Do You Think This Is Strange?

by Aaron Cully Drake

  “He’s not my friend anymore.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t answer. He nodded, understanding. “So how about the third?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but my voice was lost. Jim Worley frowned and leaned forward.

  “Frederick?” he said to me. “Are you—”

  A ding. A voice over the PA system. “Jim Worley to the office.”

  “Ah!” he said, apparently pleased. “Looks like my ship has come in.”

  “You don’t have a ship,” I said.

  “Turn of phrase,” he replied, standing up. “I have to go.” He put his pen in his inside coat pocket and picked up a notebook. “Close the door behind you when you leave, okay?”

  After he left, I sat in the chair staring at the muffin crumbs.

  Do it, the threads urged.

  Stop it, I said. You’re not supposed to be here. This is my place, not yours.

  Just do it, then.

  I stood up and walked to Jim Worley’s desk. They were the remains of a oatmeal muffin. A red sticky piece of fruit clung to one crumb. It may have been a raspberry oatmeal muffin. I swept the crumbs to the floor and noted their position. Now we wait, I thought to myself.

  The class bell rang. It was time for chemistry class.

  Just before I left, I lingered over his desk for a moment. Then, without any prompting from the threads, I opened his drawer and looked at what he had been sketching before I came in.

  It was Minnie Mouse, but she wasn’t wearing her dress. She was lying on a couch, looking directly out of the paper. She was up on one elbow. A necklace hung between her breasts.

  Draw me like one of your French mice, was the caption.

  Definitely on the spectrum.

  CHURCH, BEFOREHAND

  My list of Favourite Things has memories pinned to it. They are vignettes, perfectly remembered episodes. It’s like opening my eyes, and I am there again.

  My first and only time at church is a favourite memory and the oldest thread in my mind. I’m repeatedly opening my eyes as a seven-year-old, in a life and death struggle with my mother to not put on my Sunday-best clothes.

  At the time, I had not yet met Jesus. Many people recommended that I get to know Him, but I had yet to be introduced, and my mother decided it was time for me to make His acquaintance. I remember struggling with my mother, who held my mask in the air, as I jumped frantically, trying to snatch it back.

  “No, Freddy,” she said exasperated, pushing me away. “You are not wearing this to church.”

  I argued. I yelled and demanded. I howled for my mask. They let me wear a mask on weekends and it was the weekend.

  “You can’t go to the church with a mask on,” my father told me as he watched from my bedroom door. “Jesus might think you’re a mugger.”

  My father could afford to be unconcerned about church: he didn’t have to go; he’d already met Jesus, so there wasn’t any need to return.

  “The guy doesn’t say all that much,” Dad had informed me the night before, between forkfuls of spaghetti. “You end up doing all the talking.”

  “I don’t want to do all the talking to Jesus,” I said.

  My mother glared at my father. “Church isn’t really like that, Freddy,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything. You can just sit and listen.”

  “I don’t want to just sit and listen.”

  She paused and took a breath. “Well, we’ll try it and if you don’t like—”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “If you don’t like it when we go to church—”

  “I don’t like it when we go to church.”

  “Freddy!” she said sharply. I looked down at my plate.

  “He already knows he doesn’t want to go to church,” my father said, his mouth full of pasta. “The kid’s smarter than you think.”

  In the morning, my mother remained determined in her decision that it was time I made the Lord’s acquaintance, so it was time to go to church. I was alarmed at such a serious breach of my Sunday routine. Our battle was epic.

  Mom ordered me to the bathroom; I ran away.

  She carried me; I pounded at her back.

  She struggled to brush my teeth; I resisted.

  She tried to comb my hair; I cried in agony.

  She tried to fit me into my best clothes; I squirmed.

  “I want to wear PYJAMAS!” I shouted at her.

  She tried to soothe me. “You can wear pyjamas when we get back, sweetheart.”

  “I want to watch DORA!” I rebutted as I twisted my arm loose from her grip, desperately trying—and succeeding—to remain shirtless.

