Joy

by Erin McGraw

  “God has a plan.”

  I sent her home with a slice of pound cake that someone else had brought.

  And then I closed the house. I called Mama once a day to let her know I was breathing, but otherwise I didn’t open the blinds or answer the door. I had enough food in the refrigerator to see me through a month, and I ate the bits that I liked, mostly the brownie edges, and let the rest spoil. I listened to the silence, training myself not to listen for my boy. Day after day I laid down on the grief and rolled on it as if I were rolling on broken glass, trying to get all the hurt over at once. It took me a while to learn that glass keeps cutting; that’s its nature, like it’s skin’s nature to flinch from the cut. The cutting never stops, or the hurting. The night after I figured that out I raised the blinds and went out for Diet Coke, the first thing I’d run through.

  I attended every minute of the trial, conducted not so that we could discover who killed Jason—two bored girls had been talking behind the bleachers and saw everything—but so the jury could decide on a sentence. The killer was a pleasant-looking guy with sandy hair and tended hands. “His eyes look dead,” Mama said, but I didn’t see that. To me he looked nice.

  During the trial, through the days of testimony, he cried. Mama was enraged. “How about crying before you pull the trigger, gay boy?” she railed once we got home. “How dare you come in here now and act sorry?”

  “Maybe he is,” I said.

  “Don’t you even start,” she snarled. For three solid weeks, the length of the trial and deliberation, she didn’t say a civil word to anybody. Then the killer—Jeffrey, I knew his name by now—got life, no parole, and Mama fell against me and screamed like an animal.

  A second round of brownies and visitors has started since then, people eager to share my pain. The church choir director says, “I can at least sleep now, knowing that he’s locked up. Even though jail’s too good for him.” She leans forward. “He’s probably getting just what he wants in there.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “At least you saw justice served. At least he’s locked up. Now you can get on with your life.”

  “My life has nothing to do with him.”

  The ones who are paying attention get careful then, and start asking if I’m taking care of myself and maybe need to see a doctor. There’s no shame in a little Xanax these days.

  I haven’t become one of those forgive-everybody types. I would cheerfully send Jeffrey to the electric chair if I could back-wind the clock and reclaim my boy. But watching my friends and neighbors drip poison while they talk about Jeffrey leaves me feeling worse, and I’ve started taking walks in the late afternoon, when people tend to come by. I closed my Facebook account, and I wipe out a lot of emails.

  I’m used to a house now that is so still I could hear a ghost’s footstep, if only it would come. Mama would be alarmed if she heard me talking about ghosts; she’s already afraid that I’ve imperiled my immortal soul by saying “goddamn” when the minister visited. She doesn’t like to admit that a life can happen with no instruction manual, and that’s where I dwell now. I live in a universe that is boundless and godless and contains only me. It’s not as terrible as you might think. The worst thing that can possibly happen has happened, and now I am safe.

  I think that if I told that to Jeffrey, he would understand. Not that I’ll do it. It’s just the kind of idea that keeps me going late at night in my quiet house.

  Compliments

  FOR J.G.

  “I like your accent.”

  “You have nice eyes.”

  “You seem really smart.”

  No, she doesn’t. She seems dumb as a rock, and I’m just about ready to say so. We freshmen have had group-building exercises all morning, with pizza vouchers going to the person who memorizes the most names or correctly links the right person with the right hometown. Now we are responsible for giving compliments to every single person in our fifteen-person group. We’re lined up, as if ready to meet a firing squad. The girl next to me wears sparkly barrettes. Turn-ons include kittens and hot cocoa in front of a blazing fire.

  The complimenting girl has almost made it down the line to me. She started strong, but she’s losing steam. “You have cool shoes.” Then, “I like your backpack.” And now, face-to-face, girl-to-girl: “I’ll bet you get a lot of good grades.”

