Читать книгу The Hard Way Back to Heaven - Karl Dehmelt - Страница 14

6

September 13, 2009

Alex has attended the Bowersville School District since 1st grade. The local community of Bowersville consists of approximately 100 square miles, but only 150 students constitute a graduating class. At Bowersville, bonds between students form from early ages and often strengthen over the course of time. Alex can open up one of his middle school yearbooks and honestly say he ‘knows’ nearly everyone on the pages. Alex considers his friends sacred, because even when his family falters, his friends remain constant.

Alex gets on the bus at the end of the day feeling familiarly tired. One of his best friends lives down the street, but rides a different route. Neighbors live next door to one another, but with more breathing room than the compression of a suburb. The high school kids are anomalies. He’s read about them in the wildlife journals of gossip, observed them in their natural habitats, but only recently has encountered them face to face. They sit in the back of a bus in a cloister.

Alex is confident he will do fine in high school. Most of the time, he listens to his music and keeps his business to himself. His father warns him about the high schoolers, too—they do things that are frowned upon in the McGregor household, most often recounted to Alex as his father lights up a cigarette.

Alex stations himself near the middle of the bus, listening to his music, gazing out the window. Perhaps he will lose some of his excess weight, and become a social butterfly. Maybe his parents will fix their marital issues. Perhaps he’ll fail, and the entire world on his shoulders will crash down like a space-bound submarine falling back to earth.

“Alex!”

Alex pretends not to hear. He knows, from his clinical observations, which freshman is attempting to seize his attention. The scientifically named Kenny Locke should only be engaged if one wishes to experience a more interesting bus ride than simple songs.

“Alex McGrugger!”

Alex laughs, and his bubble is shattered. Kenny is a connoisseur of inappropriateness, and the textbook example of his father’s misplaced fear, in a convenient package of medium build. His hair is lengthier than Alex’s, housed neatly under a green skater’s cap.

“I know you can hear me, dammit! Take your earphones out and talk to me!”

The kids sitting nearest to Alex laugh. Alex relents and pivots around in his seat. Kenny’s eyes hold a friendly combination of mischief and cordiality. For his academic shortcomings, Kenny excels in personality. Alex wasn’t born with such apprehension; it’s something he’s learned.

In the seat across from Kenny sits a fellow freshman named Leigh Meyers. Her brown hair runs down to just below her shoulders, framing her face and accenting her electric blue eyes from any distance. She’s effortlessly pretty. Alex remembers on the first day of sixth grade trying to find the bus at the back of the middle school for the first time. After debating whether to miss the bus or talk to her, he’d walked up to her and asked her if he’d found the right place. She’d smiled at him and confirmed his directions. Since then, they’ve talked infrequently. He doesn’t consider many people friends.

Deciding to comply, he removes his buds and asks, “What do you want, Kenny?”

“Let me see your schedule!”

“What?”

Snickers come from the back of the bus. “Are you deaf or something?”

Alex already has his backpack open. “No!”

“Then let me see your schedule, dammit!”

Reaching into the pocket on his bag, Alex pulls out the folded sheet of paper listing his classes. Alex enjoys school to the point where he can completely discard everything related to his education at a moment’s notice. He doesn’t laugh as much as the other kids, and he doesn’t mind talking to his teachers. He is conducive to interaction in a different way: quiet, benevolent, never threatening. If he has a problem, he either pushes it down or talks through a solution.

Kenny walks up and snatches the schedule from Alex, parading to the back of the bus. Alex listens as Kenny and Leigh sprout off comments about teachers and classes they’ve survived. Such is the role of the older students in high school: to pave the way for those yet to come without failing. Alex looks around as the two older kids soundtrack his ears. He sees Peter Morgan, the Sophomore, with his own I-Pod in at the back; Sam Edwards, the girl who lived up the street, with her mystery novel, all representatives of a mold he can potentially try to fit. He tries, and he talks, and he listens, but even after Kenny and Leigh are done with the schedule and hand it back to him, he puts his ear buds back in place and considers the miracles of modern medicine.

His father will be waiting for him when he gets home. Rumors around his family are that his mother will have to go back to work at the New Life facility in Quakertown; Alex taps into the secret feeds of the adults. The whispers and the messages do not escape the ears of Alex. Life means not to reveal itself to people in shouts and declarations, but instead in the vitality hidden to the casual senses.

When Alex’s mother is either upset or angry, he avoids talking to her. The way Leigh says hello to him sometimes makes him feel better if he’s having a bad day. Kenny’s jokes thin the density of the air when Alex’s skies darken.

Alex feels as if the world is a big tapestry, with only a few hands painting the canvas. As the bus pulls onto his road, barreling down the steep hill past the home of the retired science teachers with their swans and the small lake, Alex feels as if the path he walks on in life is going to divert, just as his mp3 player shifts into “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins.

He exits the bus with the schedule the kids inspected clutched in his hand. He doesn’t wave.

—

The masks are strange.

