Ready to Fall

by Marcella Pixley

  Even though they were the same cheekbones, the same bridge of the nose, the same skin, the same hair, the woman in the coffin looked nothing like my mother at all. The effect of these anomalies was both terrifying and profoundly disappointing, because instead of seeing my mother’s face, I saw this monstrous caricature with colorless lips and waxy skin.

  “Mr. Friedman, do you see Gregor Samsa’s tragedy as natural or unnatural?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Natural or unnatural?” Dr. Austerlitz says, louder this time.

  I still don’t answer. I look over at Fish.

  “Mr. Friedman. I am asking you a question. Listen to me. And answer, please. Is Gregor Samsa’s tragedy natural or is it unnatural?” He practically screams these words into my face.

  “Natural,” I whisper, surprising myself.

  “Excuse me? I didn’t hear you,” says Dr. Austerlitz.

  “Natural,” I say again, louder this time.

  “Why natural?” says Dr. Austerlitz. “He has changed into a cockroach. How can this be natural? Explain.”

  I stand up at my seat.

  “Because sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror and you just don’t believe what you’re seeing. Sometimes you think you have become so horrible and cowardly and pathetic, you think there isn’t anything human about yourself.”

  My heart is beating and I am breathing hard.

  “You think that it’s unnatural, like turning into a cockroach. But it’s not. We all feel reprehensible sometimes. We can’t believe what we’ve become. But that disgust is part of being human. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” says Dr. Austerlitz, almost smiling. “Yes, I do. Very good, Mr. Friedman.”

  I sit down.

  The Monk is staring at me.

  “Does anyone want to respond to this?”

  More hands go up. We discuss this point for the rest of the class.

  I do not put my head down on the desk even though the tumor is shouting.

  At the end of class, The Monk helps Fish from her seat and leads her out the door. He walks her past me, his arm around her shoulders. I gather my books and make my way to the door.

  I hug the books to my chest.

  “Mr. Friedman,” says Mr. Austerlitz. He puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “Yeah?”

  “Nice job,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  The Monk whispers something to Fish and heads off down the hall alone. Fish is leaning against the wall by the water fountain arranging her folders in her backpack.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She watches The Monk disappear.

  My heart is pounding.

  “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  She shrugs.

  “I’m glad they checked you out,” I say. “I was worried.”

  “I think they wanted to call someone about my mom, but I convinced them I was fine. I don’t want any trouble. All I need is another reason for her to be mad at me. So what happened to you? I was looking for you when I got out of the nurse’s office. Where did you go?”

  “I didn’t want to get in the way,” I tell her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” says Fish.

  “I figured you didn’t need me waiting around for you. It just seemed like The Monk had everything under control.”

  Fish frowns. “You really don’t know me at all, do you?” she says.

  “I don’t know anyone,” I say. “I don’t even know myself.”

  “Well, whose fault is that?” says Fish.

  I have no answers.

  She sighs and heads off down the hall toward Cage’s class without me.

  I watch her go, ashamed of the monstrous vermin I have become.

  MISERY MAKES GOOD FICTION

  Dr. Cage smells like old yogurt. As soon as I open the door and step inside, it hits me right in the face, his odor, yeasty and pungent, like something that should be wiped up and put out with the cat. I take my seat next to Fish and pull my notebooks from my backpack. We look in opposite directions until class begins. One by one, the other students enter the room. They take their seats uneasily, breathing through their mouths. It’s not clear which part of Cage’s body is emitting this foul odor. It could be his feet or his armpits. It could be his breath or his hair or his beard. It could be dirty underwear or socks. It could be all of the above. Stinky man, we love you anyway.

  The class begins the way it always does. Students read their drafts. We go around the circle, giving feedback, appreciating every flimsy simile no matter how clichéd. And then Cage tears each piece apart. His cruelty is strangely amusing, the way it is always entertaining to watch the meanest judge in a television talent search. Even though you cringe when he does it, there is an element of delicious tension in waiting for him to lambast a contestant, ruin someone’s dreams in precisely the way you hope your own will not be ruined. And then when he rips them to shreds, you smile because deep down inside you are a selfish son of a bitch. The Germans have a word for this kind of joy: schadenfreude. It means taking pleasure in another person’s suffering. The Germans are nothing if not articulate.

  Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth stands at his chair and reads his story in a tremulous voice.

  The city at night. Blood. Sweat. Tears.

  A rat scurries down the train track like a tiny buffalo, charging, charging headlong into the yellowed, piss-stained concrete. The whores gather their skirts, raising their blouses like nursemaids to show the toothless old men how round they still are despite the years and the diseases and all the dead or dying babies who rang their breasts like bells.

  Saunders only has five bucks in his pocket. He prefers credit cards.

  But he wouldn’t be caught dead giving one of these hags his platinum. Oh no. Not just because of the frequent-flier miles, but because you just can’t trust a whore these days. Let’s face it. No one can. Even though it is the oldest profession. Saunders thinks about this as he offers one wrinkled dairymaid his crumpled fiver, Benjamin Franklin be damned, and walks with her, groping her, behind the train station, where there is a mattress on the ground that smells like piss and beer.

