The Year of the Gadfly (25 page)

“Look, Jonah,” Stephanie said, “it's clearly none of my business, but there's something odd about the way she looks at you. I mean, it's intense. Really intense.”

My heart swelled. If Stephanie had noticed this, it could only mean that Hazel's feelings toward me were developing. And Stephanie, through no fault of her own, simply wasn't accustomed to Hazel's forthright manner. “Hazel's an intense person,” I said. “She's always been.”

“Okay, Jonah. Like I said, none of my business.”

And it wasn't. I was ecstatic over my new, adult relationship with Hazel. I felt liberated, free of my previous teenage angst. Though I once believed my superior intelligence would protect me from this Salinger-induced adolescent cliché, it had not. Angst is like the chicken pox—anyone under the age of twenty-five is susceptible. But as with chicken pox, once you've had your angst, you become more or less immune. How else could high school teachers do their jobs?

 

Only then Hazel disappeared, and the angst returned. I'd last seen her at game night, when she'd bested the entire science department in Settlers of Catan, quickly grabbing up every inch of vulnerable territory. After four days and no response to my texts and phone messages, I grew concerned and more than a little anxious. On Thanksgiving Day, I called again to hear the now-familiar recording:
This is Hazel. You've missed me.
The deep, embracing timbre of her voice convinced me that I had, in fact, missed her in some fundamental way. Still, I left her a message inviting her to join me for dinner.

I spent the day perusing
Discover
and
Scientific American,
hoping the pretty pictures would distract me. They didn't. I commenced pacing, but that didn't help, so I perused microscopes on eBay. I commenced pacing for a second time. I felt like one of those scientists who thought they'd discovered signs of life on a Martian meteorite that landed in Africa a few decades back. The meteorite turned out to be an inert pile of intergalactic dust. And my relationship with Hazel? No signs of life there either.

At 6 p.m. I grabbed two bottles of red wine and set out for Thanksgiving dinner. Rick Rayburn, my department head, and his wife, Mary Ann, the school librarian, lived in a neighborhood of midsize houses with backyards just large enough for a small patio, a swing set, and a grill. Crayon drawings decorated the small, bright rooms, and the kitchen was stocked with the organic equivalents of Kraft and Chef Boyardee.

The Rayburns liked to host faculty potlucks. My colleagues in the science department would drink beer and eat homemade guacamole while children ran around. I always left those evenings in awe of the Rayburns: how they negotiated the chaos of raising three kids and built a home infused with so much simple joy that even the inevitable disappointments served only to enrich the fabric of their family life.

“Vladimir Ilyich!” I said when Rick Rayburn opened the door. He was a decade my senior, and tall with receding dark curly hair. The combination of his beard and wire-rimmed glasses made him look like a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

“Rasputin!” Rayburn shook my hand. “But where's your plus one?” He peered outside.

“She couldn't make it.” I handed him the wine and Rayburn took it with a sympathetic smile. He'd invited me over because he knew I had nowhere else to go, and though I'd declined the invitation about four times, he'd finally worn me down. “Just come and eat,” he'd said. “And stop making things awkward for yourself.”

I'd just walked inside the house when I felt a tug at my pant leg. Staring up at me with wide brown eyes was Oliver, age six, his hair exactly like his father's must have been before it started falling out.

“The kid remembers you from the last potluck,” Rayburn said. “I think you're his favorite adult.”

I put my hand out and Oliver slapped me five. Strangely enough, I'm a little-kid magnet. It takes very little—a pinch of melodrama and a funny face—to make children laugh. Even better, you can do the same joke over and over again and they'll never get bored. This technique often causes any adults in the room to wander elsewhere. Perfect for me, because I am then freed from endless annoying conversations about subjects I have no interest in discussing.

“So what's shakin', bacon?” I blubbered my lips and Oliver burst into convulsions. Rayburn shook his head. “Don't drive Jonah crazy,” he said. At which point I made the blubbering sound again and Oliver went ecstatic.

I followed Rayburn through the warm, fragrant house. In the kitchen, Mary Ann Rayburn appeared to have spoons swirling in half a dozen pots, like that circus act where the man spins china plates on chopsticks.

