Teach Me (21 page)

neural meat

Where am I?

Floating here.

All these things in my mind I can’t turn off. There’s a time coming that’s very close, a time when my head shuts off for good. But in the meantime I still know a few things.

I know the average human brain weighs three pounds.

It takes up 2 percent of the body’s weight but uses 20 percent of the blood and 20 percent of the oxygen.

It’s made up of 100 billion neurons. It has 111,000 miles of myelinated nerve fibers, enough to get you nearly halfway to the moon.

But none of this is any good to me now.

I’m winking out.

Operating on my ancient reptilian brain stem.

Wood.

Dark.

Wet.

Cold.

Die.

the language of leaving

Light.

I can see again. I can’t see anything, but I can see.

Something has shivered my mind awake. I sit up and shout at Schuyler, but I’m not speaking English. I’m not even speaking Indo-European. This language is even older, much more primitive. It’s a language spoken on the slopes of erupting volcanoes or while sliding into a black crevasse on a glacier. Everyone understands it, or will.

Schuyler doesn’t reply.

The car. We’re still in the car. I have a sense of Wilkie listing, a buoyancy that is false and won’t last. In the dark I work at the driver’s side door and get it open. Freezing water floods in.

My own language comes back to me. I’m yelling at Schuyler to come and kicking away from the car. The darkness is pitted with smears of light, squarish shapes, windows of the apartments around the lake.

Now I’m swimming in reedy water, my legs banging submerged objects. I can’t tell how deep the water is. It’s pushing too hard against my legs to let them touch bottom. Suddenly I’m floating in a cone of light; I see the tree where Wilkie is lodged.

The current shoves me against it. I angle my body, grapple with my arms. My legs swing free in the current. I see a dark figure inside Wilkie through the spattered windshield. It isn’t moving.

“Schuyler! Schuyler!”

Anything else I could scream never makes it to my mouth.

“Schuyler!”

I scream his name over and over as Wilkie’s hood takes on water. I try to bring my hand around to grab the metal grill, but the current is too strong. Every time I start to pull loose and grab the hood, the floodwater threatens to rip me away from my hold on the tree and carry me somewhere deeper. The car sinks. I get my feet braced against the roots and push.

Still Schuyler isn’t moving. I can’t tell how high the water is in Wilkie’s front seat. It’s too hard to see with the contrast between the darkness of the water and the brightness of the car lights shining on us.

Car lights.

Someone else is here.

It’s the other car, still on the road, its lights barely above the flood, but it isn’t sinking. It’s angled, pointing at me.

“Help us!” I scream.

I’ve got to make an effort, even if it means getting swept away in the torrent pouring into the lake.

I get my fingers into Wilkie’s grill and pull hard, letting go of the tree. I’m snapped straight out, but my fingers hold, even as the skin begins to tear.

The slanting hood is underwater. I have two hands on it now, can feel the grill.

It’s all I can do to hold on. I can’t pull myself closer to Schuyler. The car continues to sink. I realize it’s not sinking in water, but mud.

I scream at Schuyler to come out. The dark shape doesn’t move. Maybe the crash did something to his head. Maybe he’s— don’t say it. Don’t even think it.

The water is freezing. I find the roots again with my sneakers and push hard, propelling myself against the current. My right hand cups the front quarter panel near the tire. I pull; my strength fails me. Pull again, pushing with my feet, and get both hands on the jagged edge of the wheel well underwater.

I scissor my arms and try to stand; my body snaps out horizontally again. I fight to get my shoes back on the roots. Wilkie is lower; the water is covering his hood all the way to the windshield now. Still the shape inside hasn’t moved.

Blood comes into my eyes mixing with the rain. I can barely see. Slowly I draw myself to the wheel well and edge my way toward the door.

It’s no good.

I’m not strong enough. Schuyler’s going to die here. In this swamp. Choking on mud.

And it’s my fault.

come back for me

“Hey.”

That’s all he says.

I’m not sure it’s a voice until his hand is on my arm.

The voice is connected to a strength that pulls me forward until I can grasp the edge of the open car door.

Mr. Mann.

“Help! Help us!”

