulted me with several of the mathematical learning aids that the Beezer parents have generously purchased for their son’s edification. He jabbed me with a slide rule. He poked me with a protractor. He stabbed me with the point of his compass hard enough to break my skin and draw blood.
Mrs. Moonface, I believe the Board of Education has entrusted you with a clear responsibility to prevent your students from being stabbed with mathematical learning aids during your class. But instead of your protecting the innocent, your eyes are now gleaming with an eager sadistic pleasure. “I see that we still have five minutes left in the period,” you observe, putting down the chalk and rubbing your hands together. “Let us explore the practical applications of solving two variable linear equations by looking at one very simple question. Who would like to volunteer?”
Mrs. Moonface waits expectantly for volunteers. She manages to convey in her attitude that any student raising his or her hand will be performing an act of selfless bravery that may rescue the rest of the platoon. If this were a war movie, a freshfaced private from middle America would step forward and volunteer for the suicide mission. “Sarge,” he would say, “choose me. I’m your man to walk through this minefield and take out the machine gun nest.” But this is not a war movie—this is anti-math class, and we are all hunkered down in our antialgebra shelters waiting for the bombing raid to pass.
When it becomes clear that no one is dumb enough to take on her death question voluntarily, Mrs. Moonface begins searching for a live victim. “Then I suppose I’ll have to choose,” she says with obvious relish. “Let’s see. Who haven’t we heard from in a while?”
Her eyes do a quick death scan around the room, sweeping over the rows of students. Everyone goes into survival mode. For a long moment her gaze settles on Norman Cough, but he cleverly extricates himself by a short bronchial blast of such concentrated lung power that it moves his entire desk several feet to his right, much the way the deep-sea octopus escapes predators by sudden bursts of water from its mantle cavity.
Mrs. Moonface appears momentarily confused—Norman was in Row A but he is suddenly in Row C. She could try to pin him down again, at his new location, but he is looking back at her confidently, as if to say, “Mrs. Moonface, I am far too elusive a foe for the likes of you on this Tuesday morning. I am completely capable of coughing myself around this room for the next four minutes and forty-eight seconds if necessary.”
Mrs. Moonface goes off in search of less mobile prey. She next focuses her death gaze on Karen Dirigible’s desk. A large purple poster advertising Open School Night has been tacked up on the bulletin board behind Karen’s desk, and she has dressed in careful camouflage to take advantage of this backdrop. This morning she is wearing a purple dress that so perfectly matches the poster that one can look directly at her and not see any sign of an algebra student whatsoever.
Mrs. Moonface pauses. She knows from the attendance sheet that Karen must be at the end of row A, so she peers one way and then another, narrows her eyes, and walks several steps to one side for a better angle, but Karen Dirigible is like a sand crab on a dune—a predator can look directly at her and see nothing that can be eaten.
Mrs. Moonface’s death gaze sweeps on to me. Now, as I have demonstrated before, I am a master at avoiding unwanted algebra questions and there are several advanced techniques I could employ if necessary. But the truth is, there are now only four minutes and seven seconds left in the period. It will take Mrs. Moonface at least ten seconds to ask her question. I am quite capable of stalling for four minutes, neither answering nor not answering, till the period comes to an end. So I look directly back at Mrs. Moonface. “Do not call on me,” I am saying to her, “because you will be wrestling a cloud.”
“John,” she says, taking up my challenge, “I haven’t called your name in a while. Here is a very simple double variable question. An auto parts store ordered a combined total of fifty cases of oil filters and air cleaners that cost a total of three thousand two hundred and eleven dollars and eighty cents. Each case of oil filters costs seventy dollars and seventy cents and each case of air cleaners costs thirty dollars and thirty cents. How many cases of oil filters and how many cases of air cleaners were ordered?”
There is silence in the class. The death question has been let out of its box. It uncurls itself like a giant scorpion and approaches me, its cold arachnid eyes measuring me while its sensory bristles twitch menacingly.
I am remarkably calm. Mrs. Moonface, in asking me this death question you wasted seventeen precious seconds. That leaves me with a mere three minutes and fifty seconds of stall time—a piece of cake for an advanced practitioner of question avoidance such as myself.
I begin with the old ear pull. No, Mrs. Moonface, do not be tricked by my tugging at my earlobe into thinking that I am actually considering your question. The truth is that I do not have the slightest notion how many oil filters and air cleaners the auto parts store ordered, nor do I have the faintest glimmer of an idea of how those two variables could be solved. In fact, no one in this entire anti-math class has even a prayer of ever solving your problem, and I believe that even Albert Einstein at age fourteen, on a good day, would not have stood much of a chance.
Furthermore, Mrs. Moonface, although you claim this is a practical question, I believe there is not an auto parts store in the entire known universe that buys its oil filters and air cleaners with such sophisticated mathematical techniques. It is my firm belief that in most auto parts stores they buy enough oil filters and air cleaners to fill their shelf space, and when those run out someone says, “Hey, Joe, better order a few more of those air cleaners. And throw in some more oil filters, too.”