  She took a deep breath and grasped my wrist firmly. “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “I know you want to watch Dora the Explorer. And you can. After church.”

  “But listen: I want to watch it now.”

  “Can’t argue with that logic,” my father said, sipping his coffee as he leaned against the door jamb.

  “Well,” my mother said crisply, “maybe if you helped me get him dressed, you could go watch your football game. Or would you rather I gave up, and the two of you can watch cartoons instead?”

  In the blink of an eye, he pinned me down and she forced a shirt on me. I screamed mercilessly the entire time. I continued wailing even after I was dressed, even after he picked me up, squeezed me like an anaconda, took me to the car, and strapped me into my booster seat.

  “Have a great time,” he told me and patted me on the head.

  “I don’t WANT to have a great time,” I shouted back at him.

  I don’t know why this is a Favourite Thing, but it is, by the very fact that I continue to revisit it. By the very fact that I continue to think about it; by the very fact that it still sits, a thread in the corner of my mind, and that I still wonder why this memory is so important.

  Favourite thing number 27.

  CHURCH, AFTERHAND

  I was correct. I didn’t like church.

  I didn’t like the pews. I didn’t like that they wouldn’t recline. I didn’t like that they were called pews.

  I had to sit beside strangers. Everything smelled like turpentine. The organist was loud, and her timing was off.

  As the minister spoke, I fidgeted and tapped a rhythm on the pew in front of me. My mother gritted her teeth, then finally gave me a hymn book. After that, I sat quietly, half listening to the choir, half listening to the congregation as it shuffled and muttered in prayer and cleared its collective throat. I was happy with this arrangement. I flipped pages.

  The sermon ended and I quickly stood up to leave, but my mother put her hand on my arm. “Not yet, Freddy,” she said and bade me wait with her until after the congregation spilled out the doors, into cars, and meandered off to Denny’s for brunch.

  The minister came and sat with my mother. He smiled at me. “I’m pleased to meet you, Freddy,” he said and offered me his hand. I regarded it with suspicion.

  “I’m here against my will,” I said, then turned and ran away.

  As they talked, I raced up and down the rows, my hands sliding across the tops of the pews, making motorboat sounds with my mouth. I had no reason to make the sounds, but I liked the resonance in my head.

  “Things happen for a reason,” I heard the minister tell my mother.

  “No, they don’t,” she replied. “No one’s told me what the reason is, and I don’t care about the reason.” She lowered her voice to a sharp whisper. “I just want my son back from wherever he goes in his head. I want him present. Not some of the time. All of the time.”

  The minister put his hand over hers. “This is the spot where God comes in,” he said. “In the void between what the world is, and what you want the world to be. You can draw meaning from it, or draw nothing from it.” He flickered a kind smile. “I always think it’s better to draw meaning.”

  I ran my hand over the wooden seats, the dips and bumps, moulded from years of butts sitting, butts standing. People standing to say
hallelujah because maybe God did something good. People sitting to say amen because maybe God will do something good.

  Things happen for a reason, the congregation murmurs. But that’s not right. Things just happen. The reason is assigned to the happening, and only after the happening. And like pigeons in an experiment, the congregation flaps its wings and looks for pellets to fall from the sky.

  This memory doesn’t make me happy. But I haven’t filed it away like so many others. I return to it again and again. Despite it not being a happy thing, it remains a Favourite Thing.

  Not all Favourite Things have to be good things.

  —

  It was my last and only time at church, the last time my mother tried to force me into a freshly ironed shirt on a Sunday morning. I think she sat, said amen, and God didn’t do something good. I think she resented Him for it. I don’t think she bought into any of it. Even if things happen for a reason, who says you have to like it? And you certainly don’t have to give thanks.

  I don’t spend a lot of time trying to find the reason in things. Perhaps my life would be different if I flapped my wings periodically and expected pellets to fall. I’m not a pigeon. I’m a deer.

  But if I were a pigeon, I might say that there was a reason I was expelled from Templeton College. I might say that I left Templeton for a reason.

