Jane Two (19 page)

“Young man, what was your name?” I could not believe she had forgotten my name. I was her best student.

“Um…Mickey, ma'am.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Totter intoned as if she had been brainwashed by Mr. Totter's account of the men in my family. “Well, Mickey, we raise our hands to speak in this class. What is it?”

“Could I be excused to go to the restroom, please?”

“Is it an emergency?” Her pedantic probing made me sad. What had marriage to Mr. Totter done to her soul?

“Um, yes, ma'am…”

“Hurry up, then.” She looked at me hard. I picked up my paper lunch bag, and headed toward the door. “I know about you and brown bags, Mickey. Leave that behind, please.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I stalled returning to my desk trying to figure out how to smuggle the bag out of class with me. I sat back down in my seat pretending to place my lunch inside my desk and stuffed it in under my shirt instead. I wanted to devise a sentence that would tell her how I hated everything that she had become, but it came out as, “I'll be right back, ma'am.”

And then I walked out. When I got out into the hall, I passed a bulletin board and noticed the rules paper, and read it. Then I walked down the hall the same way I came, ducking below the window of my homeroom door. I continued combing the halls, peeking in every homeroom window. Finally I found her. I knocked. Mrs. Bradford opened the door.

“Mickey! Hello, what a wonderful surprise. Did you have a good summer?”

“Oh yes, ma'am.” Jane's mother seemed really happy to see me.

“Class, this is Mickey, he was my student last year.” Some class members waved and said hi to me and I waved back. Andy raised his hand alongside his chest, and I did the same, as was our unspoken custom. I spotted Jane's old box record player sitting on the stool, open. “Okay, don't go anywhere, class, I'll be right back.” Jane's mother closed the classroom door behind us and we stood in the hall facing each other.

“Um, Mrs. Bradford, I didn't know that I wouldn't have you this year, and I brought these.” I reached under my shirt and removed three 45s from my lunch bag. “I think she…I think Jane…” I looked up at Mrs. Bradford. “…and your class will like the ‘Drift Away' one. We can't play 'em in our class anyway. Miss Flinch is Mrs. Totter this year and she's…different.” Jane's mother nodded knowingly.

“Mickey, that's very sweet of you.”

“Well, I better get back to class.”

“
Lest
you get in trouble.” Jane's mother grinned like Jane and winked conspiratorially at me. I was determined to see Jane again, and those dangling 95s were keeping that determination alive.

“Bye, Mrs. Bradford.” I took a step back, and hesitated, then forward, and hugged her. Jane's mother looked at me, then smiled actually more to herself than to me, and returned to her class. I watched through the window for a short time, wondering if she knew about her daughter's shoes way up in the sky, just a hundred or so feet away. She did not. I could tell. It was just me.

“Well, well, it looks like we have some new music!” As I walked slowly down the hall I heard the needle drop and crackle and Dobie Gray sang “Drift Away.” And I heard him sing about doing exactly what I wanted to do every single day of my life with Jane.

It was mid-September, soon after The Pole and my ankle was still hurting, when Andy accidentally knocked over my chocolate milk at lunch. I am ashamed of what I did next. But it is because of that that I believe now. In everything. I want you to know that I have never had a problem with Andy. He knocked over my chocolate milk, and I honestly could not have cared less. But everyone else cared. And I did not care enough about my not caring to contest their caring. Or maybe I was just a pussy. The latter, I think.

“Mic's Quik was gonna be mine, you fuck wad!” Firefly roasted Andy, and set the whole fight in motion.

I should have stopped it all right there, and even now, I kick myself for not having done so. Firefly and I were sitting with some “cooler kids” who were all a year or so older than us, and Andy was sitting with the nerds at the other end of the rectangular lunch table. The nerds consisted of the one who chose never to return to football, way back in grade school, and five who never even tried out. The upshot was, though I felt not a trace of enmity toward any one of them, Andy and I just never really bonded. I knew who had my back, and that was the guys I had pushed myself to my limits with on the sports field.

