Life Sentence (6 page)

I tilted my head back to look up at the stars again.
They looked very small and cold, and in an odd way, mocking. I
wondered who or what it was that could be punishing me by taking
away the memory of myself, my life, and my family, and leaving me
only with such random, disorganized, but most of all, meaningless
knowledge.

School was not quite over for the spring, so the day
after I went shooting with my dad, I was back in class. Our
community didn’t have enough kids to divide us into age groups, or
“grades” as our elders called them. Since there weren’t many people
born right around the time the old world ended and ours began,
bigger kids like me were in classes with anyone ten or older. We
used part of an old school building for classes, so I had some idea
of the enormous scale of the old world, but I still find it hard to
imagine that those rooms were once
filled
with children. To
multiply that by the thousands of towns and cities I see on an old
map—that makes it harder to grasp than the idea that there were
once billions of people on the planet.

It almost frightens me, the idea of all those people
jammed into cities, all those children packed into schools. I know
I’m not supposed to say it, but I find myself wondering if things
are better now. Only the dead are crowded, and we’re free, the way
I like to be. Again, I don’t know. Maybe people back then liked
being all crowded together. Still, the idea frightened me, and I
liked the way I was living in my world.

Even though all of us bigger kids were in the same
class, we did go to different teachers for different subjects,
which apparently is how it’s always been. Mr. Caine, Vera’s dad,
taught English. I always liked him. He was quiet and intense, not
easy-going and cheerful like my dad. I thought it was nice how he
was so different from my dad, yet they were such good friends, like
they needed each other for balance or guidance in some strange way.
I hoped I could find a friend like that someday, but only with the
transition to Piano Girl did I begin to have a normal social life,
so I was a little behind on forming friendships with the other
kids.

Vera and I used to play more when we were little. I
always envied her light brown complexion; her dad was white and her
mom was black, so in the winter, her skin was the color of wheat,
and in the summer it would darken all the way to a walnut brown.
Mine varied between porridge white—all mottled and pasty—and
steamed crawfish pink. And of course, there were all the ugly
freckles across my cheeks and nose. But the two-year age difference
now seemed more of an obstacle between us than when we were
younger.

She still believed boys were gross and smelled bad.
That summer when I was twelve, I could begin to see how they were
strangely interesting, even compelling, though I still wasn’t sold
on the idea of having them or their smell around all the time, or
too near. Sexuality was something my mom had explained to me
soberly and clinically, and something about which the kids at
school constantly tittered, lewdly and ignorantly. But either way,
it was something I understood only vaguely and abstractly. For that
year, I was content and intrigued to observe boys from a slight
distance, but I knew things were different now than they had been
when I was younger.

Of course, none of those vague feelings that boys
might not be smelly little toads applied to my younger brother,
Roger, even though, overall, we had the kind of playful competition
and bickering that siblings always have, with no real harsh
feelings between us. He had always been the extrovert I never could
be, and the cheerful, boisterous personality of my dad was much
less appealing or even bearable in the smaller package of my little
brother.

Tall for his age and athletic, he barely tolerated
the piano lessons to placate our mom. For me, the piano had been
part of salvaging my social life. For him, it was an impediment,
though even back then I knew he was being an unusually good sport
to go along with it for our mom’s sake. A lot of kids wouldn’t
have, or would have complained even more bitterly and frequently.
Of course, Dad had something to do with keeping the complaining to
a minimum, as he didn’t take much off us two kids. He kept us in
line, and made us as strong as we needed to be in this world.

But Mr. Caine and Milton both made us strong, too,
even if their methods and the strength they built were wholly
different and even hard to pinpoint or describe. As I had tried to
articulate it to my dad, and as I have since come to understand it
better, his was the strength of certainty, of facts, of tools and
guns; theirs was the strength of curiosity, doubt, mystery, and
awe. I was lucky that I thrived on both, and by my twelfth year, I
sought them out like they were food or water. A book felt as right
in my hand as a pistol; the anxiety and frustration fed by some of
the books Mr. Caine assigned were as satisfying to me as the
pistol’s report and the clang of the frying pan as I punched
another round into it. I was lucky, even if that luck and the
gratitude for it only dawned on me gradually as the years
passed.

