Skipping School

by Jessie Haas

  “No,” Kris shouted. She was shooting higher and higher. To Phillip, who had stopped to watch, she looked about even with the bar at the top of her swing.

  “Well, don’t you!”

  “Why not? You think a girl couldn’t do it? Swing!”

  Diana rose and expressed her concern with a grave whoof.

  “You’re scaring Diana.”

  “Scaring you, too!” But she slowed down, and Phillip started again, accelerating until they were swinging in tandem.

  “Are you all right, Phillip?”

  “No.” He let the word out quickly and shut his mouth against the emotion that wanted to follow.

  Right now he was thinking of the tire swing in front of the farmhouse, remembering its deliciously lazy round arc and how you could kick off the tree trunk once you got going hard enough. He remembered his father lifting him into it, saw his own skinny little legs swallowed by the enormous hole, felt the sunshine, smelled the hogs.…

  “We used to have a tire swing.”

  “I always wanted one,” said Kris. “Dad said it would make the place look like a junkyard.” She brought her swing to a stop and began to turn herself and the seat around, twisting the chain. When they were as tight as they could be, she let go, twirling rapidly. Diana looked away, as if it were more than she could bear to watch.

  When she had come to a stop once more, head swaying, Kris asked, “Do you want to go back there?”

  “Can’t.”

  “I mean, would you? You said once that it was ugly, and it stank.”

  Maybe it would steady him to think of that—the dark side of the farm, things he used to hate. He explored it cautiously, but it only added to the blackness and hurt in his chest.

  “It’s the hogs,” he said. “You have to try not to look at them, because they’re so smart, and their skin’s the same color as ours. It’s—it was just scary, if you got to thinking.” His father’s brow, dripping sweat as he corralled a loose hog, a hog that had made a break for freedom …

  “Why didn’t you become a vegetarian?”

  You would have, he thought. “Everything was alive once—even plants.”

  “Animal rights people say farming is exploiting the animals.”

  Yes, thought Phillip. But he was no longer implicated. He decided to turn the tables.

  “Why aren’t you an animal rights person?”

  “I don’t believe in rights. I don’t know what a right is.” She smiled grimly. “I only know what’s wrong.”

  “And it’s not wrong to eat animals?”

  “Animals eat animals. Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You expect more from people. You said so once.”

  “Hey, the guy heard something I said! Maybe there’s somebody in there after all!” She wound herself up and twirled again.

  Phillip knew he probably deserved that, but he didn’t like it. He got up from the swing. “I better get back.”

  Kris stopped herself in mid-twirl and stood up. Her eyes rolled up, and she grabbed him to steady herself. “Wait—I’ll walk you home.”

  But they weren’t walking yet. Did she expect him to put his arms around her? He should want to. He loved Kris, really, and liked the way she looked, and he was a teenage guy. Shouldn’t his hormones be the most important thing in the world to him right now?

  Diana whined jealously. Kris laughed and let him go. They shoved their hands in their pockets and turned toward the street. Diana paced soberly between them.

  After a moment he sensed Kris looking at him. She was wondering, he knew, and not daring to ask. And what could she ask? She knew about his father; she, of all people, did not expect him to be a normal, happy person. Yet they had never talked about it. It was impossible to discuss, a looming bulk in the back of his mind, shadowing everything. The bulk had moved closer tonight, that was all, and he couldn’t tell her that. He wished they could go back to the playground, ride the teeter-totter and twirl the old wooden merry-go-round, just laugh and not talk.

  “Will your dog mind if we hold hands?”

  She was startled and almost stopped walking. He was startled himself, but yes, it was what he wanted. He half drew his hand from his pocket, watching to see if she would do the same. Slowly she did. Cold from the swing chains, their hands clasped above Diana’s back. Without looking at each other, they walked down the street to his house.

  What next? Phillip wondered, as his own roof came into view in the murky streetlight. If this were television, they would pause and kiss gently. Someday he would want to. Now he wanted only support—the cold, strong hand that held his, or at most, a hug.

