Not As Crazy As I Seem

by George Harrar

  She stares at me. She has this way of staring that's kind of unnerving. "You don't want me to touch your hands?"

  "No, it's not that. It's just that these gloves are really tight 'cause they're made for handball. So they're hard to get on and off."

  She knows I'm making this up. She probably even knows that I know that she knows. Still, she isn't calling me a liar or anything.

  "Well, maybe someday when you're not wearing your gloves I can feel your hand."

  I haven't touched anybody's hand since I used to sit with Granddad when he was sick. His fingers were all twisted up from arthritis, and it was like holding a beer pretzel.

  Tanya's hand isn't anything like his. Her fingers are straight and long. Her nails are bright red. Her hands are as big as mine. I wonder what it would feel like to hold them.

  She finishes her ice cream cone. "Food tastes better outside—you ever notice that?"

  I never had, but I nod.

  She folds up her ice cream wrapper and sticks it in her backpack. "You know what I hate? It's when you're telling something to somebody, and before you're even finished they say, 'Oh yeah, that's like...' and then they start telling you something. That's annoying."

  I could see how that would be annoying, so I nod again. Tanya reaches up to her earring, which looks like a tiny cross, and starts playing with it.

  "How come you never ask me to do anything?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like go to a movie."

  "I don't go to movies."

  "Why not?"

  "It's kind of hard for me to sit still for two hours, you know. I get to thinking about stuff."

  "Like what?"

  Should I tell her this? I don't want to scare her away. She already knows I eat four of everything for lunch and that I won't take my gloves off. How many more weird things about me can she take knowing?

  "I get kind of nervous, that's all."

  "Nervous about what?"

  This is getting hard. I give her an answer and she comes right back with another question. I don't even have time to think. I eat a wafer.

  "Do you really want to know? Because you might think I'm crazy if I tell you."

  "I don't mind crazy."

  "Okay. Well, in a movie things happen between the actors—that's what most people are looking at. But me, I'll see something in the background, and I'll want to change it. Like inside a house, I'll see the shades on the windows. One of them will be halfway down and the other will be three-quarters down. I'll sit there the whole movie wanting somebody to make them both the same."

  "How come?"

  "I don't know. I get to thinking something bad's going to happen if they don't. Like maybe there's a dog in the movie. I just know he's going to get run over by a car, unless somebody makes the shades even."

  Tanya stretches her legs on the steps, and it surprises me that they reach farther down than mine.

  "But the movie has already been made. What's going to happen already happened. You can't change anything."

  "Yeah, I know, that's why I don't go to movies."

  She shrugs, and I can't tell if that means she understands or doesn't.

  Still lifes.

  What could be duller than drawing things that don't move? Why not call them "still deads"?

  Why does the world go so slow? Why don't flowers grow a foot an hour and stars race across the sky and winds blow like a hurricane every day? Why does it take so long for things to freeze and melt? Why can't people leap like cats instead of creeping along, one dumb foot at a time? I would have made things happen a lot more quickly, if I'd been in charge. God made things pretty boring. I think He created it for adults, not for kids.

  I pull out my sketchpad and stare at the bowl of pears and apples and one green banana that Mrs. Cohen has arranged on her desk. I try to will something to happen with this fruit—maybe a worm crawling from the apple, or the banana magically peeling itself, or one of the pears exploding. Then I'd have something to draw.

  "Please begin, Devon."

  She always stands in the back of the room, where she can see everybody and nobody can see her. I don't like teachers who do that.

  Up ahead of me, Ben is sitting at his easel with his arms crossed. He hasn't taken out his pens yet. In a minute Mrs. Cohen will tap him on the shoulder and ask if he's napping, and the class will laugh. Then what will he do? I don't have any idea. It's strange being around someone who might at any moment do absolutely anything. I almost always know what I'm going to do.

  I draw in the top and bottom of the bowl and lean back for a better view. It looks like a lopsided Mexican sombrero, so I erase it. Then I try outlining the tops of the fruit, but they end up looking more like mountains than pears and apples. So I erase that.

