Teach Me (19 page)

chamber music

Heat lightning.

I feel it inside my head.

The squall line is closing in on the setting sun as we turn into the parking lot. The Chan Auditorium is low slung and white. Architectural style: DOD Blast Shelter. The lot is crammed with cars plastered with Piscean odes to kittens and anger-management bumper stickers:

This is the place.

What I’m about to do is suddenly made excruciatingly real: Mr. Mann’s Honda is parked up front.

If there was a time to stop this, it is over now. I’m definitely going through with it.

I reach in Wilkie’s backseat and grab a composition notebook.

“You sure you want to do this?” Schuyler says. “It’s insane, you know?”

You have no idea, I think.

I haven’t told him. I’m not going to.

This is one time Schuyler doesn’t need to know everything. Can’t.

I lean over and give him a wet smack on the cheek. “Let’s go.”

We get out, shut the doors gently to keep them quiet, and head for the auditorium. A line of sweet alyssum points the way up the sidewalk like snow in the failing light. A thunderhead rumbles ominously to the west.

Six doors to choose from, one held ajar by a rubber wedge. I yank it open. From the interior comes a rush of compressed CO2. A big crowd, perfect. I wait a moment, listening, not breathing, then step through.

Schuyler slips in behind me. We’re at the top of a large bowl-shaped chamber fanned by rows of chairs with plastic backs. Six aisles going down to the stage bisect the ranks of messy heads. A few turn as we come in, sensitive eyes wary. My kind of crowd. Probably think Heisenberg is a high-end beer.

Schuyler taps my arm, frowning. “I don’t like this, Nine. There are too many people. Let’s get out of here.”

I point an elbow into his stomach and try to smile. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. “Buck up, Ozymandias. It’ll be over soon.”

“That’s what scares me.”

I sound much braver than I feel.

We separate. Schuyler stations himself in the back. I spot an aisle seat about midway down, just as if someone were saving it for me.

Where is he?

A group of professorly types is sitting at a table on the stage. Mr. Mann is not with them. I scan the rows of heads anxiously. The sunglasses make it harder to see, but I’m too scared to take them off. The wings at either end of the stage are lost in shadows. Maybe he’s there.

My cold terror is expanding all my senses. My skin could be used to monitor barometric pressure. I catch a whiff of minerals on the air telling me the rain is almost here.

Wait.

A little guy gets up from the table, struts importantly to the podium; his hair reminds me of weedy grass in the wake of a passing train. He pokes the mike with a fingernail. The sound echoes behind me like a nightstick rapping the walls.

“As director of the College of Humanities,” he begins, “I’m extraordinarily pleased and honored to be here.”

Ten minutes later he’s turned us all into unicelled creatures. Finally the first poet is introduced.

It’s not Mr. Mann.

A fifty-ish woman with Salome veils and a Jenny Craig chassis approaches the podium. Her fingers are heavy with rings. From somewhere comes the scent of Herbal Essence and pot.

Salome begins in a quavering, artificial voice:

The stone jar of my
Heart pours out
Blood clotted with my
Pain I shout at the nails in my
Teeth scream as his dissonant
Mouth weeps tears warm as
Magnolia blossoms as he blasphemes my
Womanly core  

Whew.

I glance at Schuyler. He’s shifting in his seat like a man with a car battery hooked to his genitals. Lightning beats the air outside.

Where is he?

Maybe they’re saving Mr. Mann for the big finish? I look back at the stage. Salome sways, cheeks flushed, anxiously post-coital.

Oh, she’s done.

A smattering of polite applause ripples through the auditorium. “Tough house,” somebody close to me says.

The director claps the side of the mike as Salome wafts to a seat. “Thank you, Halsey. Simply beautiful. Halsey Passwater-Rhodes, ‘I Love My Love with a Bitch.’”

Where is he?

My skull is full of fire. I need to put it out.

We suffer through a succession of poets, each less healthy looking than the last. The topics of their poems run the gamut:

The asteroid belt as metaphor for HIV. Water rights in the Negev. Woman with older chickens. Weeping, fire, Nicaragua. Nintendo fetuses. I discover that good writing ability works in inverse proportion to the need to dress the part.

Someone behind me drops something. I turn, heart fluttering.

Ah.

There he is, skulking in the back: Mr. Mann.

His presence paints the air around him: black pants, conservative tie, white shirt with tiny silver stripes. I remember the last time I saw him wear it.

I was kissing his belly.

Hate.

