“Well, we know what the problem is,” said Aaron. “So what the hell’s the solution? How do we remind Mr. Spinelli why he chose to teach?”
I tried to consider the question. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Maybe I didn’t know the solution per se, but I knew something that superseded the formula of what we were trying to do.
“It’s not about reminding him why he chose to teach,” I said.
“What do you mean? That’s what the List says.”
“I know what the List says. But forget the List for a sec. Mr. Spinelli is broken, okay? And when something is broken, it doesn’t work.”
“Okay…” said Aaron. “So what do we do?”
“Living things always repair themselves. Plants regrow. Bones heal. Cells regenerate. What we need to do is remind Mr. Spinelli that he’s still alive. Once we do that, the rest will take care of itself. Mr. Spinelli will remind himself why he chose to teach.”
Aaron gave me a skeptical look. “That’s the most Freudian-ass shit I’ve ever heard in my entire life. What does that even mean?”
“Whatever, I just know how that feels, okay? I thought I was broken beyond repair. And then someone reminded me that I was still alive.”
“Really? Who?”
“You, asshat!”
Tagging asshat at the end was supposed to make it funny. But Aaron just stared at me with this weird look on his face that I couldn’t even begin to discern.
“What?” I said.
“It’s strange,” said Aaron. “I feel like I’ve spent the last sixteen years in a coma, and I’m just now waking up.”
Aaron was sprawled on the couch, and I had the La-Z-Boy kicked back in full horizontal, watching Pulp Fiction past the summit of my gut. It was right about when John Travolta and Uma Thurman were doing their dance-off at Jack Rabbit Slim’s that I drifted into semiconscious oblivion.
“Cliff?”
I blinked. And then I blinked another dozen times. Finally, I registered that the end credits were rolling.
“Whoa,” I said. “Alrighty then. Jackie Brown. Bring it on.”
But Aaron didn’t move, and my brain was failing to send the necessary electrical impulses to the rest of my body.
“Have you ever done something really bad?” said Aaron.
Huh?
I turned my sleep-intoxicated head to Aaron. His eyes were wide open—beyond sleepless—trained on the ceiling.
“Um…” I said. I blinked again, trying to comprehend the question. “You do know who you’re talking to, right? I don’t think I’ve ever done a thing that wasn’t really bad.”
“No, I mean really bad. Something you can’t forgive yourself for. You want to forgive yourself for it, and you need to forgive yourself for it…but you just can’t.”
My thoughts inevitably drifted to Shane—that he killed himself and that he must have killed himself for a reason. But a part of me knew that I wasn’t the reason. At least not directly.
“I still like Lacey,” said Aaron.
“What?”
“I think…I dunno. Maybe I even love her.”
My hand fumbled for the lever on the side of the recliner, and I ejected myself upright.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Just the other day, you were telling me that she’s not your type anymore.”
Aaron was still staring at the ceiling, studying the popcorn texture like it was a galaxy—a universe—of stars aligned into an indecipherable meaning.
“I cheated on Lacey.”
I nodded slowly, processing. Actually, that wasn’t surprising at all. In fact, it sounded like the most pre-List Aaron thing that Aaron could possibly have done. Of course he cheated on her! Why else wouldn’t they be together anymore?
“Okay,” I said. “People screw up. Have you two…you know…talked about it?”
“It’s complicated,” said Aaron.
“How complicated could it be?”
Aaron sighed in that way that prefaces the beginning of a long story.
“We were planning a surprise birthday party for Lacey,” he said. “Heather Goodman and me. Heather was Lacey’s best friend, and Lacey and I had been dating for six months—longer than I’d dated anyone else—so if anyone was going to throw a surprise party for her, it made sense for us to do it. And it started off great! I told Lacey that football practice would be running overtime in preparation for the next game, and Heather told her that she had family coming into town. Heather’s family had this cabin out toward Whitefish. It was big enough, had a sweet fire pit, and was way out in the middle of nowhere so we wouldn’t have to worry about noise complaints. Heather had everything mapped out—shopping lists for supplies, ideas for decorations, food and catering, cake—the whole shebang. She even had an older cousin who was going to supply the booze. We spent the first day shopping for decorations and planning where everything would go. Then we get back to the cabin and…we accidentally kissed.”
