Life After Genius

by M. Ann Jacoby

  “He couldn’t have,” one of them says. “He’s too smart to say that.”

  Freddy pokes Mead again. Harder. “Hand it over, freak, or you’ll be sorry.”

  “No. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this project. Half my final grade will be based on it. You can’t have it.”

  He moves fast, so fast that Mead does not have time to react. In one swift motion, Freddy knocks Mead down, flips him over, and pins him to the ground. With his knee digging into Mead’s back, Freddy says, “You ready to hand it over now?”

  “No.”

  “All right then, have it your way, freak.” And while the other boys hold Mead’s arms and legs to the ground, Freddy takes the ruler and slides it into the crack of Mead’s butt. A cold dread starts at the base of Mead’s skull and races down his spine. His heart thuds against the ground. Freddy isn’t just a juvenile delinquent; he is downright crazy. “I’ll give you one more chance, freak,” he says. “Hand over your report or I’ll measure just how far I can shove this ruler up your ass.”

  Unable to speak, Mead nods his head.

  “Is that a yes, freak?”

  He nods again and manages to squeak out a sound that resembles a yes.

  Freddy grabs the notebook and, knee still buried in the middle of Mead’s back, rips it in half. Then rips it again and again and again, every tear going straight through Mead’s heart, pieces of paper fluttering down through the air like feathers off a maimed bird. When Freddy is done, he tosses the carcass of the notebook into the creek, lifts his knee off Mead’s back, and says, “If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I’ll come back and finish what I started, do we understand each other?”

  Mead nods again but otherwise does not move, even when the boys climb back up the hill. Not until their voices have receded into the distance does he dare lift his face out of the dirt and sit up. The front of his shirt is soaked with urine. Still shaking, he pulls it off over his head and dunks it in the creek. Splashes water on his chest. Then wrings out his shirt, puts it back on, and steps into his pants. Only then does he retrieve from the ground all the bits and pieces of his notebook. The pieces Freddy threw into the creek are ruined beyond repair.

  Mead climbs back up the hill and sees Percy still standing on the mound. His cousin pitches a fastball in over the plate. The batter swings, misses, and the catcher yells out, “Strike!” Then the bell rings, signaling the end of recess, and everyone starts heading back toward the school, laughing and talking. Percy glances around the schoolyard until his eyes land on his cousin. Mead waves as if to say that everything is fine, that he will be along in a minute. The last thing he wants is for his cousin to see Freddy’s handiwork. Mead is humiliated enough as it is, he does not need his cousin to add to his misery with some misplaced act of heroism. And it works. Percy nods back, then trots off in the direction of the school. Not until he has disappeared inside does Mead start to make his own way back.

  THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, the last week of the project, Mead re-sketches his six-foot-by-six-foot plot of land then, from the bits and pieces of still-legible notes, tries to re-create his report. But the project he hands in is not even worth grading. Mr. Belknap grades it anyway and gives Mead the first C of his life. “Is everything all right at home?” the teacher asks and Mead nods.

  But four weeks later, when his mother gets a look at his report card, everything is not all right.

  “What happened?” she asks Mead.

  “Nothing,” he says.

  “Do you see this?” she says and holds the report card not six inches from his face. “C. That means average. You are not average, Teddy, you’re an exceptionally bright boy. Is this your idea of a joke? Or maybe you’re feeling rebellious, is that it? Maybe you’ve decided it doesn’t matter how you do in school. Maybe you think slacking off in your studies is okay. Maybe this is all a big joke to you. But it isn’t okay and it’s not a joke, Teddy, it matters more than you can even imagine.”

  “I don’t care,” Mead says. Which is a lie. He does care. He hates that C even more than his mother does. She should know this. She should know him. Why doesn’t she ask him if anything is wrong? Like his teacher. Not that he would tell her if she did ask. He would be too embarrassed. But still, she could at least ask. And so he says what he says to get back at her. To piss her off because he is mad. And it works.

  “All right,” she says. “Fine. You want to know what average is going to get you in this life? I’ll show you.” And she stomps to the front hall closet and comes back with his overcoat. “Put this on; we’re going for a ride.”

