by Debra Doxer
I tried to recall what I had written about. I knew that the twenty page paper was due only one day after two grueling finals. Then I remembered. He’d showed us a picture of a homeless man. Our assignment was to look at this picture of a man sitting on a city sidewalk, disheveled and dressed in rags, and create an entire life for him which culminated in his taking up residence in the streets. I hadn't actually put much thought into it. I’d made the man a stockbroker who couldn't stand the pressure any longer and disavowed all of his material wealth in order to live a simpler life. Not very creative at all.
"Your comparison of our society today to that of the ancient Romans was very nicely done," he continued. "Your theory about the collapse of civilization as a whole, the manner in which you juxtaposed it with the fall of the Roman empire, was impressive to say the least."
I simply stood there and stared at him. It definitely wasn't my paper he was recalling.
"I knew immediately that you were the right person for the job."
I smiled and nodded hoping he wouldn’t ask me any questions about this paper.
"Would you like some tea?" he asked.
"Sure. If it's not any trouble," I replied, because diverting his attention seemed wise.
"Oh, none at all. Sit down. I'll just be a minute."
I looked around for an uncluttered surface on which to sit. There was none. I neatly pushed some books and papers aside and carefully lowered myself onto the end of the couch. I could hear Professor Sheffield in the kitchen, clanking dishes together, opening and closing drawers. I studied a picture hanging on the wall. It was a copy of that painting by Seurat that they based a musical on called Sunday In the Park With George. I couldn't remember the real name of the painting.
A moment later, he came back into the room. He had only one teacup in his hand. He absently lifted some clutter up off a cushioned chair and threw it to the floor. He sat down, taking a sip from the only cup he’d brought. Suddenly, it didn't seem at all odd that he had been sitting right in this room, yet he had not heard the doorbell.
"About the book you’ll be helping me with," he began, "it's a study of the English language." The professor leaned back in his chair. "I have spent years studying the origins of languages, and I intend to map out exactly how every dialect of English that exists today, in its current form, developed. Doesn't that sound interesting?"
"Yes, very interesting," I agreed. As long as I was getting paid, everything he wanted me to work on was extremely interesting.
"So, as you can see, right now my notes are somewhat disorganized. I need you to transcribe my notebooks onto the computer. I don’t like computers myself, and so I never learned to use them. Here are the notes," he said gesturing toward the floor with an outstretched hand. "I hope you can read my writing."
I glanced at the notebooks scattered haphazardly on the floor and resting on every piece of furniture. "Professor Sheffield, which notebooks do you mean exactly?"
He looked at me curiously. "All of them, of course."
I swiveled my head around incredulously. There had to be hundreds of notebooks in the room. "Are they in any particular order?" I asked.
"Oh yes. They're numbered.” He picked one up off the floor and showed me the back. The number eighteen was written in the top left corner in bold, black marker. "Just copy out the notes onto the computer in order. I'm sure you can handle that, Mr. Hiller. I'll be in the study out back. You can come see me if you have any questions." He stood. "And feel free to help yourself to anything in the kitchen if you get hungry."
As he started to leave the room, I realized something. "Professor Sheffield, where is the computer?"
"Oh right," he answered absently, turning back toward me. "It's in that box. It just arrived yesterday." Then he left with his teacup in hand.
I glanced from him to the unopened cardboard box that sat in the corner by a large picture window. Apparently, he had bought a computer he obviously had no intention of ever using himself.
I went over to the box and began ripping the tape away. It looked as though a very expensive, extra wide screen, laptop computer was inside. Feeling the need to begin making a dent in my workload, I pulled the laptop out and got to work setting it up. Working for Professor Sheffield was definitely going to be interesting.