“Jonah!” She kissed me on the cheek. She was a diminutive woman with a dark brown ponytail and what my mother calls yoga arms. “My favorite mad scientist! Oops.” Mary Ann grabbed a napkin and pushed it against my face. “Lipstick. Thirty-five and I'm already turning into my mother.”

“My grandmother always licks her finger.” I licked mine and moved it menacingly toward Oliver, who broke into convulsions a third time.

“Okay, everybody out,” Mary Ann ordered. “Ricky, get Jonah something to drink.”

“Don't you need help?” I asked.

“I'm afraid you'll make something explode.” She smiled. “Now out!”

Every time I came here, I had the same argument with myself. It was unwise of me to romanticize this life. Who knew whether Rayburn was really content or had ambitions much higher than high school teacher and father of three.

Oliver pulled me into the family room, where his siblings, Corey, eight, and Eliza, ten, played Connect Four on the carpet. I was introduced to the McCaffrey family, including Peter McCaffrey, a junior in my advising group. I flashed Rayburn a look. “I didn't tell you?” he said jovially. “Pete here is Mary Ann's nephew.” Rayburn liked playing little tricks. He was relishing this. Peter looked sheepish. He was studious and polite, but painfully shy. I'd been trying to get him to join the Academic League for weeks now, convinced I could help him overcome his timidity. So far, I'd had little success. The other thing I knew about McCaffrey was that he had a hopeless crush on Iris Dupont. It must have been some kind of “opposites attract” thing. She was so tiny, and he was tall as a knobby pine—all knees and elbows. It was an unlikely pairing, but I thought they'd be good for each other. Iris needed someone her age who appreciated her, and Peter needed someone to draw him out of his shell. Earlier in the year, I'd encouraged Peter to talk to Iris. Start by saying hello, I'd instructed, and he'd looked at me like I'd asked him to perform open-heart surgery.

 

Halfway through dinner and after the kids had abandoned their plates, the conversation turned to school, and from there it was only a short jaunt into a discussion of what Rayburn had dubbed “the troubles.” I told him we weren't dealing with the IRA. He said I was underestimating the situation.

“Rick, maybe we shouldn't . . .” Mary Ann nodded at Peter.

We all looked at Peter, his fork poised in midair.

“It's okay, Aunt Mary Ann.” It was the first thing he'd said since we all sat down.

Rayburn turned to me. “We're all family and friends here tonight. I say scrap the teacher-student designations for a little while and let's just be ourselves.” He took a sip of wine. “Jonah, for the evening why don't you think of Peter like . . .” He paused, turning his glass on the table. “Like your little brother.”

It was strange to think of myself as an older sibling. Justin was five minutes and twenty seconds older than me. He quickly grew to be more physically mature and, at the end of his life, was significantly farther along with his love life, not a small point of contention between us.

“Do you have any siblings who would be offended by making Pete here family?” Rayburn added.

“I'm an only child,” I said without thinking. It seemed Hazel was exerting some invisible force over me. And yet for some reason the lie felt right, almost like a relief. “You mind being my little brother for the night?” I asked. Peter returned an uncomfortable smile.

“So, Prisom's Party,” Rayburn said, and took a bite of sweet potatoes. “Mary, this is so good.”

Mary Ann turned to me. “He knows I don't like talking about this stuff, but he fancies himself an amateur detective. He would just love to be the one to find these kids and turn them in. Reap all the glory.”

“I'm a physics teacher,” Rick protested. “I've got to take my glory where I can get it.” He took a rather large sip of his wine, and I wondered if buried in this remark was an actual note of dissatisfaction.

“Here's the question,” Bill McCaffrey said, scratching at his mustache. It was the most amazing accessory I'd ever seen adorning a man's upper lip: thick, black, and bristly. “Is it so important to assert our authority that we can't let these students operate under the radar and do some good for the school?”

Peter's older sister, Jamie, home from college, leaned over to me and whispered, “My dad was about five years too young for the Dow protests at Wisconsin, and he's been trying to make up for it ever since. He calls Pete and me ‘Generation A.'”

