A Hole in Juan

by Gillian Roberts

  Carol, the math teacher, still red-nosed and carrying a box of tissue, but a good sport, arrived dressed as a bassett hound. “My nose kind of fits the costume, doesn’t it?” she said. “Now go! You’re free to spend the evening with adults.” I thanked her and wished her well and almost made it to the door, but Ma’ayan, dressed completely in pink—shirt, linen slacks, shoes, socks, and bicycle helmet, was bearing down on me, trailed by Ben, looking as awkward and even more lovesick than ever, because he’d made himself up as a sad clown with a big plastic tear on one of his cheeks.

  Ma’ayan greeted me effusively, and then she put her hands on her hips. “Do you know what Ben thought I was? Who he thought I was?” She rolled her eyes, and if he’d been less blinded by love, he would have shriveled to the size of a raisin by the force of that expression. “He thought I was Finney!”

  The name didn’t register for the moment. “Funny?” I asked.

  “Finney! From A Separate Peace. You know!”

  “I only—” Ben began. “It was only a guess. I didn’t mean—”

  “The pink shirt! He thought that’s who I was because I’m wearing a pink shirt!”

  Ah, yes. The annual Episode of the Pink Shirt and the dull annoyance of having to go through it every year. The nervous laughter, sotto voce jokes from the back of the room. The suspicion of gayness, of the shirt signaling homosexuality. The raw material for a tenth grade snickerfest, as it had been.

  I knew they were sexually unsure of themselves, fearful of not fitting in, of not being precisely like everyone else. Still, I wished that just once it didn’t happen. And I couldn’t bear to think about Seth—all the Seths—sitting through all those classes in silent agony.

  Nothing really changes, although we like to believe we are making progress. We deal with it in class and know it won’t make a difference ten minutes later when the jokers are outside the room.

  Maybe the progress was that we did try to deal with it in class. It certainly didn’t feel like much. “Finney, yes,” I said.

  “But I’m not Finney!” she said. Ma’ayan would possibly go mute if we removed all exclamation points, both real and theoretical, from her vocabulary. “I’m a piece of bubble gum!”

  I had been pining for imagination and individuality and here it was, and it taught me something. Imagination wasn’t the be-all and end-all.

  And poor Ben! He didn’t stand a chance. He’d thought he was being insightful—drawing on their common knowledge and reference—creating an insiders’ bond and instead he’d gone splat on his face with her. How could he—anyone?—have suspected bubble gum?

  “You would have stumped me, too, but now, of course, I see it—and you do, too, don’t you Ben?”

  He nodded gratefully, and Ma’ayan sighed, but they drifted off more or less together.

  I sat there thinking about Seth. I wondered if he would show up at the party, and even if, as Nita said, his friends or former friends were coming in groups, not dates, how it must feel to know that nobody in the group is yours, or eligible to be yours.

  Maybe that was behind the mystifying and meaningless pranks. A private initiation or revenge. Maybe it was akin to Macavity’s tail on the TV—placed where it will block the most vision because, as Pip had observed, he could.

  I called Sasha again and apologized. “I forgot I was with child,” I said, and when she began cheering and exclaiming, I had to backtrack and explain that I’d meant Pip. “I’ll be there in a half hour. I’m on foot.”

  She reminded me to be careful, that it was Mischief Night.

  The room had filled still more while I’d been engaged with the bubble gum girl, and now, about 50 percent of the newcomers were in prefab culture-hero costumes. I felt a thousand years old by not even knowing the names of those people whose plastic replicas were popular masks, or what they’d done to achieve this odd sort of immortality.