Mr. Caine had all of us bigger kids finish the
school year with a play by Shakespeare. The youngest of our group,
the ten- and eleven-year-olds, had read
Julius Caesar
. The
rest of us, twelve and up, were split between
Macbeth
and
King Lear
. Since not everyone had read each play, we went in
groups, giving class presentations on the plot and characters and
answering some basic questions of interpretation or historical
background. I presented on
Macbeth
, though I had read both
of the others in my spare time. As I said, I was like that back
then, reading and studying whenever I could.

Looking back, the plays other than
Lear
were
straightforward enough, and the theme tying them together was
accessible enough even to adolescents—kings gone bad, corrupted by
personal flaws and bad decisions, turned into familial and national
tyrants, bullies, and murderers. But there was something unreal
about all the plays, and as often as I kept things to myself,
sometimes I could find a voice for my frustration, as I did that
morning. “I don’t understand why we read these, Mr. Caine. The
plays, they’re all set in a world even before yours. They talk
about kings and queens and empires. I can look all those things up
in a book, but they’re not part of our world. I mean, there are
even witches and ghosts in these books—those never existed, they’re
just made up. None of them matter to me. Nothing in these seems
real.”

I had read enough books about mean teachers—I’d
already read
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
on my
own—to know how far out of line I might be considered, and how
cruel and wicked people could be. But I had known Mr. Caine my
whole life, and I had as little fear with him as I had with my dad.
I knew he loved good questions—not frivolous or nit-picky ones,
though he would patiently answer those, too—but challenging ones,
ones that got to the
why
of what we were reading or
discussing.

He just nodded, then looked out the window. “I see
your point, Zoey. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked all plays about
kings. I should’ve seen how the very concept of government—let
alone something as ancient as kingship—would be too distant and
alien for you.”

It was how he always answered a question, I realized
later—by agreeing with the questioner and admitting to being wrong.
The only person more disarming with rhetoric was Milton, and both
men had always held me enthralled. “But let’s think if that’s the
only thing these plays are about. Zoey, the play you read,
Macbeth
, what was it about? I mean, the main character was a
bad king, but what is it about, besides what a bad king is
like?”

I had read enough on the play to know the basic
answers. “Ambition. Power corrupts. Revenge. What’s appropriate for
each sex.” There were some snickers. “Some people think he wrote it
in support of the Tudors.”

Mr. Caine smiled. “Everyone—ignore that last one!”
There were chuckles from the people who were paying attention.
“Reductionism, Zoey? I’m shocked!” I almost smiled too, but held
back, as it was another of the things—like my hair or skin or
voice—that I found especially ugly and awkward that summer. “As
though I would assign you something that was just about some bit of
historical trivia, as though a work’s beauty could be boiled down
to something so mundane! But the other themes—yes, they’re all in
there. And maybe we’re blessed with not having to worry about those
today. Nobody has too much ambition, or too much power. We’re all
just struggling to survive. So maybe those themes are irrelevant to
us, too. But I think you missed one theme, Zoey. It’s biggest in
Lear
, but it’s in
Macbeth
, too.”

He had me caught without an answer. He was so good
at that, but it was never mean—if I’d had the answer right to hand,
he would’ve praised me for that, and if I didn’t, like now, he’d
coax me along. He didn’t want to prove me wrong, he wanted me to be
right. So all I could do was shake my head and wait for his
help.

“It’s in probably the most famous speech in the
play,” he hinted. “‘Out, out, brief candle.’ I know you know what
that speech is about.”

I was surprised then that I’d missed it. “The
meaninglessness of life.”

