The Bigness of the World

by Lori Ostlund

  Martin considers explaining that the “desk guy” is actually the manager, but he is tired, so he simply says yes, he is leaving the next day. He does not mention that he moved his flight up two weeks, only that he has made the change to Singapore Air. “I’m feeling a little nervous about this Garuda Air,” he says. “They had a crash in September. Now, Singapore Airlines — you know how things are in that country. They cane pilots for crashing.” They all laugh because it is the only thing they do know about Singapore — that it’s that little country that’s always caning people.

  Amanda, the sixth and youngest member of the group, says softly, “I think you’re very wise, Martin.” She is the sort of woman that men describe as sweet, which simply means that she listens far more than she talks and that she is prone to comments like this, comments that reinforce their opinions of themselves in very uncomplicated ways. She is the only one who has not yet described a brush with fame and who is actually interested in Sylvie’s story, partly because she has a cousin in Minot, North Dakota.

  There is another thing to know about Amanda, a secret that she has maintained successfully over the last two days, largely by keeping track of her vowels. Amanda is not American. She is Canadian, though her mother is American, a Minnesotan who fell in love with Amanda’s father years ago over the course of a weekend getaway to Winnipeg with a group of friends. “With my girlfriends,” her mother says when she tells the story, though Amanda has told her mother repeatedly, and at times petulantly, to stop using girlfriends like that — to talk about the women with whom she bowls and shops.

  “Only lesbians call other women girlfriends these days,” she explains, “and they don’t mean friends.” But her mother disregards everything she says, every attempt she makes to offer advice that might save her mother from future embarrassment.

  Once, for example, during their annual visit to Minnesota, she overheard her mother telling a group of relatives that Warren — Warren was Amanda’s father — had to “really Jew down” the used car salesman from whom they had just purchased a car. Amanda was sitting on the sofa nearby reading a book about lighthouses. She always read books about strange topics when she visited her relatives because she secretly liked promoting the notion that they already had of her — as different. Different was not meant as a compliment, but because she considered her relatives backward, she clamored after the label as though it were. She lowered the lighthouse book and said, “Mother, I cannot believe you said that.”

  “What?” said her mother.

  “‘Jew him down.’ I cannot believe you would use an expression like that.”

  The conversation had stopped as they all turned to look at her, seventeen-year-old Amanda, their flesh and blood, who was being raised in Canada. No wonder she had such odd ideas. No wonder she read books about lighthouses. But her mother just laughed. “Honestly, Amanda,” she said. “Sometimes you have the most peculiar ideas. Next you’re going to tell me that the Dutch are up in arms about ‘going Dutch.’” The relatives laughed then also, laughed because even though Amanda’s mother had moved to Canada, she still had her sense of humor.

  Amanda hopes to sleep with Calvin, though Calvin is not yet aware of her interest, a state of affairs that would normally suggest that nothing is going to happen between them. Calvin, however, does not work that way, does not allow himself the luxury of choosing friends or sexual partners. Calvin waits to be chosen. Today is Calvin’s birthday, but he has not yet decided whether he will tell the others, afraid that they might find him weird, even pathetic, if they learn that he is here celebrating alone. Back home in Michigan, the story of his trip to Indonesia will play differently. His friends and coworkers will say, “That’s Calvin for you, trotting off just like that to celebrate his birthday in Java — wherever the hell that is.” Back home, he is funny, risk-taking Calvin, spontaneous Calvin who runs off to places like Java and Florida and Belize, warm places, at the drop of a hat. Calvin has worked hard to create his own myth.

  By the time the group begins to break up for the night, Calvin has finally noticed the way that Amanda’s hand creeps across the table when she addresses him, the way it sits demurely in her lap when she speaks to everyone else. Then, too, there is the way that she laughs at his jokes, heartily, with a whispered, breathy “Oh, Calvin” at the end. He thinks that all they need is one more good session of drinking and chatting as a group, one more chance for him to showcase his humor for her, and so, as they stand to go off to bed, he says, “Tomorrow, folks? Same table? Four-ish?”

