Becoming the Story (3 page)

Alf felt the muscles inside his forehead go
painfully taut. He had not counted on time pressure. He hated being
timed because his dad was always rushing him. It made Alf anxious,
and when Alf reached the breaking point of anxiety, he sometimes
fell asleep, which made his father angry. His father always blamed
him but Alf knew there was a word for what he had: narcolepsy. Alf
forced his eyes wide open and pleaded with his brain not to go to
sleep during the test.

After a tense smile, the lady cleared her
throat and became all business. “You will have 20 minutes to
complete the test,” she said. All of her sunny warmth had slid into
shadow. There was a forced formality in her tone, an authority that
brooked no argument. “When I tell you to stop, you will lay down
your pencil immediately, or the test will be invalid. Are you
ready?”

Alf tried to nod, but his head was slow to
budge. For a second, he was afraid his stomach would swallow his
head, because his lower abdomen felt hollow, a churning black hole
below his rib cage. Worse, his rib cage seemed to strain against
his lungs. He struggled to yawn, to get a good breath, but his
yawning muscles were out of order.

“You may begin,” the counselor said.

Alf imagined a gun going off, like in races.
His impulse was to sprint instead of write. But he continued to
sit.

The questions blurred into an inky mass, ran
together like a group of runners on a track. He took a deep breath
and ordered his eyes to focus, until the blurry edges sharpened
into legibility. He could comprehend better now, so why did he feel
like he was drowning?

He glanced at the clock. Two minutes had
already passed but his trembling hand was slow to move. How had
that happened? He could hear the clicking of heels and the
breathing of the counselor as she paced behind and beside him, the
floral smell of her like a smothering fog. Why did she have
to 
pace
? There was no one in the room to cheat
from.

He looked at his father sitting in a chair
beside the closed door. His father, who rarely smiled at anyone,
smiled encouragingly, even proudly, at Alf.

The smile and the pride of his father’s eyes
terrified Alf, because he could too easily imagine losing them. He
had to do well. Ace this. He had to.

He glanced down at the sequences of shapes,
the processions of numbers, and the made-up words like “sloom” or
“gornack,” which were used for logic problems. He began to think
them through, and write quickly.

He was going too fast, but he was painfully
aware of the wall clock ticking out its damning rhythm. He tensed
in his chair, because he knew his hands, and not his mind, were
doing most of the work, and hands could never be trusted.

He looked at his father again, whose legs
were crossed, one over the other, his large pale hands resting on
the arms of the chair.

Alf tried to think harder. Instead, he wrote
faster. He had the feeling that a hidden world of depth flourished
beneath the text and symbols, but that he was not touching it.

In the next problem, he decided to reach the
depth, if it was there to reach. He stared at it, a sequence of
shapes to be completed: a parade of circles, squares, and triangles
with four multiple choice answers. He slowed down in his mind, fell
into a world of curves and straight lines, and the answers began to
clarify themselves.

He could see how the test was a conversation
or a game, where someone rolled a ball to you and you rolled it
back, in just a certain way.

He forgot about the clock and the clicking
heels and the cold cloud of perfume that reminded Alf more of
funerals than pretty flowers. But his newfound concentration lasted
only for a few problems.

“Stop.”

The clicking of heels snapped a final time,
leaving a vacant silence, and for a moment Alf thought that the
instructions must have been, not for him, but for the shoes.

“Put down your number 2 pencil and leave it
at the top edge of your test.” Alf obeyed and the counselor swept
up the test booklet. It bothered him that he had not gotten to
finish the test. In class, he usually finished first.

“I am violating protocol,” she said, “but I
feel comfortable doing it because you are such a special case.
Normally, I would score this after you left. But,” she smiled,
“given your track record, I am confident you will have a stellar
score, and I can see that your father is anxious. For that matter,
so am I.”

She sat down at her desk at the front of the
room and smoothed her skirt over her knees. Alf watched her
intently, the slightest impression of a smile still etched on her
face.

