by Steve Toltz
“Of course. Jasper has been in my class all year.”
“And the others? So they can read and write: well done. That’s a lifetime of shopping lists taken care of. But do you know them? Do you know yourself? Because if you don’t know yourself, you can’t help them know themselves, and you’re probably pissing away everyone’s time here simply training an army of terrified copycats like all you lackluster teachers in this state-run fleapit are prone to do, telling the students what to think instead of how, and trying to fit them into the mold of a perfect taxpayer-to-be instead of bothering to find out who they are.”
The other students laughed, out of confusion.
“Keep quiet!” Mr. White yelled, as if it were the Day of Reckoning and he had the crucial role of sorting all the souls. We shut up. It didn’t do any good. Silence that has been commanded is still very noisy.
“Why should they respect you? You don’t have any respect for them,” Dad continued, and to the students he said, “To bow down to an authority figure is to spit in your own face.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“I’m looking forward to that moment.”
“Please leave.”
“I notice you have a crucifix around your neck.”
“What of it?”
“Do I really need to spell it out for you?”
“Simon.” Mr White addressed one of the baffled students. “Would you kindly run down to the principal’s office and explain to him that we have a disturbance in the classroom and the police should be called.”
“How can you encourage your students to think for themselves with an open mind if you’ve got an outdated belief system crushing your own head like an iron mask? Don’t you see? The flexibility of your mental movement is constricted by stringent dogmatic principles, so you might think you’re standing there telling them about Hamlet, but what they really hear is a man in fear of stepping outside the tight circle that was drawn around him by long-dead men who sold his ancestors a bunch of lies so they could molest all the little boys they wanted in the privacy of their confessional booths!”
I shot a look at Brett. He sat in his chair silently; his face was slender and delicate-looking, and I thought if it were not for the hair, eyes, nose, and mouth, his face could be a pianist’s hand. Brett caught me staring at him, but I don’t think he knew I was composing similes about his face, because he smiled at me. I smiled back. If I’d known that two months later Brett would take his own life, I would’ve cried instead.
We actually spoke the morning of his death.
“Hey, Brett, do you have that five dollars you owe me?”
“Can I pay you tomorrow?”
“Sure thing.”
People are amazingly adept at faking happiness. It’s almost second nature to them, like checking a public phone for coins after making a call. Brett was a champ at it, right up until the end. Hell, I spoke to a girl who chatted with him ten minutes before he jumped, and she said they talked about the weather!
“Hey, Kristin, d-do you think it’s a southerly wind?” Brett had a slight stutter that came and went in relation to fluctuating social pressures.
“How the hell would I know?”
“It’s p-p-pretty strong, eh?”
“Why are you talking to me, zitface?”
I don’t want to make a bigger production out of Brett’s death than it was for me. He wasn’t my closest friend or even my confidant. We were allies, which in a way made us closer than friends. Here’s how it happened:
One lunchtime a small crowd had formed a circle in the quadrangle, standing so close to each other they looked woven together like an ugly quilt. I winced in anticipation. There are no private humiliations in the schoolyard; they are all mercilessly public. I wondered who was being shamed this time. I peered over the flattop haircut of the shortest link to see Brett White on the ground, blood dribbling from his mouth. According to several delighted spectators, Brett had fallen while running from another student, Harrison. Now, peering down at Brett, all the students were laughing because their leader was laughing. It’s not that these were particularly cruel children; they’d just abandoned their egos to his, that’s all, submitted their will to the will of Harrison, a bad choice. Why groups never follow the sweet, gentle child is obvious, but I wish it would happen just once. Man, as Freud noted, has an extreme passion for authority. I think his secret yearning to be dominated could really work nicely, if he would just once allow himself to be dominated by a real sweetie. Because the truth is, in a group dynamic the leader could scream, “Let’s all give the bastard a tender kiss on the cheek!” and they’d run at the poor kid with their lips pursed.
As it was, Brett’s front teeth lay on the concrete. They looked like Tic Tacs. He picked up the teeth. You could see him struggling not to cry.
I looked at the other students and despaired that none had enough compassion to go about their business. It was painful to watch all those meager spirits harassing Brett in this way. I bent down beside him and said, “Laugh like you think it’s funny.”
He followed my advice and started laughing. He whispered in my ear, “Can they put them back in?” and I laughed loudly too, as if he’d made a joke. Once I’d gotten him to his feet, the humiliations persisted. A soccer ball came flying at his face.
“Open your mouth wide, I want to get it through the posts!” someone yelled.
It was true that his teeth looked like goal posts.
“Is that really necessary?” I shouted, pointlessly.
Harrison stepped out of the crowd and, towering over me, said, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
I groaned. I had told just one person that my grandfather was slaughtered by Nazis, and I’d never heard the end of it. Generally speaking, there wasn’t too much anti-Semitism at school, just the usual jokes about money and noses, noses and money, great big noses with money falling out of them, grubby Jewish hands stuffing money into their big Jewish noses. That kind of thing. After a while you don’t care about the ugly sentiments behind the jokes, you just wish they were funnier.
“I think you have a stupid face, Jew.”
