by Sarah Miller
Standing along the few concrete steps between the classroom buildings and the residential quad is what now could be referred to as an audience. Danielle, tired of screaming at Gideon, starts to scream at them. "Don't you have anything better to do? Don't you all want to go play polo or something? Organize your sweaters?" Their eyes stretch wide in their pale faces, their mouths are all thin, aghast.
Maybe they're thinking, What's so wrong with organizing our sweaters?
"Listen." Gid leans in and tries to put his hand on her shoulders. She bucks away from him. "Hey," he says. Gid stares at the black eyeliner seeping out of the corner of her eyes down her cheek. "Hey, stop. You should know you're still a virgin."
All the hard-edged tension seeps out of Danielle's body. She slouches. Gid tries not to look at the dark patches of faded acne around her mouth, beiged over with makeup.
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean," Gid says, "I don't think I actually, you know," and because he doesn't know what word to use next, he makes a fist, then taps his index finger against the crease. Danielle continues to stare at him. He finds there's something sexy about the patchy grayness of her skin. "So," Gid says, hopeful that he might have calmed her down, "do you get it?"
There's a long silence where they just look at each other. Gid is acutely aware of the pine smell in the air, and of Danielle's black clothing and roughness against the neat cheerfulness of the surroundings. He remembers what he liked about her. All kinds of girls, he thinks, are sexy. He likes the ones who glow and the ones who look sad and unhealthy. "You're still a virgin," he says again, thinking this is great news.
And then, suddenly, she is on him, fists pounding his chest and shoulders and, if not for the protection of his hands, his head. "You idiot. You idiot! I can't fucking believe what an idiot you are! This isn't about whether I still have a hymen or not."
Gid continues to protect his head. He can't really see. He wishes she hadn't said the word hymen out loud.
"It's about what a dick you are." Danielle's hands, arms, and wrists continue their rather ineffectual assault against him. He finds his mind starting to really float now, wondering how Danielle spent the ride up here. Did she plan out what she was going to say? Was she silent the whole time? What did Jim Rayburn know? What's all this shit
about women being just as strong as men? Gid feels like a two-year-old is hitting him with a flyswatter. Of course, Danielle is pretty small in that teenage girl living off potato chips, Diet Dr Pepper, and frozen dinners kind of way. Then, miraculously, someone is pulling her off of him. He feels a few more swipes of the flyswatter. He uncovers his head slowly to see, of all people, Molly McGarry holding Danielle's wrists. Danielle strains against her, but Molly doesn't seem to be putting out too much effort. Okay, it's not just my imagination, Gid thinks. Danielle's kind of a weakling. Edie stands a few feet off to the side, clipping and unclipping the clasp on her book bag.
"Molly," Gid says.
"If I let you go," Molly says, "you can't hit Gid."
Tm done," Danielle says in a defeated voice, and starts wiping up her eye makeup with the back of her hand.
Danielle turns to Gid. "I hate you. Do you understand that? So when I calmly explain this to you, don't think just because Tm being calm I don't hate you."
Then Jim Rayburn is coming up the hill, smiling victoriously. Gid can only imagine the massive victory he scored against Captain Cockweed's vulnerable electrical system.
"I guess your teacher's pretty grateful about what I did for him," he says. "And how do you like what I did for you? Is this a sight for sore eyes or what?" Jim puts an arm around Danielle's shoulder. Danielle, backing away from Jim, hides behind Edie.
Molly looks down at the pavement. "Yikes," she says.
Gideon talks to his father through gritted teeth. "Me and Danielle aren't really going out anymore."
"Ah," Jim Rayburn whispers. "She had me believe otherwise."
Gid nods. Danielle's smarter than he's ever given her credit for.
"Danielle, is it?" Molly says, clasping her hands together. "Look, I know you don't know us, but we're totally harmless. Our parents aren't coming until dinner. Why don't you come back to our dorm and just let Gid and his dad go? What do you think?"
Danielle crosses her arms and stares at Gid. "Sounds great," she says bitterly. Edie goes and stands with her.
Molly takes a step toward Gid.
"Thanks," Gid says, "you..."