He watched as the smile faded, then
disappeared, observed how the muscles around her mouth tightened,
and the way her forehead crumpled. With the next few beats of the
clock, Alf wanted to fade too.

He could hear her pen skidding across the
surface. Alf wanted to snatch the test back from her. She was
working too hard, taking too long.

Her eyebrows were doing a strange dance. All
at once, she laid down her pen, forced a smile at Alf, and turned
her head away. He looked at her face for some sign of reassurance,
but her eyes, lost in the glare of her bifocals, were avoiding
his.

“Well done,” she told Alf, but there was no
emotion in the words. She turned to his father, who looked back
with eager eyes. “Mr. Tyler, may I talk to you alone for a
minute?”

She pointed to a door behind the test room,
leading into an office, where Alf could see the dark corner of a
desk and a lily bending in a vase. His father rose and followed the
trail of clicking heels. The counselor shut the door.

Alf could hear the surge of voices, a back
and forth like a game of ping pong, a woman and a man paddling
words back and forth. His father was clearly the most aggressive
opponent, but it was hard for Alf to make out the words. He could
make out only one: 
overachiever.
When he heard the
word, it sounded to him like the final slam of a coffin. As if to
complete the image, Alf closed his eyes.

He tried to find the space that he retreated
to whenever kids called him Alf the Calf. Instead, the room blurred
and he fell into a kind of half sleep, lulled by the ping pong
cadence of voices. The room he was in fell away behind his lids,
and he suddenly found himself in another place.

For a dream, the detail around him was crisp
and vibrant. He was standing in a brightly lit yard in front of a
log cabin. He looked away from it and could see, far away, the
jagged tips of mountains.

The splintered door was already opened, but
he nudged it open wider and found a large muscular man asleep in a
rocking chair, head back and mouth  hanging open, his
denim-clad legs sprawled. Below him a dark four-legged beast was
chewing on something that looked like a chicken thigh.

The dog gazed up at him curiously, meat
hanging from the corners of its mouth. Its eyes were an eerie red
color. Alf began to back away and knocked over a fire poke leaning
against the wall. He exited the room quickly, consoling himself
that the dog already had what he wanted: the meat-covered bone.

Still, Alf was shaking as he fled across the
yard. Hard to do since he had no idea where he was going. He fled
toward the forest that lay in the shadow of the mountains, where it
was dark and cool and mossy.

But as he went forward, he found himself
blocked. It was the dog. No, not a dog; it was too big and
feral-looking. A wolf. Alf could only stare at the creature, at its
dull black fur and red eyes. The wolf was high enough to meet Alf
at eye level.

Alf was too fascinated to do anything but
stare at the beast and the red intensity of its eyes. “You were
afraid of me,” the wolf said. “May I ask why?”

Alf stumbled back a little. “I thought you
might want to eat me.”

“Would that have been so bad? You look so
unhappy. Would I not have been doing you a favor?”

Alf seriously considered the question. Yes,
sometimes he had wanted to die. He had. But right now he was too
curious. “I want to live,” Alf said. “I just wish I could be
someone else. I want to have a normal nose. And straight legs. But
I can’t, so I want to be extraordinary. I want to be…a genius.”

“A genius? What is a genius?”

“Well, you take a test with puzzles in it.
And if you solve enough of them in a certain time, it means you are
a genius. Everyone is impressed with you. And if you have any
terrible flaws, they stop mattering.”

“Ah,” the wolf said. “I know nothing of this
test. But solving problems for a reward: that I understand. Perhaps
what you mean is 
cunning.”

“Cunning? Well, I suppose.”

“Wolves have a lot of 
that.
We
have to. Cunning is the reason I waited until the man was asleep to
steal his food. Sometimes we use it to corner our prey. Of course,
cunning is not enough to make a wolf what it is.”

“No,” Alf said. “You have tails, pointed
ears, and four legs.”