“And I’m short too,” I said, remembering that Dad once told me the way to confuse your enemies is to respond to their insults with your own.
“Why are you so stupid?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll get to that after I work out why I’m so ugly.”
Brett caught on fast and said to me, “I’m uglier than you, and I have bad hand-eye coordination.”
“I can’t run without tripping over,” I said back.
“I’ve never kissed a girl and I probably never will.”
“I have bad acne on my back. I think it will leave lifelong scars.”
“Really? Me too.”
Charlie Mills pushed through the mob and started up too. “That’s nothing,” he said. “I’m fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, and adopted.”
Harrison stood there, confused, thinking of something to say. We all looked at him and burst out laughing. It was a good moment. Then Harrison stepped toward me with the confidence of someone who has biology on his side. He pushed me, and I tried shifting my weight onto my front foot, but it made no difference. I wound up facedown on concrete. For the second time I went home with my white shirt splattered with blood.
Eddie, Dad, and Anouk were on the veranda drinking tea, looking exhausted. There was a heavy stillness. Something told me I had just missed a heated argument. The smoke from Eddie’s clove cigarettes hung in the air. As I approached, the sight of my blood reanimated them. They all leapt to attention, as if they were three wise sages who had waited ten years for someone to ask them a question.
Anouk shouted first. “Are you being picked on by a bully? Why don’t you give him my phone number and ask him to call me? I’m sure meditation would really calm him down.”
“Pay him money,” Eddie said. “Go back and talk to him with a paper bag filled with cash.”
&n
bsp; Not to be outparented, Dad shouted from his armchair, “Come here, boy, I want to tell you something!” I walked up the veranda steps. He slapped his knee to indicate the all-clear to sit on it. I preferred to stand. Dad said, “You know who else used to get a rubbishing? Socrates. That’s right. Socrates. That’s right. This one time he was out philosophizing with some mates, and this bloke who didn’t like what he was saying came right up to him and kicked him in the arse so hard he fell to the ground. Socrates looked up at the man and smiled at him benignly. He was taking it with amazing calm. An onlooker said, ‘Why don’t you do something, or say something?’ and Socrates said back, ‘If you were kicked by a mule, would you reprimand him?’”
Dad broke into howls of laughter. His body shook so badly I was glad I had opted not to sit on his knee. It was bouncing like a rodeo bull. “Get it? Get it?” Dad asked me through peals of laughter.
I shook my head, although in secret I did get it. But truth be known, I would absolutely reprimand a mule for kicking me. I might even have it put down. It’s my mule, I can do what I want. Anyway, the point of the story is I got the point of the story, but it didn’t help my situation any more than Eddie’s or Anouk’s impossible suggestions. I tell you, Dad and Eddie and Anouk, the lights I had to guide me through childhood, did nothing but lead me into brick walls.
A few weeks later I went to Brett’s house. He’d lured me there with the promise of a chocolate cake. He said he wanted to try out his teeth. As we left the school grounds, he explained how, by wiring them back into his gums, the dentist had managed to prevent the nerve from dying. To finish the job he’d had root canal treatment, during which the dentist gave him lots of gas but not quite enough to make it worthwhile.
When we arrived at his house I was disappointed to find there was no cake, and shocked when he said we’d have to make it ourselves. I thought it best to come clean with him.
“Listen, Brett. You’re OK, but I feel a little funny baking a cake with you.”
“Don’t worry. We’re not really baking anything. We’re going to make the batter and just eat that. We won’t even use the oven.”
That sounded OK, but really in the end it was not that dissimilar to making a proper cake, and when he started sifting the flour, I nearly made a run for it. I didn’t though. I held out. We finished the mixture and were just digging into it with large wooden spoons when we heard the front door open and a voice say, “I’m home!”
My body froze and stayed that way until the kitchen door opened a crack and Mr. White’s head came through the door.
“Is that Jasper Dean?”
“Hello, Mr. White.”
“Hi, Dad,” Brett said, which struck me as odd. I had stupidly assumed he called his father Mr. White at home.
Mr. White pushed the door open and came into the kitchen. “You two making a cake?” he asked, and, looking at the mixture, added, “Let me know when it’s ready and maybe I can have a piece.”
“Ready? It’s almost finished,” Brett said, beaming at his father.
Mr. White laughed. First time I’d ever seen his teeth. They weren’t bad. He came over and stuck his finger into the bowl and tasted the thick chocolate.
“So, Jasper, how’s your father?”
“You know, he is what he is.”
“He certainly gave me a run for my money,” he said, chuckling to himself.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“The world needs passionate men,” Mr. White said, smiling.
“I suppose,” I said, and as Mr. White went upstairs, I thought of all Dad’s long catatonic periods when passion meant remembering to flush the toilet.
Brett’s room was more or less a typical teenager’s room, except it was so neat I felt my breath might make a mess. There were a couple of framed photographs on the desk, including one of Brett and Mr. White standing with their arms around each other’s shoulders on an oval—they looked like actors from a mushy television movie about a father and son. It didn’t look in the least bit real. Above Brett’s bed was a great big crucifix hanging on the wall.
