Thanksgiving means Bryce’s mom in the kitchen all day, his dad watching football on TV, and dinner in the dining room instead of the kitchen. Bryce lays out the cloth napkins and nice silverware, place settings for six. Cam and his mom are coming this year. He’d heard a phone call inviting the Vanzants and secretly hoped they wouldn’t show; Bryce does his best to avoid sitting near them at church, or any interaction other than a wave on the street.
Cam’s mom brings two bottles of wine. “I didn’t know if you’re a red man or a white man,” she tells Bryce’s dad at the door.
“Yes,” he replies and they both laugh.
She wears a dress that shows off her curves. A sexy mom – one more way Cam has all the luck.
Wine flows in the den while Bryce’s mom finishes cooking. The boys put out the basket of Pillsbury rolls, and small plates with a square of orange Jell-O salad atop a lettuce leaf.
Claire emerges from her room when it’s time to sit down. The table is covered with enough food for a village: mashed potatoes, yams, a gravy boat, green bean casserole. Bryce’s dad carves the turkey with a knife, even though there’s a new electric meat slicer in a kitchen drawer. All join hands and their mom asks Claire to say grace.
“No, thanks,” Claire replies. Their mom gives her a quick look –
company’s here
– then does it herself.
Bryce’s dad pours the red wine, filling Cam and Bryce’s glasses a quarter way, putting half that amount into Claire’s.
“This is wonderful,” Cam’s mom says after one bite. “So nice to have a home cooked meal.”
“Better than a restaurant I hope,” Bryce’s mom replies. She’d been horrified to learn that Cam ate Thanksgiving dinner at a buffet the prior year. She’d been horrified to learn about the parenting at his house in general.
It’s mostly chewing mixed with adult small talk until the conversation comes around to college. “Where are you applying, Cameron?” Bryce’s dad asks.
“A few schools in California. UC Berkeley’s my first choice.”
“My father’s alma mater,” Cam’s mom says. “He’s really been working to keep his four-point-oh.”
Bryce’s dad again: “Any thought of what you’d like to study?”
“Not yet.”
“I think Bryce is in the same situation, but his grades won’t get him into UC Berkeley. Right, son?” His dad reaches over, grabs Bryce’s shoulder. “Nothing to worry about – I was the same way.” He pries a roll in half, inserts turkey and potatoes for an impromptu sandwich, shoves the whole thing in his mouth.
The wine runs out. More college chitchat, parents talking about the admission process back in their day, until Bryce’s mom says, “Things will be even more competitive when it’s Claire’s turn.”
They all look at Claire, who takes small bites of her Jell-O. Right then, the moment. As a veteran of meals with this family, Bryce feels the slight change in the air, like turning up the thermostat one degree.
Claire grunts something to her plate.
“Honey, don’t be that way with company here,” their mom tells her. Then, to the table, “I think she’s spooked about that movie on TV the other night.”
“Oh, the one about World War Three?” Cam’s mom asks. “I couldn’t handle even looking at a minute of it. Cameron’s taken quite an interest in world events lately, though. Even joined the school Peace Club.”
Bryce’s dad blurts “Great!” and a piece of chewed roll arcs from his mouth to his wine glass.
“She was required to watch the movie for class,” their mom replies. “Right?”
Claire, still not looking up: “You know the answer already. And why do you call me ‘she’ when I’m sitting right here?”
Bryce catches Cam’s eye, turns off his invisible hearing aid. The thermostat’s up more than one degree now.
“Claire Bear…” their dad starts in his compassionate voice.
She lets loose with some kind of sigh that turns into a scream halfway. Bryce wants more potatoes but doesn’t want to make a move. Cam and his mom eat in silence, no doubt thinking back fondly on the buffet, where no one freaks out during the meal.
Their mom’s voice is almost a whisper. “Honey, calm down please.”
“You guys sit here and talk about college and grades and it’s all bull – ” She catches herself in time. “All of this is bull!”
Their mom, not whispering anymore: “Excuse yourself and go to your room, young lady.” Claire leaves without a word, without even pushing her chair in. Their mom says, “I am so sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry,” Cam’s mom answers. “I’m sure we both remember what it was like to be a girl that age.”