His hair is plastered against his face and across the bridge of his nose. He has a nylon rope knotted around his waist that leads back to his car, where the headlights are shining over the racing water.

We work together to pull Schuyler out. Mr. Mann’s arm is around my waist. This means nothing as I slide into Wilkie and tug at Schuyler’s belt. Nothing but life, safety, the future. I can’t tell if Schuyler’s breathing; he’s cold, heavy, and logy. I can barely move him in the frigid water, but he comes slowly to us.

I’m cupping his jaw with my hand, keeping it above the flood. The closer I get him to the door, the more I can see. His temple is gashed and blood is flowing into his ear, blood that looks black in the reflection from the headlights.

I get him to the door, dragging him under his arms. Mr. Mann has hold of him now, letting me go and wrapping an arm around Schuyler’s waist. He hauls against the force of the water with one hand on the rope, dragging Schuyler along.

“I’ll come back for you,” Mr. Mann says.

He does.

remember

I don’t remember how we wrestled Schuyler onto the backseat of Mr. Mann’s car. Maybe we pulled him through the window. I don’t remember the ride to the hospital.

I remember this: Mr. Mann’s arm around me. Our bodies joined against the surging flood, holding each other, the cord around us tightening and loosening until we are back on solid ground again.

mountains of time

The Door.

To keep from thinking about it, I focus on seven words:

“Don’t worry, he’s going to be fine.”

Those are the words I have to hear.

One word for each day they say it took to create the earth.

Though I know it really took billions of years and swirling dark matter and hydrogen snow.

But we are waiting God days in the emergency room of this hospital. God hours and God minutes. Whole epochs pass.

Think of anything but Schuyler back there behind the Door.

Focus. Observe.

The people shift and change like Geologic Events.

Here’s a man, head slumping. His chin slouches into his chest like a tired mountain range. A woman lying on her side is covered in fault lines. Someone she loves dearly is behind the Door. She’s a continent trying to keep itself from tearing itself apart. A couple of kids run back and forth like rivers.

Where is Mr. Mann?

I know he came in with me. We sat side by side at the desk, getting Schuyler registered. I remember him leaning against the wall. Surely he hasn’t left me. Again.

My raw fingers ache. The TV high in the corner makes me need to vomit. No sound, just a series of jeering, flashing heads. I sit with my back to it. If this is going to last an Age, I want to feel it.

My forehead is bandaged, but not many people are bleeding tonight. I don’t know what’s wrong with them as they come in. These are sleepy emergencies.

Seven words.

“Don’t worry, he’s going to be fine.”

I’m wrapped in a blanket. The Door never opens out. People go in but never come back again. The woman at the counter is so drowsy, her face is three inches from the computer monitor.

The Door keeps inhaling people.

I was born in this room, on these plastic chairs. I’ve lived here all my life. This is my school, my neighborhood, my street. Outside, I see cars flowing by. They are not lodged in this iceberg of time.

I haven’t prayed since the sixth grade. I’m praying hard now. Praying for myself as much as Schuyler.

But how do you talk to God? Sometimes I can’t think of him as anything but a Size.

How can I pray? Especially when I’ve done something like this? It’s too much to ask. Please just be good to Schuyler or the whole world is over. I’ve been stupid and pissed everything away.

The Door opens.

The doctor is pinching his eyes as he crosses the room. Triangular patches of bare scalp range deep into his hair. How does he know to come to me? Oh no.

He unscrews his face and exhales a long time, arms crossed.

“Are you Carolina?”

“Yes, please, is he okay, please tell me, is Schuyler okay?”

“Don’t worry, he’s going to be fine.”

Seven words.

I lose focus in all the crying and the relief and the wave of injured love that comes over me.

I grab the doctor—he’s shorter than me—and squeeze the life out of him. When I let him go, he tells me things I can barely stand to hear.

Concussion, broken wrist, ten stitches on the side of Schuyler’s sweet head. He’s staying overnight. The hospital has contacted his parents in Destin.

I can imagine them furiously stuffing clothes in bags, trip cut short, hair exploded by sleep, trying to find a place with gas in the middle of lower Alabama on the drive back. I can imagine what they’re saying about me. What they think.