I can’t stop it. It rushes into my fingers, pushes the fear out, makes my hands warm and tingly. I edge forward in my seat, gripping the composition book tightly. Soon. It will be over soon.

A poet with a scarf and Gandhi glasses is equating his girl-friend to Rwandan genocide. The director ushers him gently from the mike.

“And to conclude this evening’s performances, I’d like to welcome a special guest. The featured poet of this year’s UTC Fielding Poetry Series, Voices from a Single Room.”

His cue.

Mr. Mann begins making his way down the far side of the auditorium. The runty director goes on:

“His poem ‘coming in from the garden like a surprised rain’ won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Excellence in 1990. Please join me in welcoming Richard Mann.”

The applause is energetic this time, even a few Aerosmith whistles. I should be impressed.

Mr. Mann saunters to the podium and throws his head back, eyes burning around the room. He smiles appreciatively; this is his comfort zone. I realize he’s playing Him again, the one who is in command, shows no fear.

For the first time I clearly see the symbiotic connection. How each personality fuels the other, giving you a tantalizing taste of both. The powerful and the vulnerable. The commanding and the artistic. The schemer and the dreamer. Until you’re hooked, lost, gone.

Falling.

Now I feel only a heavy, numbing sadness, the flatness. The only thing it fuels is my fury.

Mr. Mann creases the chapbook open, raises it in his hand like a preacher holding a Bible, waits for the audience to settle. I chance a look at Schuyler; his seat is empty.

Here we go.

I’m blinking quickly; my heart rate zooms.

I close my eyes for an instant, pull everything into my center. The anger, my empathy, the pain, my fear. When I open my eyes again, invisible walls have risen on either side of my head. They give me a canyon of focus that closes everything else out, holds me on target.

Mr. Mann extends a single finger. He’s Adam reaching to touch the hand of God. He begins in words clear and clean: 

coming in from the garden like a surprised rain
so firm and fleshed again the tomatoes
he staked, the loosened furnace grate
creaks one more goodbye
to his shoes and lays him down to sleep his why

“Just one minute! Just one minute! I have something to say!”

I’ve dumped all the hate into my voice. It comes out a grinding squawk, a wire that projects to the farthest reaches of the auditorium. Mr. Mann stops and looks up, shocked. He sees me and drops his arm. I step into the aisle, conscious of Ms. Green’s pants riding up my shins.

“Bastard!” I scream at him, pointing. I appeal to the audience, arms imploring, head swiveling. “This man is a bastard, a cheat, a liar! Bastard!”

Mr. Mann flushes; he shades his eyes to look at me.

“You thought you had destroyed me when you left my bed!” I yell. “But look what I have become! I stand here in the spirit of ”—I consult Schuyler’s notes—“Hipparchia! The world’s first liberated woman! An Athenian Cynic and philosopher, wife of Crates, with whom she openly copulated in public!”

“What the f—!” a girl says nearby.

“Get her ass out of here!” another voice says, a guy this time.

Murmurs. Shouts. Gasps of incredulity. The little director comes forward uncertainly to the edge of the stage. “Excuse me, miss, but I’m sure this is not the forum—”

“Sit down!” I shriek.

I point at Mr. Mann.

“It’s time to send a message to all men who think they can do with us as they please, come and go with impunity, defile the body of the Earth Mother!”

Mr. Mann turns to the director, covering the mike with his hand. Still everyone in the hall can hear him whisper, “Let me talk to her.”

This is it.

He leaves the podium and hops down from the stage. He has to skirt the first row of chairs to get to my aisle. Closer, closer. My body aches to run to him. Away from him. Both.

“Listen!” I say.

The composition book is my lifeline.

Emily.

She makes my voice strong:

 
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.

A moment of silent incomprehension.

The moment grows, stretches into history in both directions. Someone nearby gasps, says something I don’t understand. There’s a low-pitched grunt of animal terror.

People are screaming now, falling away from the middle of the room, scrambling over chairs, pressing toward the walls. Now there’s nowhere else for them to go. I’m standing between them and the doors.

Mr. Mann stops coming up the aisle when he sees the pistol, face ashen.

“No! Don’t do it! Think about this. What you’re doing! Please!”

I bring the pistol level with his chest.

His arms are up, palms out, pleading.

Pull the trigger.

the color of love

Thunder.

The pistol pops in my hand once, twice, three times. It’s louder than I expected. I can’t miss at this range. Mr. Mann yelps and spins partway around. Large, wet splats of color appear on his shirt.