  I saw a stocky Spiderman, two Batmans—Batmen?—eyeing each other joylessly, one ballerina, two cowboys in homemade getups—how retro and refreshing at this point—an ominous Darth Vader in the far corner, a SpongeBob and two Teletubbies, one green, one purple. It felt almost a relief to see old-fashioned movie icons—a Wizard of Oz Tin Man and a Dorothy in sparkly red slippers. And in a dark robe and ghostly-white open-mouthed grimace, somebody being either Ghostface from the movie, Scream, or much less likely, Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

  Lurking near the door, making an appearance while appearing as little as he could manage, was Maurice Havermeyer. I hated the idea of making small talk with him, especially as I was still on his evildoers list, so I stayed where I was a little longer, feeling like one of those elderly women who sat at the side of grand balls and fanned themselves in Gone with the Wind. I found myself thinking like one, too, looking for gossip and scandal and coming up with clunkers like: Was Batman talking to Bo Peep? What’s going on with that? And a Princess Leia, complete with the bagels-over-the-ear hairdo, was sulking because The Scream was handing a glass of what I hoped was pure punch to a girl with peach and aqua spiked hair and studs punctuating her lips, nose, and both eyebrows. I wasn’t sure whether or not she was in costume.

  But wait—the screaming mask was also posturing in the other corner. He was obviously a popular item at the costume rental spots because, while I was still amused by the duplication of Screams, a third entered.

  All three were tall, half a head at least above most of the rest of the people in the gym.

  My stomach twinged. I told it to relax, that it was coincidence, nothing more.

  Then three more Screams wandered in. Team Scream. “Kind of a cool costume,” Erik had said. “You’ll like it.”

  I didn’t like it.

  I assured myself it didn’t matter how I felt about it. There was nothing necessarily sinister in a group of buddies deciding to dress the same way. They did it all the time as teammates.

  I made my way toward the door. Havermeyer was no longer standing there, which was a relief.

  I walked briskly down Walnut Street toward Sasha’s. The wind had picked up and felt damp, and I shivered in the jacket that had been the right warmth earlier in the day.

  Happily, I’d seen no evidence of Mischief Night in action, but it was probably too early. They say it’s a dying tradition, and I hope so. It was too frightening to contemplate what mischief might mean these days. I hoped Mackenzie had the car in a safe place. Old and seasoned as it was, I didn’t want it egged, another harmless-sounding prank that wound up costing thousands of dollars to replace a ruined paint job.

  And then I was at Sasha’s condo, which was as yet undraped with toilet paper, unsprayed with whipped topping, and looking pretty normal. I went up to her spacious quarters and enjoyed the pleasures of a heated home.

  She also looked normal, which is to say, happily bizarre. She wore a body-hugging shrieking orange sheath from the 1950s and amber beads the size of babies’ heads. The dress was the color of those cones they put down on the highway as a warning.

  “You said casual,” I grumbled.

  “Anything half a century old is casual. Besides, I blend with the table décor and flowers this way. I have been so pathologically organized,” she said, tweaking a yellowed leaf off the coffee table’s bouquet of bronze chrysanthemums that her dress in no way matched.

  I would have liked to have met the six-foot-tall fifties woman who originally dared to wear that dress. It gave me an entirely new vision of that era.

  “Anyway,” Sasha said, “there is nothing for you to do but keep me company. I have turned over a new leaf.”

  “Obviously.” I knew as I said it this leaf would be turned back before the night was out. Being organized, planning for more than five minutes ahead, bored Sasha. The good thing was that she never seemed to recall previous identical experiments.

  “Everything in this household has been organized—closets, drawers, desk, address book, pantry.”

  “You’re saying you’ve become insufferable.”

&n
bsp; “Yes! I was so tired of being inventive and spontaneous and interesting. This is much calmer and actually leaves me lots of free time. Dull time, but free.”

  “And what will you do with it?”

  She waved toward the dining area where I’d already noticed the table. It was difficult to avoid it, draped to the floor as it was in satin that was almost the same orange as her dress. That was in turn covered with pale yellow tulle. A pumpkin carved into a puzzled expression sat in the center, filled with yellow mums and black ribbon bows.

  “I’m thinking there’s room in this country for another household goddess,” she said. “Somebody with maybe a less . . . generic sensibility.”