  The next complimenter has already started, overlapping the first one. The people running this thing, probably sociology students itching to put their new skills to work, didn’t plan out their time very well, and we’ve only got ten minutes for 225 compliments. You’d think upper classmen would have done the arithmetic. The compliments take longer now, because we’re not supposed to repeat and the easy ones are disappearing fast.

  “Your voice is nice.”

  “That’s a cool bracelet.”

  “I saw you running this morning. You went really fast.”

  The complimenter is supposed to hold the gaze of the complimentee. How can the sociology majors think that this will build group spirit? If I see any of these people six months from now, I’ll remember the long gaze and the lies, and I’ll hide.

  “Your shirt’s a nice color,” the complimenter says to sparkly barrettes. Turn-ons include kittens and hot anal sex in front of a blazing fire.

  “Your smile looks like you’re keeping secrets,” the complimenter tells me, and one of the sociology majors says, “That’s not a compliment.”

  “Yes, it is,” I say.

  The two who are finished take their place at the end of the line—they’ve done the hard part, but they still have to be complimented. They’re whispering and looking over at the corner where the sociology majors made us put our phones in a box. The compliments, more and more stiff, tip over like dominos, all coercion and no truth, like conversation over Christmas dinner. “You have nice earrings.” “I like your shirt.”

  “You can go beyond appearances,” one of the sociology majors calls out.

  “I’ll bet you’re a nice person,” the complimenter promptly says, and I have to give it to him for quickness. To sparkly barrettes he says, “I’ll bet you’re gentle around old people.”

  Turn-ons include kittens and hot anal sex in front of a blazing house fire.

  To me he says, “I’ll bet you’re not gentle around old people,” and the sociology majors make him do it again, even though I feel totally complimented. “I’ll bet you have good music.” He gazes at me, just like he’s supposed to.

  “Shit,” says one of the others. “That’s a good one.”

  No, it isn’t. All morning I’ve stayed well under the radar, not just of the sociology majors, but of my new classmates. This is my skill: I can disappear in plain sight. If a picture is taken of us, something that seems dismally likely, it will seem as if there are fourteen people in the group, none of them me. Now I’ve got my co-freshmen assessing me, and I need to be careful. I do have a lot of good music.

  We’re over our ten minutes, and everybody’s getting restless. The sociology majors have had to swat one of the guys away from the box with the phones. We’re all hungry, and there’s a smell of tomato sauce from the cafeteria next door.

  “You have good color sense.”

  “Nice job with your hair.”

  “I can tell you like green.”

  What qualifies as a compliment, anyway? A mere fact shouldn’t count. The longer this goes on, the more sharply I see every one of us, sunburned knees and makeup lines and one guy with really nice hands, and for the love of Christ it’s sparkly barrettes’ turn to compliment. She giggles.

  “Are you a design major? Because the way you put those bracelets together totally rocks.”

  “Are you an engineering major? Lucky you. You’re actually going to be employed.”

  This is like Guess Your Astrological Sign: College Edition. I can’t blame her for finding an angle and working it. I’m just surprised she was able to do it.

  She’s good at maintaining the eye cont
act, too. “Are you a psych major?” she says to me.

  “I’m not any major yet. I haven’t even had a class.”

  “You look like you know things,” she says, her eyes boring into mine. Turn-ons include kitten-eating snakes and house fires.

  “I know I wish this exercise was over.”

  “Well, yeah.” She moves to the dude next to me, leaving the rest of her comment unsaid: Do you think you’re special?

  Kittens chopped up by chain saws. Anal rape. Conflagration.

  Now it’s my turn, and there are no compliments left in the world. People’s eyes are red from so much staring, and I have never felt so visible in my life. Everybody wants me to hurry up already; it smells like lasagna next door. But I can’t think of a damn thing to say. The girl before me cracks a little smile. “Hurry up,” she says.

  “You’re very punctual,” I say, kissing good-bye to any hope of ever making friends.

  Next: “You don’t feel the need to be too neat.”

