Fallen Land (25 page)

2:00 PM:
Restroom and water break. They line up, walk to the restrooms, he stands in a stall and urinates while three other boys hiss words he does not understand. He washes his hands, looks up at the black glass hemisphere, gets a drink at the fountain in the hall, lines up again and waits until everyone else is lined up, fingers on lips, silent except for occasional squeaks of rubber sole on linoleum, sounds that draw scowls from Mrs. Pitt’s mouth. When they are all in line, Miss Fox walks them to the science lab in the Blue Wing, where they spend an hour learning about butterflies with Mrs. Rothschild, who shows pictures of different butterflies before inviting them to come up two at a time to examine a display of real butterflies, pinned to a board and sealed under glass. He can see their small faces, and is horrified by the pins stabbed right through their bodies and wings. He wonders why it is not enough just to look at pictures since photographs, as big as they are, provide more detail than looking at the butterflies with the naked eye.

3:00 PM:
For the last period of the day Miss Fox arrives at the science lab to take them to the sports center in the Green Wing. The boys go into the Boys’ Locker Room and the girls into the Girls’ Locker Room. Inside the Boys’ Locker Room the assistant PE teacher, Mr. Bruce, hands out black swimming suits, which itch and are never the right size. Once Mr. Bruce gives him a suit he tries to find a corner where no one else is standing. Knowing the shirt will cover his private parts until he puts on the swimming suit he takes off his khaki slacks and underwear first. The other boys laugh and talk and make jokes among themselves. By the end of the day they usually have other things on their minds than him, so he manages to get changed and into the shower room before anyone can notice his discomfort. After showering they have to line up at the door to the pool and wait for Mr. Bruce to let them in. He stands shivering, looking at the other pale bodies, the extreme thinness of some, the protuberant belly buttons, the serious fatness of others, the weirdly feminine breasts. He does not have a sense of his own body. Joslyn says he is skinny but no one else says anything about his body, only about the way he behaves, the way he tries to hide, to not be seen by other boys. His teeth chatter, his feet are cold on the tile floor, he longs for the warmth of the pool. As always at swimming, the other boys are horsing around and Mr. Bruce has to tell them to stop. Austin and Ethan don’t listen and Mr. Bruce has to tell them again, then makes them all wait until everyone is standing silent and still. When Mr. Bruce passes the students he turns to avoid touching their wet bodies, and then opens the door and leads them onto the pool deck, directing them all to get into the shallow end where the girls, who always manage to be in the pool before the boys, are already splashing. Mr. Bruce and Miss Connie teach the swimming classes together and there is an additional lifeguard. A rumor has circulated among the students that someone drowned a year ago, and since then the school has insisted three adults always be present for each swimming class. It is not the swimming itself he minds. He is a strong swimmer and enjoys being in the water. It is the changing and nakedness that undo him, making him feel he is going to collapse. They spend forty minutes learning to tread water, working on their backstroke, and being allowed, in the final ten minutes, to play Marco Polo. Mr. Bruce and Miss Connie are both in the water with them; she is plump, but Mr. Bruce is tall and thin with a body broken up by distinct valleys and ridges that make him look like a special kind of three-dimensional topographical map. As he stares at Mr. Bruce he knows, all at once, that Mr. Bruce is aware of being stared at. His teacher swims over and asks him how he is doing, if he is enjoying swimming. “Yes,” he says, “I like swimming.” “Good,” says Mr. Bruce. “I want you to promise me you’ll do something really active this winter, Copley. Do you have an indoor pool of your own?” “No,” he says, “but we have a big backyard.” “That’s good,” Mr. Bruce says, “that means you can run around. Get outside, even when it’s snowing. You look tired all the time, Copley. Exercise will help you sleep better. You’ll have more energy. And in the future one cookie is enough for lunch.” He wonders how Mr. Bruce knows he ate Joslyn’s cookie as well as his own, since Mr. Bruce is never in the cafeteria. He wonders if his parents have been talking to Mr. Bruce about him. In fact, he wonders if his parents have been talking to all of his teachers about him. At the end of the lesson the boys go back into their locker room. Some of them take off their swimming suits to shower. They stand under the hot water and don’t seem to mind being naked in front of other people. He cannot bring himself to do this. He showers with his suit on, takes a towel from Mr. Bruce, wraps it around his waist, and removes his swimming suit only once the lower half of his body is covered. He puts the suit in the hamper and gets dressed, not drying the top of his body properly so he can put on his shirt faster. He pulls the underpants on while the towel is still around his waist and is dressed and ready to go when the dismissal bell rings. At his locker outside Mrs. Pitt’s classroom, he says good-bye to Joslyn. “See you tomorrow, Policeman,” she says, using the nickname for him she has devised. “See you tomorrow, Joslyn,” he says. He has tried to think of a nickname for her but since the other students call her Medusa he suspects the best thing he can do is to call her by her own name and nothing else.

