A Density of Souls (4 page)

24

A Density of Souls

She had been taunting Stephen, boring him deliberately, trying to lure him out of his shell.

“It’s late,” Stephen murmured.

He lifted his eyes to hers. She was startled by something she saw there.

Pain. In one week, Stephen had developed a type of penetrating gaze that comes out of a fine silt of resignation that settles upon the soul. It was a gaze so rare in young men of his age that its absence usually made them what they were.

He held her gaze.

“I love you, Stephen.” She was surprised by how easily the words came out of her mouth. “There will be times when you don’t think that means a lot. Or when you take it for granted. Or when it’s not as important to you as approval from . . . other people. But trust me, you need it. And you’re going to need it later, so . . .”

Monica nervously looked to her hands folded across her lap and then lifted her gaze to see Stephen raise one clenched fist to his right eye, before the tears could trickle down his cheek.

“It’s important for you to know that I love you,” she finished.

He nodded, suddenly, as if to shake her words from his ears. He lowered his fist. Tears sprang from his eyes despite the fact that he had shut them. He continued to nod his head dumbly. Monica rose, moved to his side of the booth, slid an arm around his shoulders, and walked him out of the restaurant, meeting the curious glances with the hostile glare she had perfected as a child.

They drove home in silence. Monica repeated one thought in her head, almost whispering it aloud: Goddamn you, Jeremy.

On the third floor of the Conlin residence, Jeremy Conlin’s study remained just as it was the day he had shot himself.

A child of the Garden District, he had courted Monica with poetry.

She often came up the stairs to visit his study late at night when Stephen was asleep one floor below. The streetlight through the single window threw spiderweb shadows of oak branches across walls plastered with quotations—drawn from both his own writing and that of his idols, Theodore Roethke and Thomas Mann. He had published one book of poems, The Upstairs Stories, which had met with miserable reviews but had secured him tenure in the Creative Writing department at Tulane University. Monica kept a copy of the book on The Falling Impossible

25

Jeremy’s desk. It was the only thing she ever touched in the room.

As Stephen slept, she flipped through its pages. She knew the poems by heart. Anger kept her from ferreting out Jeremy’s wisdom, from de-coding it from the lines of his poems. Yet she never became so angry that she could clear out his study, pack the notebooks into boxes, and paint the walls. After several hours sitting silently there, Monica would relax. She knew she was communing with Jeremy’s ghost. He did not haunt their house as an apparition. Rather, Jeremy Conlin was a constant, silent presence on the third floor, his substance the papers and shelves and a desk with a typewriter. If he had a wisdom to impart, it would have to filter from the study to where she and Stephen made their lives downstairs.

3

“W
ho read last night?”

Yale-educated David Carter knew enough not to let a single freshman English class compromise the reputation he had built with his students over four years. By November, however, a week before Thanksgiving, David realized that an after-lunch section of English I had forced him to do something he swore he’d never do: hate a student.

He cocked his hip, bringing the paperback copy of Lord of the Flies to his waist in one clean motion, as Stephen Conlin quite obviously peered to decipher David’s notes in the margins. Stephen’s face was wrinkled in thought. Nineteen faces stared back at David, wearing expressions of feigned fascination as they chewed the ends of their pens.

David’s Yale classmates had laughed at him when he announced he was going to spend several years teaching at the high school level.

Bewildered, his parents declared their son’s goal a waste of their tuition money. For three years, he had proved them all wrong. His junior and senior classes allowed him to cement a reputation as a handsome young maverick who knew what Cannon’s limits were.

He could say “shit” rather freely, but “fuck” would stir only useless, nervous laughter. By now he could slide Dickens and Chaucer into the minds of students without major objection. David was the teacher the male students confided in and the female students thought was hot.

But all of that was slowly being devoured by the crooked grin of Brandon Charbonnet, seated in the back row next to his twin in the testosterone brotherhood, Greg Darby.

“The boys find the wreckage of the plane,” David offered, trying to The Falling Impossible

27

control his voice. Brandon and Greg exchanged a look that resulted in stifled laughter from them both.

“Meredith, you care to jump in here?”

