Linger (11 page)

Mom took the receiver from me and said, “Joan got hit by a car, Bobby. She was sixteen years old! The place just won’t be the same without that darn cat!”

M
ONDAY MORNING THERE WAS
a sub for Mr. Raleigh.

She wrote her name on the chalkboard: Mrs. Burke. She said she was from Torrington, which was a town seven miles away. She had on a blue blazer with a shorter skirt than most of our teachers wore, and you could tell she wasn’t used to teaching because her heels were really high. She had to either sit down all day or spend the night soaking her feet.

When someone asked her where Mr. Raleigh was, she said she didn’t know, she didn’t know him, but she would very much like someone to volunteer to read his homework assignment.

Osborne de la Marin’s hand shot up instantly.

He said, “I wrote mine in verse.”

“Very original.” She smiled.

So Osborne got up and stood there with his long black braid down the back of his red Tommy Hilfiger shirt, and he read his poem.

How DARE Mr. Saddam march into Kuwait,

Driving up oil prices, something we hate!

Incubator babies thrown to the floor?

Reason enough to march off to war!

Smart bombs sail over dark sands at night,

CNN reports are filled with delight!

Dumb bombs behind them in Baghdad explode.

Civilians are slaughtered, but we are not told.

Anyway, we’re killing silly old Iraqis,

Dish towels on their heads, tackiest of tackies.

Vietnam is over, we’re back in the clover!

Out of our war cammies, into our pajammies.

If Saddam is still there,

Why on earth should we care?

We have met our fate

And oil’s well in Kuwait.

There was some scattered applause, one whispered shout of “Faggot!” and more groans of disgust and disapproval.

Mrs. Burke simply said, “Next?”

O
N GOOD FRIDAY, JUST
before we got the afternoon off, it was announced on the intercom that Mr. Raleigh had resigned, “effective immediately.”

No reason was given. Everyone I knew thought it was because the school board felt he was brainwashing us.

There were petitioners waiting outside, kids singing “All we are say-ing is give Jules a chance!” and even a few faculty members carrying signs that said things like “Heil B.H.S.!” and “Free Speech?”

It was sleeting and blowing out. Sloan and I got under her battered old umbrella with SUCK MY KISS written across it and started down the front walk, coat collars up, gloves on, eyes pelleted by the frozen rain.

That’s why we didn’t see the long black Lincoln Town Car, lined up with the others that were always there at the end of a school day. The gold Linger logo was on the side door.

We finally heard its horn. Then I saw Lynn inside.

Sloan said, “She’s been waiting for you, Gary. Go with her. I don’t care.”

“No, stay here a sec.”

I ran around to the driver’s side trying to duck the wet needles on my neck.

Lynn had on a black-leather bomber jacket and a black baseball cap with DKNY in white letters. Her long hair was tucked under the cap. There was a white silk scarf around her neck, and she smelled of that perfume she always wore.

She had on shades, too. I’d never known her to wear them. I didn’t know anyone who’d wear them in that weather.

“Would you come with me to Flynn’s, Gary?”

“Can I bring Sloan? You know Sloan Scott, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t, but I don’t care. Bring her.”

Back on the sidewalk Sloan said, “I’m not even dressed, Gary.”

“You’re not even
dressed
?”

“I look awful today, and look at her.”

“She’s got a baseball hat on, for God’s sake, Sloan. I think she’s been crying, too.”

We squeezed into the front and Lynn started in as soon as we got through the introductions.

She said her father’d forced Mr. Raleigh to resign, and it was all done behind her back, starting with Mr. Raleigh calling her to say he wouldn’t be there last weekend and not to come home. He was packing his things up, at Flynn’s.

“Daddy sat on him, Gary, until he said ‘uncle.’ He told Jules that everyone on the school board was in Rotary with him, that I was underage, and that he’d see to it Jules never taught again—
anywhere
—if he didn’t turn in his resignation.”

“What proof did your father have of anything?” I asked her.

“Daddy makes his own proof … and he has the book. It’s my fault for forgetting to take the book back to school with me. As it is, I hid it under my sweaters, but old eagle eye found it.”

