Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  “Now,” she said, putting aside a folder, “about your term project. Let me tell you, Simon, that Chirp’s illustration and your fragment of text left me baffled.”

  “It was a first draft. We were going to . . .”

  “Please listen, then speak. Did I say baffled? I meant astonished. Astonished and delighted. You two, especially your collaborator, always struck me as distant, a tad hostile or is the better word uncomfortable?”

  “I guess you could say a little uncomfortable,” Simon said. “But when you get to know us, I guess we’re pretty comfortable. We . . .”

  “Hush. Chirp Bennet’s sketch of Polly Moon told me more about the boy than anything I ever heard him say in class, which wasn’t much. I was unprepared for such a display of refined sensibility.”

  “I know what you mean. When he first showed me his . . .”

  “Shush. Which reminded me once again never to judge anyone too quickly. I don’t profess to be an art critic but am confident that Chirp is a genuine talent and I trust my instincts.”

  “That’s how I . . .”

  “And now we come to Simon Apple’s prose. Like most citizens of Glenda, I am not ignorant of your traumatic history. To have overcome such adversity and emerged with the ability to see life clearly and see it plain, as they said of Alexander Pope, is a marvelous and heroic accomplishment. You have the makings of an author.”

  “Well, thanks Miss Ulman but I don’t know if . . .”

  “Stop. Never recoil from deserved recognition, Simon. I feel that you are among the few obliged to confront the monstrous gift of talent. Talent is monstrous. It makes terrible demands. It insists on huge sacrifice. The gift can be refused or indulged. That choice is yours. But before you turn your back on such nascent—that’s a word you might wish to look up—such nascent ability you must consider the possible rewards you spurn. The incredible pleasure of making the invisible visible, singing songs of enlightenment, venturing into the deepest caves of human experience clutching nothing more than a sputtering candle stub . . .”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to play in the majors,” Simon said.

  “Don’t dare to trivialize,” Miss Ulman said. She grabbed for her cheeks and burst into tears, trembling like a tuning fork. Simon saw her melt like the sputtering candle stub she’d described. He left his seat and ran to her desk wondering if he should yell for help. Instead, he put his arm around her shoulders.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Simon said to Miss Ulman’s beehive hairdo. She tilted her head back, pulled Simon toward her and kissed him on the mouth. Her tongue pushed between his teeth. When the kiss ended, Simon pulled away and backed toward the door.

  “Don’t misunderstand my motives,” Miss Ulman said. “I’ve waited forever for a boy like you. And your partner. To think, Tabitha Ulman discovered two pearls in this oyster of mediocrity. Can you possibly know what I’m saying? Someday you will. Let me be your mentor, your spirit guide, Simon Apple. You and I can work closely together if you’ll commit to the effort. And I’ll have justified my existence.”

  “You mean me and Chirp, right? He’s one of the two pearls.”

  “I’ve already shown his drawing to Mr. Binwasser in the Art Department and he was as excited as I knew he would be. Mr. Binwasser’s province is visual. All well and good. Mine is verbal. In the beginning was the word.”

  “I thought they grunted in the beginning,” Simon said.

  “It’s a biblical reference.”

  When Miss Ulman said biblical her lips moved out on the bib, in on the lic and pouted on the al . “I knew that,” Simon said. Old Testament. I’m half Jewish.”

  That night, Simon conjured Barbara Eden to help him get to sleep. She wore her I Dream of Jeannie harem outfit and did everything he asked of her but she kept transforming into Tabitha Ulman, a confusing development. He sent Jeannie back into her bottle and summoned Tina Louise off Gilligan’s Island. Miss Ulman showed up in her place peeking out from behind the trunks of palm trees.

  Simon got out of bed and washed his face with cold water. Sitting on the toilet, he got some relief with a Vulcan maiden he resurrected from a Star Trek episode, but that experience was unnerving, what with her pointy ears and mind-melding.

  39

  Two days later, while he walked briskly toward Quikpix, Simon heard Chirp’s voice call his name. The yell came from under a blanket of music—“Some Girls,” by the Rolling Stones—pouring out of a red Chevy with a white racing stripe. Chirp was behind the wheel, gesturing for Simon to get in. Simon got in. “What’s this about?” Simon said. “I thought you were sick.”