  At first Mead thinks she is going to drive him over to the junior high so Principal Jeavons can give him a lecture, so the man can talk to Mead about grade point averages and SAT scores and all the other things universities care about so much. Which suits Mead just fine. He would love to get his hands on some college guides, to take a peek inside, to get a preview of his much-anticipated future, but he doubts Principal Jeavons has any of those lying around. That’s high school territory, after all. Mead wonders what it would take to get his mother to drag him into that principal’s office.

  But she drives in neither the direction of the junior high nor the high school. Instead she gets on the state highway and heads for St. Louis. And Mead’s hopes begin to rise again. Maybe she is bypassing both schools and taking him directly to St. Louis University. Maybe she will take him to the library. A university library. A real library. Because the one in High Grove is a joke. Cookbooks, farming manuals, and hunting magazines. That is about the extent of it. Mead would give his right arm to walk among the texts of great scholars. It’d be like dying and going to heaven. He can hardly wait.

  Only she doesn’t go there either. An hour and a half later she pulls up in front of Wessman’s Funeral Parlor and says, “We’re here. Get out.”

  A funeral parlor? She drove an hour and a half to take Mead to a funeral parlor? Geez, if she wanted him to attend a funeral, they could have just stayed in High Grove. They might have had to wait a day or two for somebody to die, but she could have made her point just as well there and saved on gas too. Whatever that point might be. Dead people don’t scare Mead. There was an open casket at his grandfather’s funeral a few years ago. The old man looked exactly the same lying in that casket as he had two days earlier lying in his bed, only with more makeup. “Pull up your grades or you’ll be burying dead people for the rest of your life like your father.” That’s all she has to say. But no, Mead’s mother has to go and make a big production out of it. Drive home her point. So fine, let’s just do this thing and go back home.

  “Sit down and I’ll be right back,” she says then disappears inside Mr. Wessman’s office. Once every month or so, Mead’s father has to come down here to pick up the body of some High Grove resident who spent his or her final days in the St. Louis Hospital, or in one of the city’s many nursing homes, and bring it back home to be buried. So unless Mead’s mother is planning to stick a corpse in the front seat between the two of them for a ride home, Mead doesn’t know what she hopes to prove with this whole charade.

  “Okay,” she says as she emerges from the office a moment later, “let’s go.” And she gets onto an oversize elevator not unlike the one at Fegley Brothers, only fancier, with inlaid wood panels and brass fixtures. The doors close and the elevator lurches into motion, heading south. Only then does it dawn on Mead that he is maybe not as prepared for whatever his mother has in mind as he first thought. “Just remember,” she says, “that I’m doing this for your own good.”

  The elevator shudders to a stop and the doors open. The first thought Mead has is that someone should turn up the thermostat. The second thought he has is that someone should open a window because it stinks down here. Like a chemistry lab. Like his uncle Martin after the man has spent a couple of hours in the basement of Fegley Brothers, only a whole lot stronger. All such thoughts go flying out of Mead’s head, however, when he sees what lies before him. Dead bodies. At least
thirty of them are laying on stainless steel gurneys, naked as jaybirds. Men and women alike. Lifeless as fallen trees. Some with sutures in their necks, others with stitches in an arm or a leg. All of them wearing toe tags. And not a single one of these bodies is under a white sheet.

  Mead’s stomach heaves and he throws up on the floor. He turns and runs back into the elevator, frantically pushing on the CLOSE button until the doors start to respond. But his mother sticks her hand between the doors and they reopen. Then she steps onto the elevator and hands Mead a Wet-Nap to clean up his face. He gets a whiff of rubbing alcohol and almost heaves again, turns away from her, presses his hot cheek against the cool brass plate, and presses the CLOSE button several more times. The door responds and the elevator begins to rise.

  His mother grabs his face, turns it toward her, and wipes his chin with the Wet-Nap as if he were two years old. “Hold still,” she says as she swipes at his cheeks, then releases his face and tucks the damp tissue back inside her purse. “And that,” she says, after snapping closed her handbag, “is what average will get you.”