  Mrs. Cohen breathes over my shoulder again. "Having trouble finding inspiration?"

  Inspiration over still deads? Is she crazy? I don't want to draw this fruit. I don't even want to look at the pears and apples and banana all tossed together in the bowl. They should be in their own separate bowls. I want to be done with this stupid assignment. I don't even want to start it.

  "Actually, Mrs. Cohen, I think I'm finished."

  "Finished?" She leans over my sketchpad. The only thing faintly visible are the erased lines. "You haven't drawn anything, Devon."

  "It's an imaginary still life. That's a new category of art I read about in the New York Times. I think the article was in Monday, but it could have been weeks ago, because my mom keeps the papers around until she reads every story. The article said you can draw something and then erase it and you're done. People pay a lot of money for this in New York."

  "I'm done, too." Ben stands up in front and shows his blank sketchpad. "My still life is even more imaginary than Devon's because I didn't draw a thing. What do you think?"

  Mrs. Cohen walks to the back of the room again. "I think you two want to flunk."

  I can see now it was a mistake to descend into the dirty basement of the school with Ben. Now he thinks we're best buddies. Every time I look around he's bouncing toward me on the balls of his feet. Kids who walk like that look conceited.

  "You sure you don't want to do something after school? I live just a couple of blocks from here, on Pleasant Street." He's asking for the third time today. He's standing just a foot away from me and my locker. I can smell cigarettes all over him. 18-26-7.18-26-7.

  No, I don't want to do something after school with him. What I want is not to be wanted so much. Friends are too much pressure. "Look, you have to stop hanging around me all the time."

  "Quiet! Everybody will hear you."

  I put my books in my locker and lock it. He's still standing there. "I'm not a very good friend, okay? I'm used to being by myself." I pull down on the lock, and it holds.

  "All right, I understand."

  Then why isn't he leaving? And why am I being so rotten to him? It's not like I have a whole line of friends waiting to take his place. 18-26-7.I turn the knob twice to the right, once to the left, then back to the 7.

  "Forget something?"

  This is exactly what I mean—friends are always asking you questions. I don't like having to explain myself.

  "My grammar book."

  "It's right there." He points to the middle of the stack of books I'm holding.

  "Oh, yeah. I thought I'd put it away."

  I shut the locker again, slip the lock through the holes and snap it shut. 18-26-7.

  Ben elbows me in the side. "It was funny with Mrs. Cohen, wasn't it? I mean, first you and then me with imaginary drawings. She'll probably flunk us."

  "It's hilarious." I've never come close to flunking anything. I wonder what it would be like to see an F on my report card. A-A-A-A-F. That wouldn't look good. A-A-F-A-A is better, but still, Mom would go crazy.

  Ben gives me a little wave, and with that he's gone. On my way out of the building, I pass the advanced biology room. It looks empty, so I lean my head in. The amphibians poster is still c
rooked. I can't understand how—

  Someone grabs me by the shoulder. I twist around—it's Alonzo.

  "You're Devon, right?"

  Of course I'm Devon. He must have heard my name called a dozen times in English. I'm sure who he is—why isn't he sure about me?

  "Yeah."

  "You've been seeing Tanya."

  "Seeing her? Sure I see her. I'm in her English class. I mean your English class—our class." God, could I sound any more lame?

  "You hang out at lunch with her, don't you?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Well, like, does she say anything about me?"

  "Not exactly. We mostly just eat."

  "She hasn't said anything?"

  "She said you two used to go out."

  "Used to—yeah, that's the problem. She's not talking about any other guy, is she?"

  "No, nobody."

  "Good. Okay, well, see you around."

  "Yeah, see you, Alonzo."

  He leaves through the side door to the buses, and I head for the front door. Then I hear my name shouted down the hall—it's Tanya running up to me.

  "Hey Dev, what did Alonzo want?"

  "He was asking about you."

  "That boy can't take a hint. I haven't even looked at him since Christmas, but I can't shake him."

