As Luck Would Have It (30 page)

Why is it that human beings take such pleasure in seeing others humiliated and embarrassed?  How could the unnecessary and intentional infliction of discomfort upon another serve any purpose and why does it seem that the need to do so is basically universal?  I’ve asked myself these questions so many times and I get no answers back; no rationalizations, no justifications, just the same perplexing reality that even though we all have been there and
k
now how bad it feels,
we keep right on doing it anyway.  Mr. Andrews, please come to the front of the class; you are our first sissy of the day.

Tell me how this exhibition will make us better drivers; please think of something that might clarify this indignity for me.  I turned red with shame, but didn’t move.  Most of my classmates were laughing, a few shouting out insults.  Joseph stared stone faced; his mouth twisting with concern, but nothing came out.  I was feeling a little sick just then and thought about my father for some reason and wondered how he might have reacted to this; would he have stayed calm in the face of my discomfort?

Come on Andrews, we
're
all waiting.  I sensed Joseph twitching next to me; don’t get up Clifford, I could almost hear him thinking.  Now our teacher was walking towards me with the bonnet, ready to put the finishing touches on his
production
; my refusal to follow his demands only
serving to
exacerbat
e
my situation.  Just as he started to place the awful hat on my head, Jose
ph snatched it out of his hands; l
et me wear it!  And with that, he put it on and proceeded to sashay up to the front of the class with his hands on his hips as they swayed suggestively to the delight of everyone, including Mr. Burns.  I have to admit, it was hilarious as he pranced around, smiling at the girls, frowning at the boys as they yelled out catcalls and whistled at him, my best friend Joseph, who proved one more time that he would do anything for me.  And given what a good driver he seemed to be, it would probably turn out to be his one and only chance to get to wear the
stupid
hat and make me laugh
in the process
, not at him with the malice of some of the others, but just from the
pure fun
of having him there.  You still don’t think he knew I loved him? 

The warm glorious days that summer were to turn out to be good ones for me, with or without the hideous hat.  We finished the drivers training course and got our learner’s permits, which meant that we could drive provided there was a parent or guardian in the passenger seat.  One Saturday afternoon, Aunt Doreen drove up totally unexpectedly in a 1973 midnight blue Pontiac Lemans, a beautiful car really, and said it would be ours to share.  Get in Clifford, you too Joseph, we’re taking her for a drive.  It was a two-door coupe with a vinyl roof and a spoiler in the back; it was so very cool looking.  I opened the passenger door and started to climb into the back seat; no, get behind the wheel Clifford, let Joseph get in back.  Wait; hey Jack, come on with us!

Once we were all seated and properly buckled in, I headed onto the freeway and drove downtown, and then onto Lakeshore Drive.  We parked by the lake and sat out for awhile, enjoying the views and the warm sunshine.  Doreen drove on the way back and we stopped for burgers before heading home.  Later that evening, I kept looking out onto the driveway making sure the Pontiac was still there, that I hadn’t just imagined the lovely afternoon
with my aunt and uncle and my best friend.

Later on while I was helping
to clean up
after dinner, the telephone rang.  It was Helen; Clifford did you hear what happened, do you have the TV on?  It’s Mr. Burns, he’s been killed
;
my God turn on the news.  He had walked into his house and surprised a burglar who was inside.  There was a struggle and he was shot once in the chest.  His wife came home and found him dead not even ten minutes later.  Now, we were without our shop teacher and Mrs. Burns was without her husband.  Helen and Joseph came to the house and we sat out on the porch talking quietly and remembering those three weeks with our teacher in driving school.  I recalled our first time on the freeway when Mr. Burns admitted I was a pretty good driver after all.  Joseph mentioned that he had once overheard him reprimanding someone in the hall for harassing an effeminate boy.  Helen thought he had a good sense of humor and probably hadn’t meant to be mean with the bonnet routine.

Mr. and Mrs. Klein had been out for a walk with Boog and came to sit with us.  Soon my aunt and uncle appeared as well and Boog lay down at Joseph’s feet like
h
e always did and we took turns petting him.  Mrs. Klein
left to
get her apple cake that she had baked earlier; there was plenty for everyone she said.  Doreen brought the coffee pot onto the porch and asked Mrs. Klein for the recipe; this cake is absolutely delicious Edna. 
Just then, Christian pulled up in the yellow Camaro; he had heard the tragic news also.
 
Doreen went inside for more coffee and a cup for Christian while Edna cut more cake; guess I’ll just have to bake another one tomorrow, she said.

I thought of Mr. Casslemond’s wife just then and realized nothing would have been like this at all if it hadn’t been for her.  I excused myself to use the bathroom, but went inside and dialed up their phone number instead.  Mr. Casslemond answered on the first ring; she’s fine Clifford, a bit tired after dinner and went to bed early, I’ll be sure to tell her you called.  I told him about the new car and he said he would drop by the next day and have a look at it.  Maybe we can go to a White Sox game next weekend; I’ll ask Charles if he can get some tickets, they play fo
u
r games against the Yankees.  Would your uncle like to come along too?

I sipped my coffee and looked around at everyone; the porch filling up with their conversations.  By now I had come to understand that luck was looking out for me, returning a favor, putting things back where they belonged, that this was not all due to chance, there was much more going on here.  What precisely it had in mind or how long it m
ight stick around was anyone’s guess, but for now anyway it was
doing OK as
far as I was concerned.  I was happier now; even when I thought of them, even when I missed them terribly, I could still bring up moments like this one and not feel tortured, not feel so horribly alone.  We showed Christian and Mr. and Mrs. Klein the Lemans; they sat inside and we played the radio.  John’s
Imagine
came on ju
s
t then and of course Christian couldn’t resist singing along.

Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too

Oh, if only there was nothing to kill or die for, Mr. Burns would still be alive and the junior varsity basketball team would still have their coach.  Instead, Mrs. Burns is left alone to suffer who knows what kind of pain, maybe for the rest of
eternity.
  Imagine if you can coming home like you’ve done every day of your life, but this time with your luck distracted or just run out, you find a gun pointed at you and now your wife is left a widow and you are in heaven or hell or somewhere other than here anyway.  Imagine if you can, life ending that unexpectedly; one minute you are teaching right-of-way
rules
to pimply faced students, the next you are
pronounced dead
in the emergency room
,
with the sobbing relatives in the tiled waiting area, waiting only to hear the inevitable awful words
, we did everything we could, we
're
so sorry for your loss. 

Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in

Nothing to say but what a day, how’s your boy been

This is our life, this our world
;
we better
pay attention, someone might break into our house, they might steal the new car if we forget to lock it, or they might slide on the icy road and crash hard enough to set the car on fire and destroy
what we
thought was indestructible.  This is our life; we better learn to live it while we have the chance, we should be careful what we say or do to people, where is that silly bonnet now, will the next teacher use it to humiliate someone who made a mistake?  The next kid might be more sensitive than me, might not have a best friend like Joseph shadowing him much of the time to protect him, to take the butt of some mean joke for him, even take a bullet for him if God forbid it came to that.

This is my
life, they are my world, on the porch having their coffee and discussing the day’s frightening events.  They have come down from wherever they were to take care of me, to look out for me.  I hear them now, how terrible what happened to Mr. Burns, there was nothing they could do to save him; Edna more cake please.  Who could have done such a thing, why Clifford and Joseph just had him for summer school; more coffee Harold?  What’s this world coming to, can anyone buy a gun these days; Christian won’t you be applying to college soon?  They are my life, they are my world, they’re all I need.

Maybe they were all I needed, but luck was something that I had whether I needed it or not.  But what was it doing exactly; did it have revenge in mind as it followed me?  Was it just a coincidence that Mr. Burns met his untimely death just a few weeks after embarrassing me in front of the class, causing Joseph to make a spectacle of himself on my behalf?  Was retribution part of the deal, would there always be a payback?  Like a gambler who wins on the lottery one night just to watch helplessly as it all melts away the next at the roulette table; is that how this would be?  What price must be paid for justice; does luck lack a sense of proportion, had it considered the severity of the offense?  Couldn’t he have just locked his keys in the car or sprained
an
ankle coming down the stairs?

We’ve seen how luck works on the surface, but can we ever know anything of its real power?  And at the end of the day, what price would it demand from me, what repayment would be required, what reprisals might be forthcoming?  It would be nearly 45 years before I would be able to wake up one day as if from a dream and finally get some answers to these questions, questions that were to baffle me for so much of my life.  And there would be no one to help me then in
my quest for answers; no Joseph to stand with me unfaltering, no Mr. Casslemond’s wife to gaze into the unseen, no Christian with the inner strength to direct me.  I would never be alone, never without any of them, but they would be powerless to help me; no, I would have to confront luck myself to know what it had finally done.

By now, you have probably noticed that I have a tendency to torture myself endlessly with questions that have no ready answers, a propensity that started shortly after my 14
th
birthday and would continue until after my 60
th
, when certain events that I will attempt to describe to you later, should you wish to continue reading that is, were to change my life drastically.  But you can’t just wake from a deep sleep and say, ah, now I see what’s been going on all these years, now I know how all this works.  I wish I could say that’s what happened, if only it were so simple.  Finding the truth, if there really is such a thing, would require weeks of self-exploration, reflection, and the ability to critically consider the people in my life and try to finally see them as they really are.  But it was impossible for me to do this just yet; first my world had to be shaken up, very badly shaken up as we will see.  Luck would fi
r
st need to be knocked loose from its moorings and drift away, leaving me exposed and confused. 

*****

Life being what it is, I was surprised that Iris’ abrupt departure seemed to have
l
imited effect on anyone in the office, at least as far as I could see.  The management team picked right up where they had left off the following day as if she had never existed, whatever work she was expected to produce secretively absorbed by the others, seemingly as effortlessly as the grass soaks up the rain.  Everyone had to know that I was
a likely factor in
the office losing one of its managers, yet it seemed as if they either did
not
notice or didn’t care.  There were always ridiculous events occurring in the office, sure, but this seemed very strange to me.  That very
d
ay Tim called a meeting for all employees to discuss the latest quarterly results and his proposed changes for the rest of the year.  Iris’ name was not even mentioned; were people glad she was gone or sad to learn of her departure?  It could not have been that I was the only one who detested her, but how come nobody talked about it?  Was there some communication about her leaving that I had missed, perhaps an email circulated with my name inadvertently, or perhaps intentionally left off the recipient list?

I saw Brent pass by my office several times; I wondered with he was up to.  Was he checking up on me, spying for the rest of the management team?  I wanted to ask him what actually happened to Iris, but I didn’t trust him.  I wondered if she was fired, and if so, did she get the porno severance package?  She was crazy, so maybe she was in a ward somewhere getting psychotherapy and some good drugs.  I walked around and asked a couple of people I was friendly with if they knew what was up, but they just shrugged and seemed too busy to talk.  Was I being even more paranoid than usual, or were people trying to avoid me?  For now anyway, I didn’t have much to do in the way of work, so I stayed in my office reading and wasting the company’s resources for the rest of the day.