He nodded. He smiled at my success—he always did,
and the smile’s sincerity was complete and made you feel like you
were as tall as the ceiling—but I also saw the sadness in his eyes,
the sadness of an old-timer. “I imagine you’ve thought of that more
than once, haven’t you? Maybe more than we ever did in my
time.”

I nodded. What else could one say in a world where
life was so small, brief, and fragile, and death was so terribly
large and durable?

“I think we all have.” He looked back out the
window. “And what about the supernatural parts in all the plays?
You said those things aren’t real, they don’t exist. When I was
your age, we thought like that, that the things people used to
believe in were superstitious and silly and science would solve
everything—every disease, every problem, every fear would be gone,
even death. I think we stopped believing in monsters, and that was
our mistake. What we got was quite different than we’d expected or
hoped for. And I think what we got was much closer to what
Shakespeare thought the world was like—a world where there are many
things we don’t understand and can’t explain, things that frighten
and amaze us. And the biggest one of those mysterious and
frightening things is right here.” He tapped his chest. “It’s us.
And I don’t think that has changed much, either. Even the people
out there, the ones who are dead, they’re still us, they’re still
threatening us because they’re like us and they remember what it’s
like to be human, and we know a little bit what it’s like to be
dead inside.”

“Like Banquo,” I said quietly.

He turned back towards me and nodded. “Quite. Or
Lady Macbeth, who wastes away so slowly and painfully. I don’t
think ghosts and monsters are as unbelievable as I used to think
when I was your age.” He paused again and looked out the window.
“Well, I’m monologuing again at the end of the day, aren’t I?”

“Like in
The Incredibles
!” my brother
helpfully offered, and all I could think was “knucklehead,” though
I kept my reaction to an all-purpose, dismissive eye-roll.

Now Mr. Caine really smiled and the laughter was
throughout the room. “Zoey and Roger, perhaps sometime you can
explain this to us. When your father, in all his infinite wisdom
and care, finally splurges and fires up the generator, why is
that
the only kind of film he ever shows to the rest of our
wonderful community?”

“It’s one of his favorite movies!” Roger informed
us.

Mr. Caine kept smiling. “I thought that was
Die
Hard
.”

“He’s showing that in a couple weeks. He promised us
when school was out he’d show all five of them in a row!”

“And I’m sure that’ll be worth every precious ounce
of fuel and every minute of your valuable time. Well, with that
wonderful treat in our future, class dismissed.”

The other kids scrambled out of the classroom for
lunch. Mr. Caine stopped me and Vera before we ran out and asked if
we’d have lunch with him. We often did this, since he was her dad
and he and I talked a lot now, getting ready for my vows. On the
way outside, we passed Mr. Enders at his little station by the
door. He was the school guard. I doubt he could’ve done much to
stop anyone, living or dead, but he was an older man, and it made
him feel useful to sit there with his nightstick and whistle and
sign-in sheet. He waved us by as he and Mr. Caine started their
back-and-forth, which I had heard with very little variation, most
days, for the last seven years.

“Morning, Mr. Caine.”

“How’s it going, Mr. Enders?”

“Oh, can’t complain.”

“That’s good. No one would listen to you if you
did.”

Chuckles followed. I had always wondered how they
decided on the script, because when my dad walked by Mr. Enders, it
was always, “Hey—working hard? Oh, no, hardly working!” Even back
then, I marveled at Mr. Caine’s ability to segue seamlessly from
the highest speculation and analysis down into meaningless banter.
It was another of his charming ways of putting people at ease,
because he did enjoy his quips with Mr. Enders, for what they were.
There was never any condescension or fakery in it.

We went outside and sat on the ground in the shade
of the school building. Mr. Caine talked to Vera first, asked how
her day had been, what she’d done in her other classes. She was
kind of at an awkward age at that point, because she both did and
didn’t want to be treated as a child, but Mr. Caine was always
flexible with her moods and listened to her carefully. Of course, I
was no less awkward, as I only wanted to be treated as an adult,
but lacked the experience, strength, or discipline always to act
and respond as one. But again, I never felt nervous or anxious
around him.