  “You know what’s in fashion.”

  “I’ll bet you have a dog.”

  Eventually it’s sparkly barrettes. I say, “You would have found room on a life boat from the Titanic.”

  “I love that movie!” She leans forward and squeezes my hand. “Do you really think so?”

  “Totally.”

  Her face is an astonishment. It might actually be emitting light. “Best. Compliment. Ever.”

  Gently, I try to get my hand back. “That’s great. Really.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be good at this, but you’re the best one here.”

  “See what a good compliment can do?” says one of the sociology majors.

  “Is anybody else hungry?” says the dude next to me.

  I pry my hand back and finish up the line with rerun compliments; everybody’s sick of the exercise now, and we’re all starving. But sparkly barrettes is bearing down on me before we leave the room. “I missed your name at the beginning,” she says.

  “Eileen.”

  She smiles. “Hey, Eileen. When the ship starts to go? I’m taking you with me.”

  The Tenth Student

  One out of ten. The other nine slump into my house because their parents send them, and they lie about practicing. When I put the sheet music up, they squint at it, unsure where to put their hands on the keyboard. “I’m so busy! I’m not like you. I have a lot of things to do.”

  No one else’s life is ever real, is it? Especially the life that belongs to the wispy-haired piano teacher with the bad apartment and the good Baldwin. That life is a soap bubble until the tenth student comes in, the fifteen-year-old with the long hands that are constantly moving. “There has to be a way to make a crescendo at the da capo,” the tenth student says. “Isn’t that what I want?”

  Stupid people imagine that the living dream of music is happy. They’ve never looked at the tenth student’s trembling mouth, just on the brink of an expression. Exultation is exhausting.

  The tenth student isn’t here to learn how to play. The tenth student knows everything about playing. I teach the tenth student what the music can bring: our ruination. The music wants to bore into the heart of the universe, find the black, hot, embracing core, and bring it back for the rest of us. The music wants to expand our souls until they shatter. This is the reason I’ve torn my nails to shreds by the time the tenth student comes for the weekly lesson, even though the tenth student arrives early, a personality trait. The tenth student comes early, pays up, and when the tenth student plays I brace myself and then still flinch, because the fulfillment of beauty is always shocking.

  My tax return lists me as a music teacher, but the truth is that I listen for my living. I’ve heard everything whispered outside my apartment—the jokes, the gasps, the shushed repetitions. Language is as flipper-footed as a seal, and it allows us only to say a few blunt things over and over, so I have learned not to say love or beauty or special. I barely say talent. One student was taken away from me just as the student began to approach rapture, a word I was idiot enough to use. The world is poorer now, and the student is in Florida, enrolled in a college program that teaches hospitality.

  I don’t claim to be the only one who can listen. Often the parents of students one through nine make a point of coming to the lessons and listening to every word I say, glaring. “Help yourself to coffee or water,” I say; “the bathroom’s right down there.”

  “I’m fine,” says the glowering parent, not about to leave a defenseless child with a teacher who talks about rapture.

  Students one through nine mostly hear what they’re told to hear, though every once in a while, when the seasons are changing and the air tilts, they sometimes hear the edge of something new. They change their posture and shift unhappily on the piano bench; who ever said that we want to hear a thing we never heard before? “That,” I say. “Play that.” They don’t; they’re one through nine. Usually they stop playing well before they come close to the sharp moment, quick as a pin, that stops their breath. I’m the one who hears it.

  After they leave, one through ten, I play, and cats run away. Students scuffle outside my house, standing at the window and straining to hear. I don’t care when one through nine are there; they think I sound perfect, which is depressing, or that I sound just like them, which is also depressing and closer to true. I play so the tenth student can hear me.

  The music I make is bricks tumbling down metal staircases, a fork tine screed over glass. It is a screen door slammed eight times in a row. It is a concrete block heaved over the edge of a rowboat, slamming a still-breathing body to the bottom of a lake. It is the entire sparkling universe snapped in two, like an LP over the knee of a piano teacher.