  Everyone nods except Martin, of course, who will be in Singapore by then. Even Noreen nods, though she is tired of everyone, but she is most tired of Sylvie — Sylvie, who never knows when to stop talking. Even when they are finally in bed, lying side by side with books in their hands, Sylvie cannot stop talking. “Do you see these books in our hands? That means we’re reading,” she said to Sylvie a few nights earlier, her voice straining to make it sound lighthearted, like a joke. And tonight will surely be worse because tonight, frustrated by having her story cut short, Sylvie will feel compelled to finish it again and again as they lie in bed.

  Sylvie, she suspects, did not notice that the others were alternately puzzled and amused by the story, not to mention annoyed by the pace at which it was told. Noreen tries to imagine the story from their point of view, a story heard over drinks around a pool in a hot, bright country, and though she had sympathized with their impatience, she still cannot make sense of their reactions, for she cannot find amusement in anything about that night, certainly not in the fear she felt as Deb pressed the Australian woman against the bar, pool cue twitching in her red, meaty hands, and announced, “In two minutes, if you are still here, I am going to kill you,” not screaming the words as an exaggerated expression of anger but stating them clearly and matter-of-factly, attaching a time frame, making them a promise.

  Is it possible, Noreen wonders, to locate the exact moment that fear (or hate or love) takes shape? And is there ever a way to convey that feeling to another person, to describe the memory of it so perfectly that it is like performing a transplant, your heart beating frantically in the body of that other person? That night, after the Australian fled, Deb turned to Noreen and Sylvie and remarked nonchalantly, “She knew,” and Noreen, looking fully into Deb’s eyes for the first time, saw in them something distant and unmoored, like a small boat far out at sea.

  When it was Noreen’s turn at the pool table, her hands shook as they held the cue, which felt different to her now — like something capable of smashing open a head or boring through a heart. As Deb racked the balls for the next game, her back turned to them, Noreen grabbed Sylvie’s hand, and they fled the bar also, sprinting across the vast, dark parking lot, glancing around nervously as they fumbled to open the doors of Noreen’s car. Once inside, they locked the doors and flung themselves on each other for just a moment, their hearts thudding crazily against the other’s groping hands, before Noreen started the car and sped out of the parking lot, not turning on the headlights until they reached the street. Halfway home, they pulled over on a dark street and finished each other off quickly right there in the car, not even bothering to silence the engine.

  On the third afternoon, shortly after the five of them convene and order their first round of drinks, a sweaty woman approaches their table and asks whether they have seen Martin. “Martin?” they repeat in a sort of lackadaisical chorus.

  “Yes,” she says impatiently. “Martin. I saw him having drinks with you yesterday. I’m his wife.”

  They look at one another nervously. Martin had not mentioned a wife. “We haven’t seen Martin today,” Joe says at last.

  Martin’s wife picks up a napkin from their table and wipes her face with it. “I’ve been out all day with friends,” she explains. “Man, is this place muggy.” She studies the napkin for a moment, then says, “Well, I better run up to the room and get myself into a shower.” But she does not commit herself to action; instead, she conti
nues to hover over them, and so they feel obligated to ask her to sit down.

  “I must look a fright,” she says, falling quickly into a chair. She eyes them suspiciously, as though she suspects them of harboring a loyalty to Martin, and then launches immediately into the story of how Martin ordered frog legs in Ubud. Amanda, with a drawn-out Canadian “oh” that almost gives her secret away, shrieks, “Oh no, the poor frogs.” The others say nothing, especially Calvin, who does not think that Amanda would be impressed by a joke about the dead, legless frogs.

  In the midst of this, the front desk man appears beside their table. “Mrs. Stein,” he says quietly, addressing Martin’s wife and mispronouncing her name.

  “Stein,” she corrects him curtly.

  “Stein,” he repeats dully. “I am very sorry, Mrs. Stein. I do not know how to say this, but the plane has crashed.” He does not know when he decided to begin in this way, by referring to the plane, a pretense suggesting that they share between them the knowledge of her husband’s departure.

  “I’m afraid that you must have me confused with another guest. I don’t know anything about a plane,” says Martin’s wife, speaking stiffly, almost angrily.

