Class Dismissed
Page 18
Gunther whispered in his ear: Oh, baby. What have we here? There was something disturbing, arousing in the star of so many teenage masturbatory fantasies cozied up against the backside of St. Norbert’s. As he approached, he could see that her startling figure was gone, as was the cascade of Farrah Fawcett hair. But, no matter, his internal response was the same: sweaty pits, incipient hard-on. He offered a sheepish hand that she turned into an awkward hug. Katie drew back and, like Coach, gave him a thorough going-over, though her evaluation paused at different spots.
“Patrick James Lynch,” she blew smoke out a corner of her mouth, “all grown up.”
He cocked his head. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”
She snorted. He’d gotten some game since high school. Lame game, but still.
“Buy me a beer,” she said, snuffing out her cigarette against the side of the church, “and I’ll tell you.”
It was fitting that he wound up with Katie Osterlund at Dawn’s Corner Taproom, always a place of fascination to the adolescent Gunther. Whenever Patrick would walk with Gunther past Dawn’s, which even in a town as brief as theirs occupied a notorious spot on the sketchier end of Main Street, Gunther would stick his nose up against the smoky glass, pondering the lurid attractions within. And if they happened to pass by at opening or closing they’d be treated to the sight of Dawn, a curvy brunette from exotic Moosehead Lake, who knew as much about the effects of make-up, shortness of skirt, and tightness of blouse on beer sales as any farmer knew about grain feed and milk production.
It was 4:30 on a Friday and the local boys were at the bar, blowing through their paychecks. Dawn, more solid than sexy now, had made no concessions to time; her décolletage flirted with the third button of her snug pink blouse and she fluttered her robin’s egg lids at Patrick before noting that he was sitting on the barstool next to Katie, a valued customer if not a regular. She took in their subdued attire and asked about Gunther, who everybody knew. Then Dawn decreed, in deference to the solemn occasion, that the Friday Happy Hour special on low-cal beer, the Dawn’s Early Lite, was now available a half-hour earlier. She popped open two Buds for them and sashayed over to the jukebox, inducing Willie Nelson to warble “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain.”
They took their beers to a quieter table under the neon Bovenmyer’s display. Patrick took the sign as a sign: Bovey’s, Gunther’s favorite brew. The fuzzy-cheeked pastor had been right in one respect; forces greater than they were at work. He almost mentioned this to Katie but couldn’t be certain where she stood on such matters, and they had to account for the past fourteen years before they could speak of the deceased.
“You showed up just in time,” she said, sparking a lighter under a Winston. “I had to get away from that place.” She offered the pack to him. He flashed a palm at her, finally able to resist peer pressure. Even from Katie Osterlund. “I keep trying to quit. Can’t smoke around my son.” Patrick shrugged away the confession, cool enough now not to stand in judgment. About the cigs or the son.
“It’s tough to quit,” he said and swigged his beer. “You’re brave to try.”
Katie wouldn’t let that be the last word on her intentions. There was so much failure in the last fourteen years, so much to regret: dropping out of Mankato State her sophomore year; coming home, only to get impregnated by Doug Knutson, former quarterback of the Homesteaders and heir to the Shop-Rite legacy; marrying Doug, divorcing Doug; a string of inconsequential, get-by jobs. “A total flame-out,” she said, “peaked on graduation day.” She took a deep drag of her cigarette, let smoke trickle out her nostrils. “Turned out, being the It Girl of a graduating class of eighty-six wasn’t quite the credential I thought.”
“And look at you,” she continued. “You went away, to an excellent college. Got your degree. Then you didn’t go off to Wall Street or some fancy law firm. You teach poor Black kids, right?”
He wobbled his head to acknowledge that this was more or less the case.
“You’re fucking amazing, Patrick.” She sipped her beer. “Why didn’t I see that in high school?”
He thought he could answer that question but was too overwhelmed by the frisson of Katie Osterlund invoking copulation and his name in the same sentence. Anyway, she saved him the trouble.
“Because I was a stupid, stuck-up, hormonal little bitch, that’s why. Hung-up on biceps and broad shoulders instead of kindness and smarts.”