  What did Kris want?

  But the yard light was on, and his mother stood at the door, looking anxiously out. As soon as she saw him, she put her hand to the latch, and his hand and Kris’s instantly parted.

  “See ya,” said Kris, and vanished.

  “Phillip, where have you been?” cried his mother, opening the door. Thea appeared from the shadows and zipped past her into the house.

  “Went for a walk,” said Phillip, knowing that the answer didn’t matter. What mattered to his mother was holding things still, keeping everyone here, and stable, for as long as she could.

  “I’m gonna take a shower,” he said, but passed through the living room briefly, pretending to look for something. The television was off, but his father sat in the chair as usual, tidied back into his habitual expression. Only it didn’t seem quite as firm to Phillip. Something had moved, and though it had been set in place again, like a stone put back on a tumbling wall, the cement of lichen and old leaves was gone.

  He was in the kitchen later, making a cup of hot milk, when the phone rang.

  His mother came around the corner, glancing at the clock and then at Phillip, her eyes full of conjecture. It was nine forty-five. Not many people called that late.

  “Hello? … Oh, Carrie! Hi, honey.” The anxiety dropped from her face and then came back full force. “What? He what?”

  Derek! thought Phillip, jerking the pan and slopping milk on the burner. It smoked and stank. There was a skin on top. He poured it down the sink and stood watching his mother’s face, which was full of astonishment and distress.

  “Oh, honey! Sweetheart, just forget about him. He isn’t worth a single tear … oh, sweetie!”

  “What did he do?” Phillip asked roughly. A sound from the living room; then his father stood in the doorway. He looked taller, his shoulders thrown back, his chest rising and falling with his angry breath. Phillip’s mother shook her head helplessly at them, listening into the phone. Phillip had the impression that all she could hear was crying.

  “What, darling? … Yes? … Listen, blow your nose, and calm down, and tell me.… Yes, all right, run and get one. Of course, I’ll wait.” Now she took the phone from her ear and looked at her husband and Phillip. “She says he dumped her!”

  “Tell her congratulations!” Phillip said. His mother only looked at him, in unchanged shock, until Carrie’s voice on the phone reclaimed her.

  Now for a long time she said only, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Phillip roamed restlessly around the kitchen, waiting for a significant word to fall. He thought passionately about Derek, and the things he wanted to do to Derek.

  Suddenly his mother stopped making any sound at all. Phillip wasn’t even sure she was breathing. She gripped the receiver and listened hard, mouth half-open. Her eyes looked frightened and miles away.

  “But how can I leave your dad all alone?” she asked finally.

  Phillip met his father’s eyes. He was startled at their brilliance. Alone?

  “Oh, honey, I don’t see how … I know, but—” She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and looked at them. “She wants me to go out there!”

  “Go,” his father said.

  “But, Carl—”

  “Go on. We’ll hold the fort.”

  She looked helplessly around her kitchen: spotless, gleaming, replete with duck needlepoints and d
uck pot-holders. Then she closed her eyes briefly.

  “All right. I’ll come. Is your roommate there this weekend? … Then I’ll pick you up around ten-thirty or eleven, and we’ll run up to Aunt Vivian’s. Now, Carrie, I want you to try and sleep, but if you can’t, get up and do homework, so you won’t have that to worry about. And make some nice hot tea, and don’t cry any more than you have to. Promise? … Yes, Daddy’s right here, and so is Phillip.” She held the phone out to her husband.

  Carl Johnson didn’t communicate in words. It was the hands, squeezing your shoulder or skimming a cuff across the top of your head. It was the eyes.

  “Hi, baby,” he said, and listened for a while. “I wish you were here.… Yeah, we’ll be all right.… Yeah.… No.… No.” He listened a moment more and then said softly, “Yeah, I love you, too.… Yeah.… Here.” He gave the phone to Phillip.

  “Hi, Phlip?” Her voice was thick and shaky.