  He puts his hand nervously into his pocket, seeking out Martin’s twenty-dollar bill, which feels different from Indonesian money, sturdier. Yes, it’s there. It exists, which means that everything else exists — Martin, the flight change, the plane — but, he realizes as he gets to the end of this chain of associations, what this means is that none of them exists.

  “The plane that your husband was on,” he croaks. “I switched him yesterday because he was nervous about flying our local airline. I called the Singapore office myself. He flew to Jakarta this morning, and from there he was going to Singapore.” His seemingly lidless eyes blink once, slowly, and then focus on the table.

  “It’s true,” says Noreen. “Martin told us yesterday that he was leaving this morning, that he had just changed his flight because Garuda made him nervous.”

  “Why didn’t you mention this a minute ago when I asked?” Martin’s wife asks, widening the scope of her anger to include all of them.

  “I guess we thought that maybe he’d changed his mind,” explains Calvin.

  “He did not,” says the manager sadly. “I took him in the hotel van myself.”

  “It really was none of our business,” adds Joe.

  Martin’s wife stands then, stands and takes another napkin from the table and passes it across her face, and when she is done, it is as though she has wiped away the angry expression, and in its place a new expression struggles to take shape, her face like a television screen as one fiddles with the antennae, all blurs and fuzziness and glimpses.

  The manager has begun to cry, quietly and without embarrassment. “Come,” he says to Martin’s wife gently, reaching for her arm. “The families are gathering at the airport to grieve. I will take you.”

  The five Americans watch them walk away from the table together, too shocked to speak. They order one round of drinks and then another, and finally Calvin says, “That front desk guy’s a heck of a nice guy,” and because they are a little tipsy by now, they drink a toast to the front desk guy.

  “His English is really good also,” says Sylvie. “I mean, he knows a word like grieve?” She holds up her glass, and they drink a second toast — this time, to the front desk man’s English.

  Only then do they discuss Martin, shaking their heads finally at the irony of the situation: how Martin died as a result of his desire to live. “Yep, old Martin would have liked that,” Calvin says, and they nod together, agreeing that their friend would have appreciated the irony, for that is how they have come to think of Martin — as a friend — because he is dead and they were the last to know him.

  “Well,” says Noreen after a moment, stretching to signal that she is done for the night. She stands, and Sylvie rises as well. “It was nice meeting you all. We’re leaving for Bali tomorrow.” She does not look at Sylvie as she says this.

  “Idyllic little Bali,” Joe replies.

  “What?” says Noreen.

  “Idyllic little Bali,” repeats Joe. “Don’t you remember yesterday, when Martin first sat down and I asked him where he was coming from? He said: ‘I’ve just spent eight days in idyllic little Bali.’” From very far away, which is how yesterday seems now that it has become a time when Martin was still alive, Noreen can hear him intoning the words, like a man in a trance, like a man exhausted by the task of putting paradise into words.

  Dr. Deneau’s Punishment

  dr. dunno. THAT IS WHAT THE BOYS CALL ME, WHAT THEY write on desks and in bathroom stalls, a play on my name — which is Deneau — and on the fact that, day after day, that is how they respond to my questions. “Dunno,” they say with an elaborate shrug and the limp, unarticulated drawl that has become ubiquitous among teenagers in a classroom setting; they cannot even be bothered to claim their ignorance in the form of a complete sentence, to say, “I don’t know,” a less than desirable response to be sure, but one that does not smack of apathy and laziness and disdain.

  They arrive each day with matted hair and soiled faces, a lifetime of wax and dirt spilling from their ears. “Ear rice,” the Koreans call it, referring, no doubt, to the tiny balls that a normal person, one who attends to his ears on a regular basis, is likely to produce — not to the prodigious amounts produced by thirteen-year-old boys oblivious to hygiene. However, I cannot sit beside them each morning as they prepare for school, coaxing them to apply just a bit more soap, to consider a cleaner shirt. No. My realm is the classroom, my only concern that when they leave it, they possess at least a modicum of proficiency in that much-maligned subject to which I have devoted my life: mathematics.