  “I wouldn’t give up your day job just yet,” I said, nodding as she opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and held up a glass. “I envy your obsessively tidy week. My week has been anything but organized. It’s included minor league annoyances and major disasters, an explosion that left a teacher in a coma, and my thinking I’d be fired. But there was also a student demonstration—a good one, for a good cause—that distracted all of us from things like firing me and also included two more explosions.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Teaching’s a lot more interesting than I thought.” She was silent for a moment, sipping wine. Then she smiled. “Hey—we could be partners in my new business. Codomestic goddesses.”

  “Does it bother you that I don’t have any of the necessary skills?”

  “What skills do goddesses need?”

  I was sitting with my backpack on my lap, and I started to put it down on the floor, out of sight, and then, spurred on by Sasha’s newfound organizational expertise, I thought I’d do some light housekeeping while we waited for the rest of the party. “I’ve become a packrat,” I said. “That is not goddesslike. I’ve been saving evidence that means nothing. It has either amused or annoyed Mackenzie all week and now it’s annoying me. It’s over, whatever it wasn’t, and I might as well toss it all.”

  “Do not try to explain what you just said. I’m happy not knowing,” Sasha said.

  I pulled out my actual work, the poetry text the eleventh graders had used, and a few late papers and one makeup exam I’d been toting around for too long. Those went into the save pile. There were other papers to keep as well, though I was tempted to chuck the entire lot and rethink my decision to stay in my classroom.

  Ethics prevailed, though feebly, and I put that stack to one side and kept removing papers. Havermeyer bulletins I’d failed to toss immediately, a few notices about the party tonight, and random detritus, notes I’d intercepted, more notes, and the anonymous doggerel that I’d thought was an extra poem in the eleventh grade collection. Nobody had claimed it and I certainly didn’t want it, so too bad—out it goes.

  But first, I would share it with Sasha:

  Mischief Night and are we scared

  For big trouble we’re prepared

  But what’s a prank and what’s a crime

  And is the only difference time?

  Friday till midnight is all right

  That’s the meaning of that night.

  But if it’s done another day,

  Then somebody’s gonna pay

  Ghosts and goblins say they will

  When they have some time to kill.

  “Ghosts and goblins say they will what?” she asked, quite reasonably.

  “They will pay?” I suggested.

  “They’ll pay for doing something bad when it wasn’t Mischief Night? They’ll pay when they have the chance? It still doesn’t make sense.”

  “It also doesn’t scan well and it’s got nothing going for it. I can’t decide if it was an honest effort or a deliberate spoof because I asked them all to give poetry a try.” But I couldn’t help but register that the poet hadn’t said “when he had time.” He’d said when they had “time to kill.”

  My cell rang, and I listened to Mackenzie’s softly slurry voice telling me he was on his way. “Got caught up in the research and forgot the time.” He sounded out of breath, as if he was running while talking. “Car’s parked halfway across town, too.”

  “Don’t worry. The others won’t be here for a while. It’s okay,” I said.

  “Good to hear you soundin’ so relaxed,” he said. “How glad are you this week’s over? All those goblins and ghosties gone.”

  Unfortunate choice of words, or at least, unfortunate timing. I must have been quiet a beat or two too long.

  “You are over it, aren’t you?” he asked. “Don’ mean over what happened to the teacher—not at all, but over your . . . well, you know.”

  I did know. Over hallucinations and grabbing at signs and portents that were anything but. Half a passed note. A stupid poem. A look. Two girls fighting every day.

  “I’m trying to be,” I answered him.

  His turn to be silent a beat too long and then to say, “Good. I’ll see you soon as I can get there.”

  Like so many women before me, when confounded as to what to do, I returned to housekeeping, making order where there was none. If only I could reach into my mind with a duster and tidy that up, too.

  “Here’s a gossipy note about precisely how much Kiley loves Brett, and half of one about what Daley’s wearing tomorrow night—that would be tonight, actually, and here’s . . .” I stopped, for some reason seeing the page I’d picked up in a new light.

  I’d considered it mawkish gibberish when Liddy Moffatt first handed it to me. A pathetic, sweaty attempt to be poetic and nothing more.