Molly holds up a hand. "I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for humanity."
Gid won't let himself look at her ass when she walks away this time. He doesn't deserve to.
"Your friends don't want to come with us?" Jim asks. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Gid says. "I'm sure."
They get into the Silverado and go a few blocks in silence. Strange to be here. Has it been only two months?
He sees his father is thinking, trying to come up with the right question to ask about what's going on.
Which is too bad for him, because Gid has decided he's not going to tell him a fucking thing.
"Where we headed?" Gid asks, the Launch of Evasions and False Brightness already underway.
Jim—how Gid was praying this wouldn't happen—tugs on his mustache. "I thought we'd find a Sizzler or something."
Gid smiles to himself. What else can he do? Be optimistic, he coaches himself as they wait at the light down the road near the theater. Tell your dad what's going on. I mean, not really, but kind of. Maybe he can help.
The light turns green. His father guns it, and the torque presses Gideon against the seats.
"Fun, huh?" his dad says. "But if there're any cops around, they have another term for it: 'exhibition of speed.'"
The hostess at Sizzler appears to be around twelve. She's short and has a little Tweety Bird haircut. She has tattoos of birds on her forearms, and slouches, displaying a pink dragon on her lower back. They follow her across the entire length of the restaurant, and she doesn't turn around once to see if they're keeping up. She seats them in a booth. When Jim declares, "Thanks, got a view of the whole place," she walks away without saying anything. Gid notices she has another tattoo on the back of her neck. She makes him sad. He stares at the salad bar, at the giant Plexiglas bowls of lettuce and pale tomatoes, and feels even sadder.
How can you not love a guy who gets depressed when he looks at a bad salad bar?
Jim, digging into a giant plate of various creepy hot foods and a salad drowning in blue cheese, curiously eyes Gid's plate of carrots, a scoop of cottage cheese, and plain tuna. "Gee, when Nicholas said 'basic nutrition,' he wasn't kidding!"
"When I got there, Nicholas said I was skinny fat and..." Gid trails off. The truth is, he doesn't have much of an appetite.
"So," his father says, "you and Danielle broke up?"
At the mention of her name Gid's stomach flips over. "'Broke up' is a strong term. I didn't exactly call her once I got here. She hates me." God, he wonders what she's doing right now. Was it a very bad idea to let her go off like that with Molly and Edie?
"Women always hate you no matter what you do," his father says. "And that's the honest truth."
This is sort of what Cullen and Nicholas have said to him. Though, of course, not in so many words. This is fantastic, if it's really true. It means that everything is okay, if in a backward kind of way.
"Did you and Danielle talk on the way up here?" Gid's curiosity about this isn't really personal. It's kind of a morbid fascination with what he considers a pretty weird pairing.
Jim wags his head from side to side. "I started out asking her about school. She gave the usual one-word
answers. After that, we pretty much just kept to ourselves."
"Did she sleep?"
"No. In fact, she was awake the whole time."
Nine conscious hours in a car with Jim Rayburn. She must really have wanted to yell at me, Gid thinks, to have endured that. So she must really love me? Again, he think
s of Pilar. What a terrible world it is.
"So what did Mr. Cavanaugh have to say?" Gid asks, taking a sip of his Coke. It tastes good. Nicholas doesn't let him drink Coke.
"Funny you should ask. I told him that you seemed like you were doing very well here, and he told me that he thought Cullen and Nicholas might be a bad influence on you."
Gideon nods, feeling good again, realizing that he doesn't give a fuck what Cavanaugh thinks, aside from its being funny.