  I watch the door as kids go out. Two, three ... I could leave now, but I should let Tanya go first. It would be rude not to. I should even open the door for her.

  "So, you walking home now?"

  "Yes ... no ... I mean, I have to get something from my locker first."

  "Okay, no problem. I'll see you Monday then."

  She opens the door as I turn the other way, heading back to my locker.

  CHAPTER 15

  When I say I hate having dinner with my parents, I don't mean only because they stare at me and talk while they're eating and put me on the spot with questions. I can stand all that. But sometimes, like tonight, Dad tells us how his day is instead of just asking about mine.

  "It was a bad one this morning." He shakes his head with his lips squeezed shut—his saddest look. I wonder whether he practices being sad for when he's getting the dead person's relatives to hand over thousands of dollars for a fancy coffin. It seems to me that you can't have a sunny kind of personality and be a funeral director. I don't know, though, whether Dad started out a gloomy person or became one because of dealing with corpses every day.

  He passes the bowl of asparagus. There are only three stalks left. Dad just took four pieces himself. I think he did that on purpose. I set the asparagus next to me so I don't have to deal with it right away. Mom bites into her slab of steak. I spear a cherry tomato and aim it at my mouth.

  "It was a young girl, not much older than you, Devon."

  "What happened to her?" Mom always asks this, and I don't know why. Aren't moms supposed to say, "That's not a good topic for the dinner table, dear." Or, "We're all very interested in your work, but how about telling us a little later so we don't hurl while listening to you?"

  Dad leans back on the legs of his chair, something he tells me not to do. "She was driving a little red Camaro, and she slid into the opposite lane on Route 2 out by Lexington where the divider ends. Just about lost her head."

  I gag on the tomato and start coughing so hard I have to spit the gooey red mess into my white linen napkin. "God, Dad, do you have to gross everybody out?"

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means we shouldn't have to hear about decapitation while we're eating."

  He eats a few green beans, chewing slowly, and I think that maybe for the first time in my life I've won an argument with him. But then he takes a sip of ice water and clears his throat. "Taking care of people like this happens to be my work. That's what most families talk about over dinner—their day at work or school. Do you think it's gross the way your father makes a living?"

  "Yeah, I do." Why would I say that? Sometimes my mouth opens and whatever's in my brain just falls out.

  Dad stands up and reaches across the table. He takes my plate loaded with little red potatoes and cherry tomatoes and baby carrots baked in brown sugar the way I like them. He picks up my bread plate with the Crescent roll I've fixed with a thin layer of grape jelly. He takes my bowl of applesauce I've sprinkled with cinnamon.

  "I guess you won't be wanting to eat any of this then, will you, since it all comes from my disgusting job?"

  Mom makes money, too, and she does the shopping. But I know better than to say that. I hold my lips tight to make sure nothing stupid pops out.

  That isn't the end of it. On Saturday morning Dad comes into my bedroom and announces that it's about time I see exactly how he earns a living. Even barely awake I can see the joke—"You make a living embalming people?"

  "That's right, and today you're going to come see how I do it."

  I sit up in bed. The clock says 9:25. "I'll pass."

  He yanks the blankets off me. "No, you're not passing. I want you to see up close the kind of work I do."

  "Whoa, Dad, you got the wrong son for that."

  "Aren't you turning sixteen in a few months?"

  "So?"

  "Aren't you hoping to start driving right away?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, if you're planning to drive one of our cars in the next ... oh, let's say year or so, you'll be outside waiting for me in five minutes."

  I think it's unfair that a parent can threaten to take something away that far in the future, but there's nothing I can do about it. It's not like I can vote Dad out of office. "Okay, I'll go, but I need fifteen minutes to get ready, at least."

  "I could wake up and be out of the door in two minutes when I was your age. I used to jog two miles every morning before breakfast, rain or shine."

  There's a concept—getting out of bed to jog every day. It's hard to believe that Dad and I have any of the same blood running in our veins.