  THE NEXT MORNING MEAD WAKES UP feeling hotter than a furnace. He splashes cold water on his face and dresses for school anyway. At the breakfast table he can barely get down his eggs and toast. “Are you feeling all right?” his mother asks and tries to touch his forehead but Mead pushes away her hand, still mad about yesterday. “I’m fine,” he says, scoops up his schoolbooks, and hurries out the door before she can touch him again. The November air is cold and feels good on his face, but Mead has walked barely two blocks when he is overcome by a wave of dizziness.

  A horn honks and he looks up. His Aunt Jewel rolls down the window of her car and says, “Teddy, you’ll catch your death walking to school in this weather. Hop in.”

  Normally he would say no and keep going, but today he makes an exception, opens the back door and crawls inside. Percy is sitting in the passenger seat up front. He turns around and says, “You look horrible, cousin, like you’re gonna puke or something.”

  “Percy,” Aunt Jewel says, “please don’t talk like that. It’s crude.” Then she glances at Mead in the rearview mirror and says, “You do look awfully pale.”

  “I’m fine,” Mead says and tries to stop shivering in his aunt’s overheated car.

  She pulls up in front of the junior high and Percy starts to get out.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she says and Percy goes, “Oh, right,” and pulls his woolen hat on over his head.

  “I mean a kiss,” she says and points to her cheek. Percy glances back over his shoulder at Mead. “Oh, right,” he says again, kisses her, and bolts from the car.

  Mead cannot help but feel jealous. He wonders what it would be like if he and his cousin were to switch mothers for a month. What it would be like to have his Aunt Jewel fuss over him the way she fusses over Percy, who obviously does not know how good he has got it. A month, that’s all it would take to knock some sense into his cousin’s head, to let him know how lucky he is. Maybe then he wouldn’t jump out of the car quite so fast.

  Mead scoots across the backseat to get out when his aunt says, “Wait a second there, young man,” then reaches over the seat back and presses her cool palm to his hot forehead. “Why, you’re burning up, Teddy. You can’t go to school.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine, you’re sick as a dog. I can’t believe your mother let you leave the house in this condition. You stay right where you are, I’m taking you home.”

  And just like that, the energy goes out of him. Mead could not get out of the car if he wanted to but he no longer even wants to. As his aunt pulls back out onto the road, Mead lies down and closes his eyes. The heat overcomes him and he falls asleep and dreams that he is down by the creek again with Freddy and his evil cohorts. “Drop your pants or else,” Freddy says but just then Mead’s Aunt Jewel appears at the top of the hill and yells, “Get away from my son, you no-good thugs, or I’ll call the police.” And off they run.

  Mead wakes up when his Aunt Jewel wraps her arms around him. “Come on, you,” she says and lifts him out of the backseat, which is an amazing feat when you consider the fact that his aunt is barely five-foot-two and cannot weigh much more than he does. Too weak to object, Mead wraps his arms around her shoulders and lets her carry him to the house.

  “What happened?” Mead’s mother says when she pulls open the front door.

  “You have one very sick little boy on your hands,” Aunt Jewel says and carries Mead to his bedroom.

  “He said he was fine when he left here fifteen minutes ago,” his mother says.

  Jewel sets Mead down on his bed. Takes off his coat. His shoes. “You can’t always take them at their word, Alayne. Especially boys. Percy never knows when he’s sick until I tell him.” Mead lies back and his aunt pulls the bedsheets up over him. “Let him sleep for a couple hours and then feed him some chicken soup.”

  “I know how to take care of my own son, Jewel,” Mead’s mother says, an edge creeping into her voice. “I’ve been doing it for ten years.”

  “I know, Alayne. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply —”

  “Thank you for bringing him home. You can go now.”

  Aunt Jewel leaves and Mead falls asleep. When he wakes up, he sees it crouching next to his bed for the first time: the six-legged creature. Startled, he sits bolt upright and gasps. “Are you feeling better?” it says and, thinking that he is hallucinating, Mead rubs his eyes and looks again. This time he sees his mother. “Well, are you?” she says.

