Adverbs (4 page)

T
he sign in the teachers’ lounge said
YOUR MOTHER DOES NOT WORK HERE
, presumably referring to cleanliness. At the word
lounge
Helena had imagined a dark, lovely place, with elegant cocktails and drapery, perhaps an old black-and-white movie on a screen without sound. Instead this was a room with some chairs in it and things taped on the walls. Love is like this, plenty of places to sit but an overall feeling that the room needs a good uptight scrubbing until everything that mentions your mother has been washed away. “I imagine you don’t have a teachers’ lounge in Britain,” said Andrea, Helena’s supervisor.

“We do not,” Helena said, moving one of the chairs.

Andrea moved it back. “I imagine you’ll enjoy this job,” she said. “I imagine you have a lot to teach them. We’re giving you afternoons and mornings. In between you can be here, or outside if you’re a smoker.”

“I’m a smoker,” Helena said. It was true. She was from Britain originally and had published a novel entitled
Glee Club
. This had led to a position in a creative expression program in a private school, although
led
was not the right word for how she ended up here, and
gig
was sometimes what she called it. The answer was money, which had a particular place in Helena’s love story. She
and her husband needed to buy things pretty much on a regular basis. This teaching job did not pay a lot of money, because, let’s face it, nobody gives a flying fuck about education, but it was a temporary position. Helena had been told it would last until the money ran out. From Helena’s experience, she would say that the money was going to run out in about nine days.

“It’s a temporary position, like I told you,” said Andrea, who had said no such thing. “Pretty much what happens is, you facilitate the creative expression part. You’re a creative expression facilitator. Get it?”

Andrea was an ex-girlfriend of Helena’s husband, so she said “Get it?” like one might say, “The same man has seen both of us naked, and prefers you, bitch.”

“Of course I get it,” Helena said, but she sighed. Things like this had not happened to her in England. She could not explain the difference, perhaps because there wasn’t one. Certainly England had castles, but Helena had not lived in them, although memories of her British life had become more and more glamorous the longer she hung out at hideous places like this.

“The first thing is, a field trip where the children will see what’s-its on migration. Magpies. It’s sponsored by the Men’s Organization for Magpie Migration for Youth, who are donating their services for free. That’ll take place tomorrow, unless the volcano erupts.” This was a San Francisco joke due to some rumors of a volcano lurking underneath the city. They had just discovered it, a volcano that had gone unnoticed but was now given official membership in the geological phenomenon known as the Ring of Fire. It was one of those news stories that made everyone giggle but
might also be true. It was like love in that way: Look at this! What’s going to happen here? “Unless the volcano erupts” became a joke, like “See you Friday, unless the volcano erupts,” or “I’ll love you forever, unless the volcano erupts.”

“So tomorrow I take them to see birds?” Helena said, thinking of what to wear.

“But today,” Andrea said, “you do a lesson on birds. Magpies in particular. Do you know anything about magpies?”

When my mother was young she went to Thanksgiving at a friend’s house and asked her friend’s mother what she could do to help. “You can make a butter bird,” the mother said to my mother, and handed her two small paddles and a mound of butter. A butter bird is, butter shaped into the shape of a decorative bird, but the point is, why is there cruelty? Why do people ask other people to do impossible things? Why behave this way? Why is there mean, when there are better things than mean, love particularly? “Oh, I know everything about all kinds of birds,” Helena said, like it might be true. “At university I studied ornithology before switching to poetry.”

“In America,” said cruel Andrea, “we don’t say
at university
. We say
in college
. Do you have information about magpies specifically?”

“I know a thing or two about magpies,” Helena said helplessly. “A thing or two.”

“Then I’ll keep all the brochures the Men’s Organization sent me,” Andrea said, standing up smug and skinny and smug. “We’re combining both grades, so it’ll be fifty kids, in one hour from now. You can’t smoke in here.”

“I just like to keep a cigarette in my hand,” Helena said, putting it back in the pack. “It helps me think. Tell me, what happened to the last woman who had this job?”

“She did a unit on idiomatic expressions that went way over the kids’ heads,” Andrea said, “so I fired her.”

The door shut and Helena was alone in the lounge, wishing it were legal to smoke so she could light a cigarette and put it in her eye. Instead she ran to the school library where there was a miracle:
The Magpies: The Ecology and Behaviour of Black-billed and Yellow-billed Magpies
, by Tim Birkhead with illustrations by David Quinn, T & AD Poyser Publishers, London, England, first printing. By the time the hour passed away Helena had a list of interesting facts which she said out loud, and when Andrea came to check on her the fifty children were silent and interested, working hard on a creative expression exercise. “Attractive, artful, and aggressive are all terms which have been used to describe magpies, and they are all accurate,” is the first sentence in
The Magpies: The Ecology and Behaviour of Black-billed and Yellow-billed Magpies
, and Helena told them they could write a story which was either attractive, artful, or aggressive, their choice.

“That worked,” Andrea admitted, giving Helena a shiny smile as the students filed out of the room. “Of course, it was probably your accent. The kids love foreign accents like that.”

