Authors: Barry Lyga
"I'll get you. Don't worry."
He hesitates again; he wants to accept the offer, but some polite part of him (welling up from a DNA source long recessive in the Lorenz genotype, but active in Zik) feels like he should decline. I don't give him a chance to act on his better instincts—I inch the car forward enough to knock him out of it, then lean over and close the door. He hops in the rain for a second, keeps his balance, then flips me off with a grin as he dashes toward the house.
All's right in the world.
I was hoping for some peace and quiet at home so that I could gather my thoughts and assemble choice phrases for my diatribe on the injustice of my latest suspension, but strangely enough Mom and Dad's cars are both in the driveway when I pull up.
Inside, I hear voices—Mom is upset, Dad is calm. Can't quite make out what they're talking about. The usual scenario.
My mother seems like those moms you see on the commercials—the ones who are cool and collected, who launch flotillas of children from battleship-size SUVs and have a ready jug of sweetened fruit punch on deck at all times. She works as a research assistant to one of the professors at Lake Eliot College. She lives for facts.
Dad, though, is one of those guys you see on the really bad sitcoms where you think,
How did he end up married to the hottie?
He works in marketing, and his slogan is "Convincing the world it's wrong, one product at a time." He deals in fantasy. And he wallows in it.
So it's not particularly out of the ordinary to hear Mom arguing and Dad grunting occasionally as the near-silent partner. What
is
weird is having them both home so early in the day.
They're in the kitchen as I come in. Mom standing by the counter, leaning on it for support, Dad at the table, the newspaper spread out before him.
"Who are you people and what have you done with my parents?" I demand, trying to break the ice. It hits me almost as the words leave my mouth: the school called them. Good old Roland decided to bend me over and screw me in advance.
Mom gives Dad a look that says, "Well?" but Dad just shrugs. Mom sighs. "We have to talk to you."
"I'm sure." Before I can launch into my defense, though, she goes on:
"This is very serious, Josh. This is difficult for us."
This can't be about my suspension. I've been suspended before.
Letters came from the Holy Trinity?
That
could be it. I didn't check the mail, so maybe one of them did and this is it. My future's been decided.
She starts to talk, then bites her lip. She's been crying. Her arms shake, bearing her weight as she leans into the counter. Mom's slim and ageless, but she looks a hundred right now.
"I can't believe this. I can't believe it."
"What, Mom? Tell me."
She nods and stands up straight, then takes my hand the way she used to when I was a kid. "We wanted you to hear it from us. That's why we came home. They're letting her out, Joshua. They're letting that woman out of prison." Mom's voice goes from reedy to boiling over by the time she hits the word "prison."
She doesn't have to tell me who she is
—tongue tracing a line of cool heat up—
and I blink, actually jerking my head at the power of it. Mom thinks I'm upset—she pulls at me, and I'm disoriented enough to let her do it. Suddenly I'm being hugged by my mom for the first time in years. It's a weird feeling; these days, I'm five inches taller than she is. I go to put my arms around her in return, but I end up crushing her to me, flattening her breasts against my chest, too aware of them, letting go—
Mom won't let go. I let her hug me, my arms lamely akimbo. She's sobbing.
"Mom, it's ... It's OK..." I look to Dad for help again. He's strumming his fingers on the table.
"She's a sick woman." He says it very calmly, and at first I think he means Mom.
She breaks away from me and screams, "Then they should leave her where she is!"
"She has to see a shrink twice a week," he says, again very calmly. I think of my sessions with Dr. Kennedy. I started out at twice a week, too. I wonder who Eve will be seeing. Wouldn't it be bizarre if it ended up being Dr. Kennedy? Could that even happen? Are there laws about that?
"She didn't even serve half her sentence!" Mom rants.
"Hell, these days we're lucky she was in that long." Dad taps his pen against his upper teeth for a second, turning into the Spermling for that brief moment. "You OK with this, Josh? You want to talk about it?"
Mom fixes Dad with a glare like something from an abstract comic book: hate vision, instead of heat vision.
"I'm seeing Dr. Kennedy tomorrow."
He nods. Mom seems mollified. A bit.
I assure them I'm all right and I do my best to keep my legs from shaking as I head to my room. Eve. Eve is getting
—do you like—
out of prison. When? I forgot to ask. I should have
—move over like that and—
asked them when, but I didn't even think to
—guuuhhh! Ohhhhhh!—
ask and the flickers are strobing as I make it to my room and collapse on the bed, as I flip back and forth between the present and multiple pasts, and I realize I never even told them I was suspended.
Dr. Kennedy:
Still worried about college?
J. Mendel:
Yeah. Still haven't heard from the Holy Trinity.
Kennedy:
You've already been accepted to Georgia Tech and College Park and Clemson, right?
Mendel:
Yeah, but those were my safety schools. MIT, Yale, and Stanford are the ones I'm really waiting on. It's like, every day I run to the mailbox, but ... nothing. It's tough because the money at those schools is, you know, a lot. My parents don't have a lot of money. I don't know how it's going to work out.
Kennedy:
It's natural that you're going to be anxious about this. I'm not going to tell you to relax about it, but I do want you to try to remember that three good schools have already accepted you and you can afford to attend each of them. Just remember that, OK?
Mendel:
Yeah.
Kennedy:
Now. Why did you hit your coach?
Mendel:
You ever do any sports, doc?
Kennedy:
I rowed crew in college.