He was content to accept the implicit compliments, though they came with unattractive implications attached. Which were all too true. Ask Coach. But he was also happy to order another round and sit and watch Katie recite the details of her fall from grace. None of which was news to him; he’d never been able to hide his crush from Erin, who’d often include some teasing “Katie updates” in their phone calls. Concluding with the latest calamity to befall his dream girl and chuckling, “It’s not too late.”
Now he could just look, closer than he dared to get in any class. Jesus, the pain he’d gotten gazing at her in chemistry. Blue balls didn’t begin to cover it. And now as he stared into those blue eyes that complemented the navy dress, he was just being a sensitive man, a good listener. Susan had trained him well. Hello? She’d snap her fingers. Look at the woman when she speaks. You can’t be grading papers and call it listening.
But, given the liberty to gaze, even Patrick could see Katie wasn’t a prom queen anymore. Though she was still, as Grandfather Lynch remembered Grandma on their wedding day, “a fine figure of a woman.” Only thicker in the middle now, and buxom, more aging milkmaid than cheerleader. And the cartons of cigarettes had begun to have their way with the creamy complexion.
She stubbed out a butt in the ashtray. “Here I’m rattling on with my tale of woe. Tell me about you. Tell me about your life in New York.”
So he ordered another round and tossed her a few of his old teacher war stories. Only they were new to her, magically new. Katie Osterlund was gazing at him now.
He was casting the line he’d used to reel in Susan long ago. And so much simpler here: Katie didn’t know Harlem from the Hamptons. Patrick felt himself caught up in the telling, in the gritty detail of it, as remote from life in Peterson’s Prairie as the Serengeti Plain. Remoter. And sure there were embellishments––a few extra weapons, another gang or two––whatever he could say to make those blue eyes widen, that imposing bosom swell, he’d say. But they were unnecessary fillips; he was pleased to find how much reality sufficed. He was, in Katie’s eyes, the hero of his own life.
He left out, of course, the recent unpleasantness in room 234 and its unsightly consequences. But the more he talked around it (and, to be sure, Susan), the more he fought the urge to match Katie confession-for-confession, to share his deepest hurts with someone with whom he shared a singular strange intimacy, someone who’d known him––well, of him––since kindergarten, who’d been the source of his sweetest longings, his most tortured desires. She knew him as no other woman knew him, and now he could see, by the third round of the Dawn’s Early Lite, that she might want, as the young reverend would have it, to know him. But as Patrick’s Helen leaned in to absorb his West Side Iliad, that snowy skin flushed pink, the glittery blue eyes a little glassy, he wrestled mightily with the better angels of his nature, fending off a new fantasy rapidly replacing the old—that fleeting image of the strip motel off I-94 he’d seen on his way up, at the Moosehead Lake exit.
He’d just launched into his set piece about the time he caught Abdul in the stairwell, jeans about his ankles, with a cutie from the Computers for Tomorrow program, when Katie began to giggle. It was funny, certainly, the way he told it, and, in the present context, with any luck, inspirational as well. But he hadn’t gotten to the funny part yet.
“I’m sorry,” she laughed, wiping foam from those oft-dreamt-of lips.
“What?”
“I was just remembering something G
unther said.”
About time, chimed that voice in Patrick’s head.
“Remember when…in biology? When he read his report on amoebas?”
Patrick smiled and nodded. He’d let her tell it.
“And Gunther said, right in front of Mrs. Geertz, with her gray bun with the pencil in it, that the amoeba was the most common…the most common single-cell orgasm?” Katie dissolved.
He laughed, took a casual sip of his Bud. It was better, much better, coming from her.
“And then the time,” she continued, “the time he fell asleep in geometry? And Mr. Dietrich called on him as a punishment? And made him come to the board to solve a proof––”
“––which he did perfectly, much to Dietrich’s dismay.” How easy, after all these years, slipping back into the student’s snarky point-of-view.
“And he finished by describing…by describing two bisecting lines,” she giggled, “as bisec-tual.”
One of my best, sighed the voice.
Patrick giggled with Katie. There was no doubt where the evening was headed. He’d have to devise an excuse for Erin. A good one.
