Unraveling

by Owen Thomas

  I push away the box and try my best to fling my attention away from Lonnie’s face and everything he represents in my life. It lands not far away, squarely on the memory of the face of Mark Shepherd, teacher of natural sciences, bobbing and grinning at me in the window of the vanbulance, his tethered conch shell swinging in and out as I watch Cait get high with Carmen Denoffrio and listen to how the moral support for me in the teachers lounge has been off the charts since my professional life broke open like an egg thrown at the chalkboard. I want desperately to believe this is true and so I do. Of course it is true. But for the grace of God, any one of them could be in my shoes. If it were anyone of them, I would be outraged. Relieved, but outraged. Sometime in the middle of a sleepless night I resolved to take Shepp’s advice and reach out to my colleagues for support at my termination hearing.

  I leave the bowl in the sink and pick up the kitchen phone. I dial up Directory Assistance and ask for the number of Roger Deihl. I spell the last name. She tells me there is a Roger Deal, D-e-a-l, in Pickaway County. I tell her that I would prefer not to bother Mr. D-e-a-l because we don’t know each other. I spell it again. No listing. I ask for the number for Suzanne LaForest. Again, there is no listing. We quibble over whether there should be one ‘r’ or two and whether the ‘La’ is part of the last name.

  “Maybe it’s just Forest,” she suggests.

  “You think her middle name is La?” I ask. She tries it anyway.

  “I have a Susan L. Forest in Licking County.”

  I thank her and hang up. I start again with a different operator. I ask for a listing for Phil Barnes. He tells me that there are no fewer than fifteen listings for Phil Barnes, Philip Barnes and P. Barnes in Franklin County. He asks for the middle initial.

  I hang up and excavate the phone book from the rolltop desk in the hall. In the Columbus metropolitan area, there is no listing for Roger Deihl or Suzanne LaForest. There are only nine listings for Phil, Philip or P. Barnes. I decide to dial my way down the list until I find him.

  The sun has broken through the morning cloud cover and is lighting up the back deck. I decide to do my calling outside. I carry the phonebook around the house, up and down, searching around for the cell phone that was inconveniently missing in action when I wanted to call Cait in off of the bleachers. I resort to calling my own cell number from the kitchen phone. A trilling comes from the space of floor between the metal tracks of the CoreFlexx 9000. The abdominal arachnid has swallowed my phone.

  The sun on the deck is a warm, sticky bath of light. I drop the phone book and the phone on the table by the grill and unfold one of the chairs leaning up against the wall. I sit. Bask. I want to sleep in the sun like a cat until it is time to go pick up Ben. In minutes, I can feel myself slipping into the fuzz of dream.

  When the phone rings, I am crawling around the floor of Lonnie Lumkin’s office harvesting turnips. We are stuffing them, dirt and all, into his old-timey leather briefcase. I tell Lonnie that one of the thousands of turnips we have stuffed into his bag is ringing. I tell him it’s a bomb. He tells me the judge is calling. He wags his finger.

  I scramble for the cell phone on the table. It is still and cold. As the fog clears I realize that it is the house phone that is ringing.

  “Hello?”

  “David?” asks my mother, not comprehending.

  “Oh, hi Mom.”

  “Did I call … I must have misdialed. I was trying to call your father.”

  “You dialed right. I’m staying with Ben. Dad’s away. I figured you knew.”

  “Away? Away where? I don’t know anything. I never do with him.”

  “A friend of his had run into some trouble. He said he needed to go out and help.”

  “Out where?”

  “Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix?

  “That’s what he said.”

  “What friend?”

  “I dunno. I don’t think he told me.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “I dunno. Criminal trouble.”

  “Criminal?”

  “He said police. Sounds like someone got arrested.”

  “And that’s all you know?”

  “I guess so. Yeah.”

  “You’d make a lousy wife, David.”

  “Thanks.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Day before yesterday.”

  There is silence on the line and the distance sounds like the ocean in a shell.

  “How’r things on your end?” I ask, meaning to incorporate into the question her location and activities as proof that I have been as attentive as any good son. But I am not able to navigate the maelstrom of my own life effectively enough to isolate what she must have told me about exactly where she is or what she is doing. Ultimately, it does not matter because she ignores the question and proceeds to grill me about how Ben and I are managing. Am I getting him to school? Is he wearing clean clothes? Is he eating something other than pizza? Does he seem happy? Are the plants still alive? I am able to reassure her on all counts, but only because I lie about the plants, which, as I look around, seem a little yellow and droopy.

  “Is that bedroom window closed?” she asks.

  “The bedroom window?”

  “I like to keep it open. Your father likes it closed. How typical is that? He sleeps with it open, but then he closes it up all day. Says it’s a security risk, which is nonsense.” I suppress a yawn. “That room does not have enough ventilation. Never has. After a couple of days it starts to smell like a laundry hamper. Like your father’s socks. So I wait until he comes down to breakfast and then I go upstairs and open that damn window.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I’ll check.”

  “Has he called?”

  “No.”

  “Have you checked the machine?”

  “Not today.”