Meredith Ducote tilted her head at him with mingled desperation and annoyance as if to say, Don’t you have anything better to do than bother me?

David pondered answering her aloud: Yes, like grant work, a PhD, a book I’ve had in me for the last seven years—but no, I love chiseling at the gold-plated lock you have on your mind, Meredith. That’s why I do it.

“Which plane?” Kate Duchamp piped up with the hollow assertive-ness common to the most popular girl in class.

David rolled his eyes.

“There are two plane wrecks,” she declared righteously.

Stephen barked out a laugh.

David tensed. The book in his hand straightened slightly against his waist as his fist clenched its spine. Stay out of this, Stephen. They’ll eat you alive.

Kate was glaring at Stephen’s back, three rows ahead of her. David caught Brandon staring at the nape of Stephen’s neck, but with an amusement as threatening as it was cocky. With a simple laugh, Stephen had strayed into Brandon’s turf—namely, the back of the class, where the budding football player conspired alongside Greg Darby, with Meredith Ducote and Kate Duchamp sitting in front of them like puppets they could manipulate.

“They find a fighter plane,” Stephen said.

Meredith found herself listening unwillingly. Stephen kept his head bowed as he spoke. But Meredith was suddenly distracted as the girl sitting behind Stephen slipped his book bag out from under his desk, dragging one of the straps with the corner of her shoe. She kicked the book bag back to Kate Duchamp, who slid it back to Brandon with her clog.

“The boys find the wreckage of a fighter plane that’s crashed on the island and . . . The Pilot. He’s still in there and there’s this parachute attached to him. And he’s got his mask on, so . . .”

Greg was writing in big block letters. As he gently tore the page from the notebook, Meredith stared straight ahead. David Carter was seated behind his desk now, holding his forehead in one palm.

“So they think he’s this monster. But really, see . . . what’s happen-28

A Density of Souls

ing is that—” Stephen was mumbling now. Meredith knew he was embarrassed by the amount of time Mr. Carter had given him to talk.

“It’s a dead man. It’s not a monster . . .”

The book bag traveled across the classroom floor. Meredith did not look down as she heard the straps sliding past her desk over the dusty linoleum.

“They’re the monster. The boys. Because they’re out there with nobody and . . . They make up this monster to cover up the fact that they’ve turned into . . .”

Stephen shifted in his seat as the girl behind him wedged his book bag under his desk with the heel of her shoe.

“. . . beasts, basically.”

“Thanks, Stevie!” Brandon said in a high-pitched squeak from the back row. Meredith caught Stephen staring down at his desk. “Fuck you,” he mumbled so audibly it frightened her. She saw Mr. Carter’s head slip off his hand in surprise.

The bell exploded through the classroom. Stephen went for his book bag and slid it over both shoulders, then bolted for the door, making his typical fast escape. David Carter stared after him, his eyes widening. Meredith saw Kate Duchamp double over in her desk with the clownish guffaws of someone laughing for everyone around her.

Greg rose out of his desk first, rushing past the spot where Meredith sat frozen, staring at Stephen’s back as he disappeared. She waited for the sound of laughter to erupt from the hallway as Stephen walked down the middle with the word
FAG
dangling on a piece of looseleaf paper taped to his backpack.

There was a rat in the prop closet. Carolyn could hear it from her desk. It was trapped and whining and she prayed it would either die or free itself and vanish into the auditorium.

The noise from the closet collapsed into breaths. She rose from her desk without thinking, abandoning her cigarette, and found Stephen Conlin curled into a fetal position on a bed of lamé draperies she had used in the living room set for Lost in Yonkers the spring before.

A piece of paper was crunched into a ball inside Stephen’s clenched fist. Carolyn squatted and forced Stephen’s fingers open, unfolding the piece of paper. Run through by wrinkles in the paper was the word
FAG
.

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29

The freight door slammed so hard that Carolyn dropped the note.

Jeff Haugh was bounding across the floor toward her. He leapt over a pile of newly painted flats. When he saw her, he faltered in uncharacteristic awkwardness. His eyes—usually drowsy with a sexual frankness Carolyn did not like to see in teenage boys—widened slightly.