Trash talk and immature negotiations flew around in between Andy and me with neither one of our mouths moving. We just sort of blankly stared at each other, and before either of us knew it, we were to meet. And fight. At school everyone knew Mr. Totter forbade fighters to wash the blood off their hands so parents would see and know they had been in another fight, so the fight location was declared: the Utotem. After school that day we would settle everything. Neither one of us even uttered a word, but our respective sides said things like, “You better apologize to Mickey!” and “Andy ain't gonna apologize for shit!” Our silence not only spoke volumes, but had confirmed our agreement to meet after school at the designated location, right behind the store's yellow Dumpster, and settle this
huge
problem once and for all.

Everyone knew I would win. That is because typically in junior high and elementary school I'd secretly get scared and react behind my tears before my opponent would. I'd strike harder before the other guy had a chance to do worse damage to me. In that way, I'd be the one to control the situation. And maybe Lilyth did this, too, but in her case I guess it was not a rush to finish a fight but rush into bed with guys, to be the first one to wrap things up, get it over with before they could do worse damage and control her. I guess in that way she controlled the situation.

But fighting Andy, I wasn't scared. It wasn't a match. I knew I'd win. And it nauseated me. I had always found Andy to be pleasant. Quiet, but pleasant. But because I was too much of a big girl's blouse to stand up for what I believed in, I was now going to fight someone whom I had absolutely nothing against. To this day, I am nauseated by this admission. Tommy Gasconade was the oldest kid in our group, and he somehow puppeteered me that whole day. So, after school, we all marched to the Utotem with definitive purpose. There were four of us. Walking there I tried to rationalize this fight in my head and came up with a whopping nothing, but strode on like a pugnacious, warring creature that charges into battle without reason. A rabid badger, perhaps. I know I was a vicious little guy when there was a reason for viciousness, but in this case there was not a reason at all, outside of looking cool to the cooler kids. For this, I am also sorry, but the fact is that the lessons I learned while at some of the lowest points in my life have always paid dividends in achieving my highest.

Firefly, Eddy, Tommy, and I arrived at the Utotem and waited impatiently around back until about four o'clock when we all realized that Andy was not going to show up. On the inside, all my molecules relaxed at once and I almost passed out from the sheer pleasantness of the moment. On the outside, I was incandescent with rage. I hid that my ankle ached from The Pole. I took the opportunity to rest my limp and pop into the Utotem and say hello to Samir, hoping Tommy would get off his high horse and forget about his justice league. Inside the Utotem, Melanie's “Candles in the Rain” was playing on Samir's turntable set up behind the counter. Two of our band of four boys had followed me inside and listened in purposefully while I struck up a pointed conversation with the Hindu guy—as they knew Samir—behind the counter. As usual, Samir played the latest music, as he said, “for the Utotem customers to
live and let live
,” so I had enjoyed dropping by to share my collection with him as it had grown.

“Ah, Mic-mic!” I liked that Samir called me Mic-mic with his accent from
Injah
. “Question for you, Mic-mic. You are knowing this lyric? Why you must
lay down
? Song says you must
lay down
!” His accent sent Eddy and Firefly into a giggle fit. If I am honest, it made me laugh, too, but I always managed to keep the giggles inside out of respect for Samir. I had often wondered the same thing about her lyrics, and that is probably why I liked Samir so much. I wanted to answer him, but I didn't understand Melanie's lyrics all that well, either. But answers or no answers, my two friends thought I was an even cooler kid when Samir was asking me stuff.

“I don't know, Samir, and I'm not sure I know how to let my white birds smile, either. But I'd like to.”

I shot Samir a peace sign like Kevin might have only weeks before, when Tommy marched inside gnashing.

“Bullshit, come on, guys, I know where Andy lives.”

The feebleness that I displayed that day still haunts me, because I followed them straight into the beautiful subdivision of Quail Valley that I had come to know so well and onto the dense velvet golf course heading straight for the trampoline at hole eighteen and the intended bludgeoning of Andy. I prayed that his house was nowhere near hers. I was deeply mortified at the chance that a unicorn might witness my senseless beating of one of her neighbors.

I suffered this point of contrast, and later it would drive home a mission to live consistently with my convictions and refuse to compromise them for any reason. But in those drawn-out minutes as I approached hole eighteen, I accepted that I was going to hell. Most people haven't a clue as to what to do with their lives, but they all want another that will last forever. I, however, just wanted to die and be done with it.