The day passed quickly as I got the laptop running and soon realized that the professor had no Internet connection in the house. Although, he had ordered plenty of pre-installed software. Occasionally, Professor Sheffield would poke his head in on his way to another room. At one point, late in the afternoon, I was crouched on the floor trying to make heads or tails of some loose notebook sheets, when unexpectedly I saw a pair of brown scuffed leather shoes in front of me. I was so surprised, not having heard the professor approach, that I sat up without thinking and banged my head hard against one of the bookshelves that lined the walls. He never asked me if I was all right. He simply stood there staring at the laptop whispering the word remarkable as though he were examining a priceless work of art. I felt the desire to ask him if he knew what year it was.
I had promised my mother that I would help her buy a Christmas tree that evening. So, at five o'clock, I told the professor I had to go. I caught him just as he was traveling past on his way to the kitchen. At the sound of my voice, he appeared startled, like he had forgotten I was there.
"How many notebooks have you transcribed so far?" he asked.
"I've actually just finished arranging them in order. There were a few missing ones that I had to search for and lots of loose sheets I had to find places for."
He scratched his head as though the fact that his work was a completely disorganized disaster came as a total surprise to him.
I glanced at my watch. "Well my mother's expecting me home. We're going to pick out a tree tonight. I'd better get going."
He smiled. "How nice that you're spending time with your family. My niece is coming up on Christmas day with her children. I don't think I'll bother getting a tree though. Buying them all gifts will be hard enough. What do you suppose children want for Christmas these days? They all want video games, I guess."
I looked at my watch again.
"But it is nice to have family around you on the holidays,” he continued. “My sister invited me to stay with her, but I don’t like traveling much. Do you?”
"Um, no, not really. I'm sorry, but I've got to get going."
"Well who's stopping you?” he asked as though he wasn’t guilty of it himself. “You mustn't keep your mother waiting."
I was late. I tried calling her, but no one picked up. It was only thirty minutes, but one might have thought I had been missing for a week by the way my mother reacted. She was standing outside in the cold when I pulled up. "Oh my goodness, Daniel, I was just about to call the police. Are you all right?”
I rolled my eyes. "Actually, I picked up a hitchhiker who held me up at gun point and tried to make me drive him all the way to California. But I wrestled the gun away from him and managed to push him out of the car. So, sorry I’m a little late," I said casually.
She pursed her lips together in that scolding manner she has. "I don't find that funny at all.” She walked over to the passenger side, opened the door and silently sat herself down inside.
By the time we reached the lot where the trees were sold, it was dark, and Mom was chattering on happily again. "Do you remember that lovely young girl from your class? The blonde one who was in the honor society with you? Well would you believe she dropped out of college because she got pregnant? I hear the father was her English professor.” She paused waiting for my reaction.
"Really," I said uninterested.
"That's right. And that nice couple, the ones who own that big grey beach house down near the cliffs. Well, you weren't here then, but they left abruptly right in the middle of the season. It turns out they went into bankruptcy, the bank foreclosed on them and the house is now deserted. Can you believe it? That big beautiful house?"
My mother always thrived on gossip. I listened with half an ear. The lot was busy with late shoppers. Mom and I walked up and down the rows of trees inspecting them carefully. She stopped in front of one. I went over and stood beside her. The tree was small, barely six feet, but it was full with healthy green needles.
"This is the one," she said. She turned to me excited, "Oh Daniel, it has been so long since we've done this."
Looking at her, something occurred to me for the first time. "Mom, did you get a tree last Christmas?"
She turned away and waved her hand in the air. "Oh no we didn't bother. Without you home, it just wasn't the same."
I stared at my mother in disbelief. She hadn't bothered to get a tree last year, a ritual I could not imagine her neglecting. My throat became tight, and my head suddenly throbbed right where I had hit it at the professor’s house. I stood rooted to the ground while she called someone over to purchase the tree. I couldn't understand why she would remain in a life that made her so unhappy. But I couldn't imagine her having the strength to change her situation either.