“That would explain America’s rabid interest in audio recordings of Winston Churchill’s speeches,” Helena said, but Andrea was telling her to watch her purse.

“Watch my purse,” Andrea said, “while I get your paperwork. I’m afraid you won’t get your money for twelve weeks.”

“Okay,” Helena said, but when Andrea left the room she
opened the purse and found the wallet. There was a ridiculous amount of cash money and she took all of it. It was gone and in Helena’s pocket long before Andrea returned with a plastic cup.

“We have to test you for drugs, is how we do it in America,” Andrea said. “You have to pee in this.”

On the way home Helena bought a magnum of very expensive champagne from a liquor-store guy who flirted outrageously with her. She flirted back and drank most of it on the way, the bottle as heavy as a pair of twins. “How did you drink all that without peeing?” her husband said, when she walked in the door.

“Oh, I peed,” Helena said. “Don’t worry about that.”

“Everyone I’ve ever gone out with,” David said, “has drunk too much. Your mother told me you’d probably be tipsy when you got home from your first day of new work. You’re British but even all the Americans I dated, they all drank too much.”

“What are you saying?” Helena said. “That there’s no difference? With magpies even, there’s different what’s-it, between the British and here in California.
Plumage
.”

“What I’m saying,” David said kindly, “is that first thing tomorrow morning you have to take fifty children out to the hinterlands to look at black birds. Andrea says to meet at the place at eight sharp.”

“They have
yellow breasts
,” Helena said sourly, “and don’t tell me you don’t notice, David. Andrea’s got enormous ones.”

“It’s all the same to me,” David said, and then sighed very kindly, too. “I don’t think this conversation is going well,” he said. “You’re being a little aggressive.”

“You’re being a little
artful
,” Helena said, “and Andrea’s be
ing a little
attractive
. I can’t believe you talked to
my
mother and
your
ex-girlfriend while all the while I was buying you a bottle of expensive champagne.”

“Which you’ve drunk most of,” David said, “and I don’t like.”

“Look,” Helena said. “
Look
, I love you and I don’t know what to do. I’m worrying about money. That can’t be love.” She slunk down on a chair she had bought on a whim. It cost let’s say three million dollars. Her mother told her that you can’t live on love, but Helena could not find anything else to live on. This is love and its trouble. You can earn it but it may not come for twelve more weeks, so you take it from other people and buy gifts for your lover he does not like and you drink most of. You take it to live on and you worry there’s never enough. Helena could not stand this line of reasoning, but the trouble was, not standing this line of reasoning didn’t pay anything either.

“I love you, too,” David said, and took the bottle.

“I want you to love me in particular,” Helena said. “I’m not the same as an American. I’m my own species and I want you to be picky about it, if that’s the expression. How can it be all the same to you? What is it, did we move here so you could be with Andrea again?”

“
I’m
not with her,” David said. “She gave you a job.”

“Her and her jobs,” Helena said. “Just tell me you love me.”

“I love you,” David said, “but I’m not sure that’s enough for the likes of you.”

“Then tell me you love me and give me a hundred billion dollars,” she said, and David shook his head. In the morning
there was no field trip, but not because the volcano erupted. There was no field trip due to weather, if that’s the expression. Rain fell all over the windows and Helena had the class write letters to her mother and read them out loud for creative expression. Helena wrote a list of things that had to be in the letter, but they could be creative.

It was possible Margaret didn’t understand the assignment, but it didn’t matter because Andrea came in halfway and put an end to the entire program. “The money is gone,” she said, with a significant look in Helena’s dismayed direction. “You can throw those letters away, kids.”

Helena would never have called them kids, but maybe this was an American thing. “Don’t throw them away!” she cried. “I’m going to send those letters to my mother!”

The kids for some reason were cruel, and Helena was bombarded with balled-up letters and paper airplanes, like a terrorist action from a country not known for terror. “Look,” Andrea said, when they all had left. Helena looked where Andrea was looking, at some rubbage of letters on the floor. “I just mean,
look
,” Andrea said, picking up after her. “The expression
look
. The gig’s over. The money is gone. Get it?”

“My mother doesn’t work here,” Helena said, “and neither do I.”

Andrea sighed. “You’re fired,” she said, “I’m fired, we’re all fired without the money.”

“We’re part of the ring of fired,” Helena tried, and put an airplane in her purse. “Like the song. I fell into a something ring of fire. Johnny Money.”

“
Burning
,” Andrea said. “
Cash
.”

“
Aggressive
,” Helena said. “
Artful
.” This was the creative expression part, the part they were going to pay her for. What was the third word? She felt fat. “Money,” she said, and looked out the window. The rain was spread hard all over like an ocean of cheap wine, wet and seasonal, and this was like love too. We
love someone in particular, but without money it’s all the same to us; we’re in despair. Without money we can stand next to someone else’s girlfriend instead, for all the love it brings. This wasn’t enough for the likes of Helena, and every word of the love she was losing was sadder as she said it. Every word got sadder, every letter nothing in her purse. “Money,” she said again. “Money money money money money money money money.”