How Tommy knew exactly where Andy's house was, I have no idea, but he strode straight down the golf cart path. As we followed, I saw a fire engine red golf cart that was made to look like a Rolls-Royce. It was parked at the Halfway Food Hut in between the ninth and tenth holes. Seated in it was an obese man just resting like a giant tumor behind the wheel of that golf cart as he chatted up another Titly-est waitress. He had on a blue alligator shirt with bright orange stains smeared all over the front. As we neared, I saw that he was eating Cheetos, and after every bite, he would wipe his hands down the front of the pale blue fabric. I don't know why, but in that very moment, just briefly, I hated that man. Then, just as we passed him, he stopped talking to the waitress, looked right at me like he knew what I was up to, and turned up the volume of his little in-dash stereo as if he were trying to drown out the inevitability of my callow attack on Andy. His eyes made tiny pinpricks in my chest and I found it hard to breathe. I knew he knew, and disapproved of what I was about to do. Donovan's “Hurdy Gurdy Man” blazed louder and louder on the fat man's radio as my leaden legs took me closer and closer to the residence of Andy and his family, and slowly out of that fat man's gaze.

We arrived at Andy's house and Tommy rang the front doorbell. Impatient, he rang it again. Nothing. Inside, I rejoiced. No Andy!

“Come on, let's go around the back.” Tommy strode onward. My heart sank. We walked all the way around to the other side of his house, right on the golf course with no fence to impede the view. I could see the trampoline a few houses down, and that is the first and only time I have ever prayed to not see Jane since she had bounced into my life. The back of Andy's house had a big sliding glass door that hid nothing of the kitchen and living room. Tommy knocked on the glass. Then he knocked harder. It reverberated. Finally, Andy's mother came down the stairs and upon seeing us, broke into a grin whose image burned itself onto the back side of my eyelids.

She flung open the sliding glass door and graciously said, “Hello!” Tommy rudely cut to the chase and immediately asked if Andy was home, without even a
hi, how are you today, ma'am
. And then, the impossible happened. Andy's mother's grin turned into a full-on smile. It was a smile that I recognized from my own parents. It was the smile of pride. Pride at the realization that “cool” kids were finally coming to visit her son. My heart shriveled up to the size of a small, sun-dried raisin, and I accepted as fact that I was probably never going to make it to heaven. The residue of the dried raisin left a stinking picture, and some stinking pictures you just cannot unboil. Andy came walking down the stairs as his mother kept smiling and talking to us. My tunnel vision was on Andy: Our eyes finally met as he finished his descent.

“I'll be back in a minute, Mom.” He crossed right past us into their backyard as if he was just going out to mow the lawn or lead us off to play a round of golf. We all walked resolutely out toward the seventeenth green, away from the trampoline, for which I was grateful.

“Come on back when you're done and I'll serve y'all some sandwiches and cupcakes.” His mother's voice tapered off.

“Yes, thank you, ma'am, we'll be right back. We won't be long,” hollered Firefly.

Neither Andy nor I spoke the entire walk out to the green, but Tommy, Eddy, and Firefly were like three Caesars in a coliseum. When we arrived at what felt like the right spot, Tommy took out the seventeenth hole flag just like they do for the final putt. I dropped my books on the ground as Andy and I turned to face each other. The only thing I wanted at that moment was for Andy to apologize so we could all go home. I heard Tommy start to say something right before I felt Andy's fist impact the side of my head right by my left ear. I stumbled to the right and immediately tackled him before he could swing again. Straddling him, I grabbed Andy's head in a tight vise and asked him if he gave up. Led by Tommy, Eddy and Firefly yelled, “Punch him in the face!” and “Kick his ass!” I held him down with all my weight and switched my grip on him to a conventional headlock to free up my right hand. I raised my fist up over Andy's face and yelled at him to
please give up goddammit
. He would not, I promise you, he would not give up. It is always good to strive to be like people whom you respect. Conversely, I also feel that there are not many things more depressing than finding out that you have things in common with people you detest. I punched Andy on the forehead and asked him again to give up. Nothing. I punched again. Nothing. I threw again for his forehead, but he squirmed and I caught his nose. It opened up, and blood flew everywhere.