In the back, Schuyler slaps the light switches. The auditorium is plunged into gloom—the glass doors at the top let in some light from the parking lot, but my eyes are slow to adjust. A white flash of lightning suddenly marks the rectangles of the doors. I charge toward them up the aisle. Schuyler is already there, holding open the door. We hit the sidewalk and run for the streetlamps.

Raindrops spatter my back as I jump into Wilkie Collins. I sling Schuyler’s paintball pistol on the floorboards in the back, gather my legs in. The key is hanging in the ignition; I twist it, the engine sputters.

“Come on, start, baby, start,” I say, pumping the pedal.

“Nine! You didn’t tell me. Why! Why didn’t you tell me!” Schuyler still has the hat and sunglasses on.

“Come on, baby, come on.”

“I can’t believe you did that—I thought—we were just going to embarrass him. Oh God. We’re in so much trouble. God.”

He’s pounding the dash, swearing, making choking sounds. Wilkie sputters and catches. Tires squealing, I bump over the corner of the curb on the way out.

I throw off the sunglasses and look over my shoulder as we fly past the student center. The last thing I see is Mr. Mann running up the sidewalk in the streetlamp, trampling the alyssum, his new shirt splattered blue.

and do it anyway

Getaway.

We race down the interstate, not speaking. Rain is flecking the windshield. I turn on the wipers, but there isn’t enough water yet to keep them from making an awful rubbery dragging sound. I have to turn them off and on again and again to be able to see. Their rhythmic, pulling sound is huge and ominous by the time we get to the Firestone Holy Tire Palace.

In case we’re being followed, I back Wilkie Collins deeper than usual into the Crackling Forest. The leaves all around the windows make me feel a little better. We’ve landed on a different planet, one that doesn’t allow men and buildings and roads. One that’s not so crazy.

As soon as I shut off the wipers, I realize Schuyler is making a noise. He throws the sunglasses and fishing hat down.

“Are you okay?” I say. The light is not very good here. I’m having trouble reading his face. I nudge him. “Huh?”

“Now I know what made me think about Fleetwood Lindley,” he says gloomily.

I try to smile; it doesn’t feel good. “But how could you know? You didn’t know. So what are you saying—now I’m John Wilkes Booth?”

“I’m serious!” He almost yells the words. “I hate guns. I hate them! That was bad, Nine.”

“I know it was, Schuyler. But I had to do it. I had to do something.”

“Had to do what? Scare three hundred people to death? This was all about him. What did they do to you?”

“But couldn’t you tell it was your CO2 pistol? The one you used to shoot out my streetlamp. You left it over at my place, remember?”

“It looked real. I thought it was real! All those people! God, he thought it was real. I thought he was dead, Nine.”

“That was the idea.”

“Not mine. We were just going to embarrass him! You should’ve told me, given me a chance to—you dragged me into something—God, we are in so much trouble.”

He puts his face in his hands, elbows on knees. Then he sits up suddenly, looking out the drizzly window.

“Do you think he’s coming?”

“Not here. Probably he’s at my house right now, talking to my parents.”

“You’re right. That’s worse.”

“But what have you got to worry about?”

“I was there. I helped you.” Schuyler’s speaking between his fingers.

“He doesn’t have to know that. At least your folks are out of town.”

I’m grabbing at his hands.

“Leave me alone!” he says, shoving me away. “What about the cops?”

“I don’t know if what we did—if what I did—if it was illegal.”

He lifts his head, starts pulling crazily at his hair. “These days? It’s almost got to be. I know it’s illegal to walk into a crowded theater and scream
fire
, and what we did was a lot worse than that!”

“It was a paintball gun, Schuyler. Not the real thing.”

“Yeah, but all those people. They were scared out of their minds. It made me sick, Nine! I thought I was going to puke. The sounds they were making, watching them falling over the chairs. I’ve never seen people that scared. That was bad, Nine. It might’ve been funny in a movie, but that was bad. We shouldn’t have done it. We’re in so much trouble.”

“You said that.”

I feel the numbness, the battlefield exhilaration, starting to fade. I don’t want to think about what comes next.

“I’m hot; this stuff is scratchy. I’m going to change.”

I kick off the clogs and get out. The leaves are squishy and cold between my toes. Fat blots of slow rain patter around me. I hurry to get the black bag from the trunk.