“But the best,” she declared, pointing the mouth of her Bud at him, “was that experiment you guys did in chemistry.” It took Katie a moment to collect herself. “When you guys,” she swallowed, “you guys filled those beakers with the yellow and the green and the blue liquids and stirred them all together. And Mr. Jennings got all red in the face and told you to stop messing around and made you both sit down.” She took a sip. “And then…later, when he was showing how the experiment was supposed to work, that purplish, reddish, blackish foam coming out of your beakers. It seemed like gallons of it, all over the table, all over the floor. Like some monster had puked all over the classroom.” There were tears in her eyes.
He took it up. “And then when the class fell apart laughing, and Mr. Jennings was screaming, Gunther stood up and shouted everybody down, even Jennings. How can you all laugh? he said. Remember? The eruption you just witnessed, he said, was his tribute to the ancient citizens of Pompeii, to the hideous deaths they suffered––burned, suffocated––by the thousands. And he said that ooze on the floor, black and red, was a memorial…”
He looked at Katie, sober, suddenly, her eyes far away. He’d only thought of that moment once before, teaching––trying to teach––Romeo and Juliet. Two boys performed the Queen Mab scene, painfully, in English that Shakespeare would not have recognized. But he was riveted––Remembrance of Things Past––when the dread-locked Romeo mumbled, Mercutio, thou art mad. Thou talksts…of nothing. And Patrick was back in Jennings’ chem class, April 1978, surrounded by demonic foam and his best friend’s insanity.
“You guys pulled some crazy shit,” Katie whispered. She popped a cigarette from the pack, sparked the lighter.
“That was Gunther’s idea. They were all Gunther’s ideas.” Except for one. But they wouldn’t speak of that.
Katie looked at her nails. They were red, a little chipped. “You know, I ran into Gunther––maybe a year ago?––right here at Dawn’s.” It was a different Katie talking now, older, farther away. “I hadn’t talked to him in, Jesus, years. He pumped my gas sometimes. Gave me a deal when I cracked my catalytic convertor.” She said it with Gunther’s expert inflection. “He was sitting at this exact table when I walked in and, believe it or not, he was drinking coffee.” She shook her head. “He asked if I’d sit with him, and I said I would, and we sat and talked. Well, he talked.” She smiled to herself. “And he rambled on about politics, existentialism. Gunther stuff. Then he said he was changing his life, going to AA, reading the Bible. That’s great, I said, but what are you doing at Dawn’s? It was a test, he said. He’d never believed in tests as a kid, but now he did. He bought me a couple beers and just sat with me, talking, drinking his coffee.” She lowered her voice as Dawn strolled by. “Horrible coffee here, he said. Another test.
“We stayed till closing and he got this look on his face. What? I asked. He said he got depressed this time of night. Would I mind following his car back to his place in Winnipee Falls? I live just past there, next exit, and he did look a little scared, so I said, fine.
“I followed him to this cute little house on Elm Street. Perfect lawn, you wouldn’t think. Gonna have another cup of coffee, he said. Wanna join me? Gunther, I said, and I just stared at him. How long have I known you? I could use the company, he said. Couldn’t you?
“Well, anyway, Little Doug was with Big Doug that weekend. And, I don’t know, I was coming off a really bad relationship.” She waved away the excuse. “And Gunther was a nut, for sure, but sweet too. And not bad looking, after he lost the goatee and that nasty black cap.” A wicked smile. “And creative.”
The smile vanished when she looked up and caught Patrick’s expression. He could’ve been anywhere during this reverie, anyone. “I’m sorry,” she said, and checked her red nails.
Back…way, way back, shouted the voice.
You were always so fucking competitive, Gunnie.
And competitive, fucking.
But Katie? My Katie?
Grand slam! Home team wins! Can you believe it?
“Speaking of Little Doug,” Katie sighed, and it was an altogether different gear. “His sitter’s on overtime.”
Patrick felt some emotional breaker switch slam down. “Absolutely.” He looked at his watch but didn’t notice the time. “My sister’s making dinner. Can’t be late for that.”
“Erin? Was she at the service?”
He nodded.
“Say hi for me, will you?”
“Of course.”