  Would it surprise you to know that I have students who do not understand the concept of ten, who, when given the task of adding some multiple of 10 to a number ending in, let us say, 4, cannot predict that the sum will also end in 4? This, of course, suggests a much bigger problem — an ignorance of zero itself. The Romans developed no concept of zero and we see where that got them, the Roman numeral system in all its past glory relegated to the role of placeholder in complex outlines and on the faces of clocks.

  “Imagine your lives without zero,” I once challenged my students in a moment of folly, thinking that I was offering inspiration, a new window onto the world, but they had stared back at me blandly, no doubt wondering what zero could possibly have to do with eating and sleeping and unabated nose picking.

  “You mean like sports?” said James Nyquist. I had not meant sports, for sports is a topic to which I never allude.

  “Kindly elaborate, Mr. Nyquist. I have yet to see your point.”

  “Like in the beginning when no one’s scored,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, and then, more forcefully, “Yes!” for I meant precisely this.

  “We’d just start at one, I guess,” he said.

  “One?” I repeated. “But one implies that you’ve already scored.”

  “You said to imagine our lives without zero,” he pointed out. “That means it doesn’t exist, right? And if both sides start at one, it’s the same as starting at zero.”

  It was as though I had eliminated Pringles from their lives. Fine, they would eat Ruffles instead. That easily was zero dispensed with.

  This week, we are discussing averages, concerning ourselves only with mean averages, the general consensus among my colleagues being that median and mode would simply muddy the already none-too-clear waters. Toward this end, I gave young Mr. Stuart the following task: to average five test scores ranging from 77% to 94%. After much button pushing (for no task can be performed without a calculator firmly in hand), he announced that the average score was 264%.

  “That, sir, is impossible,” I replied. I have found that few things annoy an eighth-grade boy like being referred to as sir by a grown man.

  He, however, was quick to provide me with incontrovertible proof. “See for you
rself,” he said, surprisingly smug for one whose chin still bore a dusting of toast crumbs, and thrust the calculator in my face. Indeed, through some mismanagement of the keys, he had arrived at 264%.

  “Do you not understand what average means?” I asked.

  “It means you’re like everyone else,” he said.

  “Well,” I replied. “Yes. Except for those who are above average. And, of course, those who are below.” I did not make it personal, did not point out his obvious qualifications for the latter category; I am, after all, an educator. Moreover, I have been reprimanded for such things in the past. Just last month, it was brought to my attention that the names I had given to the three math groups in the class were inappropriate. The most proficient, and not incidentally smallest, group I chose to call the Superheroes, a name that I considered attractive (dare I say motivational) to boys of this age. The middle group was dubbed the Bluebirds, an innocuous but not unflattering moniker. It was the name that I selected for the third group that raised some ire. The Donkeys.

  “But didn’t you consider the implication?” the principal asked. “Donkeys are slow animals.”

  “I am quite familiar with the characteristics of the donkey,” I replied indignantly. “In short, I found the comparison apt.”

  “Well, perhaps you would like to explain that to the boys’ parents?” he said.

  Although I was spared having to answer to that particular pack of irate mothers and fathers, I was required to submit a list of three appropriate replacements for “the Donkeys” by the following morning, a request with which I complied; by noon, I had been invited back to the principal’s office to discuss my suggestions.

  A word about Thorqvist, my principal. First, I find him an affable fellow, though a bit less affability would work wonders with some of these boys. I also cannot object to his sartorial choices nor to the fact that he is always well pressed, a state of affairs that his wife is surely behind. He is somewhat of a malapropist, particularly in regard to clichés, which he uses liberally and generally manages to botch. On one occasion — and here I said nothing because I supported his cause if not his phrasing — he urged the faculty to be careful in making sweeping curriculum changes, lest they “throw the baby out with the dishwater.” Another time, during an assembly when it would have been inappropriate to correct him, I had literally to take my tongue between thumb and index finger as he cautioned the boys not once but thrice: “Each of you must learn to take responsibility for your educations if you do not wish to find yourselves up a creek without a ladder.”