The Sharp Time

by Mary O'Connell

  * * *

  And then Bradley and I are out the door to a cold cloudy day of old snow, the wind taking our breath as we walk down the sidewalk, the monastery at the end of the street looking like a magical hushed heaven where your earthly problems would melt away—ta-da! Except there is a troubling bronze crucifix hanging over the entrance, the face of Jesus in his lukewarm and perplexed faith, two lines of a metal frown pinched between his eyebrows, his mouth a neutral line.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  “That’d be great,” Bradley says. “Since I don’t have a car.”

  We discuss our options—barbeque, that smoothie place that also does wraps—but my mind races away from the tangy delight of ribs, of spirulina berry chillers. I take my cell phone from my purse, offering up a quick “Sorry! This is rude, I know,” and check my home machine. I have no new messages.

  “Hey,” I say. I try to make it sound casual, a jaunty idea that has just now popped into my head. “Would you want to drive by my school?”

  Bradley nods, exuberant. “I’d love to drive by your school.”

  “Yeah? Because then we’ll have to rush with lunch—”

  Bradley snorts. “Please! They don’t want us to go back there anytime soon. Henry Charbonneau and his new man will probably lock up the store and have sex in the dressing room. Or the display window.”

  “This is me,” I say, pointing to my car.

  “Don’t you mean to say, ‘This is my car’?” Bradley says, employing the voice of slick car guy. “Or have you become one with your sedan?”

  “I am the Taurus,” I say.

  Bradley nods. “I am the eggman.” He gets in my car, ignoring my flurry of apologies for the trash on the floor, the overstuffed ashtray. He makes himself comfortable, one hand behind his head, and I realize how nice it is to have a passenger. If perchance I stopped breathing, he could take the wheel.

  Bradley sighs. “Where are we off to? What school do you go to?”

  And this leads me to think about tense-problems: Do I currently go to school there, or, or … what?

  “Woodrow Wilson. But I’m not really going to school that much …,” I say.

  Catherine Bennett, perpetual backseat driver, screams, Because she doesn’t know how to pay attention.

  “I wondered. Since this is a school day.”

  “I went to school the day before yesterday. Monday. But just in the morning.”

  There is a big old pregnant pause before Bradley cocks his head and says, “And so …”

  And so I drive out of downtown, to the threaded blandness of the highway, almost missing my exit as I tell Bradley the story: I tell my sad story, of course I do, but I also tell Alecia Hardaway’s story. Alecia Hardaway mainstreamed, Alecia Hardaway never, ever quite right. Alecia Hardaway surprisingly quite good at algebra, but bad at social equations. I tell Bradley the dark heart of the story, how Mrs. Bennett would throw out an obligatory request for everyone to listen up as she stood in front of the classroom, chalk in hand, how she would move in for the kill, her voice laced with awful happiness: “Alecia! Alecia, honey. What color are the Kleenex on my desk? What is your favorite kind of soup?”

  And then came the horror of Alecia Hardaway’s frantic blurting, her sweet pride: she can answer every question and damn it, she will answer every question. And, oh, how Mrs. Bennett would give such a benevolent smile: “Yes! The Kleenex are blue! I like chicken noodle soup too!”

  I tell Bradley how Alecia Hardaway’s face pinkened with the excitement of knowing every single question, of getting everything right, while the rest of the class laughed out their groans, their sickness, or stared at the floor, or sketched smiley faces in their spiral notebooks. I tell him how even people who seemed nominally nice acted jackassy: Evan Harper, the hot guy for the alternative girls, a long, cool drink nonpareil who writes righteous, rambling essays on varying social issues in Honors English, even Evan would laugh at Alecia Hardaway. Actually, he would chuckle sardonically, which was worse. And so I would sneak looks at his carved profile and rewrite the John Henry song:

  Does your sense of justice only apply to fair-trade coffee beans, Evan Harper?

  Does your sense of justice only apply to supporting local coffee shops, Evan Harper?

  Your handsome face gets you many random fucks, and you want to slay Starbucks.

  Why must you laugh at a slow girl, Evan Harper?

  I tell Bradley how those moments had an otherworldly quality framed by the questions: Is this really happening and is it as bad as it seems? Why is Catherine Bennett’s cruelty so bare and non-nuanced? So unpunished? Except for the spectacle of Mrs. Bennett’s skirt ripping when she was freaking out on me. “That is biblical,” Bradley says, pumping his fist.