I haven’t called Mom and Dad. I don’t think I will. They go to bed so early these days. They’re sleeping. Let them sleep through it. Let them have one more night of relative peace before they see just how changed I’ve become.

Is it possible to be driven home, crawl into my sheets, just wake up tomorrow? When will they notice Wilkie is gone? My bandaged fingers? The butterfly tape on my forehead? The doctor is about to leave.

“Can I see him?”

arm crazy

Inside.

Schuyler looks better than I expect, but it doesn’t help.

I touch his bent hair and stroke his temple. I’m trying to find places that don’t hurt and places that can still feel good.

“Sky, I’m so sorry,” I say.

He looks at me, doesn’t say anything.

“I nearly got you killed.”

He raises his arm to indicate something; it’s somehow been transmogrified into a telephone pole. He puts it back down.

“You’re the shittiest driver I’ve ever seen,” he says. “Excuse my Middle English.”

“Quarter.”

We laugh a little and it might be okay. I hope it’s okay. I can’t lose him.

“I’m stupid,” I say.

His ears go up and he shifts a little onto his side, where he can see me better. “That’s one thing you never will be. Mentally unbalanced, maybe.”

“Stupid.”

“Okay, yeah. But everybody is sometimes.”

“Not you. Not much. Does it hurt much?”

“No.”

“Don’t lie.”

“Okay. It hurts.”

A nurse comes in and does things with his arm. She says there are people outside I need to talk to. Police.

A look passes between us. Okay. Just get through it.

“Come back?” Schuyler says.

“Sure. I’ll sneak you something in.”

The police are here for the report.

There are two of them. Their uniforms are tight and harshly creased; their pants float above their shoes. They move slowly. One is large, with a shaved head. The other is not so large, with a shaved head. Both carry receipt books: whatever I say, my words will bleed through from white to pink to blue to yellow to green.

Which is the customer copy? I’ve paid enough.

I’m ready to tell them anything. They might as well know it all. Stalking Mr. Mann, the poetry reading, the crash. What good is anything I have ever done if I can’t tell it now? They’re ready, pens poised.

“It’s all my fault,” Mr. Mann says.

raining words

He’s there.

Standing across the room behind me. For how long? He comes to where I’m sitting. He’s wet and wrinkly, still wearing the clothes he wore at the Chan Auditorium. The paint is gone, washed away by the rain and flood. His left sleeve is soaked with Schuyler’s blood.

“Everything was my fault,” he says again.

He talks to the policemen. Says nothing about the poetry reading, nothing about us following him. He says it was his fault we ran off the road, an accident in the rain.

They believe him so easily. Why do older people seem more honest, dependable? But it’s true. People think lies are like the food pyramid or Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, broad at the base. What does a ninety-year-old have to fib about?

The policemen hand us our receipts, tell us where we can go to pick up copies for the insurance. Do I have a ride home? Mr. Mann says I do. They leave.

I sit across from him, trying to decide what I feel. Forget it. I’m too relieved, too tired.

“You okay?” Mr. Mann says.

I nod.

“Sure?”

Nod again. “So I’m not in trouble? You don’t want me arrested? What about the people at the auditorium?”

“I told them I’d never seen you before in my life. They figured you must be a nut, somebody off the net with a cross to burn.”

He laughs.

It’s the most horrible laugh I’ve ever heard.

He’s looking at me, but I’ve never felt so far away from anyone in my life. I’m standing on Titan, my feet wreathed in methane. He’s still laughing.

“What?” I say.

He stops laughing, comes back from somewhere far away. “Something I’ve just realized,” he says.

“What?”

“The mystery. There had to be a mystery. Something you could investigate, study. Figure out. I just realized what it is.”

“What?”

“It’s me.”

adoring machine

I stare.

Mr. Mann is speaking softly. I ask him to repeat what he said.

“The mystery is me.”

“I don’t understand.”

He pins me to the spot with his eyes. “That’s one of the things I love about you, Carolina. You figure things out. You find the answers. I love how sure you can be. You want so badly to understand, don’t you?”

He slumps in a chair with his chin in his hands, lets out a great shuddery exhalation. I sit across from him. I want to touch him, crush his head in my arms, but I can’t. My legs won’t let me. He lifts his face.