After the guests leave, Bryce hears his own parents through the basement ceiling, their voices alternating with the sound of running water in the sink. He can picture the exact scene: his mom rinsing the plates while his dad sits and watches.
“Some of these teachers like to get the kids all riled up,” his dad says. “You know, fight the power.”
His mom says something about Dakota.
“But that was
months
ago, Barb.”
“I’m thinking it might be a good idea to have her talk to someone.”
“A shrink? Come on, it’s all a scam. We never had therapists when we were in school, and everyone turned out fine. Welcome to being a teenager – it’s tough.”
“I’m going to take a piece of pie up to her and see how she’s feeling.”
Bryce hears the hiss of the whipped cream can, then footsteps. His dad keeps talking to himself, but the words aren’t clear. Nothing is clear anymore.
Cameron plummets through the clouds. His glasses fly off. His hands flail wildly as if to grab hold of the sky.
He wakes up from this one with a yell, his stomach still hollowed-out from the fall. Hopefully that didn’t wake his mom up, or she’ll be in with her concerned parent act. He listens for her but hears only the shifting of the house.
Sleep won’t be back for a while, once again, so he goes downstairs to eat Thanksgiving leftovers from Bryce’s while reviewing college application requirements.
“What’s the disaster?” Claire asks from under her new front desk in Mr. Hagen’s class. He’d stopped in the middle of his lecture, checked his watch, and told them to get ready right before the alarm started screaming.
He says from the floor behind his own desk, “Only a theoretical one for now, Claire. We have to be prepared for anything, though.”
The alarm ceases, replaced by Principal Rodriguez’s voice, instructing teachers to lead their classes to the gymnasium and line up alphabetically.
She paces herself so she can walk next to Hagen among the backpacks heading for the exit. Isabel is a few heads ahead of them. “You really think everyone will stroll out all nice and calm when the missiles are flying?”
He laughs. “Hope springs eternal.”
“A drill like this is pointless,” someone says from behind. “The lucky ones will be the ones who die in the initial blast.” Claire glances back to see some guy in a suit, too young to be a teacher. A couple of Mexican kids bump past, running forward through the crowd; maybe they didn’t get the message that it’s all practice.
“What would you do if you knew this city was about to be a mushroom cloud?” Claire asks Hagen. She likes that he’ll always talk to her, unlike some teachers who pretend to be above it all; she likes the sound of his voice when he’s not shouting to be heard over the class.
“My duty as a state employee would be to make sure everyone got evacuated safely.”
“Fine. Now the real answer.”
He looks at her. “Get my board and my dog, drive as fast as I could down to the Gulf and try to catch a last big wave.” She thinks that might be the best plan she’s ever heard, for any event. She thinks about asking if she can come along,
when
not
if
– everyone knows what the world is heading for.
Up ahead, a bottleneck at the gym entrance. Too many bodies, too close together. Hagen’s there, then gone. Someone flat tires the back of her shoe. A shoulder jerks by. She tries to turn back but a camouflage shirt blocks her way.
Hard to breathe now. Not here. No.
No
.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Claire says to someone’s back.
She steps into the girls’ room, lean against the beige-tiled wall, starts to make a calm-down list. 31 Flavors: Mint Chip, Jamocha Almond Fudge, Pink Bubblegum, French Vanilla.
She jumps when the door swings open.
“Found you,” Ricky says. “Why are you crying?”
She smiles so hard it hurts.
He holds out his hand. “C’mon, we’re ditching this bullshit.” Outside the door, the sounds of stragglers, a walkie-talkie crackling. Ricky waits until the sounds pass by.
Then they’re running. Laughing. Empty halls. Empty desks inside every classroom. Like being inside a memory of school. Like they’re the last two people left. Claire could run forever.
Ricky stops inside one room long enough to swipe all the papers off the teacher’s desk onto the floor.
He leads her out the furthest exit. They make it to the edge of campus and hop the waist-high fence, then move behind the grove of trees. He pulls her close and kisses her. The first time. His chin is scratchy, his mouth tastes like cigarettes and grape soda; it’s open so wide, like he wants to swallow her whole.