Just as I get the top of the pants suit unbuttoned, I hear a terrible rattling sound crossing the interstate. It drives toward me, getting louder and louder until a wall of rain suddenly hammers the parking lot, water bouncing a foot in the air. The rain is coming down so hard it hurts. The whole world is stinging. I leap in the backseat, instantly drenched to the skin.

“Do you mind if I change in here?” I say to the back of Schuyler’s head. He doesn’t speak. “Just don’t turn around; I’ll tell you when you can look, okay?”

The ocean has been tipped over on our heads. The windshield smears, huge drops bursting against the glass. The floor of the Crackling Forest in the headlights jumps in dirty little fistfuls. A current is already overrunning the storm drain and I can’t see the pavement anymore. There is a feeling of being trapped, attacked, with nowhere to run.

I wriggle out of Ms. Green’s pants suit—it ’s not easy, I’m too long. After a lot of grunting and straining I’m down to my underwear. I wad up the steaming pants suit and sponge it against my bare breasts, wishing I had a towel. Schuyler doesn’t move. I reach for my clothes from the bag and slip into them. That’s when I hear him crying.

“Oh, oh, come on,” I say. “Come on, Schuyler.”

I reach to touch his back. I feel his shoulders move under my fingers. He’s hot. A wave of affection rushes over me. I wrap my arm around his neck, pull his head to my mouth. I kiss and pat his wild hair, both of us making little noises.

“Come on, it’ll be okay, really, Schuyler, it’s okay, I promise, come on.”

My ear cups his neck. I hear a crunching swallow in his throat as he fights to hold back a sob. “No,” he says.

I keep kissing his head. This is something I’ve never felt before, an overwhelming sense of protective love.

“No,” he says again.

I lean over the seat and turn his head toward mine. Kiss his cheekbones, his ear. He tries to pull away, but I scramble over the seat. I take his head in my hands and kiss his hot, streaky face. I kiss him again and again, gently working my way toward his mouth. Gently, then more insistently. Finally I kiss him lightly on the mouth; he pushes against me. But I’m gentle, gentle but insistent. He pushes.

I’m putting my hands on him, his chest, his shoulders, then sliding them down to his waist. He keeps pushing, but not so strong now. Lets me snuggle against him. My mouth brushes his lips. He doesn’t push me away this time.

My arms go around him; his back is smoldering. He leans into me, I get his shirt out of his pants, pull it up, rub my hands across the bumpy hills of his spine, then around to the front, touch his lean stomach, his chest. There’s only a little hair, right in the very center over his breastbone, with a silky line running down toward his navel. So different from Mr. Mann’s chest. My breath is coming faster. I take Schuyler’s hands and put them on me, hot on my shoulders through my T-shirt. My skin is tingling with the need to be caressed.

The fear, mine and his, it’s feeding me.

It’s pouring into my movements, becoming my need for him.

This is the other side of that moment we had in the snow. This is the side with the heat, the dirt, nothing pure, sparkly, or white, everything gone but flesh, his tongue in my mouth, teeth on my shoulders. But that’s what he needs. And that’s what I want from him.

That’s it; I’m helping him. Just like Mr. Mann helped me. But I’m not helping Schuyler climb; I’m helping him down. He’s been up there too high too long. It’s made him afraid, being up there all by himself. It’s freezing him. He needs to come down, get warm.

I move his hands down to my breasts, making him touch me through my shirt. Schuyler won’t keep them there. I pull them down again, aching, aching. He keeps them there this time, but I need him to squeeze, make me realize the size of his own ache. I’m desperate for him to pull me to him, to need me just as much.

I’m fumbling at the snap on his shorts. Now. Now. This is everything; here is what is finally real, right here. Schuyler understands what I’m doing, but he doesn’t understand—he takes my hands by the wrists, tries to push them away.

“No, no.”

“Why, come on, why? Oh God, please, why, come on.”

“I can’t, no, Nine, I can’t, I—”

I try closing his mouth with kisses; he can’t hold my wrists and keep my lips away at the same time. I’m nearly weeping with the size of my ache. But he’s twisting his head, jerking away from me.

“Please, please, let me do this.”

“I can’t! I’m not ready, I can’t, it’s too much—”

“Let me, please, let me do this for you—”

I have his shorts half undone, I’m pressing him back against the car door, overwhelmed with a hunger that is bigger than my will to stop it.

Schuyler yells, “I can’t! No!”

“Why, Schuyler, why?”

“You’ll—you’ll—!”

“What? What is it?”

“You’ll hate me!”

“I won’t!”

“You’ll hate me just like you hate him!”