  Saskia.

  It was time for us to meet again. My new Favourite Thing. My old Favourite Thing.

  THINKING OF EXCALIBUR HOUSE

  There was only one thing that wasn’t boring about group therapy: Saskia Stiles. Ten years ago, we were in the same social group. We spent hours playing cards and Taking Turns. Twice daily, we practised entering the room. We greeted each other with a How Do You Do and How Are You?

  This is what I learned: when entering a room, you are expected to say something from a list of sentences:

  Hello, everyone, my name is Freddy. (If you know the people in the room, you do not have to give your name.)

  Isn’t it a lovely day? (I don’t like this one; often it isn’t a definitively lovely or non-lovely day.)

  Did you have a good day? (This should never be used in the morning.)

  How are you? (How are you what? I always wondered.)

  Where the hell is my coffee? (This was not on the list of expected sentences at Excalibur House, but when my father discovered the list in my backpack and looked over the speech balloons filled with questions asked by smiling, waving stick figures, he added this question to the end. When I used it at Excalibur House, they called it unexpected behaviour and made me sit for seven minutes in the Room with the Bathtub Full of Plastic Balls.)

  I was good at remembering the scripts we repeated each day, better than most of the people in my group. Saskia had no trouble remembering responses but struggled with remembering which one to use appropriately.

  Nevertheless, she loved the game. It was exciting. She received immediate feedback for a job well done. She got to repeat the scripts again and again. If she did especially well, she got to read her favourite book. Sometimes she could sit with her interventionist and they would write a poem.

  These games didn’t interest me. I found no challenge in identifying the characteristics of the moment, in order to decide the appropriate sentence to use. Within a split second, I could compare the criteria with the circumstance and choose the correct response.

  They bored me.

  Saskia, on the other hand, was always excited to play. Each time I entered the room, she smiled as wide as she could.

  “Say, ‘Hello, Freddy,’” prompted her interventionist.

  “HELLO, Freddy!” she shouted, with joy. “HELLO! How was your DAY?”

  The more she said it, the more excited she became, jumping up and down, her wrists flapping up at shoulder level, palms opening and closing. She looked like she was trying to fly.

  In a way, she was.

  For hours at a time, we greeted each other, and played games, and said polite things. We excused each other a lot.

  My favourite game was building a block tower with her before I knocked it down. It was a script, in which I next apologized, and in which Saskia next said it was okay. She loved the game to the point where she trembled with anticipation as I built the tower. Just before I tipped it over, she stepped back, her hands in the air, flapping. Then I knocked it over.

  “Sorry,” I said to her. “It was an accident.”

  “Say, ‘That’s okay,’” prompted her interventionist.

  “That’s okay,” she replied, hopping up and down, “I FORGIVE you, Freddy!”

  She was only supposed to say, “That’s okay.” I don’t know if the rest was a response added by her own father, but I do know she was never sent to sit in the Room with the Bathtub Full of Plastic Balls. Instead, the interventionist let Saskia add her own flair of grand sweeping forgiveness. For more than a year, while we practised this script, or other scripts like it, I was forgiven my sins. Therapy at Excalibur House was like a confessional.

  I haven’t confessed in ten years now.

  THE DAY OF NOTE IN THE LUNCHROOM

  I opened my eyes and I was seventeen. I was in the cafeteria, and there she was.

  Saskia Stiles came back into my life in winter, early in the new year. I knew it was her the moment I saw her from across the cafeteria. There was no way I could have missed her. Locks of blond hair escaping from under her wool cap like refugees across the border. Her hands bursting with nervous activity, scribbling in her notebook, or rising in the air, fingers flexing, palms opening and closing. It was Saskia and I knew it, even though ten years had passed.

  The cafeteria was a loud place, with eyes looking in every direction. At least one set of eyes was on me at any time, if only by chance. When I walked to my table, people glanced up at me. Especially girls. More girls looked at me than boys. Perhaps they looked at other boys as much as they did at me. I was never preoccupied enough with it to find out, and the threads seemed to have no problem with it.

