Ordinary People (3 page)

Then, don’t! he felt like screaming, squirming to pass through the remark, untouched. He wants to belong to this house again, needs to be part of these tall windows set low to the ground, walls half-hidden behind thick waxy rhododendron leaves, the cedar hedge in front, all of it—all elegance and good taste. Good taste is absorbed through the skin, like rays from the sun, in this elegant, tasteful section of Lake Forest, Illinois, a direct quote from a newspaper article. They had laughed when they read it and he laughs now, out loud. See? Haven’t lost your sense of humor after all but your sense of identity is what seems to have been misplaced. No. Wrong. You don’t lose what you never had.

 

 

Lazenby’s red Mustang hurls itself into the driveway, and he tosses his books in the back seat; climbs in after them to sit beside Van Buren.

“We’re late,” Stillman says, “because Dickie’s mom had to pack his lunch.”

“Two minutes! Christ, you guys were already late when you got to my house!” Van Buren moves over to make room. “Hey, listen, I damn near killed myself over this poly-sci exam.”

“Yeah, the guy wants a goddamn
personal analysis
of it all, I was up until two o’clock, trying to make sense out of the crap—”

“It helps,” Lazenby drawls, “if you read the crap when it’s assigned. Instead of inhaling it the night before the exam. Just a friendly hint.”

“Tell me about it,” Van Buren says.

Stillman sneers. “Get a sense of reality, will, you, Lazenby? We swim our asses off every friggin’ day. When are we supposed to study?”

Lazenby shrugs. “I swim. I study.”

“Yeah, you’re perfect.” Stillman twists around in the front seat. “What’re you reading, Jarrett? Is that Hardy? Junior English?”

Conrad nods. They are all seniors this year, except him. He had taken no finals last year. Not January, or June.

“You got all junior classes this year?” Stillman asks. “They didn’t pass you on anything?”

Van Buren yawns. “They don’t pass you on breathing in that dump if you haven’t taken the final.”

Lazenby says, “Kevin, will you quit screwing around with the dial, get something and leave it.”

Stillman gives a mocking nod, turning up the volume on the radio. He continues to screw around with the dial. Conrad feels the slow, rolling pressure of panic building inside himself. The air in the back seat is being sucked out the windows by a huge and powerful vacuum. Relentless, it will soon crush the car like an eggshell. They cross the Chicago-Northwestern tracks and Stillman is immediately alert, on the lookout.

“Hey, there’s Pratt,” he says. “Lemme out. I need a jump.”

A small, neat-looking redhead in a blue skirt and tan jacket is hurrying along the street, her books in her arms.

“Nice legs,” Lazenby says.

“Nice ass.” Stillman is looking at him again; sees him glance out the window. “Huh, Jarrett? Hey, look. Jarrett’s interested in something.”

Lazenby says over his shoulder, “She’s new. Just moved in last spring.”

“She’s new, she’s blue, she needs a screw,” Stillman sings.

Van Buren yawns again. “Christ, you’re a goddamn comedian today, aren’t you?”

He remembers this now, about Stillman; that it is too easy for him. He is too good-looking; girls have been falling into his lap since junior high, and he has done nothing to earn it, in fact, does not deserve it, spending his time as he does, in tossing off crude remarks about them and then grinning, as if he will be President someday. A diver on the swim team. In general, he has observed that divers tend to be crappy human beings. One of life’s mysteries.

“Hey, a tongue twister,” Stillman says. “Jarrett falls for Pratt’s ass. How’s that?”

Lazenby and Van Buren laugh. The remark has an indelible quality that makes Conrad’s skin prickle. Stillman is an expert at that: he and Buck had phrases that would sing in the locker room for weeks.
No not today not today.
He wills his mind to slip over it, a blur of gold leaves and green grass sliding, sliding as they turn into the parking lot behind the school.

“ ‘Jarrett falls for Pratt’s ass,’ yeah, I like it.” Stillman leers at him over the seat, gives him the Presidential grin. “What’s the matter? Not funny?”

An undertone of faint hostility has crept into his voice. Conrad’s stomach tightens. He needs no more enemies. He forces a laugh from the back of his throat; turns his attention outside the window
Forget it forget it he was never a friend
sends him a mental message Screw you he will not get it does not operate on the same frequency never will so fuck it.

 

 

“Conrad, what’s your theory on Jude Fawley?”

“What?”

Miss Mellon smiles at him. “Do you think he was powerless in the grip of circumstances, or could he have helped himself?”

“I don’t know,” he stalls. “Powerless? I guess he thought he was.”

“What’s the difference?” Her attention on him now, full force. It will smother him. Too much interest brings out every ounce of reserve he has, makes him unable to think, to formulate answers, even to hear the questions. He looks blankly back at her.

“The guy was a jerk,” somebody says. “All hung up on what was the
moral
thing to do. It didn’t make any sense.”

“That’s too easy, Joel.” And he breathes again, as her attention shifts. He knows, though, that she will corner him after class, and she does.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured about this report,” she says. “Do you want an extension?”

“No.” Backing slowly out the door as she follows him. “I’ll get it done.”

“You’re sure? There’s no need to push yourself....”