  “Mama took me to Lourdes,” Chirp said. “I am healed, hallelujah. So what happened with our project?”

  “Tabitha liked it,” Simon said. “She creamed.”

  “Tabitha?”

  “Miss Ulman. She says you’re a genius, showed your work to Mr. Binwasser. He thinks you’re a black Picasso. I tried to call you three times, no answer. Where the hell have you been besides out stealing cars? So tell me.”

  “I got my driver’s license,” Chirp said.

  “Bullshit. You’re not old enough.”

  “That’s for me to know and them to find out. Here it is—The Chirpmobile. Catch my smiling face. So what do you think, friend? Your honest opinion or at least a beautiful lie.”

  “You’re telling me this is your car? No way.”

  “It’s been my car for a year,” Chirp said. “My little baby. A wreck when I rescued her. A ’68 Camaro selling wilted flowers from the gutter. Look at my Eliza Dolittle now. She’s got it. 327 V8, Cragar wheels, 4-barreled Holley carburetor, Crane performance camshaft, open headers, hood scoop, Hurst shift, and leopard skin seats—is this not a chariot of fire? Man, this vehicle rocks. Listen to that stereo. Feel the bass on your face. The door’s ajar so come on in.”

  Simon got into the passenger seat and ran his hand over the gleaming dashboard.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were still alive? I was writing your obit.”

  “Sorry,” Chirp said. “But I was too busy living. Anyway, I can’t believe it myself. Chirp Bennet is in the driver’s seat. Now all he has to do is get laid before the Commies blow up the world and he’ll achieve the American dream. Not a minute too soon. Hang on. We’re off to see the wizard.” Chirp revved the motor.

  “Not now, Dr. Do-As-Little-As-Possible,” Simon said. “Got to get downtown. Listen, Mr. Binwasser said to tell you he wants to see some other examples of your doodles. He’s going to work with you, she’s working with me.”

  “You’re talking Tabitha?”

  “I’m talking Miss Ulman.”

  “Who’d have thought it?” Chirp said, wetting his lips with his tongue.

  “Cut that out,” Simon said. “She’s very nice. Very sincere.”

  “Excuse me,” Chirp said. “But does Miss Ulman have a 4-barreled Holley carburetor?”

  “I’m not sure,” Simon said.

  Over the next months, much of Chirp’s free time was spent washing the car, spraying Windex on its windows, waxing and polishing its body, rubbing its wheel hubs with Brillo pads.

  Simon pressured his reluctant friend to give him driving lessons. It took a lot of persuasion; Chirp winced if Simon so much as burped inside the Camaro. The idea of allowing a neophyte to sit in the driver’s seat was unthinkable at first but Chirp finally yielded to Simon’s sulks, pleas and outright bribes.

  When he had the money, Simon sprung for gas, kicked in for a battery that could power half of Glenda, and gave his instructor a Mick Jagger bobble-head—more chick bait to dangle from the rearview mirror.

  The first time Simon ground the gears, Chirp whacked him square on the jaw but Simon had no hard feelings since he’d brought it on himself.

  When they weren’t taking curves on obscure country roads outside town, Chirp and Simon worked together on their school project. Mr. Binwasser met with his protégé three times a week, offering a mix of criticism, encour
agement and humiliation. He spat on Chirp’s favorite drawings, ripped up sketches, threw tantrums, gushed praise, lectured on the sanctity of art, forced concentration, pointed the emerging artist in what Mr. Binwasser thought were positive directions. Whatever Mr. Binwasser did, he did catch Chirp’s attention. Simon could tell how their sessions went by the way Chirp drove, measured on an automotive scale from madman to maniac.

  Simon huddled under Tabitha Ulman’s engulfing wings. The pages he brought her were returned looking like wounded soldiers, slashed in red and battered by a black marking pen. She made Simon read E.B. White’s manual on basic grammar. She force-fed him stories by Anderson (both Hans Christian and Sherwood), Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Salinger, Balzac, and De Maupassant. She gave him novels by Twain, Melville, Hammett, Roth, Bellow, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, poems by Dickinson, Yeats, Jeffers, Cummings, plays by Sophocles and Shakespeare. She made him copy whole chapters by hand, quizzed him on the mysterious transit from felt emotion to cold type, explained subtleties of style and form, forbad him to use a typewriter instead of a pen or pencil because there was no substitute for direct connection from flesh to paper.