3:57 PM:
His mother is waiting in the parking lot. From the front door of the school he runs through the rain and into the cool dry air of the car. They have half an hour to get to the doctor’s appointment, which his mother tells him is all the way on the other side of town. The rain coarsens, slamming against the windshield, and at one point it becomes so heavy, the wind so strong, that they cannot see the bumper of the car in front of them. His mother pulls off the road into the parking lot of a shopping mall where they wait for ten minutes. “We have time,” she says. “It’s not that far now. How was your day?” “Fine,” he says. “What did you do?” she asks. “Lots of things,” he says. The drawing he did in art is stowed in a manila folder in his backpack and he takes it out to show his mother. “Who’s this?” she says, looking at the image of the old white house and Louise holding her candle. “It’s the woman who lives in the house next door,” he says. “What woman?” his mother asks, as if she does not know. “Louise. I see her every morning. We met through the fence. She lights a candle in her kitchen. Smoke comes out of the chimney. She’s one of my only two friends here.” “But that house is condemned, Copley. I didn’t know anyone lived there. You should have told us earlier.” His mother looks concerned and asks to keep the picture. Adults are always keeping his work, taking it away from him, and then, when he least expects it, returning it without explanation.

4:25 PM:
The doctor’s office is in a brown brick three-story building. Unlike at his ordinary doctor’s office, where he had a check-up last week, there is no receptionist. He and his mother sit in the waiting room. There are magazines for adults, books for children, and various toys: plastic cars and trucks and wooden blocks. He has started paging through an issue of
American Scientist
when the door to the doctor’s consulting room opens and he asks them both to come in. Dr. Phaedrus looks like an older version of his father: shorter, fatter, balder, his blue and white striped shirt tucked into the waist of his gray slacks, held in by a gold-buckled brown leather belt that matches his tasseled brown leather shoes. He explains that he will be “speaking with Copley and Mom together and then Copley alone” while his mother waits in a different room than the one they started in. At the end he’ll “talk to Mom alone” and when the session is finished they will “exit through the back of the building,” so anyone in the first waiting room will not see them, and they will not see those who may be waiting. He asks why they have to do it this way since he does not understand why it is important that no one knows they are there. “To preserve privacy,” Dr. Phaedrus explains, “because some people don’t like others to know they’re coming to see me.” Dr. Phaedrus smiles and closes the door, puts some soft music on his stereo, and asks them to sit down on a brown leather couch that matches the doctor’s belt and shoes. Dr. Phaedrus sits across from the two of them in a matching chair and holds a pad of yellow paper and pen. The doctor stares at him for a moment and he stares back at the doctor and then the doctor begins. “I feel fine,” he says, when the doctor asks him how he’s been feeling, “I’m not sick.” “No one is saying you’re sick,” says Dr. Phaedrus. “But you’re a doctor,” he says. “Sometimes people go to a doctor so they can try to feel even better. Let’s think of it that way if we can,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “that you’re here to try to feel even better than you do already.” The doctor smiles, his teeth very white, his skin tanned and shiny, head almost bald except for a crescent of white frost that matches his teeth, so when he smiles it looks like a white ring is angled all the way round his head. “Tell me what kinds of things you liked to do in Boston,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “and what kinds of things you like to do now that you’re living here.” He thinks about the question for a moment and then begins to answer, conscious of trying to find good things to say about his new home, and not just about Boston. He tries to be balanced: not everything about Boston was great, and not everything here is terrible. The doctor listens, takes notes, and watches him in a way that reminds him of how he feels when he has to change for swimming. The doctor smiles and asks what he likes best about his new house and new school. He thinks and answers the questions: “I like how big my room is. I like having my own bathroom. I like having a backyard even though it’s too wet to go outside