A Hole in Juan (22 page)

“He’s just . . . he’s a typical moody teenager. But even so, and I understand that, still—how could I not worry? He’s been so irritable this week, so . . . different! And my husband’s in Asia till tomorrow and Lucy’s sick, and it’s like watching a stranger sit down and take your kid’s place.”

I felt great sympathy for her, but I also knew that moody didn’t cover split lips and black eyes. Moody didn’t explain stolen exams, acid in briefcases, petty pilfering, vandalism, or erudite threats for the science teacher.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

She shook her head. “I was initially afraid, ever since—I mean, he did what we thought was right, his father and I. And Seth, of course. We talked it through, but even so, you read about hideous things happening, brutality—but I thought not here.

This is Philadelphia! And we were right. Wilson was great. The other boys on the teams were great. A big nonevent, he said. We shouldn’t have been so worried. Nobody—it would never happen there, at his school where he has such good friends, and of course his teammates.

“My husband’s more cynical. He thinks that if Seth wasn’t such a fine athlete, maybe his teammates wouldn’t be so accepting. But that’s just how my husband thinks.”

From upstairs, a wail, and a call, “Mama!”

She stood and went to the bottom of the stairs. “In a minute, Lucy. I’ll be right there.”

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I stood up, too. “This is a bad time,” I said. “But I’m confused. Are we talking about this week?”

“No!” She shook her head, had one hand clasped in the other, in position to start wringing. “No. That was two
months
ago—August, and
nothing happened.
Two months ago is ancient history in a teenager’s life. That’s why none of this makes sense.

Why would it take two months to matter? If that’s it at all. Besides, Wilson’s been his friend, his ally through all of this, and Seth’s helped Wilson with his homework for three years now.

Why hurt each other this much?”

I thought I knew what she was saying and not saying, and what she assumed I understood, but I needed to be certain.

Another wail, from upstairs.

“So sorry. But the doctor—they were bad breaks and I have to—I thought we’d be able to talk, but—I hate to say this but could you let yourself out?”

“Of course, but please, one last thing. This nonevent two months ago—I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

She had half-turned, had her foot on the first riser, and she swiveled her torso to look at me. She looked surprised by my words. “Seth came out in August. Told his friends—his close friends—that he was gay. He wasn’t going to keep it a secret anymore. You didn’t know?”

I shook my head. Not that I needed to know a student’s sexual orientation, but it was one more thing I hadn’t known in a long list this week.

She walked up another step, then turned around and called out to me as I moved toward the front entry. “But the point is, that didn’t create any problems,” she said. “So don’t mix it up with whatever is going on this week. Do you understand?”

I nodded, though that was far from the truth.

Seventeen

Iwas positive that I’d already put in more than five days at school. Surely we were into the weekend. But the calendar said Friday. Mackenzie verified it and even Pip, awake and alert this particular morning, agreed that it was still the same interminable week.

I guess it was T.G.I.F., but I would have been happier with T.G.I. Saturday.

“What awakens you before noon?” I asked Pip as I set out three cereal bowls.

“No fair—I don’t sleep that late,” he said. “Besides, you’re not even here to see. Why’d you say that?”

“Amanda’s in a bad mood,” Mackenzie said. “She thinks somebody’s sneaking extra days into her week.”

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Pip considered the two of us before opting to answer my question. He ate his cornflakes and banana with much delibera-tion. He wasn’t slick at evasion yet, and it was obvious he was stalling, deciding how to answer me. “I’ve got some plans to hang out,” he finally said.

“Where?” Mackenzie and I asked in unison.

He looked startled. You could almost see him searching for an untrue response. “Maybe here,” he said with a painful lack of sincerity. “I like it here. Cool place you’ve got.”

“Got up early to go nowhere?”

“You don’t have to worry about me, you know. I’m not a kid.

There’s a lot of stuff on that list you gave me, places and stuff to see.”

I nodded. “Are you maybe hanging out with the girl you met yesterday?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Doesn’t she go to school?”

“Speaking of which . . .” Mackenzie nodded in the direction of the big schoolroom clock on the wall. “If you’re still planning to walk, which I hope, because I could use the car today.”