Quarantine is not a comforting word to Alex. His father is mostly restricted to the back of the house for his waking hours. When he ventures out, he has to wear a medical mask whose foreign design provides protection from airborne disease. Alex doesn’t know how to say the full name of the disease they think his father has, so he just calls it TB. Anytime he tries to spell ‘tuberculosis’, he always puts a ‘u’ where the ‘e’ should be, just like when Michael coughs, his body puts blood mixed with mucus where there should be pure phlegm.

Lauren and Michael are losing money. The disease is forcing Michael to operate from his dining room office with shorter hours. The routine is shattered, and among the pieces, with a Cheshire grin, sits the bloated cat known as fear. Lauren knows nobody else can see the creature. The animal must have crashed through the skylight in the middle of the hearth room, plummeting from the black shingles of the McGregor roof to the floor. She tries to keep the animal away, but the hidden nature of the disease permeating the bleb inside her husband’s chest hinges on a phone call from Dr. Fost. She wears the mask and avoids looking in the mirror as much as possible. She walks around the house as if she is paddling a boat, sloshing at her ankles with the ripples from each stroke she cuts through the river of uncertainty.

Alex walks through the front door as his father, mask and all, sits at the table in the dining room, absorbed by his computer. Michael coughs as Alex sets his heavy bag down next to the chairs in the hearth room. Walking over to his father, Alex stands on the edge of the mat placed on the floor to protect the carpet from the wheels of the chairs.

“Hey, Alex.” Michael stifles another cough.

“Hey, Dad. Did we hear from the doctor yet?”

“No, Dr. Fost hasn’t called. I don’t really expect him to until tomorrow, at least.”

“It’s been over a week since the bronchoscopy, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be quarantined?’

Michael wheezes a laugh.

“Yeah, I guess I am. I have to keep working, though; none of the other guys have what could be TB.” Michael shifts back towards the computer.

“Why do they think it’s TB?”

“Well, the symptoms, plus the cells they scraped off the part of my lung, all pretty much point one way. It could be something else; they don’t have 100% certainty yet.”

“I wish we could know one way or the other, that’s all.”

“I know, Alex. So do I. So does your mother.”

Lauren shifts in from the kitchen, a soft smile on her face. Alex notices the stubs of her fingernails are jagged. She’s wearing a plain tee shirt, her hair naturally tussled.

“Hi, mom.”

“Hey. How was school?”

Alex’s mind relaxes. He won’t be gaining much more vital information from this conversation; everything seems stable.

“It was alright. Neil wanted to know if I could go to his house later, we have this science project to deal with.”

“Is Mrs. Pock alright with it?”

“Yeah, as far as I know.”

“And what about Mr. Pock?”

“Mom, I have no idea. He asked me at school.”

Lauren places her hand on her son’s shoulder, as if to steady herself.

“I don’t think you should be going over there with this whole TB business going on.”

“What?” Michael looks up from his laptop, accompanied by a cough.

“You might be contagious, Mike. We don’t want to be going and infecting Alex’s friends.”

“I wouldn’t be going down there with him, I’d be staying here working. We sent him to school, so I don’t see why he can’t go down the street.”

“What if the Pocks get sick? We’d be blamed for starting a practical epidemic because we didn’t listen to the quarantine order! You should be in bed.” Lauren’s smile has evaporated like water tossed on top of the wood stove in the hearth room.

“Lauren, you can’t just keep the kid all bottled up. We can’t live in fear.”

The Cheshire cat, in its malignant manifestation, growls hungrily at the mention of its name. Lauren ignores it, even as it sits perched above her husband’s head, using him as a pillow.

“Mike, I just think it’s a bad idea.”

“He needs to get his work done.”

Alex’s hands are sweating. “I think I can get it done without having to go down there.”

Michael’s voice and coughing increase in tandem. Balled up paper towels frame his workspace.

“I think he should be able to go down there and work on it. It’s literally two minutes down the street.”

“Mike, you’re sick.”

“It’s nothing worse than when I dealt with that walking pneumonia back in 2003.” At the end of his sentence, Michael rasps another cough. A warm substance hits the inside of his mouth.

“Tuberculosis is a big deal, Mike. This isn’t some common cold you can just shove away.”

Michael rises from his chair, walking across the floor to the bathroom around the corner, adjacent to Alex’s room. Walking in, he removes the mask, and spits the bloody sputum into the sink. The pink tinge has deepened in color. Coughing again, he turns the small faucet on. He spits once more, and the projectile lands in the already corrupted stream of water, whisking down the bowl of the sink and into the drain. Michael dimly notes Alex’s toothbrush in the corner, staring at him with the same blank expression as is on his son’s face in the dining room.

The phone rings.

Michael puts the mask on and walks back into the dining room. He meets Alex’s eyes for a moment, and Michael feels a stab of pain.

Lauren moves in from the kitchen, listening intently.

“Yes, Dr. Fost, this is Lauren McGregor.”

Michael picks up a tissue from his desk, and he wipes the excess blood and spittle from his chin. It appears on the fabric like a miniature murder scene.