very much. I like the new kitchen.” “And school,” the doctor prompts. He thinks; there is nothing he likes about the school itself. “I like my friend Joslyn,” he says, “and I like the art teacher Mr. Cross and the swimming teacher Mr. Bruce and my language arts teacher Mrs. Abbot.” The doctor nods and asks him what he likes about each of these teachers, skipping over Joslyn entirely. He tells Dr. Phaedrus about how nice Mrs. Abbot is, how Mr. Cross liked his drawing today, and how Mr. Bruce looks like a movie star. The doctor nods, takes notes, smiles to himself, goes on nodding, takes more notes. “Now, I spoke with your parents last week and they told me that from time to time you pretend to be a toy soldier. Can you tell me why you do that?” It’s not about being a toy soldier, although sometimes when he does it he is thinking of the steps he learned in dance class in Boston, and he knows those were for the “March of the Toy Soldiers”; he often hears the music in his head. More frequently, however, he is not thinking about the dance steps at all; instead, he is becoming someone else, someone more logical, more stable, someone who does not have to act in ways his parents expect him to act, but he does not know how to say any of this to the doctor. “I don’t know why,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “Sometimes I just walk like that.” “And your dad says you put on a different voice, a funny voice,” the doctor says. “It’s not a funny voice. It’s a different voice. It’s still my voice. It isn’t funny, though.” “And why do you talk with that other voice?” “I don’t know. Because I want to.” The doctor frowns and writes for almost a full minute: while the doctor is writing he looks at the gold second hand creeping round on the watch his parents gave him for his last birthday. “Okay, I think it’s time for Mom to go in the waiting room at the back, and Copley and I will continue our conversation.” Dr. Phaedrus winks at his mother and shows her into the other room. When he comes back to sit down, the doctor clears his throat and says, “Okay, Cop, let’s get down to brass tacks, now that it’s just us two guys. Your parents said that you’ve been having some interesting dreams. Can you maybe tell me about that?” Dr. Phaedrus turns over a blank sheet of paper and raises his pen. “Dreams?” he asks, understanding that he has, in fact, been brought to a doctor who helps people with sleeping problems. “Yes, Copley, dreams. I believe you’ve been having some unusual kinds of dreams since you moved here from Boston. I’m very interested in dreams, and in the way people remember their dreams. You’ll actually be helping
me
, you know, if you can try to remember some of them.” He is unsure what kinds of dreams he should report. He remembers many of his dreams. In the last several weeks he has been dreaming, night-to-night, about working on a particular drawing. He tells Dr. Phaedrus he began the drawing on one night and continued it
on subsequent nights, improving it, expanding it, making the colors brighter: it has been, literally, a dream with sequels. “A recurring dream, a dream you keep having, which is always the same?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “No, it’s different every time. It’s like chapters in a book.” He thinks this is interesting but Dr. Phaedrus looks bored and asks him if there are any other dreams—about his father or mother or about friends at school or friends he left behind in Boston. In fact, he remembers a dream about his mother drowning, and he woke up to find he was crying, and he spent the whole next day so upset he could not even look at his mother; he decides this is too private to share with a doctor he has only just met, who, in any case, clearly thinks his most interesting dreams are boring. “No,” he says, “I can’t remember any dreams like that.” Dr. Phaedrus mumbles to himself, writes something on his pad, sighs, and looks up at him. “Is there anything that’s been bothering you, Copley? Is there anything happening at school that you don’t feel like you can tell your parents?” He thinks about Mrs. Pitt and the other boys, but says no, nothing at school, except for the fact that there’s meat in all the lunches. “And you don’t eat meat?” “It’s not just me. My parents don’t eat meat either.” The doctor makes a note. “And what about at home? Is there anything maybe happening with one of your parents that you don’t feel like you can tell the other one? Is there anything bad happening?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “What about with your grandparents?” He thinks about his mother’s father, Grandpa Chilton, who is kind and funny but who they rarely see, and then he thinks about his father’s parents, Grandpa Arthur and Grandma Ruth. They don’t see them very often either. The last time they saw his father’s parents was before Christmas last year. His grandfather came into his bedroom at night after dinner and balanced him on his knee. He looked straight into his eyes, smiled, and then suddenly grimaced, gritted his teeth, and said, “Copley, I want you to know your opinion doesn’t matter