  I play every night.

  Second Sight

  Liz’s mother, Hannah, knew Liz and I were going to Ocracoke for our anniversary before I did. Hannah believes she has psychic powers, though I’m never sure what she intuits and what Liz breaks down and tells her. Hannah doesn’t like being left out of things, and if she discerns a secret, there’s hell to pay. She told me brightly, “Ocracoke is nice this time of year. Not so crowded.”

  “How did you know we were thinking about Ocracoke?”

  “I know what Liz is thinking. So I asked, and she told me.”

  Liz and I were in a rough patch, and neither one of us had felt like talking about an anniversary celebration. I’d been looking at some Ocracoke websites, that’s all. Maybe Liz saw them on our computer and told her mom. Maybe.

  We went, and it wasn’t crowded. The whole time we were there, I thought about Hannah and wondered whether she knew what her daughter and I were doing—mostly, not talking to each other and drinking maybe just a little bit too much Chardonnay. When I said, “Where are you? You’re a million miles away,” Liz said, “I’m right here. Right where I want to be.” Then we sat another half hour without a word.

  After we got home, Liz washed her own clothes and left my unwashed laundry in a meticulous pile at the end of the bed, where it still sits. I can’t even tell you what we’re fighting about, though I’m desperate to fix it.

  We met—where else?—at a gay bar in Columbus, like half of our friends. I found out that she was funny and smart and owned her own house. She noticed when a woman near us stopped drinking, and quietly told the bartender to keep serving her; Liz would pay the bill. Observant, I thought. Kind. It didn’t occur to me to ask whether she lived next to a narcissistic, touchy, arguably psychic mother who had a love life more complicated than the national budget. We learn the lessons we need to know too late.

  Some crisis is always at the boil in Hannah’s life, the new woman she loves or man she hates, and Liz and I allot one solid day a week to Hannah management. Today, because I can’t think of anybody else to ask, I’ve invited Hannah to come over. I feel like I’m edging onto a minefield, though all I’m doing is making my mother-in-law some tea.

  At the kitchen table, she shakes her hair back from her unnervingly green
eyes. Liz told me that Hannah got contacts lenses to enhance the glow.

  “How are you and Lizzie doing? I haven’t seen you lately.”

  It’s been four days since she was here for dinner. “Rough.”

  The mug between Hannah’s hands is chipped. Liz and I need to get some decent mugs. “Liz isn’t happy, and I don’t know if I’m the problem or not. She won’t tell me.” I swallow. “I’m afraid it’s somebody else.”

  “Has she said anything?”

  In the last three days Liz has said about eight words, four of them about the filthy tub. “What do you think?”

  Hannah wouldn’t pause so long if she didn’t know something. “You’re a thoughtful person. It was kind to make tea for me.”

  “Good grief, Hannah. It’s just a cup of tea.” I’m thinking I should offer her some cookies, but the look on Hannah’s face changes, and suddenly I’m aware of the planes of her face and how close her hand is to mine on the table. If she’s psychic, she should be able to feel my stomach plummet. “Cookies?” I blurt, moving my hand away.

  She lets a moment pass. “I have an appointment coming up. I need to get ready,” she says, though she doesn’t move.

  When I try to speak again, my voice has deserted me. I croak, “I would do anything for Liz.”

  “Don’t tell her that. She doesn’t like to feel crowded.” Hannah’s face is suddenly severe, a line of afternoon shadow cutting down her cheek. “Give her some room. She’ll come back to you.” Not hard to imagine the turban and the crystal ball.

  When Hannah hugs me good-bye, I pretend not to feel how hard she pulls me in. Later I’ll see her makeup mark on the shoulder of my sweater.

  I leave the house before Liz comes home and text her that I’ll be home late. She’s reading in the living room when I come home after eight o’clock, and greets me with the first smile I’ve seen in a while.