Читать книгу Monoceros - Suzette Mayr - Страница 10

Way back on Monday, 4:17 a.m., Walter, the guidance counsellor — stone-cold irritated at his boyfriend Max because of their fight the night before, stone-cold awake hours before the alarm clock is set to shriek them awake— hauls himself out of bed and shakes open the newspaper in the dark of the kitchen. His boyfriend Max now awake too, bumps into the wall on his way to the bathroom. Walter hears the toilet flush, so he flicks on the coffee machine. The coffee almost done gurgling as Walter cranks open a can of cat food while their cat, Lieutenant Fong, twines her tail around his shins, and Max sucks in his morning smoke on the back porch, wrapped in his parka, his boots trailing their laces. They spoon low-cal cereal and skim milk from their bowls, drink the coffee, bite into toast with peanut butter, Max still oppressively silent like a great big pouting man-baby, his silent fury left over from last night because Walter accidentally marked the coffee table with a ring from his glass of orange juice. The Cold War all over again because of a bit of marked varnish on the coffee table. It’s 5:32 a.m. as they knot their scarves and pull on their toques and boots. Walter stuffs the book he finished this weekend into the papers spilling from his satchel: Max’s secretary, Joy, recommended it, The Pride and the Joy it’s called, and he loved it. Loved it. He hasn’t cried so much since he read Sounder when he was eleven.

Max about to yank open the front door.

— Wait, says Walter. — Where’s my goodbye kiss?

Max purses his lips, his arms crossed. Leans forward and pecks Walter on the mouth.

— That’s right, says Walter.

— Doesn’t fix the goddamn table, spits Max, furiously shooting back the lock on the door.

— Oh bugger off, says Walter. Max pounds his feet into the snow.

— You bugger off.

Max violently brushes snow off the car windshield, the hood.

— No, you bugger off, whispers Walter, stepping through the front gate and out onto the slushy sidewalk.

That Monday morning before all the bad things happened. A normal Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.

Monday, Walter decides to walk to work instead of taking the bus while the diapered and swaddled giant squalling baby Sir Max, His Royal Highness, the Sulking King of Coffee Tables, who as principal of the school and so technically Walter’s boss, drives away and onward to his special, reserved parking space at the school. Excruciatingly early for work. Walter estimates it will take him an hour and forty minutes to walk to school. Two hours maximum.

Walter forced to run the last fifteen minutes to work, he broke down and jumped on the bus part of the way there, his clunky boots nearly kicking off his feet as he lumbers through snowbanks, leaps icy gutters, his coat flapping wide open, his armpits soggy, his knees creaking, his lungs raw and heaving, socks sliding down inside his boots, his heels naked and rubbing against the felt lining. Bursting through the doors only one minute before the first bell which means he’s twenty-nine minutes late.

Walter mops and blots himself down in the bathroom with paper towels as best he can, his shirt drenched with sweat; ten minutes later, sauntering casually, his lungs still smouldering, to the main office to refill his coffee cup, The Pride and the Joy under his arm, when Joy the secretary says, — The Pride and the Joy? No no, I said The Pride of Provence! It’s a book about a man from Ontario who decides to renovate his country house in Provence. Look at this picture I took of my husband and son when we did a bus tour of Provence. More like an eating tour!

Walter crinkles his lips, — That’s awesome! he says, tucking The Pride and the Joy behind his back. His chest pings. His book a different book entirely.

She flips through her little plastic book of pictures twice, so he won’t miss the white canvas cap her husband is wearing, how tanned she is in her striped tube top, camera case slung over her shoulder, an irritating Frenchman who pops his head into the picture at the last second. Her son’s round face and barbed wire teeth blocking the view of a stone church, the outline of a quaint bakery window neatly arranged with iced pastries and loaves of bread. Walter gazes at the pictures, gazes at the bobby pins criss-crossed on the back of Joy’s head from where he is hunched over her shoulder for her exciting pictures.

— How wonderful! he says. — Awesome!

He grins when she swivels in her chair to watch the delight on his face. He’s read the completely wrong book — a dreadfully wrong book, a sentimental, gloopy, ridiculously happy-ending gay love story that he read for twelve hours straight on the weekend while Max was out, and which made him bawl.

