Calling Home (6 page)

Just as I wanted to deny that Mead was dead.

“Do you have to be anywhere by eleven or twelve or anything like that?” Angela asked.

“My mother's out on one of her marathon dates. She dates these businessmen. I think she's hoping to find a rich one. But she never really likes them. She keeps finding a newer, richer one, and then he's not the right man, and then she finds another one.”

“She's fussy.”

“I guess so. I think she still misses my father. Even though she hates him. I also think she resents men, in general. She's sick of them.”

“I don't blame her. Men are pretty awful. Especially the people my parents know. Stockbrokers and realtors and people who have parties at the Super Bowl every year. Rich guys in cowboy boots.”

“Sometimes I think my mother hates practically everyone.”

“She sounds like a lot of fun.”

“She's very complicated.”

“I thought you didn't like her.”

“I don't, usually. But I have some sympathy for her. A lot of it, actually.”

“You sound tired.”

“I feel terrific.”

“You sound more than tired. You sound very peculiar.”

“I work at it. Sounding peculiar is one of my major ambitions.”

“You ought to be very pleased. You're very successful.”

“You like me because I'm odd. So I work at it. I don't want you to be disappointed in me.” I was at least partly right. I'm normal-looking, not all that special to behold, thin and pale, with hair that looks a little bit blond in some lights, but is really plain, cardboard brown most of the time. Angela has the kind of looks that turns heads. You see men look at her as they drive by, their lips parted in mid-speech.

The view from the hills was enough to silence both of us. An airplane light winked slowly across the glitter. The Bay was a big empty place, and the Bay Bridge glittered over the blackness. Usually a sight like that moved me, calmed me, made me feel that a living, twinkling map—the real world—was at my feet.

“You aren't being very friendly tonight,” Angela complained.

“Maybe we should go.”

“The view isn't so good tonight, is it? Sort of yellowish.”

“The view's all right. Maybe a little yellowish, but not too bad.”

“You've been having problems with your parents. I can tell. I'd have more problems with mine, except that they're gone so much of the time. I'm lucky.”

Angela was lucky, I thought. Her life was still a life. She had a future.

We drove back, listening to the car stereo, the windows rolled up against the scent of the trees.

8

“I don't particularly care if you learn Latin or not,” said Mr. Lindner. He touched his mustache and sat on the front of his desk. “You must realize that some people are not cut out for Ovid. It happens. Not everyone is intellectually graceful,” he said, rising and stepping around his desk to sit, like he wanted to demonstrate his own mental fitness by moving his body in a tight, efficient manner.

“I know,” I said, shifting my books in my hands.

“But I do ask that students not come to class high on whatever drugs they choose to use when they recreate on their own time.”

“I'm not using drugs, Mr. Lindner.”

“I ask this because I have pride in myself as a teacher, and because I have standards. No hats. No gum. And,” he glanced at his nails, “no drugs.”

“All right,” I said, turning to go.

“Don't go yet, I'm not finished. If I can sacrifice five minutes of my lunch, you can, too.” Mr. Lindner was a trim black man, dapper, with a collection of gold cuff links and dozens of shoes; I hardly ever saw him wear a pair of shoes I had seen before. He taught in a quiet voice, and could recite Cicero on Old Age or the Virtues of Children while staring at students as he paced among them. Most of what he did, in speech and dress, was calculated to prove how superior he was to any human being in the world, and no one argued with him. He was a short, slim, perfect man, and brilliant enough to wear his contempt easily, like a well-knit tie.

I sat in a chair sideways, and waited for him to finish leafing through his grade book. “Why, Peter,” he began, enjoying the sound of his voice, “did you elect Latin? Of all the subjects in the world, why this one?”

“I don't know.” I didn't know. It had sounded exotic, and I had read it easily for the first few months. Many of the words were like English words, like “villa” for house, to give an example, and anyone with a brain could stumble along. But now we were in deep waters, studying the subjunctive mood, and other such subjects, and I was lost.