  I pour out my heart as I drive; it is a sweet relief. But there is one thing I do not tell Bradley. That day of Mrs. Bennett’s Kleenex and Chicken Soup Questionnaire was the day my mother was killed. I do not tell him the grotesque symmetry, the wildly unsubtle connection between cowardice—me, looking down, drawing migrating monarch butterflies on my homework while Mrs. Bennett grilled Alecia—and punishment: the car jumping the curb, my mother standing there on the corner that September morning, cappuccino in hand. She was on her morning break, heading back to work. I do not allow my mind to picture the impact, but I do allow for the snowy and cinnamoned peaks of her cappuccino to wobble and then slam into the side of her cup. Just that much.

  I do tell Bradley about the Target horror show, about standing in the checkout lane on a Saturday morning at Target with my mom, discussing where we’d go for lunch: an unsuspecting bliss before the world imploded. My mother was complaining about the weather forecast—the August heat and saunalike humidity—not knowing, of course, that she would not live to see winter. But that Saturday morning she was fully alive and reaching for an Almond Joy, when there was the sudden bad luck of Alecia Hardaway and her mother getting in line behind us, of Alecia saying: “Hi, Sandinista! Hi, Sandinista! Hi, Sandi, you’re a real cool person! You’re a real cool person every day!”

  I said a quick hello; I smiled lethargically and took a ferocious interest in the new fusion chewing gums—banana and mango cream, lime and strawberry. Soon I would be far away from the strange, slow girl who had seemingly memorized the name of every person who passed by her at Woodrow Wilson High School. Usually students were nice to Alecia, but once I’d seen the cheerleaders mocking her aggressive friendliness in the halls, the cruelest Bob Whites circling behind Alecia and stage-whispering: “Hi, Craig! You’re cool, Craig! Look, it’s Lauren! Hi, Lauren!”

  But right then it was all Oh fuck me and double fuck my bad luck because as it turned out, our moms knew each other, our moms had been in some lame Mommy and Me playgroup back in the day and appeared to have genuine affection for each other—Alecia’s mom told my mom: “I remember you! You had purple hair! You were the other young mom in that group!”

  And my own mom, so enthusiastic and kind: “Of course! I remember you, too. I haven’t seen you in years. You look just the same! You haven’t aged a bit!”

  Oh, great, it was on, it was all Welcome to Awkwardville: America’s Hometown. The subject turned, perilously, to Woodrow Wilson High School, and Alecia’s mom proved her knowledge of our exemplary public school system by saying: “Alecia is getting on fine at Woodrow Wilson! Oh, it’s sooo good for her to be with her peers, compared to when she was in the separate special ed classroom back in junior high.”

  Meanwhile, Alecia Hardaway kept kicking it with her wrenching chorus of “You’re a real cool person, Sandinista, you’re a real cool person every day,” as if I had ever given her more than the random creeped-out smile in the hall. And so I made excruciating small talk: “Thanks, Alecia. You’re cool, too. You’re cool every day.” Alecia’s mother gave me a ravishing smile that made me suicidal, and said, “Alecia’s going to be doing algebra on her own this year! She has shown a real affinity for math—so she’s going to take algebra with
out her paraprofessional.”

  My own mother smiled at Alecia. It was a real smile, not some lame bullshit grin. “Alecia, that’s terrific! Truthfully, I despise all forms of mathematics. I’m afraid Sandinista agrees with me. She’s taking algebra this year too.”

  “With Mrs. Bennett?” Mrs. Hardaway asked me. Even then I knew Alecia’s mom shouldn’t be taking such a bright tone, for Mrs. Bennett was widely known to be insane.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, wishing myself away from the checkout lane and into the parking lot, into the car, into the wide, wide world.

  And then Alecia’s mother said it: “I hear she’s tough but good!”

  Alecia Hardaway had grown bored with the conversation and was looking at the Pokémon cards and candy. My mother and Mrs. Hardaway grinned at each other under the fluorescent lights as the elephant in the room—Target!—rose up and moonwalked through the cosmetics section before he Rollerbladed back to Kitchenware and juggled butcher knives in his brand-new SpongeBob underwear. Because, um, hello? Why in the name of Christ would Alecia’s mother think it would be good for her to have a “tough” teacher? Tough but good!