  Mead nods. “I think maybe my temperature has gone down.”

  “No, I mean do you feel better now that you’ve embarrassed me. That was the point of all this, wasn’t it? To get back at me for yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry that you threw up, Teddy, I really am. I just had to make sure that you understand the importance of doing well in school. You and I aren’t like your father and his whole side of the family. We’re cut from a different cloth. I want you to have the educational opportunities I never had. To fulfill your true potential. I only did it for you.”

  “Fine. Got it.” Mead says, closes his eyes, and rolls away. “Do you think maybe I could have some soup now?”

  The straight-backed chair scrapes across the floor as she gets up to leave. But she doesn’t come back with soup; she comes back with two aspirin, a cup of herbal tea, and his schoolbooks. Placing them on his bedside table, she says, “I spoke with Mr. Belknap just now. He’s willing to change your C to an A if you’ll do a project for extra credit.”

  “Fine,” Mead says, pops the two aspirin into his mouth, and washes them down with the lukewarm tea. Just so long as it has nothing to do with that creek.

  MR. BELKNAP GIVES MEAD A LIST of projects from which to choose and tells him that, if he would like, he can also submit it for inclusion in the county science fair.

  “Are prizes awarded?” Mead asks.

  “Yes, indeed,” Mr. Belknap says. “First prize earns a blue ribbon and one hundred dollars. Second prize —”

  “I don’t care about second prize,” Mead says. “I plan to place first.”

  And so he picks the project he figures will give him the best shot at winning the blue ribbon: running a mouse through a maze. The mouse part is easy. Mead just goes to the pet section of Woolworth’s —where eleven of them are running around inside a glass aquarium bedded with sawdust —and observes his prospective subjects for a few minutes before choosing the most active and inquisitive one of the bunch: a white mouse with a single gray spot the size of a dime on its hind end. He also buys a wire cage, a running wheel, a bag of sawdust, and a water bottle. The maze part is harder. Because he has to build one. And because he has no skills when it comes to anything involving power tools. Like his mother said, Mead is not like his father and that whole Fegley side of the family. He is not good with his hands. And so he goes to someone who is.

  “You want me to do
what?” Percy says.

  “I’ll give you half my prize money when I win.”

  “And what if you don’t win?”

  “Don’t worry, I will.”

  And so Mead starts going over to his cousin’s house every day after school. The house his father and Uncle Martin grew up in. The house his grandfather Henry Charles built with his own two hands. There’s a shed on the property where Uncle Martin stores some of the overflow inventory from the store (i.e., the older stuff that didn’t sell) until Goodwill or the Salvation Army can come by with a truck to pick it up. The place where it all started: Henry Charles’s workshop. The shed where the man built his first chest of drawers for the president of the local bank and, several years later, his first casket for the same customer. And the rest is history, or at least Fegley history.

  Percy clears a bunch of cardboard boxes off the workbench. Christmas ornaments and old baby toys and toddler clothes that Mead’s Aunt Jewel does not have the heart to throw out. Or, in his cousin’s words: junk. Buried underneath all this junk is a band saw that requires some maintenance before it can be used. But Uncle Martin is happy to help out, crawling under the old saw with a wrench in one hand and an oil can in the other as if it were an old car in need of a tune-up. Then he takes the boys to the lumberyard, going over Mead’s blueprint for the maze with the owner, the two of them knocking heads like a couple of old geezers. Percy rolls his eyes and sighs a lot but Mead kind of enjoys it. Kind of enjoys having his uncle take an interest in what he is doing.

  “All right, Dad,” Percy says when they get back to the shed. “You can leave now. Teddy asked me to help him, not you.” And he nearly pushes his father out the door. “You have no idea,” he says to Mead after Martin is gone, “what it’s like having that man for a father. He’s always sticking his nose into everything I do. I can hardly breathe around here without him getting involved.”

  “Excuse me,” Mead says. “You have met my mother, haven’t you?”

  “Oh. Right. So maybe you do know.”