I am sorry to report, Mrs. Moonface, that my earlobe tugging has absolutely nothing to do with actual thought. Its devious twin purposes are movement and distraction—I am simulating thought. And since the old earlobe pull has worked so well for twenty seconds, I am now adding the old brow wrinkle as well. Do not think, Mrs. Moonface, that the furrows and creases now appearing and disappearing across my brow and forehead indicate any cerebral activity taking place inside my cranium. You cannot judge a book by its cover, Mrs. Moonface, and you also cannot judge brain function or lack thereof by superficial forehead furrowing.
“John, are you making any progress?”
Ye
s, indeed, Mrs. Moonface, I have just made fifty seconds of progress in stalling out your death question. There are a mere three minutes remaining. That is less time than it takes a world-class runner to run a mile. It is also less time, Mrs. Moonface, than it takes to cook three one-minute eggs back to back. You will not get an answer today, Mrs. Moonface, but you also will not not get an answer. You are wrestling vapor. You are punching snowflakes.
“This question is kicking your butt, doofus,” Billy Beezer taunts me in a subsonic whisper. “You’re dead meat. Dead meat.”
It is regrettable that my algebra-class neighbor is so negative, but his comments do not faze me. I am also not getting much encouragement from the other direction. On my right side, Glory Hallelujah sits forward and squints her eyes at me, amping up the firepower of her death lasers so that I believe the legs of my desk begin to melt. She is looking right at me, her two bright blue eyes flashing with fearful intensity.
I decided not to send up any friendly conversational flares in Glory Hallelujah’s direction before this anti-math class began. As you may remember, she vowed in the hall this morning that she and I would never speak again, and third period seemed to me a bit soon to put her oath to the test. Several times this morning we have bumped into each other in the school hallways, and she has shown no sign whatsoever of wanting to bury the hatchet, so to speak.
As Gloria and I passed each other in the hall between first and second periods, I saw her chatting with two of her friends, Yuki Kaguchi and Julie Moskowitz, both charter members of the secret sorority of pretty fourteen-year-old girls. As I walked by, Gloria pointed me out to them with a rather rude hand gesture, and began to whisper furiously.
I hesitate to speculate without the facts, but I believe that Gloria was spreading certain negative reports about me, as dating material, to her friends. She was, perhaps, telling them that I am a liar, a coward, and even a bad kisser who nips noses and then flees irate fathers. I believe it is eminently possible that a worldwide emergency bulletin has gone out to all members of the secret sorority of pretty fourteen-year-old girls that I am never again to be dated under any circumstances. And now, having ruined my romantic chances for the rest of my life, Gloria is concentrating her ocular-based laser attack in an effort to finish me off once and for all. I can feel the heat from her angry blue eyes singeing the delicate hairs on my forearms.
“John,” Mrs. Moonface asks, “are the wheels turning? Do you at least have a first step in mind?”
Yes, Mrs. Moonface, the first step I have in mind is right out the door. In two minutes and twenty-seven seconds, when the bell rings, let me assure you that I will be the very first member of this anti-math class out that door. You will not see me leave, because I will be traveling at the speed of light, but I will be gone.
Since the old earlobe pull and forehead furrow are starting to wear thin, and we are closing in on our final two-minute countdown, I decide to enhance my stall with some appropriate sound effects. Looking directly back at Mrs. Moonface, I clear my throat as if I am about to utter some profound mathematical observation that is at the very tip of my tongue. “Uhghh-huh,” I grunt, nodding my head slightly. “Un-nuhh-hah. Uwha-nn-hmm.”
I see that you have been completely taken in by the old throat clearings, Mrs. Moonface. You are leaning forward, as if you believe I am at the brink of declaiming some deep mathematical epiphany, whatever that means. You do not realize that those are actually the very same throat-clearing sounds I made last spring when a fly flew into my mouth and became wedged in my esophagus.
“John, are you trying to work it all out in your head? Have you formed the system to be solved? Take it step by step, John. Have you even defined your variables?”
There is less than one minute to go! Mrs. Moonface is launching questions at me, but I am firing back at her on all cylinders. I am pulling the old earlobe so hard that it is almost stretched beneath my chin. My brow and forehead are furrowing and unfurrowing so rapidly and deeply that my eyebrows are in danger of becoming unstitched and peeling off my face. I am rocking back and forth in my seat as if I can barely contain my excitement at wrestling with this algebraic enigma. And every five or ten seconds I am dredging up a new throat-clearing sound for Mrs. Moonface, as if I am at the very brink of explicating a mathematical insight that will shake the foundations of modern number theory.
“John, we’re running out of time.”
“Yes, indeed we are, Mrs. Moonface.”
“What did you say?”