at all
. You are
no one
. You are
nothing
.” As his grandfather was telling him this, his father came into the room and he has not seen his grandparents since then, not even before they left Boston to move here. “I want you to know this is a safe place,” says Dr. Phaedrus, “a place where you can tell me absolutely anything that comes into your head. You don’t have to keep anything from me. You can trust me, Copley.” He looks at Dr. Phaedrus and decides he has nothing to lose; he has told his parents about the man in the house and they don’t believe him, so perhaps Dr. Phaedrus will, and then something can be done, although what exactly he thinks should be done about it he can’t say. The earth spins several thousand more feet around on its axis to let a faint patch of sun through the window. It hits his face and he squints; Dr. Phaedrus adjusts the blind. “Is that better?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “Yes, that’s better. There’s a man in the house,” he says, his hands beginning to shake. “What?” “I said there’s a man in our house. I told my parents but they don’t believe me. I’ve seen him more than once. He’s really tall, taller than Mr. Bruce. Like a giant, except not a giant. I know giants don’t exist. I mean, I know there are really, really tall people on earth, but that they’re not magical or anything. I know it’s a . . .”—he looks for the word—“
genetic
problem they have. This man isn’t really, really tall, but he’s definitely tall.” “And you’ve seen him more than once?” Dr. Phaedrus asks. “A few times. On the night after we moved in, I think I was sleepwalking and I woke up outside. I walked out the front door. I was walking down the lawn, and then this man picked me up. I didn’t recognize him. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me. I was really scared. He was so big and he carried me like I didn’t weigh anything. He carried me back inside the house and he locked the door and then I walked back upstairs, really slowly, so he would think I was still asleep, but I wasn’t. I told my parents but they said it was a dream.” “And was it a dream?” “I don’t know, maybe, except I saw him again. He was in my room in the middle of the night. He didn’t think I could see him but I could and I spoke to him. I told him I could see he was there. He was sitting in the corner next to my dresser. He said my room was his son’s room. He asked me if I was his son. He sounded angry.” “And were you scared?” “No, I wasn’t scared, not that time. I recognized him. I was scared the first time, and that time I screamed, but the second time I’d already seen him.” “But if he was a stranger, why didn’t you scream the second time? Why didn’t you call your parents?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “If a stranger was in my house, I’d scream.” He thinks about this and wonders why he was not afraid the second time. He does not have an answer. In fact, he knows now that he is unsure if the man’s presence was or was not a dream. He remembers seeing the man outside the window and is fairly certain he was awake when that happened, but the movement of the furniture this morning, and his parents’ belief that he is the one responsible for the rearrangement, has unsettled his sense of what he has experienced and what he has imagined. He is no longer sure what he may have dreamed, and what he may have experienced in real life, nor is he sure that dreams are not, in fact, just a different room in the house of
REAL LIFE
than the ones we walk around in during the day. “Do you think maybe it was a dream?” asks Dr. Phaedrus. “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. He held me the first time. I felt him holding me. I didn’t dream that. And I saw him this morning as we were leaving the house.” The truth is, he isn’t sure, but even if he dreamed it, it still might be true. He dreamed they would leave Boston before his parents ever told him they were going to move. He dreamed they would live in a house that looked something like the one they live in now. He has not told his parents this. It’s another thing they don’t know. He also dreamed they would not be living alone.