We were down to one shared car, C.K.’s ancient VW. My beloved burgundy ’65 Mustang had wheezed and creaked to impossibly expensive maintenance and replacement costs. The VW

was also geriatric, but better for our budget. One car made better sense, but also complicated logistics.

“She kind of goes,” Pip said.

I took a minute to remember what I’d asked. “What’s that mean? This girl kind of goes to school?” I carried my bowl to the sink, grabbed my jacket and briefcase and headed toward the door, and Pip hadn’t yet mustered up an answer. I paused to kiss Mackenzie good-bye and whisper, “Find out, okay? Who is this girl? Doesn’t sound good,” to wish Pip a good day, and to ask for call-ins about his whereabouts, and then I was out of there, all sorts of imagined Pip-responses playing in my head, none of them what I wanted to hear. The girl had dropped out of school GILLIAN ROBERTS

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precisely as had Pip. The girl was a decade older than Pip and went to school part-time. The girl was the female equivalent of Harriet’s Erroll, “kind of ” going to school forever. The girl had been on the prowl looking for an innocent bumpkin to snare for God knows what purpose . . .

I walked to school, again, still astounded by the Halloween decorative frenzy I passed. When I arrived, I cut into the alley behind the building and entered through the back door, where I was less likely to bump into early-bird students.

I love school when it’s wrapped in anticipatory silence. This is the time of day when anything seems possible, and the aroma of old walls and the generations of children who’ve inhabited them is bracing, invigorating. This is, in short, the ideal, lacking only the factor that makes things less than ideal—students, who tend not to understand or respect my fantasies of the educational process.

“Good morning!” Harriet sang out so brightly that I knew things were going well with Erroll. “Happy Mischief Day, and be sure to check your mailbox! You’ve got mail!” She chuckled.

Of late, I’d come to fear messages, but two out of three were innocuous. The good news was that Carol Parillo had recuper-ated. That was nice for her—and for Mackenzie and me, since we were off the hook now for chaperoning the party.

The bad but not surprising news was a message from Laurel Fremont, who’d phoned the office to thank me for my concern, and to say that Seth wouldn’t be in today. She requested that any homework assignment be e-mailed.

I couldn’t tell if the note was a polite brush-off, a way of saying stay away because everything’s taken care of—or not.

The third note was neutral, meaningless. All the folded paper said in large computer-printed letters was: friday.

The day of the week. Nothing frightening about that per se, but it nonetheless accelerated my heart rate.

“Shame Seth is sick,” Harriet said, “but something is certainly going around.”

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Something always was “going around” in the gigantic petri dish we call school, but we always reacted with surprise and amazement, as if the newest something was a rare anomaly.

“Even my Erroll,” Harriet said. I wanted to grab my hat—if I’d had one—and head for the hills, but I still hadn’t a clue where those hills were.

“He’s all sniffly, and aren’t men the biggest babies when they’re sick?”

I knew I was supposed to nod in a show of superior sisterly smugness. I knew from prior experience and from other women that lots of men became peculiar if they sneezed once, but the man with whom I co-existed was neither whiny nor infantile. So, torn between sisterhood and the truth, I resorted to my Harriet
hmmm.

As usual, she took it as agreement, and smiled. “Also—”

As if to save me from hearing any more about Erroll’s nasal disabilities, the door to the headmaster’s office opened, and Maurice Havermeyer himself emerged, skin flushed and eyes squinted in a furious scowl. “Are you aware of what is going on?”

Harriet looked so awestruck and fearful, I thought she was about to drop to her knees and bang her head on the floorboards.

But at that moment, he realized she was not alone. “Hah!” he shouted, wheeling and pointing at me. “Are
you
aware of what’s going on?”

“I try to be. I read the newspaper and—”

“Outside!” he said. “Right here!”

“What?” I felt the way a puppy must, sure by the master’s tone that I’d displeased him, but without a clue as to what I’d done, when I’d done it, or why what I’d done was so bad.

“You said it was a play!”

“Sir?”

“Right at our doorstep!”