“Generation Apathy,” Bill McCaffrey clarified. Apparently he'd heard Jamie. “My kids don't care about changing the world.” He glanced at his son pushing mashed potatoes around his plate. “Let me ask again: What harm has this Prisom's Party really done?”

“Mary, tell him the rumors—” But Rayburn was interrupted by a loud crash from upstairs, followed by silence, followed by a child screaming. Mary Ann slid her chair back.

“Talk about entrenched gender roles,” Bill McCaffrey said, spooning string beans onto his plate. “Jesus, Rick, don't you do
any
of the cooking or childrearing?”

Rayburn shook his head, but he pushed his chair back and followed his wife upstairs. This left me alone with the McCaffreys, and Bill didn't miss a beat. “You know anything about the rumors?” He leaned toward me on his elbows. His mustache twitched.

“No, sorry.”

“Ignore him, Jonah,” Linda McCaffrey said.

“I heard you were quite the hell-raiser back in the day.”

“Bill!” Linda McCaffrey looked up from the asparagus spears she'd been slicing into ever-smaller sections. For the first time Peter was showing interest in the conversation.

“I was pretty tame,” I said, and happened to catch Peter's eye. He blinked like he hadn't heard me.

Rick and Mary Ann returned. “Nuclear war averted,” Rayburn said, reclaiming his seat.

“We were just discussing Mr. Kaplan's illustrious history at the school,” Bill McCaffrey said. “Or should we say notorious history!” He leaned over and nudged my arm.

Rayburn sipped his wine and shook his head. “Kaplan's straight as an arrow,” he said, winking at me. I noticed that Peter had perked up again. He looked like he might ask me something, but before he could, Rayburn plunged ahead. “Back to your story, my darling wife.”

“Well, I've heard a few things about blackmail.”

There was a loud clatter. Peter had dropped a spoonful of cranberry sauce on the table, and the spoon fell into his lap. He looked mortified and started wiping at the mess.

“Oh, honey.” Mary Ann took the napkin from him. “There's some club soda in the fridge. Bring it back and I'll help you with the stain.” Peter slunk into the kitchen.

“Who's blackmailing whom about what?” Bill McCaffrey said. This guy was insufferable.

“Well, you all remember Matt Sheridan, of course.” Mary Ann turned to me. “Matt was a senior, full load of APs, a soccer star, president of half a dozen clubs, and last year he was elected president of the Community Council.”

“Impressive,” I said.

“But you know kids like Sheridan,” Rayburn said. “Fool's gold.”

Mary Ann shook her head. “Did you know my husband has categories for all the students? ‘Fool's gold' means Sheridan looked fantastic on the outside—”

“But he was empty on the inside,” Rayburn cut in. “He was a jerk, Jonah. Arrogant, entitled, Abercrombie good looks. I'm sure you've figured out that to get elected to the Community Council, you especially have to
look
like leadership material.”

“Anyway,” Mary Ann continued, “one day last year toward the end of first semester, somebody destroyed the Prisom Artifacts.”

The Prisom Artifacts was a collection of memorabilia preserved from the early days of the school: time-glazed portraits of Mariana, Charles, and Henry Prisom; sepia photographs of the school's first class, twenty-five stern-eyed boys, their hair slicked, their mouths unsmiling; the Prisom cup, a crystal goblet engraved with the school's motto—
Brotherhood, Truth, and Equality for All
—that was symbolically bestowed upon the head of the Community Council each year; and an original copy of the Community Code booklet, bearing Charles Prisom's signature. These were kept in a glass display case in the lobby. Or had been. Only now did I realize that the display was gone.

“The case was toppled, the goblet smashed, the pictures shredded to pieces, and the Community Code booklet burned.” Mary Ann shook her head. “Then a few days later a
Devil's Advocate
appeared with photographs of Matt Sheridan trashing the stuff.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What happened?”

“We think Sheridan just snapped. Too much pressure, I guess. He left school and took the rest of the year off. We heard he had a breakdown. I think he's now at the Melville School.”

“Talk about a downgrade,” Bill McCaffrey said. I looked at Bill and his mustache, and my chest welled with antipathy. With a father like that, no wonder Peter walked around like he was constantly ducking for cover.