  Boom chicka wow, the threads said.

  I don’t know what that means, I answered.

  Whether it was with a girl or a boy, I worked to avoid eye contact, but it wasn’t always easy to do in a way that didn’t call attention to myself. Looking down didn’t work. Oscar Tolstoy, for instance, never looked up, and he engendered all sorts of remarks and comments. He couldn’t get through a single day at Templeton without someone pushing him into a locker, it seemed.

  My strategy to avoid eye contact was different. I looked straight ahead, eyes fixed on a point on the horizon. I remained resolute and refused to let my eyes dart about the room.

  Pick a spot on the wall at the end of the cafeteria, the threads advised. Don’t stop looking at it.

  Done, I said. Now what?

  Walk toward it.

  And when I get there?

  Probably you should stop.

  My spot on the wall was straight up the aisle, on the wall behind my lunch table, three feet below the ceiling. With just enough room to picture my clock.

  4:32, the clock called out each time.

  That’s so weird, said the threads.

  The day Saskia returned, I walked up the middle of the aisle, eyes locked on the red clock. Still, I could see a girl, sitting at my table. Directly in my line of sight. Her head immediately below the spot on the wall at which I stare every time. So I looked at her.

  Things happen for a reason. No they don’t.

  Saskia.

  The last time I saw her, it was ten years ago. On that day, she did especially well, was extra attentive, and earned six stickers, enough for a Fun Break. She sat with her interventionist and wrote a poem, while I fumbled to get my coat on as my father waited to take me for ice cream. She shouted out each line as she wrote it.

  “ONCE upon a very merry time,” she said loudly as she wrote the words. “Once. Once upon a VERY! MERRY! TIME!” and she wrote some more.

  I never saw Saskia again.

  A
decade later, here she was, at lunch hour, sitting at the seventh table in the third row. My table.

  That’s when I noticed the others at the table. She wasn’t alone. The metal shop boys with greasy fingernails and scuffed boots were there, clustered beside her. She was leaning slightly away from them. I don’t think she welcomed their presence.

  No one ever sat at this table except me, which was why I chose it in the first place. The door to the janitors’ lunchroom was only a few feet away, always open, with janitors inside, having lunch, talking or playing cards. So no one sat here. I think people don’t like to be this close because janitors are not people. Janitors should not have lunchrooms. Janitors are not supposed to eat lunches.

  They are supposed to mop.

  I approached my table, then stopped. There was Saskia. There also sat the three loud boys from shop class, and they laughed loudly, talked loudly, and threw Tater Tots at each other. Loudly.

  One of the boys leaned over to look at Saskia’s sketch pad. He was tall, with a wide frame and closely cropped red hair. “Whatcha drawing?” he asked and moved closer to her along the bench. She didn’t acknowledge him. She didn’t answer. She adjusted her headphones instead.

  All the better to hear you with. Or not.

  “Leave her alone, she’s busy,” said the boy with a gold earring in his left ear and shoulder-length blond hair. I knew him. His name was Danny Hardwick, and we shared the same homeroom class. He bounced a Tater Tot at his friend; the chunk of potato hit Saskia in the shoulder and fell to her lap. All three boys laughed. Saskia did not.

  “Whoops,” Danny said. “Sorry.”

  I don’t think he meant it.

  Saskia wiped the Tater Tot to the floor. It rolled to the lip of the janitors’ lunchroom. Inside, Mr. Earle and Mr. Bryce argued baseball, unconcerned with the Tater Tot. I was suddenly annoyed at them. They weren’t supposed to be having lunch. Janitors are supposed to clean up floors and bathrooms; they are not supposed to eat. In particular, they shouldn’t eat sandwiches, because they eat sandwiches with their hands. Although they may wash their hands, I can’t be certain that they actually do. Not all of them. Not all of the time. By the law of averages, janitors periodically eat sandwiches with the same unwashed hands that just scrubbed a toilet.