  But now I saw that there was more.

  Dim candles burn

  Incense on the air

  Evening has come

  Far in the mist

  Against all fear

  Greatness arose

  Limited nowhere

  Intent fulfilled

  Armor and Shield

  Resist the night

  “What do you think of this?” I asked Sasha, passing the sheet to her.

  “More bad poetry? Thanks a lot. How about we talk instead?”

  “Please read it.”

  She frowned as she did, then she looked up at me. “No offense, teach, but I think it means you have not inspired them to greatness.”

  “Read it again.”

  “Really, Manda, it’s refrigerator poetry. Like they had a bunch of words somebody thought were poetic—incense, mist, resist—and they strung them together.”

  “Please?”

  “Okay.” Sighing for my benefit, she again read the lines, then looked up at me. “Was I supposed to see the glimmer of genius this time? You know I don’t know anything about poetry in the first place but . . . I still say it stinks.”

  “Yes, of course, but the first letters of each line,” I said softly.

  “Diefa—oh,” she said slowly. “But that must be a coincidence because what would be the point? You got the poem, right?”

  “It was on the floor, under a desk. The cleaning woman is a fanatic about saving things. If for no other reason, she’d think we could write on the back of the page, use the paper.”

  “So that means you don’t know when it fell on the floor, which class, if anybody besides the wretched poet saw it, or if it has anything whatsoever to do with your students or real life.” She tossed the paper onto the coffee table and yawned.

  “It does,” I said softly. “I’m sure it does.”

  “Manda, you’re really overreacting. You look stressed out, you’ve had a rotten week—give it up. This is trash. Bad poetry and not worth a second glance.”

  “It’s Mischief Night.”

  “And what else is new?”

  “Time to kill. That other poem about Mischief Night, about crime?”

  “It was nonsense, too. What are you doing?”

  “Maybe they were left on purpose, but not for me—for a victim. For somebody they were tormenting.”

  “I really wish you’d—”

  “I have to go. I’ll be back—you’ll see. I’ll be back before you all f
inish your cocktails—but I have to go.”

  She stood up, all six feet of screaming sheath. “You just got here, and here is where you’re supposed to be—we’re having a dinner party—and what on earth is wrong with you?”

  “I’ll sound crazy but—”

  “You already do.”

  “I’ve been getting signals—”

  “Please don’t say from little green men with antennae?”

  “From kids. From poems like this. From random remarks. I think from kids who were too terrified to speak directly. A kid.” Nita. I was sure she’d sent the messages, including the concise one that simply said FRIDAY. But why did she have to remain anonymous, afraid to speak to me even this afternoon? “I caught the signals, but I misread them.”

  I was up by now, grabbing my jacket and nearing the door. “And today I made it worse. I think a kid’s going to wind up being humiliated or hurt tonight because I meant well. He told me he was in a war, and I didn’t think it through. I think I sent him into an ambush. And if that’s so—or if he anticipates it—I don’t know what he’ll do in return.”

  “Call the cops if you think something dangerous is going to happen!”

  “I wouldn’t know what to tell them, and I don’t mean that level of danger. It’s at school, after all. Lots of people, but I’ve felt something was coming to a head. It’s so amorphous—look how I can’t convince you, so how could I convince cops?” I shook my head in frustration at the vagueness even I could hear. “I don’t know what I’d say.” It wouldn’t bring out the forces if I said futures were about to be destroyed.

  “There are adults there, right?”

  I nodded.

  She smiled, playing coy. The dress helped the act. “What could happen that’s worth missing dinner with great people?”

  I could easily envision a brawl. Property damage. Havermeyer going ballistic. An arrest record. Futures upended and curdled.

  I thought of Nita saying she was probably staying home tonight because she didn’t want to see the fruit of her labors. Whatever was scheduled to happen had been planned. The quarrels made sense if she’d refused to be a part of what was going on, or had once been a part, but then broke with the others as the war escalated.