  “I called this morning and left a message.”

  “I was taking Ben to school.”

  “I called his cell phone and left a message. I called your place thinking maybe you’d know, but you weren’t there, left a message. I called your cell phone and left a message. I was about to give up and thought I’d try the house again. He just took off?”

  “It’s not a problem. Ben and I are having a great time.”

  “Well, I’m sure Ben is loving it. You should go ask Martina for help.”

  “I’m fine. But, yeah, okay.”

  “Ben likes her.”

  “Ben likes everybody, Mom.”

  “That’s true, but Martina is good with Ben. She knows all of his issues.”

  “Okay.”

  “When are you going to work this thing out at school, David? I worry about that.”

  “Oh,” I say dismissively, as if she has expressed concern over the nutritional content of school lunches, “I’ll know more next week.”

  “Is your job at risk?”

  “You mean like, am I going to be fired?” I am hoping the tone of incredulity will short-circuit the inquiry.

  “Well… yes, now that you mention it.”

  “It’s basically just a dispute over the curriculum. We’ll work something out.” The silence tells me she does not believe a word I am saying. I rush to fill the void. “So where are you again, Mom?”

  “Kent State. How’s Mae?”

  “Oh, you know. Same ol’ Mae. Working too hard at that firm.”

  “She’s not still sick is she?”

  “Uh, no. No. That passed.”

  “Good.”

  “Want me to have Dad call you when he gets in?”

  “No. I’ll be back in town in two days. He wouldn’t call anyway.”

  “He wouldn’t? Why not?”

  “Your father,” she sighs, as if that explains everything.

  “You two having issues?” It is a dangerous, floodgate sort of question I would never have asked had I been thinking more clearly. I brace for the full marital lament.

  “Tell you what,” she says matter-of-factly. �
�I won’t ask any more about your school if you don’t ask any more about my marriage.”

  There is a measure of control in her voice that I am not sure I have ever heard on the subject of my father. I wonder if this is really my mother. “Okay.”

  “I’m sure it will pass. It always does.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did he say when he would be back?”

  “Couple of days, but it’s already been that.”

  “I hope he’s okay.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine, Mom.”

  “I have to go. I’m being summoned. Thank you for watching your brother. You’re a good boy, David. Remember Martina. And go open that damned window.”

  I hang up and walk through the house with a watering can, wetting every container with any sign of plant life, however ancient. Upstairs, I pop into my parents’ bedroom. It does kind of smell like a hamper. I open the window and go into the bathroom to refill the watering can. I look like hell. I need to sleep. I need to shave.

  There is an envelope behind the sink, leaning up against the mirror. I stare at it as the water runs. My father’s scrawl is across the front. Susan, it declares.

  I let the can fill and turn off the water, picking up the envelope. It is not sealed. I hold it in my palm, weighing the all of moral arguments. The search of my teenage room for missing Playboys reasserts itself, but I am not sure I can justify two invasions of my father’s privacy on the same, now ancient indignity, even if the first invasion resulted in me assembling his CoreFlexx torture machine. It is the growing and genuine concern that maybe something is wrong, some disturbance in the Force that has caused my mother to call me out of the blue, that makes me to wonder why he has not called and convinces me that I am right, or at least not wrong, to open the envelope.

  S –

  I have been thinking a great deal about our “discussion.” I write these words not out of anger or malice. I write them out of consideration for our long history together and out of respect for your right to know where things stand between us. I have never had any interest in hiding my feelings or concerns from you and I have no intention of changing that now. You deserve the truth.

  I refold the letter and return it to the envelope, unable to finish. The words carry my father’s voice and, with it, the rest of him in all of his rectitude. It is as though his words are reading me as I read them. A wave of moral revulsion sweeps over me and I wish I could rewind the last fifteen seconds of my life and choose differently.

  There is also something about the tone of the first four sentences of the letter that lodges in my stomach like an irregular stone, amplifying my sense of nausea. It is a tone that threatens a fiction; a fiction stronger than Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny; a fiction held sacred by children who will fight their entire lives to keep in their heads, just beneath the surface, that nursery-rhyme meter of original love. The origins of the self. The implacable virtue of our founders, our discoverers, our parents. I am one of those children. The truth buried in the tone of this letter is neither something I want nor something I can handle. I return the letter to its place behind the sink.

  In fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue …

  I return to the back deck. High cirrus clouds have scuttled in to obscure the sun. I sit and turn on my phone. I have two messages, one from each parent. Mom informs me that she is trying to check in with Dad. She wants to know if I know where he is. She wants me to go over to the house and check in on him and Ben.

  The message from my father arrived at 2:58 yesterday afternoon as Cait and I were driving around trying to find Carmen Denoffrio’s house. He sounds tired and irritated and far away.

  David. This is Dad. Call me on my cell. I need your sister’s address. I…I need to send her something. I tried the house. You and Ben must be out someplace. I’ll call you at your place; maybe you’re…

  That the message causes me concern for my father’s welfare is undeniable. But that concern comes less from the abrupt termination of the call and the lack of a call back, than from his sudden, inexplicable desire to communicate with my sister.