Caught, Carolyn thought, as she crouched over Stephen. She saw fear in Jeff’s eyes. She saw her suspicions of the boy suddenly written across his face. He had come to hear Stephen’s sobs and perhaps taunt him further. She felt a flicker of disappointment. She had thought Jeff might actually be better than his crude jock brethren.

Jeff’s gaze shifted—from the note in Carolyn’s hand to the rectangular view of Stephen’s butt through the prop closet door. She stood up and held the note in one hand so the word was visible to Jeff. She waited for Jeff to muster some response as he surveyed the result of what she now believed to be his crime.

He said nothing.

“Get out,” Carolyn hissed.

“What?” Jeff’s anger was incredulous and immediate.

“I said, get out of here. Go to the football field and stay there!

Don’t ever come anywhere near my office again! Do you understand me?”

His upper lip trembled in what looked to Carolyn like a sneer.

She held her ground.

Jeff gave one last look to what he could see of Stephen through the doorway before turning and leaving the theatre building, his gait more strained. When the freight door slammed behind him, Carolyn brought both hands to the top of the note, to rip it down the center.

Then she was struck by the odd thought that for some reason Stephen might want to keep it. And if he didn’t, she just might.

After escorting Stephen to the nurse’s office on the ground floor of the Athletic Center—he had said nothing to her, but as his tears subsided he had let himself be led—Carolyn made her way beneath the flamed photographs of Headmaster’s Award winners hanging along the walls of the Administrative Hallway to find David Carter at the coffee maker in the faculty lounge.

His eyes jumped as Carolyn slapped the note down next to his coffee mug. A few teachers looked up from their conversations about 30

A Density of Souls

impending Thanksgiving plans and their stacks of yet-to be-graded papers, then looked away just as quickly.

“Did you see this?” she asked.

“Yes, but . . .”

“You saw this note? You saw . . .”

“No I didn’t . . .” He backed away from her.

“Well, what are you saying then, Dave? Did you or didn’t you see the godamn note?” She felt the effect of her suddenly raised voice rippling through the faculty lounge.

“I’d appreciate it if you stopped yelling at me,” David said gravely.

From his tone, Carolyn could tell he thought she was violating the rule of all high school teachers by being too emotional, getting too involved. He would tell her to calm down, get a little distance, and realize that they were only children.

“Have you spoken with Phillip?” she asked. Phillip Hartman was the headmaster.

“I didn’t see who did it, Carolyn,” David whispered.

Carolyn’s shoulders sagged. She had just been told a lie she didn’t have the energy to expose.

“Carolyn.” David took an exaggerated, deep breath. “Have you ever heard the argument that if you confront the issue at the moment you might end up embarrassing the victim more than the perpetrator?

There’s a point where . . . well, kids want to take care of it on their own. It’s humiliating to have a teacher intervene . . .”

Carolyn snorted, then looked from the note to David. “We have auditions for the musical a week after Thanksgiving break,” she began, her voice quaking with each word. David furrowed his brow in confusion, but Carolyn continued. “Stephen wants to audition. I want him to. If he doesn’t make it until then, or if he”—Her teeth clenched, her eyes flared—“. . . if he’s too embarrassed to get up on stage, then expect this note in your mailbox!”

In the nurse’s office, a sophomore girl had just been hooked up to an aspirator by Mrs. Schwartz, a member of the Cannon Mothers’ Club whose only qualification for tending to the young was the ability to speak gently. As the plastic tube pumped oxygen into her asthmatic lungs, the girl stared blankly at Stephen, who was sprawled flat on his back on a gurney. Stephen studied the ceiling.

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31

Nurse Schwartz approached and laid a hand softly on his shoulder.

“Do you think you’re ready to go back to class, Stephen?” she asked.

“No,” he whispered.

“Well . . .” Nurse Schwartz seemed baffled. Her hand lifted off his shoulder, then touched him lightly again before she withdrew it completely. Her eyes wandered down the length of Stephen as if there was some solution in the way his legs attached to his hips.

“It’s never a good idea to cry like you do,” Nurse Schwartz said quietly, so the girl would not hear. “Kids can be mean, but if they see you cry that usually makes them meaner.”