  “Hi, Care. You okay?”

  “No,” she said, with a choke. “Actually, no, I’m not okay. I just wanted to tell you that you were right.”

  Phillip winced. “You don’t have to say that!” Typical Carrie!

  “No, I want to. All it took was—I just started thinking more about my problems. Like you said, I was his mirror, and when he stopped seeing himself, he just looked for another one.”

  “He’s a shit!”

  “No, he’s just … had a really hard life.…”

  “And you haven’t?”

  “Not till now, no.” He could hear a sound almost like panting; she was starting to cry again.

  “Hey! Remember what Mom said?”

  Sniff. “Can I talk to her again?”

  “Sure. Um … take care, all right?” He handed the phone back to his mother.

  They were a long time saying good-bye. Phillip and his father drifted back into the living room, waiting.

  At last she put down the receiver and came around the corner. “Oh, my! I never would have dreamed … He seemed like …” She was unable to finish, unable to reconstruct what Derek had seemed like.

  Phillip’s father sat down in his chair again.

  “Oh, my goodness. Well, Phillip, I’m going to write you out a list of phone numbers.…”

  A list of phone numbers, prominent among them doctors, emergency rooms, and ambulance services. A list of his father’s medicines. A list of where food was kept …

  “I know where all the food is,” Phillip said. But a list was made, and also cooking instructions. In desperation—as all the lists and instructions were also being given verbally—Phillip went to bed.

  He would be alone with his father.

  He couldn’t imagine what they might say to each other. His mother brokered whatever small conversations they now had, so eager for each word that fell from her husband’s lips that Phillip knew he always had to share. Did they have anything to say to each other? And would they say it? The possibility of talking worried him as much as the possibility of not talking.

  He sat up. Despite his day—oh, God, his day! How many miles had he walked?—his body would not be still. Nothing could wear him out anymore. All his extra walking only made him fitter.

  He opened his door. Instantly his mother appeared at the end of the hall. He went into the bathroom.

  “Phillip, am I making too much noise for you?” she asked at the door.

  “No.”

  “I’m just making up a couple of things for you two to eat.” She started to tell him what. Phillip stifled a groan, slipped out of his pajamas, and got into the shower. He turned it on very hot.

  “Phillip?” Now she was in the bathroom! “Why are you taking another shower? You had one earlier.…”

  Phillip made a violent grimace, actually hurting some jaw muscles. “I can’t sleep!”

  “Oh. Well …” After a moment he heard the door shut.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Early in the morning she drove away. The sky was just lightening, and the air was very cold, with a fresh, wet feel. Snow coming, Phillip thought.

  He and his father were up early to say good-bye. His mother looked anxious and faraway but didn’t say much. She gave each of them a long hug, and Phillip carried her overnight case out to the car. She sat with the driver’s door open for a few minutes, letting the engine warm up a little.

  “He should have plenty of oxygen till I get back,” she said suddenly, “but if not, call the hospital. They’ll tell you how to have some delivered.” She looked up into his face. “I’m counting on you, Phillip.”

  “Mmm,” said Phillip. In fact, she was not counting on him at all. She was doing her best not to have to, with her lists and her instructions. Phillip didn’t blame her. He felt himself that he could be counted on for the essentials, but not to cover the full extent of her anxieties.

  “Drive safe,” he said.

  “I will.” She closed the door and shifted the car into reverse. Phillip stood back and watched her go, already looking serious and competent in the precise economy of her turn. As she disappeared, he saw her in his mind’s eye, streaming down the gray highways, wide-eyed and alert. This was the woman who mastered the computer by reading the manuals; the woman who could kill a chicken and gut it, though she cried if a weasel did the same; the woman who had engineered the move here, to a part of the country where they had no relatives, so no one would be always pitying them. He imagined her opening the window partway, pressing her foot on the accelerator to an efficient but illegal speed, her men and her home slipping behind her with the miles.

  When he went back inside, the house felt empty, with a sort of vibration on the air. He didn’t know what to do next.