G
olfing today I beheaded a magpie. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Some kind of bird, anyway—grant me this—midair in the curve of the ball I hit. It fell. I walked across the lawn wondering what it was I had seen, some small glop of something fallen. It was a good swing and my eyesight is strong, but there are moments it doesn’t matter if you look or not. The magpie’s mouth was open like it couldn’t believe it either. I picked up the ball and looked at the stain of blood in a perfect square. I sort of nudged the body with my foot, rolled it over into a thicker part of the grass. It was all alone, the bird. And here I bury you, O thing who winged your way into my path. Only I know of your poor little murdered head.

I grew up in the sort of house with a pool out back, and a small shack to shower and change into clothes to swim in the pool, and my older sister. She had boyfriends. Usually I went someplace else when they came splashing in, because my older sister grabbed boyfriends in ways that meant no girls came around the house. I was fourteen. The girls were at the pool at the club, so I went to the pool at the club, and there they sat, the girls older than me, rows of legs, rows of sunglasses, rows of laughing together. They let me sit knowing I was staring at
them: a meager insult to my older sister, the only boy they could keep. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. I handed them the lotions. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. This was my summer, my two summers, my long weekends, all the sudden sunshine veering into town without reason, and all of it has abandoned me. I have loved none of those girls. I could not picture for you what any bathing suit revealed, although that’s where I must have been looking, fourteen years old, all that skin that crossed my path. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes.

What I remember is named Keith. By all means he was not the favorite because my older sister had no favorites. Anybody could hand her snitched rum in the good glasses while she lay out and waited. By agreement, on these rare afternoons without the club I was changing in the shack and then would swim alone at the deeper end, while the boyfriend would stray at the shallow where my older sister dangled herself, and cup handfuls of the pool and let them run down her legs until dusk, while I treaded the surface of nine feet of water and pulled myself out on the shaky ladder when my skin couldn’t wrinkle any longer. Four steps on the ladder, three steps on the ladder, five steps, I could not tell you now. That ladder has abandoned me, some maybe moment when I could have pulled myself out. That was the last time, when I emerged myself out of the pool and went to the shack to change forever, the moment before I fell, if fallen is what I am feeling, if fallen is what I am.

Show me the man who would not love the man who stepped out of the shower and put on his briefs, because I would love
that man too. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Soaking wet the shoulders, the hair spiked with water, pushed back with his hand which had a hippie ring on it of thick pewter, silver, some girlfriend gift, some souvenir of a place he went before he walked into my path forever once. Hair the color of the hills surrounding the club when the droughts hit, but nothing would get me to the club again. His breathing chest rising carelessly from the rest of him, but the desire here like nothing I can type: grant me this. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Five years older, arms from the shoulders with the careless towel hiding nothing, the chest swelled and flat with impressing my sister, hair I had yet to grow trailing toward me like warm smoke from someone’s mouth. Down to the legs, down to the penis, thick with sitting all day near something he wanted but showered calm, never something I had seen before. Oh, certainly: in locker rooms, textbook something, but to no avail. Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. There was no one I loved before Keith and his arms, his face scarcely glancing at me, the thin line of not smiling as he shook off water without fear. Where do they come from who can do that, step out wet and share a small nude space with someone’s brother, cup his own penis for nothing, sit on the redwood bench and dry his feet where I would never walk, wreck my life like a pop song can wreck your brain? At fourteen I couldn’t tell you “swoon” and now I cannot remember any love but the swoon of him until he picked through the scrabble of his clothes and stepped into his underwear, and there was that little stumble into my path. He nudged me on the spot on the side of myself below my armpit oh my God. He nudged me and I oc
curred to him, and Keith, Keith, Keith looked up and said it, said the thing I heard myself say right now as the bird did its last thing and got slain.

“Hey.”

The rum on his breath and then the blue shirt ate his chest and he zipped up and he walked out carrying his shoes away from me like I was fired. Briefly that door swung open and briefly that door closed. There was a song playing from a portable thing my sister must have owned, or maybe blaring through the open windows into the air. The song is “Come and Get My Heart” by The L Club, from their first album
Introducing The L Club
on L Club Records, and Keith put his briefs on during the part of the second verse that goes “Yes yes yes, oh baby yes,” while the bass line gurgles a thing I could recite note for note. It got louder as the shack door opened and then quieter as he went home, but I never got his tune out of my little head. Never never saw him again. If I called my older sister she would say, “Keith who, and why are you calling?” My wife would say the same thing, like the chorus of a stupid song. It is only on mornings like this, the birds just out living life, that out of view, privately, briefly, you can lose your head. All alone, unwitnessed, there is no one else to believe it, the way paths cross in the sun. Love is this sudden crash in your path, quick and to the point, and nearly always it leaves someone slain on the green. I killed the bird and I never saw Keith again and so I am alone this morning with blood on my shoe.

You won’t believe how I love this guy. I can’t believe it either. Is it possible to love someone forever but not think
of him for years? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Is it possible to lose someone who only stepped in front of you once in a towel? Yes yes yes, oh baby yes. Grant me this, this brief murdered moment, and then I will bury it sadly and go on with my game.