— You should go to France! exclaims Joy. — You can borrow our Michelin guide. And the French women are beautiful. Beautiful! Very stylish. Find yourself a girlfriend in no time. In fact, I have a girlfriend in my book club, Yolanda, recently divorced…

— Getting too old for that kind of nonsense, Walter grins. He grips the wrong book, tucked even more firmly, behind his back. She’s new, been working here for less than a year. He’s a fat black man in his fifties, an old bachelor, who eats alone in his guidance counsellor office every lunch hour. Doesn’t she know to leave him alone?

He points at a picture of her son doing a grinning handstand in a fountain to distract her from Yolanda, from the book burning his hand. His spilling desire, his longing to talk about The Pride and the Joy with someone, anyone, in this relentless place, who might understand just one word. Max so absorbed in the damn coffee table, he refused to listen when Walter tried to tell him about the book this weekend. On the way back to his office, Walter grasps the book, title in, against his chest, its pages slippery with inadvertent radioactivity.

Walter puffs into his office, then realizes he forgot his coffee cup in the main office. He opens the Tupperware container on his desk, a jumble of carrots, celery pieces and cherry tomatoes. He pops a tomato into his mouth and bites on it while he scrolls his emails, flips through his appointment book, scratches his beard hard all over, beard dandruff flakes fluttering, then remembers with a start that graduation is in less than four months. He fritters the morning away printing up Grade 12 transcripts and trying to come up with a more time-efficient plan for the graduation ceremony.

After a lunch spent eating an egg salad sandwich from the machine in the cafeteria and looking out his office window at a snowy honeysuckle hedge, he meets with two students, Laura Giardini at 2:30 p.m. who wants to argue about her aptitude test, — I don’t want to be a hairdresser, I want to be a lawyer, why doesn’t the test show that I should be a lawyer? Can I take it again? How many times?

Josh Gatchalian at 3:00 p.m. who doesn’t want to talk about anything, — My mom told me to come, he says. — Nope, don’t know why I’m here. So what if I’m failing band, I never wanted to play the trombone anyway, only fags get good grades in band, Mr. Boyle.

Only a half an hour left in this Monday. Walter opens files on both Laura Giardini and Josh Gatchalian, adds their file icon selves to his list, types in Laura’s history from her pink Grade 10 sheet, figures out Josh’s aptitude test results say he’s suitable for the police or law enforcement or party planning. Walter leaves a voice mail on Josh’s parents’ phones, — I think it would help Josh if we all had a meeting to talk about why playing the trombone is vital. Okay. Awesome. Hope you have a great evening!

Sequestered in his office, he opens his Tupperware again, a piece of carrot crunched in half when he picks up the ringing phone and Max is calling him from down the hall, — Mr. Boyle. Walter, I need to speak with you immediately. I need you.

A piece of carrot half-bitten, half-chewed, the secret thrill he gets when he has to interact with his boyfriend at work. Their dangerous, exciting secret.

Thirty seconds later, his hand on the principal’s doorknob.

The door opening, the vice-principals Morty and Gladys standing at attention on either side of the principal, a carved wooden crucifix hanging on the wall behind his head. Their silence cool metal. Walter’s heart falters.

Walter’s Monday should have been the tedious photocopy of every other Monday, but Max the principal tents his pale fingers and breaks open the rotting egg of Patrick Furey’s suicide to him and the two vice-principals, turning this Monday into a Monday of unique suffering.

— A student in our school has made the disastrous decision to end his life, Max says, his voice quavering. — I have already begun taking the appropriate measures.

It’s okay to cry, Maxie, Walter wants to say. You blubber away. — I’ll draft a memo for the teachers and staff, Walter says instead.

— And put in your memo, says Max, — that staff and teachers are forbidden to discuss the death with the students until I have all the facts. We’ll let the students know on Wednesday.

— In my position as head guidance counsellor I have to ask if you really think that’s a good idea, Max, says Walter. — Better to give them the facts as we know them as soon as possible because the students will figure it out themselves but they’ll figure it out all wrong. We know enough already about how he died, don’t we? Today’s Monday. By tomorrow afternoon the rumours will be out of control. Better to get the grief counsellors in first thing Tuesday morning.