“What was the book?” Sloan said.

“It was just poetry, e.e. cummings. But Jules circled something that sounds like we were lovers,
that way,
and we never were. Then he wrote the page number in the front, and he wrote, ‘For my Lingerling with love from J-Bird.’ I mean, my Gawd, that’s embarrassing, incriminating, corny … and all Daddy needed!”

“How did you find out your father threatened Jules that way?”

“I found out because Daddy told me. He loves to gloat, loves to say things like Well, your Mr. Right was wrong about a lot more than the war, wasn’t he? He didn’t waste any time clearing out, did he? He knows better than to get into a contest with
me.
… I’ll have him up on morals charges if he shows his face around here again—you’re a minor!”

She shoved a tape in.

It was Whitney Houston’s “All the Man That I Need.”

We were doing sixty-five in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone.

“I love this song,” Sloan said.

“I don’t love going this fast,” I said. “And you better take it easy, Lynn. We’re down near Railroad Avenue, and the homeless are around there. All you need is to run over someone!”

“They’re not sleeping in the streets yet!”

I’d never seen her so hyper. She was actually stepping on the gas.

She said, “Where did he ever get the idea to search my room?”

Sloan poked my appendix with her elbow as if to say Don’t tell her about your mother; now is not the time.

I was thinking I’ll tell Lynn about my mother the day Dunlinger invites Nine Inch Nails to play in The Regency Room. There was no way Lynn was going to believe anything I told her, once she found out it was my mother who’d tipped Mr. Raleigh, never mind how accidentally.

She’d never believe I wasn’t to blame.

I decided to change the subject, fast. “What are you going to do at Flynn’s?”

“That’s where you two come in. You tell Mrs. Flynn you’re his students, and you want to write him. I know she’ll have a forwarding address.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“Gary,” she said, pushing the car up to seventy, “I didn’t take Daddy’s car without his knowing it and drive down to your school and wait a half hour out front, and now find myself heading down to Allen Avenue in the freezing damn wind and sleet, because I know where he is. If I knew where he was, I’d probably be with him, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, I’d say,” Sloan said.

“I’d say so too,” I said. “I just hope we get there in one piece.”

Sloan was nudging me, and I was rubbing my knee against hers, but this was not hormones driving us, it was adrenaline; it was a cry to survive from our pores in the form of sweat, the word we never say in the Peel house.

“Don’t you think you’d better park down the street so Mrs. Flynn doesn’t see the Linger car?” I said.

“I thought of that. Daddy’s probably promised her a year of free dinners if she keeps her mouth shut. I’m not going in. I’ll park a few doors away.”

She went around a corner with the wheels squealing, the sleet whooshing against the windshield, and Whitney Houston hitting a long, sweet, high note I figured might be our swan song.

“I wish I had a piece of paper,” I said to Sloan.

“Why?”

“I’d write down my last wishes. I’d say If I die in a car wreck, don’t have a celebration of my life instead of a funeral. You know how they have nothing but celebrations these days?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t think it’s anything to celebrate, death in a car crash at sixteen.”

“You
liar
.” Lynn said. “You told me you were two years younger than Bobby, not three.”

“That was way back when you obsessed me,” I said. “Back before I knew how you drive.”

Sloan was laughing into her hands.

I was thinking how I’d always liked the way the Lincoln smelled, that great new expensive-car smell of good leather. Even the chrome smelled.

But did I want it for my casket?

Finally, Lynn slowed up.

She said, “We’re almost here, I think. There’s Waffle Waffle down the street.”

“You better park here,” I said.

“It kills me!” Lynn said. “e.e. cummings! I don’t even like him, the way he printed his name in lower case, all that ‘your hands are like the rain’ crap! It was so phony! I couldn’t tell Jules I’d rather read Leonard Cohen!”

“Park,” I said. “Slow up so you can park, Lynn.”

“To have e.e. cummings do me in!” she said. “The irony of it!”

“‘Lingerling’ and ‘J-Bird’ did you in,” I said. “Those are lovers’ names for each other.”