  His father sat at the table, stirring a cup of coffee. Phillip looked at him obliquely and caught the tail end of a slanting glance. “What’s the weather look like out there?”

  “Cold. Might snow.”

  “She’ll be okay, though. Your mother.”

  “Yeah.”

  His father coughed and took a sip of coffee. “Guess I’ll lie down.…” He looked grayish, and he grunted with each exhalation, grunted as he pushed himself up from the table. Mornings were hard for him.

  A couple of hours later Phillip had a second breakfast, and in the middle of it his father woke up. The coughing was horrible—both pitiful and disgusting. Phillip usually avoided hearing it, being on his way to school weekdays and either outdoors or buried in his room with headphones on weekend mornings. He hated being the kind of person who put on headphones first thing in the morning, and he thought he should be stronger. But he left his breakfast and went outside, pretending to check the mailbox. When he came back inside, it was over, and his father was at the coffeemaker, pouring himself a cup. He inhaled the steam for a moment, then poured in the cream and looked over at Phillip.

  “What are your plans?”

  “Aah …” said Phillip, blankly. People never asked him that. He hardly ever made plans anyway.

  “Did she say—your mother—that you shouldn’t leave the house?”

  Had she? It had been implied in every instruction, but perhaps not actually said.

  “’Cause—” Carl Johnson took another sip of coffee. “I haven’t been alone for … six months, and if … you’ve got stuff to do, I want you to do it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Phillip said. His voice sounded thin and young to him. He wished he’d put more breath into it.

  “Couple things first. Find me a lawn chair. I want to sit out awhile.”

  “It’s cold,” Phillip said.

  His father’s face twisted in an unusual expression of bitterness. “What am I going to do? Get sick?”

  Phillip took a deep, openmouthed breath. “And the other thing?”

  “Huh?”

  “You wanted a couple things?” This was hard labor, prying words out of his father, and the man was unusually talkative this morning.

  “Oh.” His father turned and looked through the doorway into the living room. “P
ut those … goddamned pillows in a closet somewhere. And … take ’em out tomorrow. Make sure!”

  Phillip gathered up an armful of pillows and dropped them into the hall closet where the winter coats were kept. Some of the ducks and geese were cute, and some were actually beautiful. He hoped they wouldn’t get dirty on the closet floor, but of course, the closet floor was very clean.

  When he left, his father was leaning back into the corner of the couch, coffee mug between his hands, looking at the cold white sky through the picture window.

  So, at ten o’clock, Phillip found himself out on the road. His day was his own, whether he liked it or not.

  One good thing—on his hip, buckled to his belt, a small saucepan and a tin cup bounced up and down. In his pocket were some packages of instant cocoa. With his mother out of the house, he’d been able to liberate these items.

  He was almost to the high school when he heard the first shot. Only then did he remember: first day of deer season.

  He looked down at himself. His barn jacket and his jeans were dulled blue denim. His sweater was brown. Might as well paint a white tail on his butt!

  He braked, wondering if he should turn back, go to the mall and buy an orange vest. It seemed a long way to go, for something he didn’t really want.

  Then he remembered the little store he’d found the day that he got lost.

  The store was bustling with activity, people buying ammo and talking ammo, and stalking, and great shots they had made or almost made. A guy with a newly killed deer in the back of his pickup stopped to get his gas tank topped off and to brag. A girl whom Phillip had seen at school was buying milk, and a couple of people got lottery tickets.

  Phillip walked up and down the four aisles, trying to convince himself that he couldn’t see a single flash of orange. Surely all stores like this carried hunting vests or at least orange knit hats. Didn’t they? On a day like this he could really appreciate one of those hats.

  He picked up a can of tomato soup and went up to the counter to ask, something that was normally against his principles. As he stood behind a woman buying cigarettes and lottery tickets, he spotted his first flash of red in the whole store—a cotton bandanna hung on the wall behind the storekeeper’s head.