  I dial his cell number. The call goes straight to message.

  I apologize for missing the call, explaining how I forgot my phone yesterday when I went out to pick up Ben. I tell him that Mom has just called looking for him and that maybe he should call her back. I give him her cell number in case he does not remember. I tell him that I have never mailed anything to Tilly at her current address. I get up and head for the kitchen, talking into the phone as though I am engaged in an actual conversation. I look in my mother’s address book and recite my sister’s address and telephone numbers. I tell him that Ben is great and assure him all is well.

  Then, suddenly, I am out of things to say and the seconds of silence begin to accumulate. It is an impulse I cannot explain, a sensitivity not unlike the sensitivity of fish to the stress of other fish a long ways away in the watery gloom, a resonance of despair, that prompts me to utter words rarely spoken between fathers and sons.

  Love you.

  If his call has alerted me to the possibility that there is something odd about him, then my call is certain to suggest that there is something odd about me. If he only knew.

  I return to the deck and pick up the phone book from the table. It takes five awkward conversations with a Peter Barnes, a Paul Barnes, the wife of a Phil Barnes, the son of a Philip Barnes, the husband of Patricia Barnes before finding the Phil Barnes who works as a government studies teacher at BJ Wilson High School.

  “Phil?”

  “Yes?”

  “Wilson High School Phil?”

  “Yes.”

  It occurs to me in this moment that I am calling during school hours and that Phil, like the rest of the world except me, should be out of the house earning a living.

  “What are you doing home?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Sorry. Phil. Sorry. This is David Johns.”

  There is silence.

  “I… I wasn’t calling to check up on you.” I laugh at myself. It sounds defensive. “It just suddenly occurred to me that it was in the middle of the day and I was surprised to hear your voice.”

  “I’m sick,” he said. His voice was thick, like he had just gotten out of bed.

  “Oh, God, Phil. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … to get you out of bed or anything.”

  “What’s going on Dave?”

  I tell him about the hearing. That I was wondering, hoping really, after having talked with Mark Shepherd, that he might consider testifying on my behalf, well, not just on my behalf but really standing up for all academic freedom. I explain how history and government are academic first cousins and that he should be concerned that one day he might find himself in my shoes. I monologue with an unavoidable but unintended condescension about the role of the teacher as distinguished from the role of the administrator and the role of the parent. I call Principal Robertson a traitor to the cause of learning; a petty, tyrannical bureaucrat who intentionally fosters misunderstandings among parents about what their kids are learning in the classroom so that he can exercise a personal vendetta against a teacher, me, who has refused to knuckle under. I insist, laying it on a bit thick, that Robertson panders to the prejudices of that very vocal minority of ill-informed, small-minded, bigoted parents who, if given the choice, would have us burn Charles Darwin in effigy at all pep rallies and use the PTA money to commission a marble bust of George Bush to go on a pedestal in the lunchroom.

  I stop not because I am out of things to say, I am really just getting started, but because I am concerned that Phil, who has uttered not a sound during this tirade, might no longer be on the line.

  “Phil?”

  “I’m a Christian, Dave. I’m also a Republican.”

  “Phil… I’m not trying…”

  “I’m not interested in a big, controversial…”

  “That’s fine, that’s fine. I have nothing against Christians or
Republicans. I…”

  “Really? That’s not what I’ve heard.”

  “You heard wrong. My parents are Republicans. That’s not the point. The point is that Robertson is way out of line.”

  “I know he is. There’s no love to be lost between me and Robertson.”

  “He should give the teachers more room to teach. He should have our backs.”

  “He should. I agree.”

  “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I agree.”

  “So will you come say a few words?”

  “You mean testify?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t in the classroom, Dave. I don’t actually know what you said.”

  “So then say that. That’s okay. Get that out there. I just want to ask you about your experiences with Robertson and about your experiences with me as a colleague.”

  “You want to ask me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t you have a lawyer?”

  I explain the cost of legal services and then we spend a couple of minutes ragging on the teachers’ union. He wants to think it over. I give him the time and place of the hearing. He doesn’t say ‘no’ and I do my best to take this as a good sign. I forget to ask him if he knows how to reach Suzanne and Roger. I call back but he doesn’t answer the phone. I do my best not to take this as a terrible sign. I fail.

  A lark lands on the deck railing, he twists his head, trying to figure me out. He gives up and quickly disappears over the Rasmussens’ roofline. I prop my feet on the table and put my hands behind my head, elbows akimbo, and look up at the sky which is still trying to re-blue itself.

  There is a theory out there that our brains actually take cues from our body language in producing emotion. Acting happy – smiling, laughing, adopting a posture of contentment – will supposedly help to produce actual happiness and contentment. Fake it ‘til you make it, as they say. So I imagine that I am on the deck of a yacht, my yacht, feet propped up the rail, arms behind my head, elbows akimbo, looking out over a sparkling blue bay. There’s a dolphin! A pelican with a fish! A school of mermaid! I laugh out loud with delight, flinging my arms up in the air. I am no longer prone to seasickness! Then a long, satisfied sigh.