Lynn said, “Ned Dunlinger did us in,” and she said it between her teeth, suddenly braking, teaching us as we lurched treacherously toward the windshield the value of the seat belts we didn’t have fastened.

D
EAR ROBERTO,

My name is Gina Sanchez, and I am Augustin’s sister.

I feel like I know you because of what he has written home about you. Then you and Sugar signed the card Augustin sent me for my
quinceanera.
Do you remember that?

I am sorry to hear that Sugar died. Our whole family feels terrible over that news.

We also hope you are having a good recovery.

Now I must tell you about Augustin, Roberto (does it bother you to call you that? Do you like Robert better?). You see, he had some very, very bad things happen. I will just have to tell you straight out. Some of it you may know.

What has happened is that Augustin has been so badly burned, he does not look the same. One eye, his nose and lips and ears have all been burned away. Six fingers are gone, his thumbs, and the skin on his legs and one arm.

He is now undergoing plastic surgery and skin grafts.

Roberto, we know you have been burned, too, but not so bad, you say, and so I think you did not realize all that was burned on Augustin.

I am asking you now not to call him by the nickname you fellows called him by over there. He does not look a lot like a movie star now.

Some of his friends from high school called him Gus.

The family has always called him Augustin or Gustin.

He has asked me to write you and give you his address, and fill you in on his damage.

Right now we do not know when he will be up and about, but a nurse or one of us writes letters for him. He has received all yours, and I know he will like to see more.

I hope someday we meet you. We have heard about your Linger and it sounds good.

Yours truly,

Gina Sanchez

“M
Y MOTHER’S DOWN AT
Waffle Waffle,” the kid said. “She eats early, then goes to Caldor’s to work until nine.”

“We just want to ask you about Mr. Raleigh,” I said.

The kid invited us in and said his name was Marty Flynn.

He was wearing a baseball cap backward, and a T-shirt that featured Mr. Happy Face with a bullet hole through his forehead, blood trickling over the smile.

He said to Sloan, “I like your umbrella. I like The Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

“I’m not into them—someone gave it to me,” said Sloan.

“‘Suck My Kiss’ is a big mosh tune,” he said. “I’m into mosh.” He was about fourteen.

I said, “We’re students of Mr. Raleigh’s.”

“You mean you
were.
”

“Yeah, we were. He left: so fast, we didn’t get a chance to return a book we have of his.”

Sloan said, “Plus we’d like to say good-bye to him.”

“We don’t have any address for him, so I’m sorry.”

“Your mother doesn’t?”

“I said
we.
We’re the only two here. He made three.”

“What if someone wants to reach him?”

The kid shrugged and shifted his weight from one Doc Martens to the other.

He said, “He paid up through June, so
we
don’t have to reach him.”

“What about other people?” Sloan asked him.

“What about them?”

“Where does he live?” Sloan asked him.

“He did live here. He didn’t have two places.”

“Do you know where his son is?”

“He’s in some school in Vermont.”

“That’s right. Vermont,” I said. “I remember he went there one weekend.”

“All we know is he said he resigned and he wouldn’t be back.”

“Okay.” I zipped my jacket back up.

He said, “We heard he got kicked out for opposing the war.”

“Something like that,” I said.

We were opening the door on our way out.

“My mom was for the war, and I was against it. But she says there was no reason to can him.”

“I was against it too,” Sloan said.

We walked down the street in the rain. “What’s mush?” I asked her.

“Mosh. M-O-S-H. It’s sort of like slam dancing.”

“What’s slam dancing?”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

“I don’t dance. Bobby doesn’t either. We Peel men don’t dance.”

“That’s got to change. I love to.”

“Maybe you should date Marty Flynn. Did you see that T-shirt?”

“Yeah, but deep down he’s a peacenik,” she said.

Lynn was playing Janet Jackson’s “Love Will Never Do.”

She said to get in back since we were wet. I told her we didn’t have any luck.

I said, “But at least we found out his son’s school is in Vermont.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“I guess you do,” I said. “Come to think of it.”