“She was the nicest girl, and so pretty. And your dear mother too. Will you?”
Patrick paid their tab and left Dawn a tip with fourteen years’ worth of interest. He walked Katie to a gold mid-80s Nissan bearing all the scars of Minnesota winter salt.
She unlocked the door and turned to him. “God, Patrick, it was so good to see you.” Her eyes got wet. “I can’t tell you.” She kissed his cheek and threw both arms around his neck, holding him uncomfortably long. His first and last real embrace with Katie Osterlund.
She started the engine and jammed it into a grinding reverse. He waved and turned but heard the window rolling down. “How does a grown man––a mechanic––have a one-car accident on a cloudless night on a highway he could drive blindfolded? Even drunk––which I know he wasn’t.”
She shook her head and rolled up the window. And that was his final view of Katie, turning the rusty gold Nissan onto Main Street, wiping her cheeks with her wrist.
Though so much of Peterson’s Prairie had changed, the soybean field off Rural Route 17 was still there. The clouds had cleared and the furrows were revealed in all their Minnesota spring ripeness. It had grown warm and humid and Patrick rolled the cool Bovenmyer’s bottle down his sweaty neck as he sat in his shirtsleeves on the hood of the Corolla. It had to be Bovey’s, of course; he’d driven all the way to Bryson’s Liquors in Winnipee Falls to find it. When he pointedly asked for the old liquid death, the man at Bryson’s laughed and said they had some in the back. Bovenmyer’s had just been bought up by Anheuser-Busch, he added, so, really, wouldn’t Bud do just as well? Not for this occasion, my man, Patrick told him, reaching for his wallet.
He’d meant to drive straight to Erin’s, play with the twins, help with supper. But this rental was on autopilot, determined to hit all the Stations of the Cross before he left his home state. He ceased contemplating his sister’s displeasure and leaned back against the toasty windshield, enjoying the sun setting beyond the––what did Gunther call it? loamy?––the loamy field.
Patrick swiped a trickle of sweat from his cheek and his hand came away red. Katie’s lipstick. He pictured that motel near Moosehead Lake and flinched in shame. The worst of both worlds: he’d betrayed Susan and struck out with Katie.
What was it Gunther said to him that time? Spring, senior year? He’d been running errands for his mother in his dad’s old Ford station wagon, driving on fumes, forced to stop at Hendrickson’s Best, something he went out of his way to avoid. He couldn’t help seeing Gunther at school, playing opposite him in gym, but being alone with––served by––his former best friend was too painful.
Gunther had sauntered over, same as always, as if Patrick drove into his station every day. “What’ll it be, Paddy? Regular?” He’d pulled at the goatee. A white crescent ran from the bridge of his nose to his cheekbone. “Or you gonna throw caution to the wind and go with the high test?”
He’d shrugged at Gunther and laughed, trying to be casual. “Think I’ll stick with the regular,” he said.
“Do what ya gotta do,” Gunther said, turning toward the pump.
That was it: Do what ya gotta do. He hadn’t known what to make of that. At the time he took it as judgment, a bitter summation of his role in their lapsed friendship. It was the last thing Gunther ever said to him.
But now, as he gazed out at the leafy rows of soy, Patrick took the broader view, that these last words were a final piece of Gunther’s philosophy. His friend putting his lonely destiny in context. And perhaps, Patrick thought, weighing all that awaited him back in New York, his own as well.
Wasn’t Gunther, in the end, responsible for that? Everyone assumed he’d become a teacher because of his parents. And true, their influence was undeniable, profound. But who, really, was the first to push him––shame him––into reading The Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Sawyer, White Fang? They were scattered across Gunther’s stained gray carpet, under his bed with the dust bunnies and half-eaten sandwiches. Sure, sometimes it began with Patrick leafing through one of the Classic Comics versions, which Gunther had read in third grade. But his friend was no snob; he may have been an inbred Lutheran, but he was catholic in his tastes. The funnies, the sports section, were no less sacred texts than the editorial page. Patrick owed more of his adult life––the good part––to Gunther than he’d ever admitted before. He had, in large measure, Gunther to thank/blame for his teaching career. That was why he was here.