“Accidentally kissed?” I said. “How do you accidentally kiss?”
“And then we accidentally had sex.”
Apparently, we were using the word accident in the context of poor decision making.
“We did it two more times before the birthday party,” said Aaron.
“No,” I said.
“The thing you have to understand about my and Heather’s relationship was that it wasn’t romantic. It was purely sexual. Almost businesslike. Except I was cheating on my girlfriend, and Heather was screwing over her best friend, and the guilt was too much for either of us to handle. So, in order to cope with the guilt, we kept…you know…doing it. It was a sort of therapeutic self-destruction. Unfortunately, it gets worse.”
“You’re kidding. How could it possibly get worse?”
Once again, Aaron gave that tragic sigh.
“The night of the party, I was in charge of Lacey. Heather was in charge of the ‘surprise.’ We had it all figured out: I would take Lacey out on a romantic one-on-one camping trip. Lacey hates camping. Last minute, I would reveal that we were actually staying at a cabin. Meanwhile, Heather would direct traffic and make sure everyone made it to the cabin and got into position in time. When we finally got there and everyone jumped out and shouted ‘Surprise!’ Lacey started crying. Like, happy crying. Anyway, Lacey got hammered to the point of no return. She was playing drinking games with Kyle and Desmond and some other guys—California Kings, I think. For whatever reason, Heather and I decided to sit out on the same round. I don’t know if either of us intended to do that, but at some point, I looked at her, and she looked at me, and there was this sense of…completion, I guess. We had set out to plan the best surprise party ever, and it was. Then like five minutes later, we were in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
“What?”
“And then Lacey walked in.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. She just walks in, makes direct eye contact with both Heather and me, and then, without saying a word, she calmly walks out and shuts the door behind her. And that was the last that was ever said about it.”
“What do you mean, that was the last that was ever said about it?” I asked. “Nothing was said!”
“Exactly,” said Aaron.
If Aaron was any less direct, I swear, he’d be talking backward.
“Look,” said Aaron. “Heather and I were so freaked-out, we decided to let Lacey bring the incident up herself. Heather offered to drive Lacey home that night. Lacey never brought it up. I pulled her aside at school the next day and asked how she was doing. She said she was great. And if you know Lacey, her sarcasm is so on point, you almost have to be psychic to tell the difference.”
“And you kept dating?” I said.
Aaron grimaced. “We kept dating for another month. It was a solid month of hell—mostly because I couldn’t relax around her. I felt like I was dating a double agent or something. Like, the moment I let my guard down, she might snap my neck. So I became distant. And my distance made her distant. And
then we mutually broke up. Heather and I never screwed around after that. She was going through the same thing as me—interacting with Lacey on pins and needles, waiting for the bomb to drop. But it never did. After all this time, Lacey has never said a word about it.”
I nodded silently, taking in Aaron’s story. I was a roll of paper towels, tasked with mopping up a geyser.
“So, what?” I said. “Did she see you, or didn’t she?”
Aaron threw his hands in the air. “Hell if I know. Either she was so drunk that she didn’t process what she saw—which is a definite possibility, one that I might have wrecked our relationship over—or she did see us, and just…I dunno…switched off the part of her brain that deals with cheating bastards and backstabbing best friends.”
“And you’re still in love with her.”
Aaron shrugged hopelessly. “Maybe. I think so. Yeah.”
Somebody call the CW. I’d just found their new teen drama.
“Aaron,” I said. “You need to tell her the truth. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth.”
“Nice try, Judge Judy. But no way. That ship has sailed. There’s no way I can tell her the truth now.”