My dad used to come with us to pick out a tree, but as soon as I grew big enough to fasten it to the roof of the car myself, he’d stopped. I was just tying off the last cord when I heard my mother's voice rise in an enthusiastic greeting. I walked around to the other side of the Buick and there was Seth, standing over her smiling. He looked older with dark stubble and a fuller face than I remembered.
"Hey Danny, I heard you were home.” He turned his smile on me and gave me a small wave.
"Hey yourself. Good to see you."
"I told Daniel you were home, but he has a job working for one of his professors over the vacation. In fact, he already spent his first day of vacation there.” She smiled with pride.
"Dan always did work hard," Seth acknowledged. "I told my mother I'd be back early. So I'd better start looking for a tree. Maybe we'll get together some time before we have to go back to school,” he said to me. “That is, if you're not too busy."
"Sure," I said mostly for my mother’s benefit. "Give me a call."
"I will. Good-bye, Mrs. Hiller. Nice to see you."
Mom called after him, "You, too. Say hello to your mother for me."
As Seth walked away she turned to me and whispered, "Now that was embarrassing. I told you to call him. Now it looks bad, like you never intended to."
"It doesn’t look like anything. Besides, I didn't intend to call him."
"What happened between the two of you anyway? You used to be such good friends?"
It was freezing out and I didn’t want to have this conversation while my toes were turning numb. I opened the car door for her hoping she would take the hint. She looked at me waiting for an answer.
"I don't know, Mom,” I finally responded. “I guess we just grew apart.” I stopped waiting for her to get in and walked around to the driver’s side. She finally joined me, and I rubbed my hands together and breathed on them for a moment before I put the car in reverse.
"Did you two have a fight?"
"No. We just didn't keep in touch. There's no specific reason.”
She wasn't buying that. "Well, I would think that such good friends would try to make an effort to call each other occasionally. It makes me wonder if we would ever talk if I didn't always call you."
I rolled my eyes at her, realizing how much I did that and making a mental note to curtail it. "That's ridiculous. Of course we would."
She exhaled loudly and turned her attention to the Christmas lights that adorned the small homes we passed. Bright points of red and green reflected off the glass. I knew my mother didn't believe me, but I was telling the truth. There wasn't one incident I could point to as causing the dissolution of our friendship. Although, Eddie did have something to do with it. I'd always felt a certain wonderment for Eddie, but Seth absolutely idolized him. Seth would follow him blindly in any scheme he cooked up. Toward the end, I often begged off, citing some poor excuse that they surely saw right through.
four
There was one thing about Eddie that both excited and scared me. He had no boundaries. My entire life existed within boundaries. But Eddie had no concept of society’s constraints. He drove an old, rusted, black Camaro that he’d rescued from the junkyard and restored himself. One of his favorite games was traversing the perilously dark and windy roads of South Seaport in his car, late at night, at dangerously high speeds, without the benefit of headlights. Seth would sit in the passenger seat cheering loudly while I gripped the cushions in back and tried not to look terrified.
The first time I ever went to the sea cliff was with Eddie. During the years I was in high school, the sea cliff became infamous. There was a section of South Seaport that the town had originally sectioned off for a park. The astute elected officials in charge of the project didn't seem to think that the dangerous cliffs which made up the southern boundary would be a problem. They simply erected a chain link fence and called it a day. But the parents of the children who were to play in this park protested and forced the project to be moved to another safer location. Nothing was ever done with this land, but the fence remained, as did the stigma of danger. It didn't take long for the thrill seekers, mainly teenagers desperate for excitement, to begin climbing the fence and venturing far too close to the edge of the drop.
The cliff actually had a secondary ledge, about six feet down. You could lower yourself onto that ledge and get a good view of the sharp rocks and the white foam of the crashing waves below. Soon the good citizens of South Seaport caught word of this daring ritual, and the local paper printed a story about the sea cliff, stating that a person would probably have to die before the town placed a proper boundary there.