“It isn't the sort of language I would have expected you to want to learn.”

“I thought it would be easier.”

“It is easy. Easy as walking across the room.” He stood and walked to the blackboard as if to show how a person could walk through Latin, striding across first, second, and third declension nouns as if they were so much hardwood floor. “As easy,” he said, erasing
Vir/homo
with a flick of the eraser, “as that. If, Peter. If. If the student studies.” He said the word “studies” so well that it stayed in the air, a kind of charm that kept both of us from moving.

“You have not been studying. I don't know what your background is, or what you hope in terms of higher education.” He pronounced it “Ed-You-Caysh-ee-un,” and he let that word, too, wrap itself around me like a snake. “You are not stupid. Not at all.” He plucked a piece of chalk from the tray. “But you have not been”—and here he snapped the chalk in two and looked at me like I was the largest piece of bird dropping he had ever witnessed—“studying.”

I cleared my throat, but I had nothing to say.

“By studying Latin you learn not only the language of Virgil, but you develop intellectual strength. You become more capable of learning other subjects. So that when I see you staring off in class, doped out of your mind, such as it is—”

“No. I'm not doped out of—I swear it.”

“I don't care, Peter.” He repeated very slowly, “I don't care.”

I fiddled with my books.

“But if you come to class in that condition again, I will throw you out. You may leave.”

I forgot my locker combination for a moment, and spun the dial mindlessly. I had not smoked, swallowed, or in any other way taken in any drug known to man on that morning. But I was worried that I had appeared drugged. I would have to perk up; I would have to pay more attention to the expression I had on my face. Expressions are important. A person can look alert or stupid, and why not look alert if you have any choice in the matter. I should be supple enough to put on any expression I want to.

Angela leaned against the locker at my elbow. “What did Lindner want?”

“He says I'm not paying attention in class.” My locker opened itself, and swung like it was a thing with a mind. “He was complaining about that. I guess I had a vacant expression on my face. Sometimes a person does, you know. Have a vacant expression. It doesn't mean anything.”

“That guy's a peckerhead. A jerk.”

“No, he's not. He's a very brilliant guy. He probably—” Mr. Lindner nodded to me as he passed. I lowered my voice. “He probably hates teaching high school students. He probably would rather be in some school out in the middle of a green field, where there is moss and ivy on the walls, and people actually speak Latin to each other, even over breakfast.”

“He's just overcompensating because he's black. He wants to prove to everybody how perfect he is.”

“So what? Everybody has reasons for being what they are. What difference does that make?”

I passed a trash can that was overflowing and I picked up an empty milk carton. This, I thought to myself, is Mr. Lindner's head. I squeezed it hard and crushed it in an instant, only it was much too easy; I wanted something much harder to crush that I could imagine was Mr. Lindner's head. A spot of milk shimmered on the back of my hand and I licked it off, thinking how little all the people in the world knew about me, and how appalled they would be if they knew how much contempt I had for them. I kicked a hole in the wall a little bit bigger, and then kicked a new hole. My shoe got stuck in the plaster, as if the building were trying to hang on to me while someone ran for the police.

Angela linked her arm with mine like she was proud to be seen with a destructive person, and I took her outside. We strolled along Lake Boulevard, and I kicked the empty Coke cans out of our way, one of them spinning into the center of the street where a pickup truck squashed it flat.

“They're coming back tonight,” she said, tossing her hair and leaning her head on my shoulder. “I wish the plane would crash.”

“You shouldn't say that.”

“Why not? Saying it won't make it happen.”

“It's a bad wish. Bad wishes might not make things happen, but they're bad anyway. You ought to watch what you say. It's just a policy a person ought to adopt.”

Her arm was still linked to mine, but it was a dead thing; the affection wasn't in it, and I could tell that she was going to take it away if I said anything else critical about her.

I continued, “You're awfully careless about things you say. Calling people names, wishing them dead.”

“Fuck you.” Her arm was gone.

“That's very mature. Very articulate. You should be on talk shows.”