"Naturally, I was concerned. Then he starts telling me he doesn't have proof, but he thinks they do drugs. Drugs!" Jim laughs and takes a giant bite of something yellow, maybe an enchilada, maybe scalloped potatoes. "I about laughed out loud. I mean, I've seen people on drugs. Those boys, those two are nice-looking, nice boys in good shape. Drugs!" Jim shakes his head. Out in the parking lot, a wizened guy dressed in a filthy warm-up suit, squinting under his blue nylon baseball hat, limps by. He's missing teeth. Gid estimates his age as somewhere between thirty and ninety. "Now, that guy is on drugs," Jim says. "Like I wouldn't know if my own son was taking drugs."
really okay
Charlie Otterman, Jim's former client, convicted drunk driver, and the man responsible for Gideon's attending Midvale, made Jim promise that on this visit, he would take a complete tour of the campus. "He told me Midvale was a special place," Jim says, setting a hand on Gid's shoulder. They're crossing the very same parking lot where Danielle made her previous assault. "He said to make sure I see everything." Gid leads him first to Thayer Hall, where Jim is suitably impressed by the vaulted ceilings and woodwork. Then to Pollard Theater, which Jim pronounces "very different." Then Gid finds himself leading his father toward the basement lounge of Proctor. It's a sentimental attachment to the night he talked to Mickey Eisenberg, and then met Pilar, that takes him there. Of course he tells none of this to his father, who surveys the ugly room, then simply nods and says, "Seems cozy."
For their final stop, Gid takes his father down the hill buttressing the south side of the campus to the track. A couple of football players, lumbering their way around, give them a cursory wave, and Jim yells out, "Keep up the good work, fellas!" They tip their giant heads to the ground, eager, Gid knows, to avoid further contact. Ordinarily, Gid would be mortified. Instead he considers the track's bright blue tone, smartly demarcated with white lines and numbers. This is the place, he reminds himself, where so much skinny fatness has been forged into strength.
Minute by minute, Gid manages to sustain that whole my-father-is-not-me feeling.
Jim kneels down, tugging at the grass as if to test its strength. "Okay," he says in a tone that lets Gid know he's satisfied. "Why don't we see if we can track down Little Miss Temper Tantrum?"
He's trying to bond with Gid, of course, but Gid feels a stab of defensive anger. Danielle, he thinks, hasn't been all that unreasonable.
Gid realizes now that he was so relieved to extricate himself—well, really to have Molly and Edie extricate him—from that initial situation with Danielle that he mistakenly thought that would be the end of it.
Walking back up the hill to Emerson, the girls' dorm, Jim Rayburn has the very good sense not to talk. Gid prepares himself for confrontation with more contriteness than imagination. I will say sorry, he tells himself, over and over and over again. I will just keep repeating it and then Danielle will eventually just have to go away.
There's a common space to the left as you walk in, but save for the poster of Sojourner Truth, it's empty. Gid leads his father back past the entrance down a short flight of stairs into another basement common room, as bleak as the one in Proctor.
A tenth-grader and a much younger kid, probably her brother, are watching television. Gid approaches the girl humbly. She's pretty, and Gid knows from having seen her around, from the imperious way she surveys the cafeteria before sitting down, that she's neither particularly secure or nice. "Have you seen Molly McGarry or Edie...uh...?" He doesn't know her last name.
The girl narrows her eyes. She has straight blonde hair and is wearing green eyeliner. "Are they with some girl that doesn't go here?" she says.
"Yes, yes, exactly," Gid says, smiling, trying to let her know he's grateful.
"They're in the second-floor lounge." She looks back at the TV.
"Okay," Gid says. He stands there, waiting for the girl to say shell go get them. Then the girl points to a sign on the wall, a simple sign printed on computer paper in a larger than usual, but by no means eye-catching, font: Special allowances have been made for Parents' Weekend for men and boys to access the hallways and common areas in the girls'dorms.
"Duh," she says.
Gid turns around. His father pretends to read an American Heritage magazine from 1986. His face has such a pathetic look. Like a dog searching for a place to go to the bathroom.
Gid bristles. "I didn't see it," he says. “I’m new."
"Duh," the girl says again.
"I always thought you looked like a bitch," Gid says. "I guess my instincts were dead on."
The girl seems to actually shrink. Her eyes widen and fill up her face, which has gone white.
Gid leads his father upstairs as if nothing has happened, but if he didn't have his hands in his pockets they would shake. Still, he feels good.
His father finally lets out a low whistle. "Jeez," he says, "you really let Miss Fancy Pants back there have it."
Gid doesn't turn around but just keeps trudging up the stairs. He can't look at his father when he uses phrases like Miss Fancy Pants.
"I just can't believe how friggin' confident you are."