Eddie was drawn to that place as though it were Shangri-La. The woods across from my house were quickly abandoned and nearly every weekend was spent drunkenly climbing the fence and jumping down onto that secondary ledge at the sea cliff. I always scooted myself back against the wall of the cliff side, but not Eddie. He'd lean over the edge, dropping bottles, listening for the sound of breaking glass. He could convince Seth to teeter along the edge with him, but I never went out that far. I endured many evenings of name calling. But even falling down drunk, I could never make myself go out to the edge. Not until one Saturday night.
It was this one night in particular when Eddie seemed completely out of control. His father had laid into him that afternoon when he got home from school for forgetting to rake the yard. His face was swollen and bruised. In retaliation, Eddie had stolen his father's supply of scotch.
Seth and I followed him down to the ledge that night, but we both knew he wasn’t himself. He was unusually quiet. His mouth was a tight straight line.
It was late fall. The air was chilled, and the sky looked like a sheet of glass dotted with pinpoints of light. The surf pounded rhythmically below us. Eddie paced along the edge, tripping over his own feet, the bottle sloshing in his hand.
"I'm going to kill him," Eddie spat.
Seth was trying to calm him down. I sat there silently. There was no talking to Eddie when he got this way. He tilted his head back and finished off the scotch, his Adam's apple bouncing up and down with each gulp. With a clumsy arm, he tossed the bottle in the air and followed its progression downward. The crashing waves were too loud, and the drop was too far to hear the bottle smash even though we all listened for it. Long after the bottle had disappeared, Eddie continued to stand there, the tips of his toes no longer on land, staring down at the water. After a moment, he started to lean. It was such a slow progression forward, it was almost imperceptible. Seth had turned away, looking for another bottle in Eddie's bag. I sat transfixed. Eddie tilted further, his eyes staring downward, unblinking, the breeze rippling through his hair. Suddenly, he had gone too far. He was going to lose his balance at any moment and plummet downward. I shot up and grabbed the bottom of his coat, pulling him back with one hard tug.
He stumbled, trying to regain his footing, but
he couldn’t, and he landed on top of me, squeezing the breath from my lungs. I lay there on my side gasping for air as Eddie scrambled to his feet and looked down at me angrily, his hand tightening into a fist.
Seth was gaping at us. "What the hell are you two doing?"
Eddie uncurled his fingers, and his incensed expression transformed into a wide mocking grin. He pointed down at me. "This idiot thought I was going to jump." He began to laugh loudly. Soon Seth was laughing also. I sat up and looked hard at Eddie. I knew the truth.
He averted his eyes and continued to poke fun at me. "Well, thanks, Danny boy. You saved my life," he snickered while Seth joined in drunkenly.
I shook my head at them and climbed back up onto the cliff. I could hear Seth yelling after me, "Where are you going? You need to lighten up."
The next day they both acted as though nothing had happened and so did I.
Good friends are rare. I do not believe that a close friendship, the likes of which once existed between Seth Cooper and me, will ever happen to me again. From the first grade until the middle of my senior year in high school, we were inseparable. I was never at a loss for words around him. I had no siblings, and he was as close to a brother as I would ever get. We used to go into my basement and set off dime store firecrackers that would send my mother raving, chasing us around the house in a state. We walked to the candy store every afternoon. I'd always buy those long red strings of licorice, and he'd purchase a bag of giant blue jawbreakers. Then he'd mumble all the way home with the candy lodged inside his cheek, his tongue and lips turning blue.
We didn't need anyone else. We had a language all our own. Other people couldn't help but feel left out when they were around us. Seth might say something like "My mother gave me pineapple with my lunch" and I'd crack up laughing, holding my sides. Whoever was sitting with us would be perplexed, having absolutely no clue as to what was so funny. The day before Seth had pranced around his kitchen with two pineapples held against his chest, speaking in a high voice, impersonating his older, well-endowed sister. Because we spent so much time together, nearly every event was turned into something humorous to be referenced later and laughed over again and again. I was a fixture at his house as he was in mine.