  “Stop reading,” says Cage. “I can’t hear any more. Please. Don’t go on.”

  “Why not?” asks Thomas.

  “Because it’s completely offensive. And there’s no real value in anything you have written here. Please. Put me out of my misery. Stop. It’s horrible torture.”

  “That’s your opinion,” mutters Thomas peevishly.

  “Yes,” says Cage. “It is. I don’t even want to go around the circle to hear your classmates try to make you feel better by complimenting your similes. This story is garbage. Pure and simple. I refuse to allow you to continue.”

  “It’s not that bad,” says Thomas.

  “It is,” says Cage. “It’s worse. It could kill a person.”

  “I think my grammar and sentence structure are pretty good.”

  “My dear boy,” says Cage. “Saying that your story isn’t bad because it has pretty good grammar and sentence structure is like saying that Auschwitz wasn’t bad because it had pretty good plumbing.”

  “That’s not fair,” says Thomas. “You’re comparing my short story to a concentration camp.”

  “It has the same effect. Listen. If you grew up in the city surrounded by whores, or if your mother were a whore, or if you had recently taken a trip to the city in search of a whore, well, now then maybe you would have something worth writing about. But this is just titillating chauvinistic garbage. It’s not even worth revision.”

  “You’re saying I should go into the city and find a whore?”

  “Are you really this concrete? Listen carefully. I am not saying you should go into the city to find a whore. No. I am not saying that. I am saying that you have written something that does not come from your own experience, so there’s no sense of reality. The whores. The city. The piss. It’s completely beyond you, Thomas. You see what I mea
n?”

  “He might have had experiences with credit cards,” says one of our classmates either in an attempt to be helpful or to break the tension. “Or five-dollar bills. I bet he has handled plenty of five-dollar bills.”

  “That’s true,” says Thomas desperately. “I have a credit card. I have also handled five-dollar bills.”

  “Well, congratulations,” says Cage. “There are two details in your story that come from somewhere real. The rest of it is complete bullshit. Listen. I get it. You’re sixteen years old. Right? You haven’t lived for very long. You are looking for something to write about that will feel exciting and edgy. Borrowing someone else’s misery, because you don’t think you’ve lived through anything important. But I promise you, if you look hard, you’ll find that your own small miseries are more than enough.”

  Cage takes a battered red bandanna from his back pocket and mops his face. He is sweating profusely. He takes off his blue cable-knit sweater and airs himself, fanning his damp undershirt with the folders on his desk.

  “I don’t have any small miseries,” says Thomas miserably.

  “Bullshit,” says Cage. “You’ve never heard your parents fight?”

  Thomas shakes his head.

  “You’ve never wanted to kiss someone so bad it hurts? You’ve never had some crazy old creative writing teacher pull apart your story in front of all your friends? Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” says Thomas.

  “I just handed you one,” says Cage. “The creative writing teacher. It’s happening. Right now.”

  “Oh,” says Thomas. “That’s not so bad. That doesn’t even bother me that much.”

  Cage looks like he is getting ready to slap Thomas, who is completely unaware that he is experiencing existential angst for the first time in his life.

  “Okay,” says Cage. “I give up. Get into pairs. Talk to each other. Brainstorm as many miserable moments as you can. Some of you are going to have to dig. You didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas. Your dog peed on the rug. Your teacher made you cry because he said your story was bullshit. Something. I guarantee you, even our boy Thomas has some misery in there somewhere. Go on, find a partner. Share your misery. Get busy. I need to take a break.”

  Thomas A. Trowbridge the Fourth heads off to the bathroom. Cage reaches one hand into his pocket and pulls out a small bottle of aspirin. He shakes two into the palm of his hand, pops them into his mouth, and puts his head down on his desk.

  “I think we killed him,” I say to Fish.

  “Thomas killed him,” says Fish.

  Fish is looking out the window.

  The tumor kicks the back of my eyelid with his cleats.

  What are you waiting for? Talk to her.

  I put my hand in my pocket and wrap my fingers around the shard.

  “You said I didn’t know you very well.”

  Fish keeps looking out the window.

  “Well, I was wondering if we can be partners so we can tell each other some things that happened, and maybe it will help me know you better.”

  “Maybe,” says Fish. “But only if you don’t run away like you did this morning.”

  She turns toward me. I can’t stand the pain on her face.

  “I promise I won’t run away,” I tell her.

  “Even if what I have to say bothers you?”

  “Especially then,” I say, looking into her green eyes. “I promise.”

  Fish exhales. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

  All around us, kids are breaking into pairs and telling each other about their angst: we moved when I was nine, my dog died, they all made fun of me, I didn’t win the competition, I studied my brains out and only got a B, he broke up with me, she broke up with me, they got divorced, I broke my leg, my tooth fell out, I never saw her again, he died before I was born, there was a fire in the kitchen, we got into an accident, I never had the chance to apologize. A strange litany of sadnesses from all sides of the room. Whispered voices, confessing their scars. Even the kids who look happy. Even the kids who look normal. Even the kids who look healthy. Even the kids who speak easily and make friends easily and walk without any visible burden in their step. All of them laying out their disappointments like paper boats in a river, hoping the current will be strong enough to carry them away.