Gid stops on the landing. No one has ever used this word to describe him. Ever. Even Danielle, who
worshipped him, who wrote him notes covered with adjectives, cute, sexxxy, hot, adorable, cuddly, luscious...confident was never among them. Because he's with himself every day, Gid doesn't see himself change, but he tries to imagine telling that girl off when he first arrived here, and, well, there's just no way he would have. Confident. Hell take it. Even from his dad.
"Thanks," Gid says.
"I'm sorry I brought Danielle here," Jim says.
"It's all right," Gid replies. "I can handle it."
The second-floor lounge in the girls' dorm is a big room with a flowered sofa, a coffee table offering up a few magazines, and three round tables. It is decorated with oil paintings of dead headmasters' wives. Danielle, Edie, and Molly sit at one table, a nearly full Scrabble board in front of them, frowning over what's left of their tiles. He is amazed when he has an impulse to go to Danielle. The impulse confuses him.
Guys are always confused by how soft and sentimental they are. It's not like he wants her back. But he forgets...not long ago, he was pretty enmeshed.
Gid inches up behind her, stealing a glance at her letters—she has an A, a C, and a V— and the score sheet. Danielle leads with 187 points, Edie is second with 156, and Molly is last with 109. Molly and Edie are letting Danielle win! Molly gives him a quick glance over her shoulder, picks up her C. and puts it at the front of the word reek to make creek.
"Okay, eleven points," she says, writing it down. "Why don't you guys take a seat? We'll be done in a second."
Jim lets out a short, nervous laugh. "I was kind of hoping to get on the road before dark," he says.
No one responds.
Jim clears his throat, sits down, and begins to thumb through a three-year-old issue of American Heritage. Gid sits down too. He tries to smile at Danielle, but she seems to be concentrating on the game. She has reapplied her makeup and put on a clean shirt, which Gid is almost sure belongs to Molly. It's Edie's turn now. She twists her little face this way and that in concentration. Jim Rayburn taps his foot. Finally, she lays some tiles on the board. Gid sits up a little bit so he can see. Edie has made the word mordant. "What does that mean?" Gideon asks, relieved to have a genuine question.
"I don't know," Edie says. "But it's a word. And that's all my tiles."
Danielle wins anyw
ay. Gid can see from the slight lift in her eyes that she is pleased with this. He knows he has to talk to her again. He knows about closure—his mother talks about it a lot, especially now that she lives in New Mexico and does yoga. Danielle excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and Gid, however grimly, accepts this as his cue to follow her for their closure chat.
But on her way out of the room, she passes close to him, puts her hand on his arm, leans in, and whispers,
"It's okay. It's really okay."
Edie's busy putting away the game. Jim continues to read. Gid catches Molly's eye. He mouths, "She's not mad?"
But all Molly does is slightly raise one eyebrow. Okay. He's not getting anything out of her today. Fair enough.
Fair enough indeed.
She and Edie do accompany Gid, Jim, and Danielle back to the parking lot. Gid studies Danielle with some wariness as they walk, but she remains silent, guarded. She gives small, girlish hugs to Molly and Edie. She offers Gideon a hesitant smile, then climbs into the Silverado. Gid watches her for signs that she's about to blow, but she looks into the mirror on the visor, pretending, probably, to get something out of her eyes but just looking at herself in the way all girls who aren't totally ugly do whenever they get the chance.
He suddenly remembers his conversation this morning with Pilar, the secret arranged marriage, her turtlelike father, her blue suede shoes. He smiles fondly at all of it, then frowns, puzzled. He hasn't thought of her all day. It's almost certainly a record since he's met her. He usually doesn't go ten minutes, much less ten hours.
As he hugs his father, he looks at Molly over his shoulder. Gray afternoon light looks good on her sort of serious, librariany prettiness, particularly with her head turned the way it is, away from him.
tick tock
The cold is starting to come in earnest now. As Gideon and Nicholas make their way back to the track on the Thursday following Parents' Day, the morning chill seeps from the hardened ground up into their toes. The light comes slowly, and a gray fog lifts a bit, then hovers stubbornly at the tops of the trees.