— Get that memo written up, says Max, turning to his desk and picking up a stack of paper. — You may go now, Walter.

Walter exits the office like a butler instructed to go scrub the chamber pots, his face and feelings sutured tight as he trudges back down the hallway, slams through the drawers on his office desk, prepares to write his memo, Monday fucking afternoon.

He tries not to dissolve into the 98 percent water he is made of when Joy rushes into his office and grips him in a bosomy hug.

— Oh Walter, she says, as she grips his upper arm, his overflowing waist, — You looked so sad. Like you needed a hug.

— Sometimes it is hard to understand God’s plan, gasps Walter, trying to pull himself away. — We just have to trust He knows what He is doing. The boy’s in a better place now.

He accidentally touches her bra strap through her blouse, yanks his hand back, pulls himself away from Joy. Clumsily pats her on the shoulder. Joy’s crinkled eyes squish out tears.

— I never understand how that’s supposed to make someone feel better, she says in a flannelly voice, her nose bright red.

Walter starts to draft the memo that Joy will slip into all the teachers’ mail slots Tuesday morning. He tries to hunt down the right words for the memo, thumbing through his thesaurus, settling for appropriately vague, consoling words: unfortunately rather than tragically, passed away rather than died, please refrain rather than forbidden. His face to the computer screen in his office, he swallows, his Adam’s apple sliding up his throat, tipping further up into his sinus cavity, cutting off his breath.

They meet Monday night in the front foyer of their house, Walter and Max, when Max finally swings closed and bolts the door behind him. He kicks off his winter boots, the air heavy. Walter puts a hand on each of Max’s shoulders.

— This day, exhales Max.

— I’ll crack you open a beer, Maxie, says Walter. He kisses Max’s temple. The skin sticky.

They eat from the bowls of stew in front of them, Lieutenant Fong perched neatly in Walter’s lap, studying every movement of his spoon from the bowl to the mouth to the bowl. Max inserting spoonfuls of stew into his own mouth as though administering to an assembly line: deposit, chew, swallow, deposit, chew, deposit, swallow.

Walter’s lips slack, Max’s lips tight.

— At least it didn’t happen on school property, says Max, his words clipped and cauterized. — That’s one good thing.

Walter’s ears pop. — What did you just say? Walter’s spoon clattering into his bowl. Lieutenant Fong skitters to the floor from Walter’s lap.

The growing puddle of stew in Walter’s belly sour, coagulated.

— It didn’t happen on school property. It’s technically not a school issue.

— You know what? says Walter, — This stew tastes like diarrhea. It looks like diarrhea too.

— My mother made this stew, snaps Max.

— Lucky she didn’t make it on school property.

Max’s jaw clicking rhythmically, the scrape of his metal spoon on the bottom of the ceramic bowl. Walter tosses his bowl in the sink, grabs the pot from the stove.

— Oh, and by the way, I don’t appreciate the way you talked to me today, says Walter as he scrubs the glutinous remains of the stew from the pot with steel wool, his man-boobs bobbing under his T-shirt. — We have enough facts about how the boy died. What other details do you need?

Max stands up from the table, rattles cups and plates in the dishwasher as he inserts and reinserts them, his elbows jabbing, stabbing the air.

— Do I need to remind you of suicide contagion? says Max, his face swivelling from the dishwasher to Walter, pencil-dot eyes. — Or are you having some kind of neuron seizure? You cannot even begin to conceive of the damage this will do to the school’s reputation, can you?

Walter harrumphs as he slops the dishrag back and forth across the counter, knots up the plastic bag of garbage, the bag sloppy and heavy as he trudges it out the back door. He swings the green garbage bag in an arc into the trashcan, the metal clanging, the bag landing with a tinny squelch. He clumps back into the house, snow squeaking under his feet.

— The students will not find out ahead of Wednesday that there was a death, says Max. — Or any erroneous details about the death, if news management is done correctly. News management is your job. He slams the dishwasher door closed, his elbows folding back to his sides.

Walter sloshes water into the kettle for a cup of instant decaf.

Walter regards Max in his old sweatpants, his oversize T-shirt proclaiming Don’t Mess with Sulu drooping over his ass, Max locking the dishwasher door, stabbing the On button.