“No, more than that. Far more. A wolf must
have courage.” The wolf turned to the side and Alf could see a
patch of singed fur, with raw pink skin beneath. Alf stepped
hesitantly forward, but the wolf emboldened Alf with a nod.

Alf reached out tremulously and ran his
fingers along the rough scar. The wolf spoke again. “The first time
I robbed the man you saw he burned me with a fire poke. I should
have bitten him and grabbed the food. Instead I yowled and limped
away. Two of my cubs starved. That day I was a coward. It was only
much later that I returned, because I had to.”

“But I thought you said wolves were always
courageous.”

“Wolves are lots of things, beyond cunning.
We are vicious and kind. We eat and are eaten. We fight and
retreat. The challenge for a wolf is to be a wolf, with all that it
means. To know struggle and survive. For all that cunning is
useful, but not enough to make a wolf a wolf, and especially not an
extraordinary one.”

The wolf stared at Alf with dangerous eyes.
“We corner. We persuade. We intimidate. And sometimes we are
cowards, because sometimes we have to be. We are wolves. If you
want to be extraordinary, if you want to be
a 
genius, 
then stop trying. Instead, be human. Be
human with all that it means, and never flinch from it. Be human,
be cowardly, and be brave. Then be honest. As honest as you can
possibly be. If you can do that, your kind will see you as a
genius. And in every way that matters, you will be.”

Alf stood speechless, looking into the glare
of earnest red eyes. Alf felt a burning flush, yet a shiver rippled
through him from his neck to his spine. “Thank you,” Alf said. “I
will try.”

“
What
 will you try?” the wolf
prompted.

At first Alf was confused, until he realized
the wolf was testing him like his teachers did sometimes to make
sure he understood. “I will be human. Always human. And then
honest. But…tell me more. Help me understand.”

“You can start by looking out the
window.”

“Huh? What window?”

“Behind you.”

Alf turned around and saw none of the grass
and no mountains – only the large office picture window with its
cracked mini-blinds and the sun winking through them. He turned
back around and could see the round clock mounted to the wall, and
hear the voices.

He wiped the bleary confusion from his
eyes with his fists. The door cracked open a bit so he could make
out what the woman said, though she was whispering. “Bear in mind,
Mr. Tyler, I am 
not
 a licensed psychologist. It
was only one test. The discrepancy tells me something else was
going on with him. Please. Even if he is only an overachiever, you
have every right be proud of him.”

Though the woman was defending him, the
words that struck Alf the most was the phrase “only an
overachiever,” confirming his impression that it was not what
you 
did
 that defined you,  but who the
world said you were
.

When his father emerged, Alf desperately
searched his face for any vestige of the pride and approval he had
seen the last few weeks. But his father kept his head down. His
face was drawn and pale above the starched collar of his shirt, his
tie askew.

His sudden pallor made the network of lines
around his mouth look deeper. There was a look of pain in his blue
eyes.

He looked so old and tired, Alf wanted to
comfort, to hug, and reassure him. “I can take the test again,” Alf
said, but his voice broke up on the last two words.

His father sighed wearily and shook his
head. “Get your coat, Alf.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can do
better. 
Please,
 let me try again.”

“What did you do with the bags?”

“Huh?” Alf thought his father meant book
bags, but Alf only had one of them, which was slung across his
shoulder.

“The 
bags.
 The ones all
your new brain toys came in, the ones I bought you. I need the
receipts. All of them.”

The words burned like a fire poke inside
Alf. They scorched and scraped his heart raw. And he thought about
the dream wolf and the red power of its eyes, containing all the
courage and cowardice of every wolf who had ever lived.

Alf remembered the jagged scar scorched into
its flesh as if it were his own and felt again the rough warmth of
furless skin against his fingertips.

And he remembered what the wolf had
said. 
Be human.

Alf knew right then that the test was wrong;
that the world behind his eyes went far and deep beyond what any
test could ever tell. He imagined the fire poke sinking low and hot
into his skin, the fire-heat burning away everything inside him
that could be burned and illuminating everything he was or ever
could be.