I shook my head. “I came in the back door—only a minute or so—”

“The
front
doorstep! The one everyone in the world can see—and certainly will now, won’t they?”

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I looked around, though I don’t know why, unless I thought I’d developed super powers while I stood there, and I could now use my X-ray vision to see to the street and to whatever was driv-ing Maurice Havermeyer to the brink of insanity.

Didn’t work, so I looked to the window. This was an equally stupid move because the main office sided on a narrow alleyway between our building and the one next door. The only thing I saw through the blinds was the shadow of what I hoped was a prowling cat.

“How did this happen?” Havermeyer stormed. “Why didn’t somebody stop it? Look for yourself!” he shouted, motioning Harriet and me into his office. “And then tell me it’s a play. A play!”

“A game?” Harriet whispered.

“No—a
play.
With actors—a drama! Look for yourself.” He pointed toward his office. “You’ll see this is no
play
no matter how you mean the word.”

His sanctum must have had double-paned windows, because the room was muffled in silence even as I gazed onto an amazing sight. What looked like most of our student body was on the pavement, circling in a fairly organized loop and carrying signs.

In their midst, Cheryl Stevens addressed them and the world, a microphone to her mouth and her free arm punching the sky.

Several students had bright red tape across their mouths.

Others carried signs. Mostly, I saw the sides of the placards, but when students turned to speak to one another, I could catch the words, and I immediately saw antigone brigade on one.

“Oh,” I said. “
That
play.”

Another placard wobbled into sight reading, what happened to freedom of speech? and another had blood red letters saying, civil disobedience is sometimes required! That one was so large that the diminutive girl holding it tilted backward.

Any rebellion might have produced Havermeyer’s fit, but he was over-the-top because this insurrection was outside. In public.

With witnesses.

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A HOLE IN JUAN

Forget issues; forget meaning. Think
bad publicity.

The “drop-off and pickup only” zone in front of the school was occupied by a van with call letters on it. I was surprised a high school demonstration was newsworthy until I remembered that Cheryl’s father had some sort of operations job at a local net-work affiliate.

A familiar TV face pushed a microphone in front of a succession of students.

“It’s her fault,” Havermeyer growled. “That girl with the poem. Her words were a call to violence. Look what she’s done.”

“All Erroll has to hear about is kids taking to the streets in favor of violence,” Harriet said. “He’ll insist that I quit and find a safer job.”

Right. He’d hate to have his Sugar Mommy be a victim of violence and stop shelling out his tuition. “This is a peaceful demonstration,” I said. “There’s no violence.”

“Ring the bell,” Havermeyer said. “Harriet, ring the bell.”

“It isn’t time yet, Dr.—”

“This is an emergency—ring the bell.”

After a few minutes of readjusting settings, she did. We could see eyes roll toward the school, acknowledging the sound, but that was all. Their attention returned to the pavement.

“They heard it!” Havermeyer sputtered. “Why aren’t they listening if they’re such peaceful people and this is such a peaceful event?”

Because the party and the reporters were outside? Maybe, even, because they might believe in what they were doing?

The TV reporter approached a group, her microphone out to catch comments. She seemed of a different species than our students, at a more advanced evolutionary stage. She gleamed and sparkled and had none of the look of morning about her. The students had enthusiasm going for them, but that was about it.

Their skin lacked her expensive mother-of-pearl shine. Their lips didn’t beam out star-shaped gleams with each movement.

The reporter spoke to Cheryl, her eyes wide. I was impressed GILLIAN ROBERTS

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by how she could keep a photogenic smile while having a serious conversation about Cheryl’s blinded cousin. That was real talent.

No wonder she was paid the big bucks.

Cheryl answered with much less panache, but great fervor.

While I was enjoying what felt like a Technicolor silent film, Louis Applegate came “onscreen.” He took in the entire scene, his slow boil visible as his face warmed from its normal pallor to pink to the color of decaying meat. He looked around, and then saw Cheryl, whose back had been to him. His mouth curled, and only because students in front of him turned around did I realize that he was speaking or perhaps even shouting. His lips formed the same pattern over and over.