“Nice try, Mrs. Moonface, but you will not trick me into blurting out a wrong answer by pretending that I have begun to try to solve a problem that I have absolutely no intention of ever trying to solve. Mrs. Moonface, you may be so miserable in your own pathetic life that you have to try to stump us with these algebra questions from the lowest level of hell and make fools of us, and destroy our self-esteem, but that doesn’t mean that I plan to give in one iota to your need for self-gratification by sadistic algebra torture of the innocent . . .”
At this moment, I become aware that the class is roaring with laughter. I also observe that Mrs. Moonface’s face—always the pasty color of the lunar surface—has turned the bleached color, granular texture, and, I suspect, bitter taste of salt. She lets out something that is halfway between a sigh and a scream, and leans heavily against her desk.
I realize to my horror that the little man in the swivel chair has made a major, horrific mistake at the control board of my brain. Blinded by lasers from the girl of my dreams and befuddled by ion bursts from my friend who is not a friend; riddled with anger toward my mother and seething with fury toward the man who is not and never will be my father; confounded by an algebra question that has pincerlike claws and a hollow, poisonous stinger; and lost without a compass amid a sea of troubles in my life that is not a life, I have actually been speaking my thoughts out loud! I have called Mrs. Moonface Mrs. Moonface to her face!
The whole class is laughing. And now the kinder members of the class have begun to stop laughing because poor old Mrs. Gabriel is hyperventilating . . . and her fingers are shaking . . .
And then the bell rings. Algebra class is over. I rise and begin to exit the room at the speed of light, but I am not the first person out the door. Mrs. Moonface beats me into the hallway. The last I see of her, she is sprinting toward the ladies’ faculty bathroom, making sounds as if she is drowning, and she is covering her face with her hands.
20
Fateful Tuesday reaches a Crescendo
“Dear, dear members of the band family,” Mr. Steenwilly says to us, and his nervousness is very apparent in every word and every fidgety gesture, “I know that you have all been working on ‘The Love Song of the Bullfrog’ as hard as you can, practicing it night and day. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that our Winter Concert—the world premiere of this, my finest composition—is now only two weeks away. But today we have a chance to have a little world premiere before the big world premiere! This is a very special day!”
Mr. Steenwilly pauses. Do not look in my direction, Mr. Steenwilly. This is indeed a very special day, but for all the wrong reasons. It is fateful Tuesday, and anything I touch crumbles to dust. Look away out the window of the band room, or down at the tips of your loafers, but do not train those excited black eyes in my direction.
“Today we have a guest,” Mr. Steenwilly announces. “A very special guest. A celebrity guest! None other than Professor Gustav Slavodan Kachooski—my old instructor and mentor from the Eastman School of Music and, in the minds of many, one of the foremost musicologists ever to draw breath! He stopped by our school to pay me a surprise visit today, and he has agreed to stay and hear you play!” Mr. Steenwilly glances toward the band office. “This is a great honor,” he says with awe sloshing around thickly in his voice, like suds in a washing machine. “Truly a great honor. Please, Professor.”
A short, bald old man in a dark suit walks out of the band office blowing his nose in a long continuous
honk, in what I believe is a B flat. He finally tucks his handkerchief into a back pocket, arranges his black-framed eyeglasses on the bridge of his small nose, and says, “Please, Arthur, you’re too kind, too kind. The honor is all mine, all mine, to hear my best student’s best students.”
Professor Kachooski, if you are really one of the foremost musicologists ever to draw breath, you might want to run out of this anti-school while you can still respirate. Mr. Steenwilly, if I may also take the liberty of giving you a piece of advice which you would be very wise to follow, you should probably drag your old professor back into the band office and fix him a nice cup of Earl Grey tea with low-fat milk, and reminisce about your halcyon days together at the music academy, whatever that means.
But, Mr. Steenwilly, if you insist on going forward with this ill-advised surprise concert, I think it might be prudent for you to let Kachooski know that the tuba soloist he is about to hear is in the midst of a personal meltdown on the level of the Chernobyl reactor, and that on this fateful Tuesday I could not play “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” let alone “The Love Song of the Bullfrog.”
Mr. Steenwilly sets up a folding chair for Professor Kachooski so that the old man will have a good visual and aural vantage point for the upcoming performance. “Closer,” Kachooski says to him, “let me sit closer, Arthur. I don’t want to miss a single brilliant note.”
Kachooski, you are asking for it, and I fear that you are going to get it. I do not mean to be pessimistic about the quality of the musical rendition you are about to hear, but if I were you, I would take out that white handkerchief and stuff it deep into your ears.
Mr. Steenwilly climbs onto his conducting podium and looks out at us. His thin mustache quivers above his lip line, as if it is so overcome with the poignancy of the moment that it is tempted to slither off his face and hide in the collar of his starched white shirt. “May I just say,” he tells us, with a nervous little grin, “that at the Eastman School of Music, Professor Kachooski had a nickname. We called him ‘the Man with the Golden Ear.’ And now that golden ear is going to hear some golden notes from all of you.”