Mendel:
Then you know—sometimes coaches just need to be hit.
Kennedy:
Be that as it may—
Mendel:
I love that expression.
Kennedy:
Glad to brighten your day. Be that as it may, was it worth a three-day suspension? Was it worth the possible legal ramifications?
Mendel:
There won't be any legal ramifications.
Kennedy:
For hitting a teacher? That seems pretty serious. They usually don't let things like that slide. Not these days.
Mendel:
If they make a big deal out of it, they'll have to take it to court, right? And if they take it to court, then I'll testify as to what he said. Believe me, he doesn't want that to get out.
Kennedy:
See, now we're getting somewhere. You hit him because he said something to you. You didn't mention that before.
Mendel:
You didn't ask.
Kennedy:
We've been doing this too long for games. You know damn well I asked why you hit him. So what did he say, Josh? What ticked you off?
Mendel:
We were running laps and the little prick was goading us on and when I ran past him, he dropped his voice so that I was the only one who could hear him, and he said, "Pick it up, Mendel! You never slept with me, so I ain't about to take it easy on you!"
Kennedy:
He said that? He actually said that to you? Well, you were right: He needed to be hit. What a piece of shit.
Mendel:
My sentiments exactly.
Kennedy:
You can't let this stand. You should report what he said.
Mendel:
Why bother? It'll just open up the whole thing again. And at least now I know what everyone's thinking. I have confirmation.
Kennedy:
Confirmation of what you've always expected?
Mendel:
Yeah.
Kennedy:
Do you think
everyone
at your school thinks like Coach Kaltenbach?
Mendel:
I don't know. I see the looks I get sometimes. Especially from the female teachers. It's like they're afraid of me. Like they have to avoid touching me or they'll catch the molester virus.
Kennedy:
You haven't molested anyone. You are the victim... the target of molestation.
Mendel:
Once you've been touched—
Kennedy:
You said the female teachers in particular. Why them?
Mendel:
I don't know.
Kennedy:
Until you punched out your coach, you've never harmed a teacher, right? So why would they be afraid of you?
Mendel:
Maybe they don't want to spend five years in jail like, y'know. Like...
Kennedy:
Like Mrs. Sherman. Hmm?
Mendel:
I guess.
Kennedy:
What do
you
have to do with that? She chose you, Josh. Not the other way around.
Mendel:
I guess.
Kennedy:
Do you think there's a teacher at the school who's interested in you? Sexually?
Mendel:
No! No.
Kennedy:
It's not uncommon for a sexual predator to latch on to a previous—
Mendel:
No. No one. It's me. They're afraid of me.
Kennedy:
That just doesn't make sense. I think you're projecting something onto them.
Mendel:
Oh, God. Psychobabble bullshit. You're not supposed to—
Kennedy:
I know, I broke the rule. Here's a dollar. But look, clearly there's still some residual worry about Mrs. Sherman and about what she did. It's perfectly natural for you to fear the same reaction from women in similar positions. Are any of these teachers young? Attractive?
Mendel:
Every school's got at least one like that. You're not listening to me. But I appreciate the buck.
Kennedy:
Josh, don't be obtuse. I know how bright you are. Think about it: What are the odds you're so concerned about this just as Mrs. Sherman is being released from prison? How do you feel about that? Scared? It's OK to be scared.
Mendel:
I'm not scared.
Kennedy:
There's already a protective order in place. She's not allowed within a hundred yards of you.
Mendel:
Why? What's she going to do to me? I'm not twelve anymore. I'm six-one. I outweigh her by a hundred pounds. I could—
Kennedy:
What? What could you do? Hurt her? Is that it? Did you want to hit her? Is that why you hit your coach? He was there and she wasn't.
Mendel:
No. I don't want to hurt her. I hit Kaltenbach because he was a fucking douchebag, OK?
Kennedy:
There's no doubt in my mind that Kaltenbach is a fucking douchebag. But you have every right to be angry at Evelyn Sherman. Every right to want to hurt her. I don't want you to
act
on that anger, but I want you to know that it's OK, that it's understandable.
Mendel:
[unintelligible]
Kennedy:
What's that?
Mendel:
I said—I said, she liked to be called "Eve." Not Evelyn. Eve.
After my session with Dr. Kennedy, I head over to South Brook High and wait in the parking lot for Zik, who comes running up from behind the building—the rain ended last night, so practice was outside. He spots me, waves.
"Watch the mud," I tell him when he opens the passenger-side door. I drive a crappy little Escort from before the Pre-cambrian era, but I like to keep it clean. Zik's cleats are caked with mud and grass. Kaltenbach's an idiot for having outdoor practice without waiting for the field to dry.
"No fear," Zik says. He leans against the car and pries off his shoes, then dumps them into a plastic bag. We've done this routine before.
"Dinner?" I ask him, once he's strapped in and ready for takeoff. It's a rhetorical question. Zik would be up for driving to the moon if I asked—it would keep him out of his house.
"Yeah, let's hit the Narc."
"I don't want to."
"Oh, come on, man! They've got the best fried chicken!"
The Narc is a big local grocery store off 54 on the north side of Brookdale. It's actually called "Nat's Market," but at some point in teen history that got shortened and corrupted to "the Narc." Har-har. Its defining characteristic is the ancient lunch counter tucked away in the back, open from noon to midnight. Throwback to a rumored time when such things were common. The only other time I've seen a lunch counter is in old footage of the civil rights movement.