  Sometimes she poured him hot chocolate from a thermos, topped with a squirt of whipped cream, before sending him through an open door on his way to some new discovery. Miss Ulman gave him a set of rubber letters—the alphabet glued to wooden blocks, along with a stamp pad—hammering home that every book on the school’s library shelves traced its heritage to those few symbols. She rhapsodized on the marvels of language and its infinite challenge.

  She also gave him spontaneous erections that Simon tried to hide by scrunching in his seat or pacing her classroom facing backward. No woman had fussed so much over Simon Apple since the days of Victoria. He worked his ass off for Tabitha Ulman, tempted to glory; he respected her, adored her, lusted after her. On those rare occasions when his teacher was pleased with a sentence, a paragraph, a turn of phrase, Simon melted to butter. When she’d touch his cheek or fondle his hair to show approval, Simon noticed that her breath would quicken, her cheeks glow like traffic lights in the rain, her nipples pop up, a sight as startling as seeing crocuses burst through snow.

  Then there were the silent moments that made the noblest language obsolete and meaningless. Those twenty-six rubber letters in the English alphabet were exposed as only a collection of stale crumbs. Mentor and student dissolved into smoke, drifting and mingling in the afternoon air. The eloquence of shared silence was, curiously, the best muse for inspiration.

  Simon, who was fascinated by experiments that made Popsicles out of dead people in the hope that they could be thawed when cures were found for diseases that killed them, imagined what it might be like to be chipped from the tundra like a wooly mammoth, then thawed to sentience. It was like that during his after-school conferences with Miss Ulman. She brought him to life.

  When their term project was finished, Chirp and Simon were forever changed. The work was marked A+ (a first for both). Miss Ulman and Mr. Binwasser arranged for its publication in the Glenda High Annual.

  Author and artist were instant stars. The night the magazine appeared, Chirp scored with Elaine Flink, head cheerleader for the Glenda Eagles. Polly Moon sought out Simon and told him she realized he was a “real person” in a superficial world, a man with “groovy karma.” In the past, her words would have been manna. But Simon was already in love and not with Placebo.

  40

  “We should celebrate your success, Simon,” Miss Ulman said after Principal Myron Borg lauded Chirp and Simon’s collaboration during assembly. Simon felt edgy being alone with his teacher in the now empty auditorium. He answered in a whisper, in case some student had left a pair of ears behind.

  “You could wish me happy birthday,” Simon said. “I just turned seventeen. Aren’t you supposed to collect two hundred dollars when you pass puberty?”

  “Happy birthday, Simon,” Miss Ulman said while Simon waited for her nipples to confirm the blessing. “You know, I was thinking how nice it would be to continue our relationship. We do learn from one another.”

  “I have nothing to teach you,” Simon said.

  “Not true. This has been a symbiotic association. I was actually about to extend an invitation to dinner at my home. That could involve certain complications. You know how it is here. People talk. And what they say can be based on gross misunderstandings that lead to awful consequences.”

  “What could be wrong about dinner?” Simon said.

  “Nothing. But I could be charged with corrupting the morals of a minor.” For the first time Simon heard Tabitha Ulman laugh at her own joke.

  “Well, thanks for the thought,” Simon said.

  “Still, it is your birthday.”

  “Maybe we could go someplace for a pizza. Out of town. Strangers in the night.”

  “I suppose we could sneak off,” Miss Ulman said. “Pizza and champagne. A cupcake and a candle. A whoosh down the road and a wish for good things. Lovely. But I don’t have a car.”

  “A car?” Simon said. “I can get hold of a car.” Hearing his voice say that, Simon doubted his sanity.

  “Really? You drive?”

  “Absolutely. But I can’t afford champagne.”

  “That’s my department,” Miss Ulman said.

  “When are we talking about?” Simon said.

  “How about tonight while your birthday is still fresh.”

  “Tonight,” Simon said. “No problem. I could pick you up someplace nobody goes.”

  “It’s a date,” Miss Ulman said. She held out a copy of the Annual and asked Simon for his autograph.