  Finally my own deluded mother paid for our trash bags and tampons and lip liners, and we made our escape.

  I tell Bradley how Mr. and Mrs. Hardaway went to my mother’s funeral, how Alecia sat between her parents in a sparkly black dress, interrupting the service with her blurted, pure-hearted interjections: “Sandinista looks sad. Mom, do you think Sandinista’s sad?” I don’t tell him that Mrs. Hardaway dropped off gorgeous food for me in the endless autumn weeks after my mother died: Caprese salads, bittersweet brownies swirled with cream cheese, eggplant lasagnas. I don’t tell Bradley that Mrs. Hardaway left many messages on my machine, inviting me to dinner with her family, and that I never returned a single call. But I certainly gobbled up the meals—packed in thoughtful, disposable pans flanked by ice packs—she left on my front porch.

  “Christ,” Bradley says, rubbing his face. “It was nice of her family to go to your mom’s funeral. God, September? Just four months ago?”

  I shrug. “Yeah.”

  “Jesus. That’s what I say to all of it: Jesus! Man, I hope I haven’t been too bitchy about the Windex or anything,” he says.

  “You are a kind instructor in the art of Windexing.” I say.

  Bradley’s voice is soft. “So, without your mom—”

  “We were going to Europe next year. I mean, we were going to go to Europe next year. That was the plan. My mom wanted me to see the fashion capitals of Europe.” I can feel tears coming, so I quickly say, “I know it’s kind of lame to go to Europe with a parent.” My mind cooks up the mean response: Now you won’t have to worry about that, little lady!

  Bradley smiles; his voice is tender. “It’s not lame. I wish the two of you could have done that.”

  I start to feel queasy as I turn onto the exit ramp for Woodrow Wilson High School.

  “Bradley, this is the gateway to hell.”

  “What would Woodrow Wilson say about all of this? Don’t get me wrong, St. Matthew’s sucked, too. But I mean, there you expect it to suck, you are following in the footsteps of Adam, as old St. Aquinas says.”

  I had no idea that old Saint Aquinas said that, which makes me thinks that at least the actual education is better if you go Catholic. Though I’m pretty surprised that Bradley went to the most exclusive high school in the city; I thought he was like me.

  “You expect a little better treatment from a public school,” Bradley says. “What with Big Brother watching and all. Maybe high school just sucks in general. College is a million times better: if you’re gay, whatever, you can just sort of go ahead and be gay. At St. Matthew’s? Not so much.”

  “I am highly honored to have a St. Matthew’s alum in my car. Mr. Blazer and School Crest, I salute you. And I thought you might be Catholic”—I point to the crucified-Jesus tattoo on his thumb—“but I had no idea that you were some Catholic fancy pants.”

  Bradley laughs. “Oh, well, absolutely I am a tattooed Catholic fancy pants. And that would not be a bad name for a blog: the Catholic Fancy Pants.”

  But Bradley’s words zigzag into buzzy nothingness, because as soon as I turn into the school parking lot, I see it. Catherine Bennett is back. Her car is in its usual spot in the teachers’ row, her WELL-BEHAVED WOMEN RARELY MAKE HISTORY! bumper sticker taunting me.

  Bradley looks at me. “What is it?”

  “She’s back.”

  Did the school do nothing? Is that even possible? Legal?

  “Are you kidding? Her ass should totally be fired. Man, I thought only the Catholics were this lame,” Bradley says mournfully. He leans over the bucket seats and awkwardly puts his arm around my shoulder. I put the car in park and sit there, staring at Catherine Bennett’s car.

  Bradley sighs. “I mean, a normal person? Their skirt catches on the desk and comes down? A normal person would take the whole week off. For that alone.” Bradley clears his throat. He is working very hard. “This is massively, massively fucked up. Massively.”

  I stare out the window. I had thought waiting for the school to call made me stoic and mannered, a rawboned Midwesterner staring out at the frosty fields. I shall bide my time. Perhaps it was my rampant Midwesternitis that made me prim and polite, my Kansas City calling card: I don’t want to bother anybody! I’ll go ahead and wait for you to call! But probably geography has nothing to do with any of this; probably the school of We Will Mistreat You With Pleasure If You Let Us has an international open-admissions policy. And look at me: My mother gave me a punk-rock name, but my spirit is composed of elevator music: Tra-la-la-la./Don’t mind me./I’m a nice girl./I have good manners./I’ll not bother you./Tra-la-LA!