“Now that you’re not dating? Because if you ask me, now seems like the perfect time.”
“Oh, c’mon. It’s not like there aren’t other people caught up in this. Things are finally normal with Heather and Lacey again. If I throw that stick in the spokes of Heather and Lacey’s bicycle of friendship, it’ll beef.”
“Aaron?”
“Yeah?”
“That was probably the dumbest metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
“You know what I mean.”
“So, what? You’re just going to keep your feelings pent up inside of you forever and ever until you either have a psychological breakdown or you spontaneously combust?”
“Um, yeah, duh. Let’s go with door number two.”
It was clear I wouldn’t win this argument. I let it go. I leaned back in the recliner, and Aaron unspooled on the sofa. His eyes drifted back to the ceiling.
“I think I know why God chose me for this List,” said Aaron. “I think he wanted to find the shittiest person in Happy Valley and give him a chance to unshitify himself.”
“I guess that explains why I’m your sidekick,” I said. “Because I’m definitely the second-shittiest person.”
The next morning, Aaron and I shook off our deep-fried food coma, crawled off our furniture sleeping apparatuses, and staggered into the kitchen. The thing about a night of raging gluttony is that it expands your stomach, leaving you to wake up in a state of starvation.
“Need…cereal,” I moaned.
Aaron laughed nervously. “About that…”
He opened the cereal cupboard. Except it wasn’t a cereal cupboard. It was the Gateway to Fat Person Hell. He looked at me and added, “Have I mentioned my parents are health nuts?”
“What. Is. That?” I said.
Instead of answering my question, Aaron proceeded to awkwardly rattle off the titles of quote/unquote “cereal.”
“Raisin Bran, Fiber One, Quaker Oatmeal Squares…”
No. No. No.
“Kashi Go Lean, Peace Cereal with Goji Berry and Chia, Grape-Nuts…”
God no.
“And Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” said Aaron. He turned and faced me, completely deadpan. “Which would you like?”
I stared at Aaron. “Did you really just ask me that?”
“I try not to make stereotypical assumptions.”
“How sensitive of you. Now hand over the Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”
I rummaged through the dinnerware cupboard. There I discovered what was either a large cereal bowl or a small mixing bowl. I filled it to the top. When I poured the milk in, the cereal formed a treacherous mushroom cloud over the rim.
Aaron stared at me and my cereal like we were a pair of escaped convicts.
“Don’t judge me,” I said.
“I’m not judging you.”
“I can feel you judging me. I see it in your eyes.”
Aaron poured himself a bowl of—heaven help him—Quaker Oatmeal Squares, and sat down across the table from me. Shoved one hefty spoonful in his mouth. Chewed. Swallowed. He then rested his spoon on the side of his bowl, interlocked his fingers, and shot me a deliberating look. His face was a little too serious, countered harshly by his bed hair, sticking up like the Berlin Wall on the right side of his head.
“Show Frankie’s gang a better way,” said Aaron.
“Hmph?” I said through a mouthful of cereal.
“Number four on the List: show Frankie’s gang a better way. How do we do that?”
I swallowed. “Better question: What does that even mean? A better way of what? Pushing pot?”
“Yeah, that’s definitely what God meant.” Aaron rolled his eyes.
“Hey, just…thinking outside the box,” I mumbled.
I shoved another spoonful of cereal into my mouth so as to shut myself up.
“I know how we can show Frankie’s gang a better way,” said Aaron.
I swallowed again. “What? How?”
“Tegan.”
It took a moment for that to sink in. I shook my head vigorously. “No. No, Aaron. Just because she’s my, like, girlfriend or whatever, that doesn’t mean she’ll, like—”
“Help us with the List?” said Aaron. “Because from what I understand, she already agreed to do that.”
Aaron was right. She did agree to help us.
I sighed. “Okay. Maybe you’re right.”
“I am?”
Aaron seemed shocked that I would agree with him so easily. Surely, there had to be a catch.