Please do
.
Mr. Buckland hasn’t failed to live up to those early expectations in English class. He makes the books matter, makes reading
fun
. Even the cholos – who normally sit in the back of class in their white undershirts and dark blue-almost-black cuffed jeans, marking time until freedom – try hard for Mr. B.
He says things like, “‘Free from desire, you realize mystery. Caught in desire, you see only manifestations.’”
And
“‘We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.’”
And
“‘All streams flow to the sea because it is lower than they are. Humility gives it its power.’”
When people ask what he’s talking about, he simply smiles his smile.
Other facts about his past trickle out as the weeks by: he once lived in his van; he once jammed with the Grateful Dead; his stage name was Blackjack Stevie. Every Friday, he plays song requests, seated on the edge of his desk at the front of the room, fingers dancing across the strings like lightning. He seems to know every song anyone names, until Tara Gunther asks him to play some Olivia Newton-John. Someone launches a wadded up piece of paper at the side of her head.
Unspoken during all this is the obviously tragic ending to the Buckland story: that someone with a life like that ended up teaching high school.
Mr. B even provides Bryce with an easy excuse for getting out of a family bowling night. Seriously, a family bowling night! They’re finishing their tuna casserole dinner when his dad suddenly floats the bizarre idea and Claire says, “It’s a school night.”
“Oh, come on, Eclaire. Let’s live a little.”
Bryce could bowl and still finish his homework, but they don’t need to know that. Both parents are happy to hear of his dedication to academics, knowing that college application season is about to get underway. Claire silently spins noodles around on her fork,no doubt fuming that her brother got out of it before she could.
With the three of them gone, Bryce turns on
Magnum, P.I.
in the background and gets down to work. Or tries to. Tonight, instead of the usual ball troubles, his mind wanders from picturing Mr. B as a rocker, to imagining life in a band. Always on the road, women throwing themselves at you, adoring crowds.
Who would give that up to be a
teacher
?
Bryce stops to sharpen his pencil, and notices the daddy longlegs no longer up in the corner but on the floor, folded in on itself. Even being in the same room as Bryce is bad luck.
* * *
Two guest voices on the daily announcements:
“Hi, this is Garrett Lucas, co-president of Peace Club.”
“And this is Rosemary Vickers, the other co-president of Peace Club.”
Bryce has yet to see the face connected to that voice, but he imagines Cam getting a hard-on right about now.
They alternate sentences from there on. “Our club has written a letter to President Reagan encouraging him to work for the elimination of nuclear weapons. We want to get as many signatures as possible so he knows there are kids out there who care about preserving the world. We’re gonna have a table in the Commons starting tomorrow, so please come by. You can read a copy of the letter and hopefully sign it.”
This late-breaking news just in, Thunderbirds: Bryce Rollins has testicular cancer and may soon be a bald, one-balled freak. Or be dead. Stay tuned.
Poor Mr. Terry, who runs the computers class like a kindly old uncle, unaware he’s surrounded by a motley crew that would’ve been at home on a pirate ship back in the old days.
Today, Victor, one of Ricky Zaplin’s friends, somehow gets his screen to fill with a scrolling column of
FUKC
that he can’t stop. The laughter of those at nearby machines even penetrates the permanent haze around Mr. Terry’s head.
After school, Bryce stops at Tales of Wonder to pick up that week’s comics. He gets home to an empty house, so he’s able to sit on the toilet in peace, for as long as he wants, with the new issue of
Alpha Flight
. Reading a comic book on the toilet, with no one nagging you to hurry up… how can life get any better?
Dying on the toilet wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Elvis Presley supposedly died on the can. If Bryce had found out that was the method of his upcoming death, he’d be ok.
Afterwards, he discovers one of the UHF channels has replaced
Gilligan’s Island
in the 4:00 p.m. slot with
Star Trek
. It’s like God is giving him some good to make up for the big bad. He sits down with a pepperoni Hot Pocket, and as “The Man Trap” unfolds, with its transporters and phasers and salt vampire, Bryce forgets about everything for one glorious hour.
But after that hour, the tide retreats and he’s back to counting down the minutes of his life.