“I’m sorry to disappoint you. This is not that kind of mystery. Not the kind with answers. There is no figuring it out. There is no understanding. You want me to explain something I haven’t been able to explain to myself.”

“What?”

“Somewhere along the way I think maybe I stopped.”

“Stopped?”

“Something happened. Or maybe something didn’t happen that was supposed to happen. Something important. Anyway, somehow I got stuck. High school, junior high. Who knows?”

I nod as if agreeing. “So now you’re going to tell me your parents are all to blame for your arrested adolescence? Poor little misunderstood Ricky. All that moving around. So many schools, lost friends, sensitive little writer soul. Isn’t that convenient.”

“No. I blame myself. I don’t know why it happened, just that it’s something inside me. Something I never knew how to fix. Not that I didn’t try.”

He rubs his face with his hands and keeps going.

“I tried so many times to break out of it, to grow, move on. But no matter what I did, it was always a disaster with somebody my own age. I was too messed up inside.”

“Okay.”

“So I kept trying to rescue myself, turn things around. But the rescue attempt always failed. I never could follow through. I was stuck.”

“So what changed? You don’t love Alicia.”

He sits up. “Oh, but I do. That’s one of the things you don’t understand. I was utterly undeserving when she came along. There was no reason to ever believe in me. My track record was too awful. She loved the shit out of me anyway.”

“Maybe she was too young to know any better.”

I watch his face, but nothing changes. “It’s not what you’re thinking. She wasn’t a student of mine. I met her when she was already halfway through college.”

I know,
I want to say.
I just wanted to know for sure, wanted to hear you say it.

“So what happened? Why’d you ever break up, then?”

“I was in my old cycle. It was great for a while, then when things got serious, I got spooked. I used her father as an excuse. He’s never liked me all that much. Really I was just running away again because things had gotten too close. Just like I always did. And then I found you.”

“Victim number what—five? Six? More?”

Now his face definitely changes—goes slack, weary, sad. “It wasn’t like that. It really wasn’t. You were so different. And even then, I still fought against it.”

I give him a look.

“You’re right,” he says. “Not very hard, but I did. But you were everything I ever wanted. For the first time I believed it would be okay—I could just give in to what I wanted, finally. You were perfect. You were so young, but you were different. You were smart enough, mature enough to handle it. You were so focused, knew what you wanted. Nothing was going to stop you. But you were still growing, too. Maybe I wanted to see how you did it. Maybe I thought we could grow together. Maybe you could teach me.”

“That’s bullshit. Psychological bullshit.”

“You’re right. It’s bullshit. But that’s what I’m good at. Making people believe in bullshit. Things I can’t even believe in myself.” He covers his eyes.

“If you expect me to feel sorry for you, Richard, I don’t. I never will. Save it for
Oprah
. Better yet,
Jerry Springer
.”

His jaw goes hard. He takes his hand away and looks at me again. “I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me. I’m telling you the truth. You more than anyone else.”

I try to run my fingers through my matted hair and fail. “Wow. I’m a lucky girl. Top of the heap in your stable of wannabes. How’s that poem of Emily’s go?
Success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed
—”

He winces. “I meant what I said. Everything.”

“I know. But I’m tired of talking about you.”

I stand, look around. The walls, the chairs welded in rows. Anywhere but Mr. Mann. Something about the light in this room is green. I’m in a space station. Everyone else has been killed by an alien virus.

“I don’t like hospitals,” I say after a while, still not looking at him.

“Who does?”

“Why can’t they just heal people outdoors?”

He shrugs, thinking I expect an answer. And I do. Just not the one he wants to offer.

“It’s better if you’re close to nature,” I say. “I don’t like buildings either. I especially don’t like cars. Not anymore.”

“Anything man-made?”

“Right. Man-made. Anything made by man. Look at what they do.”

I’m not looking, but I can hear the anguished smile in his voice.

“What do they do?” he says.

“They make things and make people want them. Then they keep them away from you or tear you to pieces. That’s what men do. That’s what—”

“She’s pregnant, Nine,” he says.