“You're a prick, you know that?” She was, as they say, beautiful when she was angry, but also vacant, like being mad sucked up all of her natural vivacity and made her stupid.

She flounced away, and the way she flounced said, “Catch up with me and apologize so we can get something to eat,” but I let her flounce diminish to a regular walk and didn't even make a move to catch up with her. I saw something in Angela then that I didn't want to see. I saw that the thing that would keep her from amounting to anything as a person was that she was too perfect. I don't mean too admirable; I mean too perfect, the way a goldfish is perfect.

Lake Boulevard was thick with a sudden herd of AC Transit buses, delivery trucks, and Cadillacs. The sun was tarnished; an ugly haze was over the sky, a kind of smog that no one gets excited about because it probably isn't that bad for a person's health, it only makes things look ugly and boring and cheap.

I walked up the steps to the school very slowly, like my body was thickening into a robot even as I reached the top step, and there, looking like a runaway from his own funeral, stood Mr. Tyler. I turned to face Tyler as I passed, and eyed him up and down just to teach him something, but to my surprise, he did not flinch. He smiled in a way that made me queasy and said, “Just the man I was looking for.”

Whenever a stinker like Mr. Tyler calls you a man or “mister,” you're about to be had. “What for?” I said, trying to yawn.

“Vice principal wants to see you.”

Had Mr. Lindner complained that I was bombed in his class? No, that was impossible. Mr. Lindner hated the administration as much as he hated students, and he also would think that his little talk was effective enough to settle the problem for the time being.

The hall was empty, and Mr. Tyler followed me as I put my hands in my pockets and strolled toward the brown door with the translucent glass which read, in flaking black letters,
VICE PRINCIPAL
. Every step was difficult because inside me, I felt the urge to flee immediately, to go anywhere, to run and never come back and turn into someone else, someplace else, with a different name and even a different face; these things can be done, but I don't know enough about them.

Mr. Tyler opened the door for me, actually turned the knob and held it open with a slight smile, the inside of his lower lip coated with chalk from his ulcer medicine. I put out one hand to the doorjamb and stepped into the office, letting my features float, for a moment, like petals on a pond while I chose the correct expression.

Mr. Williams, the vice principal, was there, a fungus who shuffled papers and stood. “Peter Evers,” he said as if he couldn't quite be sure I was the right person. I kept my mouth shut, and my features, in an act of genius, found the exact expression of puzzled irritation that I needed as I glanced around and saw the tallest Chinese man I have ever seen, and stout, too.

“This is Peter Evers,” said Mr. Tyler from behind me, and I mentally squeezed his neck in my hands until digested Rolaids ran down my hands from his gaping mouth. “Peter,” added Mr. Tyler, a surge of authority enriching his voice, “this is Inspector Ng.”

“Just a few quick questions, Peter, if you don't mind, so we can get some things squared away in a little investigation we have to do,” said Inspector Ng in one breath. His words were so fast I needed a moment to think about them, but he slapped more words in my face so rapidly I had to sit down, and did, feeling my bones turn to piss.

“I understand that you are a friend of Mead Litton, and I'm sorry to say that Mead has been reported missing so I have to ask you one or two questions in hopes that we can find him,” said Inspector Ng.

I swallowed. “Mead is missing?”

“That's right. This is a routine investigation we do in all cases such as this, contacting friends and acquaintances to attempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing person.”

“So they can find him,” said Mr. Tyler. “Runaways.” Mr. Tyler shook his head. “Runaways in a world like this.”

“Mead ran away?” I asked, hurting my neck to look up at Inspector Ng.

Inspector Ng opened a notebook. “We don't expect any foul play because he has called home to reassure his parents that he is all right, and we have no reason to believe that he is in any kind of actual trouble.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You are a friend of Mead Litton's, aren't you, Peter?” asked Inspector Ng, sitting down. We were all sitting, except Mr. Tyler, who guarded the door like he expected me to bolt, even though I could have tossed him aside as easily as a hat rack.