  Fish and I move to an empty corner of the room. We sit facing each other, our knees touching. “Are you ready?” I ask her.

  She nods. Then she takes a deep breath and begins.

  “My dad had an affair,” she says.

  I say, “My mom got cancer the first time when I was five.”

  “My mom had an affair.”

  “Then she had surgery.”

  “They fought all the time. Screaming. Broken dishes.”

  “She had chemotherapy.”

  “Then one night he left.”

  “All of her hair fell out.”

  “She totally fell apart. She started drinking. Stopped taking care of things. The house is a mess. Sometimes I do things just to piss her off. Like taking ten bucks from her purse or going out with The Monk or dying my hair pink. She used to love my hair.”

  I reach out and touch her hair. “She became so fragile.”

  She touches my fingers. “She became so broken. I used to worry she would get worse if I did the wrong thing. But I still did a lot of bad things. Things are so bad I don’t even know how to talk about them. Are you going to run away now?”

  I turn her hand over and touch her scar. I trace it with the tip of my finger, across her wrist and down the inside of her arm. I want to kiss her scar so badly my whole body is flushed with it.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not going to run away.”

  “Your turn,” she whispers. “What happened after the chemo?” She reaches out and holds my other hand.

  “She was in remission for ten years,” I say. “We thought we had it licked. And then it came back.”

  “She died?” whispers Fish.

  “Yeah,” I say, looking into Fish’s wide green eyes. “She died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” I mutter.

  “You miss her,” says Fish. It isn’t a question.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I miss my mom too.”

  We look at each other for a long time. I think I can see my reflection in her eyes. The faintest gleam. All around us, students are still whispering their sadness, the long, feathered flock of disappointments rising into the air like prayers. Slowly, carefully, as though we might break if we touch each other too quickly or with too much force, Fish and I put our arms around each other. We begin to rock. We rock each other back and forth so gently it almost tears me open. I have never rocked another person before. Her body is fragile and tentative, but it is warm. I can feel her heart beating. She looks at me with her sore lip and before I can say anything, she puts her head on my shoulder and I put my head on her shoulder and we breathe and breathe.

  GET THEE TO A NUNNERY

  The winter weeks pass. Fish and I exchange phone numbers, but I never have the guts to call her. We rehearse every day after school, even on Fridays when we are tired from the week and eager for the weekend, we get up onstage and do our best. In act 3, scene 1, Hamlet delivers the famous “To Be or Not to Be” speech. The Monk wanders to the very edge of the stage and stares at us with shining, wild eyes. He is suffering. You can see it in the way he holds himself, the way he paces back and forth like a caged animal. He is trying to decide whether it’s better to be alive or not, whether it’s more noble to suffer all the horrors and mishaps of living or to take matters into his own hands and end it all. What is death, he wonders, but a long sleep? But then he suggests that death is really not at all like sleep, because once our spirit has left our body, there can be no dreaming, there can be no more thinking. The end is simply the end, a face in the coffin, a stone. And so we trudge through life and we keep on living. We try as hard as we can to avoid the nothingness th
at waits for us in the grave.

  I am sitting next to Ravi in the audience. His eyes are glued on The Monk. He leans forward with his chin in his hands and studies him. When The Monk is finished with his monologue, Ravi sighs and nods and looks around at all of us dramatically to make sure we are appreciating the brilliance onstage. No one meets his eyes but me.

  Enter Fish stage left as Ophelia, Hamlet’s onetime girlfriend, barefoot, lovely, luminous with her pink hair against the black stage, a stack of Hamlet’s love letters tied in a red velvet ribbon. She tells him he can have the letters back. Here they are. Back in your hands, where they belong. Hamlet stares at her with wild, furious eyes. He says he has no idea what she’s talking about, and he begins raging about her beauty and her honesty and then he lunges at her like he is going to hit her, but instead he pulls her to him and kisses her neck and when she throws back her head in ecstasy he screams, Get thee to a nunnery so she will never have to set eyes on a sinner like him ever again. He berates her. He teases her. He confuses her. He flirts with her.

  I am amazed at how comfortable they are with each other’s bodies. Both the tenderness and the violence. How easily they move from one to the other. I put my hand in my pocket and curl my fingers around the shard. I let the sharp edge cut into my palm. This pain feels better than watching them onstage together. I rub my fingers over the shard. I press it into my thumb.

  The Monk grabs Fish by the waist, touches her hair, kisses her eyes, and pushes her away so hard she falls to the floor.

  I stand up.

  Ravi pulls me down.

  “Hamlet,” says Donna Pruitt. “Why are you being so cruel to Ophelia?”

  “I’m angry,” says The Monk, staring at Fish with eyes that have seen her in so many more ways than I have seen her.

  “Why?” Donna Pruitt asks.

  Fish and The Monk continue making eye contact.

  “She hasn’t been paying attention to me lately,” says The Monk. “And I am addicted to her attention. So I’m furious. I am also really mad at my mom for moving on to someone new so soon after my father died. So I guess you could say I’m down on women right now. I hate the sight of them.”