— Tell me, says Walter. — What are you feeling? It’s okay to cry.

— One moment please. I can’t hear a word you’re saying with the water on, Max says in that strident principal’s voice that makes Walter want to set his own hair on fire as he double-checks, triple-checks the lights on the dishwasher. — What did you say? asks Max.

— Oh forget it, says Walter, turning to the cupboard for a coffee cup. He stops. His hand rests on the cupboard door.

Something suspended inside him has just dropped. Lieutenant Fong meows.

Max adjusts the single magnet on the fridge, a mini replica of the Starship Monoceros from his favourite television show, Sector Six. He brushes past Walter on his way out of the kitchen and into the TV room because tonight is Monday night and Monday night is Sector Six night even if it’s just mid-season reruns and a boy died today. Max dusty, mouldy, plumped on the couch.

Sunday, Saturday, Thursday, Friday. Last Friday.

Walter should have noticed, should have hooked the dead boy Patrick Furey back from the edge of that cliff. He should have stood at the bottom and let the boy bounce off his belly. Walter never met the parents, he never met the dead boy really except to squirm across the desk from him last Friday as the boy insisted on opening his mouth and confessing his obsessions into Walter’s ears. Patrick Furey was addicted to another boy. I’m in love, he told Walter. Patrick’s voice jumping and squeaking as he creaked forward on the chair opposite Walter, Walter nervously spooning out globs of canned therapy-speak as fast as he could in the direction of the boy, — Is that so? How do you feel about that? Really? Mm-hmm.

Walter noting every papery curl, every ragged edge of the posters pinned to the wall behind the boy’s head: the poster of the Hang In There ginger kitten clinging to a fence, the Black History Month poster trumpeting Inspiration in rainbow colours. Walter still managing to blob out platitudes, a horse shitting in a geometrically perfect line in a parade.

But as the dead boy talked, his problem mushroomed between them, the boy blowing his problem into a giant word balloon that squished them into opposing corners, — He’s in my English class, said the soon-to-be-dead boy. — I really love him. He gave me his grandmother’s necklace. I can’t sleep anymore, Mr. Boyle. This school is an insane asylum. They stole my skateboard. Mr. Applegate says that because it was off school property the school isn’t responsible.

— Insane asylum is a bit harsh, don’t you think? said Walter.

The chair’s hiss as the boy leaned forward, fingers at his chest, fiddling with the heart pendant on the long chain around his neck, his sweater on inside out, his eyes wet and wide. He said, — You know what I mean, right?

The dead boy wearing a girl’s heart-shaped locket around his neck. His fingers tangling in the delicate chain. His heart exposed outside his clothes.

— I don’t know what you mean, said Walter.

— Well you’re— you’re—

— No, Walter said. Because he would not lose his job for this kid. — Let’s focus, he said. — This isn’t about me. Sounds like your problem is a lack of focus. You don’t know what your feelings are. You’re distracted from your schoolwork. Keep focused on the important things.

Walter caught up a pencil from his desk, started tapping his front teeth with the eraser end. He dropped the pencil, slid open his desk’s top drawer and crinkled open a package of Sezme Sesame Snaps. Crunched a Sezme wafer loudly.

The boy leaned back in his chair. His mouth a straight line.

Walter finished chewing his Sezme. Swallowed. Picked sesame seeds from his teeth with tongue, then cleared his throat. He picked up his pencil. — Life is all about focus, Walter said, resuming tapping the pencil against his teeth.

— Mmm, said the boy.

— Awesome, said Walter. — Thanks for the talk. Good luck!

And the boy slipped from the office. Walter too sweaty to call out a goodbye, his hands clasped in his lap to clamp down on the shaking.

The boy left the door ajar so Walter wheeled over in his desk chair and pushed it closed himself. He turned to his computer and clicked open a new file. The boy’s name, Furey, Patrick under the file icon. Under category Hobbies, Walter typed, Likes skateboarding, into the electronic file. He clicked the file closed, then turned to his lunch bag for another package of Sezme Snaps. He jammed all the Snaps in at once, the sharp corners piercing his gums.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday. Monday. Monday. Monday.

The boy having solved his problem then.