  "Mercy Hospital," the sign says. Personally, if I was being rushed in an ambulance to an emergency room, I'd rather see "Expert Doctors' Hospital" on the sign out front, or "Don't You Worry Everything's Going to Be Fine Hospital." Mercy sounds like something you give to somebody dying, like putting them out of their misery with a pillow over their face.

  Dad drives us past the main entrance and turns into a narrow driveway marked "Service Only." He weaves past huge green Dumpsters and a broken-down ambulance and mounds of construction dirt. Then he backs the van up tight to an unmarked black door.

  We get out, but instead of going in the door, Dad starts off around the building. I have to run a little to catch up, and I wonder, what's the hurry? It's not like the body's going anywhere. I follow him through the main patient entrance, and we go down a long hallway. Dad waves to several people, like nurses and orderlies. He seems to know everyone, which surprises me. How did he meet so many people in the short time that we've lived here?

  At the pathology department he signs in, and the receptionist gives him a key tied to a crinkled cardboard square marked "Morgue." Then she nods at me. "Who's your helper today?"

  "My son—he's come to learn the business."

  "That's nice, a father-son operation."

  Right. Devon Brown, Junior Embalmer, who spends all day draining corpses of their blood and then dressing them up for viewing in their caskets. That sounds like me, all right.

  We walk past the elevator and take the stairs one flight down. Dad unlocks the outer door to the morgue and then pulls out a box of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. He gives a pair to me, and that calms me a little. I can do a lot of things with gloves on.

  He opens the refrigerated vault. I inhale the deepest breath of my life and follow him in. The cold hits me like I've stepped outside in winter without a jacket on. I like cold. Germs don't live long in it.

  There are a half-dozen stretchers in the room. On the closest one a white sheet is spread over a long, lumpy form. Dad pushes up the sheet, and I can see feet covered in plastic, like
a shrink-wrapped turkey at Christmas. Dad reaches for the tag hanging from the big toe. I lean over to read it with him—"Lawrence R. Keegan."

  "Who is he, Dad?"

  "He was a thirty-nine-year-old man who couldn't stop himself from drinking and driving. He ran over a little boy on a bike last night, and then he rammed himself into a telephone pole."

  "A telephone pole can kill you?"

  "Anything can kill you, Devon, if you hit it hard enough. All right, let's get going. Which end do you want?"

  "Which end of what?"

  He points at the body. "The legs are lighter, you take them."

  I wish Dad had made it clear beforehand that he wanted me to actually help, not just watch him work. I would definitely have stayed in bed, no matter how many years of driving it cost me.

  "Let's go, I don't want to spend all morning in a refrigerator."

  I slide my hands under the sheet. Dad counts to three and we lift together.

  "Imagine you're carrying a sack of potatoes. That's what I did in the beginning."

  I figure I have just about the best imagination of any kid I know, but pretending a human body is potatoes? Besides, how would I know what it's like to carry two hundred pounds of potatoes?

  Dad isn't making me watch him prepare the body. He said I could wait in the waiting room. So I'm leaning against the wall between the sofa and a large potted plant. The leaves are mostly yellow, and a few of them have fallen to the floor. It seems strange that he would keep a dying plant in his waiting room. Why not give his visitors something cheery to look at?

  I've been waiting an hour so far. I'm trying not to think about Mr. Keegan, who was a person yesterday—probably somebody's father—and now a corpse. Everybody who ever lived has ended up like him, or will someday. Eating four M&Ms every lunch isn't going to save me from becoming a corpse, too. Doing things in fours is stupid. I'm tired of it. I'm not a scared little kid anymore. I'm going to change.

  On the other hand ... there's always the other hand, isn't there? Just when you think you've got something important settled in your mind, the other hand pops up. For instance, maybe I was born to be obsessive about things—that's me, and how can I change me? In classics last week Mr. Green read us a quote from a Roman guy named Manilius. He said, "At birth our death is sealed, and our end consequent upon our beginning." If he was right, then there's no use trying to change. I might as well get used to the way I was born.