  Simon found Chirp holding court outside the school’s main entrance, surrounded by a crowd of admirers. He asked for a private audience. “What’s up?” Chirp said.

  “Not much,” Simon said.

  “This is some kind of week,” Chirp said. “I’m liking it.”

  “I noticed. Listen, buddy, I have something to ask you. Prepare for apoplexy.”

  “I was born prepared for apoplexy,” Chirp said. “Speak.”

  “I need to borrow your car tonight.”

  “Say wha ?”

  “You heard.”

  “First of all, your daddy has a car. Your mama has a car. You got uncles and cousins with cars. Second of all, you don’t have a driver’s license, not even a learner’s permit. Third of all, you never soloed in a moving vehicle except maybe for your stroller or on your bike. Fourth of all, I would not lend my wheels to any living thing under any circumstances for any possible reason whatsoever. Say you were late for your exorcism. I would not lend you my car. Tell me you got to pick up a heart for a transplant. I would say tough titty. No and no and absolutely no. There’s no exception to this rule. I wouldn’t lend Martin Luther King my car, not Jimmy Baldwin or Langston Hughes or Miles Davis. Not Jack or Bobby Kennedy. Not Jesus, not Moses, not Muhammad, not Bobby Dylan or Aretha Franklin. Do you understand my position here?”

  “Is that a definite no?”

  “I’d say so,” Chirp said. “You know how long it took me to get that car? How much self-denial? What indignities I suffered? And when I bought the Camaro it was unfit for human habitation. You have a glimmer how much sweat I put into that machine? Ask me for anything else. But, my man, please do not ask me to lend you my car.”

  “I wasn’t planning to drive to the Grand Canyon,” Simon said. “Just a few miles on straight roads. If it was for a transplant or exorcism I’d take the bus. But this is big, Chirp. Enormous. Strictly off the record, a pizza date with Miss Ulman.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No joke. Her idea. I have feelings for that girl.”

  “Girl? That is no girl. That is a fully developed lady. You’re walking barefoot on hot coals, Simon. Besides, how many times have you told me you’re saving yourself for Polly Moon?”

  “I am,” Simon said. “In a larger sense. But in the meanwhile, I’m like a meteorite pulled by gravity. I can’t help mys
elf. She brought up the pizza. Maybe she just wants to talk. Maybe all we’ll do is eat and share a moment together, probably nothing intimate. What have I got to give her besides gratitude? And I am grateful to her. You should be too. We owe her, Chirp.”

  “If anything but your cherry was under discussion this meeting would be over. Simon, if I am dumb enough to go along with this madness there are a few ground rules. You keep the sainted vehicle for two hours, max. You don’t even consider trying to parallel park. If the cops stop you, your story is you got hold of my keys and sneaked the car on your own. I had nothing to do with any of it. If you eat pizza in the front seat you spread napkins everyplace including the rugs on the floor. If, God willing, you make it to the backseat you drape the Turkish towel I keep in the trunk for such occasions. If there’s any kind of stain, tomato or otherwise, or even crumbs on the carpet, you not only pay for the cleanup you agree to kill yourself in a slow, agonizing manner and leave a neat note pinned to your shirt saying how you were depressed by racial injustice. Lastly but not leastly, when the car is returned it will have a full tank of gas. High test. Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “On what?”

  “My immortal soul.”

  “Say amen.”

  “Amen.”

  “After tonight, I own you,” Chirp said.

  “By the way, Miss Ulman said she wants your autograph on her copy of the Annual. ”

  “She did?” Chirp said. “She really said that?”

  Simon arranged to pick up Tabitha Ulman two blocks from her apartment in West Glenda. Chirp left the Camaro parked around the corner from Quikpix in a public lot that was all but deserted after business hours. When Simon found it waiting he broke into a heavy sweat. He let himself in and screwed himself into the sacred driver’s seat, blotting his face with a Kleenex.

  After five minutes of fear, he turned the ignition key and felt the delicious power surge as eight cylinders made the car shudder. Simon sat enjoying the vibrations. They helped calm him down. Then he depressed the clutch and shifted into first gear, pressed lightly on the gas pedal, clutching the wheel with all his strength. The car actually moved.