“We probably do need Tegan’s help,” I said. “But we can talk to her on Monday. Right now, I want to focus on something else.”
“Something else?”
“Someone else,” I said. “Our Montana Teacher of the Year.”
After a quick phone call to Jack Halbert, we managed to extract Mr. Spinelli’s home address—with one stipulation.
“Don’t tell him I gave it to you,” said Jack. “That man scares me.”
Once upon a time, this seemed like a good idea. But that felt like a long time ago. The moment we hopped in Aaron’s car, plugged the address into Google Maps, and set off on the proverbial Road to Redemption, I realized I had no clue in hell what I was doing.
So far, my plan involved the word sorry used in excess. I wanted to call it a work in progress. But that implied progress.
Aaron slowed down as we neared his address. Naturally, my heart rate accelerated.
And then I saw Mr. Spinelli.
I actually stared at him for a solid five seconds before I realized who he was. He stood on the left side of the street, three houses ahead, checking his mail. The fact that he wearing nothing but boxers and a bathrobe was almost forgivable. So was the bottle he was carrying—what appeared to be vodka—which was massive enough to make all of Mother Russia nod their ushanka-wearing heads in respect.
The unforgivable part was his front lawn. Because it wasn’t a lawn. It was the motherfucking Congo.
Seriously, the grass was over a foot tall in places. To make matters worse, it was on Gleason Avenue. The neighborhood was hardly extravagant, but it sure as hell wasn’t slummy. This was solid middle-class suburbia, and Spinelli’s house, by association, looked like the trashiest POS this side of Arcadia Park.
“Mother of pearl,” said Aaron. “That’s like a half gallon of Smirnoff.”
“The vodka?” I said. “The vodka is what you’re noticing here?”
“I mean, his lawn is scary, too. But no wonder it looks like shit. He probably can’t even mow straight.”
Spinelli didn’t notice Aaron’s car creeping conspicuously up the street. He grabbed his mail out of the mailbox, shuffled up his driveway, and shut the door.
I hadn’t noticed the door until now. There were several sheets of paper haphazardly attached to it like a b
ulletin board.
Aaron parked on the opposite side of the street. I was out of the car before he even shut off the engine. I veered across the street, on a vicious course to Spinelli’s house.
“Whoa, Cliff, hold up!”
If someone were to ask me what the hell I was doing, I would have given them a firm I dunno. But my curiosity was a missile, and I had to know what those papers were all about.
If one of those was an eviction notice…
…because he couldn’t pay the rent…
…because he quit his teaching job…
…because of us…
I missiled my ass straight to his front door and ripped off a paper—one of three—on his door. Aaron caught up behind me and silently read over my shoulder. This notice had the most recent date, and was immensely long, and even more immensely boring—despite the threat, which was mildly alarming. I would be doing a great disservice against humanity to quote its monotonous bullshit verbatim, but it essentially said:
Dear Home-Owning Bitch,
We’re the Home Owner’s Association, and you’re in a crap-ton o’ trouble. This is your third warning, in case you can’t count the papers still taped to your door. Due to your inability to pull your shitty lawn together, we are charging your raggedy ass a $500 fine. We invite you to a hearing before our HOA Board of Evil Douchemongers where we can negotiate a resolution, and the fine can possibly be waived. But not likely, schmuck.
Sincerely,
Your Executioners
Okay, so the letter exercised a little more social restraint than that, but you could just smell the condescension. I hated these HOA assholes, and I didn’t even know them. And Spinelli obviously hated them too and cared about their threats about as much as he cared about wearing pants. He wasn’t going to do shit about his lawn.
“Shit,” said Aaron.
Shit, indeed. I came to three conclusions:
1. If we tried to talk or apologize to Spinelli, he would slam the door in our faces before we got two words in.
2. If we persisted, he would probably call the cops.
3. We didn’t need to talk to him to mow his lawn.
Neanderthal Opens the Door to the Universe Page 13