  Because look how easy I have made it for the school; I have a bruise on my ribs from where my desk slammed into me when that crazy bitch freaked and kicked the desk leg and I have said nothing.

  Still, isn’t the school worried that I will contact an attorney? Do they not think I will report this to the state? Do they not think that I just might have a pretty pink and cream gun in my glove box?

  But as I look at Woodrow Wilson High School, my rib starts to ache and pulse. Epiphany comes as soft sickness, acid pangs in the gut: the school knows of my personal situation, they know I am an eighteen-year-old with no parents. They know, a quick look at my transcripts, that I am not some shiny-haired Caitlin off to Yale, not someone whose name they would call out at graduation to a mad blast of applause. They have nothing in the world to fear from a girl like me: motherless, mediocre, my only As in art and English.

  “Let’s blow this Popsicle stand,” Bradley says, his voice heavy with kindness, and so I drive off—there’s not a reason in the world to stay.

  Bradley seems to know that my brain has gone muzzy, possibly because when I merge onto the highway, a semi blows its horn. I always pass too close.

  “For lunch we’re getting burgers and fries and milk shakes, chica. We are having a comfort-food extravaganza and we are going to eat everything on our plates, even the wrappers, and you know what?” Bradley claps his hand on my knee and gives it a nice little shake. “We are going to love every last bite.”

  And so we do, we drive through and get burgers with bacon and cheese, and chicken strips, as if animal death is the antidote for all this—Viva the slaughterhouse!

  But of course it does make us feel a little better, doesn’t it, and we eat in a deserted park, brushing the snow off an ancient wooden picnic table carved with inane graffiti: DO YOU GET HI? FOR A GOOD TIME CALL JULIE’S SEXY GRANDMA. I HEART TITS.

  When we finish the winter picnic, we smoke our comfort—tobacco for me, weed for Bradley—and it’s back to work we go, where all afternoon my mind flashes images of Catherine Bennett teaching algebra as if nothing ever happened, and I wonder, exactly, what the social expectation is: Is everyone expected to act like nothing happened? Like Monday was just another day in paradise?

  And I am paying atte
ntion, I am paying attention, I know how to pay attention and I make change and I sell powder blue cashmere sweaters with iridescent pearl buttons, and men’s black tuxedo pants with a charcoal stripe. I Swiffer the floor, I Windex the mirrors in the dressing room, I fill and refill the candy dishes, and I have the satisfaction of this, though occasionally I check my home messages—surprise, surprise, nobody has called. No one is curious about me. No one would like to see how I am doing; both nobody and no one would like to go for coffee.

  Okay: I understand how unnuanced the whole situation is and I understand that people enjoy being helpful and prescriptive if your problem is singular and manageable. Boyfriend dump you? It’s all: Been there, sister. Smoke and write your stricken poetry and you will feel better in approximately seven months. But the school thing on top of the dead-mom thing is too much, one melodrama too many, and a girl becomes Typhoid Mary of the Plains. This is my fault too. After my mom died, I routinely blew off my friends for such minor offenses: I remember a sympathy card with a peach rose photographed in soft focus like an aging starlet that infuriated me.

  But now there is Bradley.

  I see him crouch behind the rack of coats, pull his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, punch in numbers, and wait, his eyes cast down, his dark lashes fringing the planes of his cheekbones. He’s waiting, too.

  When he stands up, he gives me a bright smile that seems full of effort and says, “What’s your plan for tonight, Sandinista?”

  “Advil and vino?”

  “Nice,” he says. “I’m there.”

  And so he is. When we lock up for the night, when the minutiae of commerce are done—counting out the cash drawer, the soft shuffle of bills, the crisp flick and flutter of checks, the rusty zi-i-ip of the bank deposit bag—we drive to my house, cranking the radio and smoking, the feeling of a fun night on deck undercut with the specter of Catherine Bennett behind my eyelids. She might be popping a Lean Cuisine in the microwave right now, or watching Law & Order or ironing clothes for tomorrow, which is a school day, after all … heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to work she goes!