“What’s that for?” I asked in horror.
“It was my mother’s.”
“What happened to her?”
“Stomach cancer.”
“Ouch.”
Brett walked to the window with slow, hesitant steps, as if crossing unfamiliar terrain at night.
“You don’t have a mother either, do you? What happened to yours?”
“The Arab mafia.”
“OK, don’t tell me.”
I took a closer look at Jesus strung up there, his long-suffering face looking down at an angle. He appeared to be studying those sentimental photographs of Brett and his father. His unhurried eyes seemed to be contemplating them with a certain sadness. Maybe it made him think of his own father, or of how sometimes you get resurrected when you least expect it.
“So you guys are religious?” I asked.
“We’re Catholics. You?”
“Atheists.”
“Do you like school?” Brett asked suddenly.
“What do you think?”
“It’s not forever. That’s what I keep thinking. It’s not forever.”
“Just be grateful you’re not fat. Once you’re out in the real world, you’ll be fine. No one hates a thin man.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
Brett sat on the edge of his bed, biting his fingernails. I admit now, there must have been a fog in my perception that day. I missed all the signs. I didn’t interpret the nail-biting as a cry for help or as an indication that he would soon be rotting dumbly in the earth. After Brett’s death, I dissected that afternoon in my head countless times. I thought: If only I’d known, I could have said something, or done something, anything, to change his mind. Now I wonder, why do we wish our loved ones back to life if they were so obviously miserable? Did we really hate them that much?
The day of Brett’s suicide, a Monday.
It was recess and everyone was fondly reminiscing about a Saturday night party. I was smiling because I felt lonely and unwanted, and it seemed to me that everyone in the phone book from A. Aaron to Z. Zurichman had been invited except me. I imagined what it would be like to be popular for an afternoon, and decided it meant I’d have to high-five everybody as I walked down the hallways. I wouldn’t like that, I was thinking, when I heard a voice shouting, “Somebody jumped! Somebody jumped!”
“Another suicide!”
The school bell rang and wouldn’t let up. We all crossed the oval and ran toward the cliffs. A teacher ordered us to return, but there were too many of us. You’ve heard of mass hysteria—mass curiosity is even more powerful. There was no turning us back. We reached the edge of the cliff and peered down. The waves were smashing up against the rocks, as if digesting: there was a body down there, all right, a student. Whoever it was, all the bones must have shattered on impact. It seemed as if all we were looking at was a school uniform tossed about in a washing machine.
“Who is it? Who is it?”
People were crying, grieving for someone. But who? Who were we grieving for? Students were already climbing down the steep path to see.
I didn’t have to see. I knew it was Brett. How did I know? Because Charlie was standing beside me on the cliff edge, and the only other friend I had was Brett. I had personalized the tragedy; I knew it was something for me—and I was right.
“It’s Brett White!” a voice confirmed from below.
Mr. White was standing right there, peering down like the rest of us. He straightened up and swayed on his feet. Before he ran down the path and waded into the sea and took his dead son in his arms and sobbed until the police pried Brett from his cold, wet hands, there was a long moment when everyone gaped at him and he just stood there on the cliff edge crumbling, like a Roman ruin.
II
Brett’s suicide note fell into the wrong hands. It was found in his locker by a couple of nosy students, and before it was turned in to the proper authori
ties it had passed around the whole school. This was it:
Don’t be sad for me unless you’re prepared to be sad your whole lives. Otherwise forget it. What good’s a couple of hard weeks of tears and regret if a month later you’re laughing again? No, forget it. Just forget it.
Personally, I thought Brett’s suicide note was pretty good. It cut right to the heart of the matter. He had measured the depth of human feeling, found it shallow, and said so. Well done, Brett, wherever you are! He didn’t fall into the trap of most suicide notes—people are always assigning blame or asking forgiveness. Rarely does anyone leave any helpful tips on what to do with his pets. I suppose the most honest and lucid suicide note I ever heard of was by the British actor George Sanders, who wrote:
Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.
Isn’t that gorgeous? He’s so right. It is a sweet cesspool. And by addressing the note to the world, he doesn’t worry about leaving anyone out. He’s succinct and clear in his reasons for ending his own life, makes a final poetic insight, then generously and considerately wishes us luck. I’m telling you, this is the kind of suicide note I could really go for. It’s a hell of a lot better than the crappy suicide note I once wrote. It said:
So what if life’s a gift? Haven’t you ever returned a gift? It’s done all the time.
That was it. I thought: Why not be a surly smarty-pants right to the end? If I was all of a sudden magnanimous, it just wouldn’t ring true. But really, I’m not even the suicidal type. I have this stupid habit of thinking things are going to get better, even when all evidence is pointing to the contrary, even when they get worse and worse and worse and worse.
Brett was buried in tan slacks and a blue shirt. Smart casual. Mr. White had bought the clothes two days earlier. They were on sale, but I heard he wanted to pay full price. I heard the clerk had argued with him. “Ten percent off,” he’d said, and Mr. White refused the discount and the clerk laughed as Mr. White threw the full amount on the counter and ran out, demented with grief.