Wrong. There is a need. To regain his spot on the swim team, to get back into choir again, there are no choices at all, just endless motion. And no more mistakes. Like the ones he had made last year, when everything was sliding. He had made a lot of them, then. He had brought in some poems to her. That had been a big one.
“Why are you writing all this about violence and war? Aren’t there other things you’d like to say, Conrad? This doesn’t sound like you. ”
Now it’s as if the whole thing were her fault. She is trying to make it up to him, and he wants no part of those memories. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants from people except that he prefers indifference to concern. Easier to handle.
Please stop holding my goddamn hand,
he wants to say to her. She tears his pride to shreds.

Indifference? Or something more definite than that, strong waves of unfriendliness he can actually feel coming toward him, toward his seat at the back of the room in chemistry lab. Mr. Raymond doesn’t like him any more. Why? They hardly knew each other before. And Mr. Simmons, his college algebra/trig teacher, is embarrassed; won’t look at him at all. Well, tough. So what? They can all go to hell, he doesn’t care. He has gotten what he wanted from all of them. They agreed to have him back in their classes this year, didn’t they? “Maybe we ought to cut down on some of these extras, Conrad.” At the meeting before school started, with the principal, Mr. Knight, his counselor, Mr. Hellwarth, his father. “Maybe take a straight English course, instead of English honors, and drop choir—” But, no, he had not wanted that, and then Faughnan, the choir director, had stepped in, told Knight that he was short on tenors, he needed Conrad for balance. Balance. Forester Singers was definitely the prestige group of the school. A Cappella Choir, selection by audition only. They have a reputation to maintain, and Faughnan has pull. If he needs Jarrett for balance, that’s that.

Choir is the one time of day when he lets down his guard; there is peace in the strict concentration that Faughnan demands of all of them, in the sweet dissonance of voices in chorus. He has sung in here since he was a freshman. Faughnan is a serious student of music; also, a perfectionist of the sternest sort, who cares about nobody, about nothing other than the music. His shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, his tie undone, he drives them. Every minute of every hour that is spent there, they work, and there is only one way to prove yourself. You sing, and sing, and sing. All else is unimportant.

“Nice job, tenors,” Faughnan will say, once in a while, offhand. There are only six of them. He allows himself the smallest thrust of pride on those days. However, today is not one of those days. They sift down off the stands and he stops to retrieve his books from the back table. In front of him are two sopranos, one blonde and one redhead, whose hair hangs, silk-smooth and straight, almost to the middle of her back. No, not red: more of a peach color. The back of her head is three inches from his nose. He could touch it, if he wanted to.

“Hi, Con.” The blonde has turned around; is looking directly into his face. He can’t remember her name.

“Hi.” His face flushes; burns. Beneath the roughened skin, he can feel the rash begin to prickle; stinging nettles against his face.

“Have you met Jeannine?”

“No.”

“Jeannine Pratt, Conrad Jarrett.”

“Nice to meet you.” She smiles; puts out her hand. He stands there, stupidly confused. He still cannot remember the blonde’s name and-she acts like she knows him and this other one, the redhead blue eyes copper-colored freckles a blue skirt he suddenly remembers it is the girl he saw from the car:
Jarrett falls for Pratt’s ass,
goddamn you, Stillman, anyway. He doesn’t move doesn’t speak stands helplessly waiting for inspiration, for release.

“I think you stand behind me,” Jeannine says.

“You sing better than you talk,” the blonde says, giggling, and he remembers. Gail Noonan is her name. Buck took her out once.

“Well—” she says, “we’ll see you.”

They turn away, and he walks blindly out the door behind them, down the hall toward history class. He thinks of a simple, spare melody, picking up the notes as they slide into his mind—“Rainy Day Man,” an old James Taylor tune. That one is really old, goes all the way back to junior high. He hums it through to relax himself. He has escaped this time but even the smallest, most insignificant encounter is alive with complication and danger. He wishes himself, for a moment, back inside the hospital where things were predictable. Mercifully dull.

He yawns at swim practice, and Salan, the coach, catches him. “Maybe I oughta start a bed check on you guys again.” He stares pointedly at him, calls him over after practice.

“Jarrett, you having fun out there?”

“Fun?”

“Yeah. You oughta be, you know.” He sits, hands on his thighs, one thick ham hooked across the corner of the table. “The point is lost, if it’s not fun any more.” He inclines his head, wanting an answer. “Right?”

“I guess.”

“You guess.”

Salan wears a threadbare T-shirt and khakis, rolled above his ankles. He does not look like a man to be feared. Conrad, sick with fright, stands mutely, waiting for the ax to fall.
Doesn’t matter doesn’t matter I didn’t really want to swim,
breathing in the heavy moisture-laden air, while behind him he can feel the steam rising lazily from the blue-glass surface of the pool.

“You on medication, Jarrett? Tranquilizers? Anything?”

“No.”

Salan removes the stopwatch from around his neck. “Did I ask you before if they gave you shock out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Yeah, you asked me before,” he says. “Yeah, they did.”

Salan shakes his head; clicks his tongue in disapproval. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m no doctor, but I don’t think I’d let them mess around with my head like that.”

Conrad says nothing, does not look at Salan directly, looks instead at the low, brick wall behind the table. It
wasn’t exactly an orgy of pleasure for me you dumb prick.
Salan is shaking his head.

“Your timing is lousy.”

“I know.”

“Look, I don’t want to be—I’m not being too rough on you, am I? But I’m wondering if it’s gonna be too much for you.” He leans back, one arm around an upraised knee. “This is a team effort, Jarrett. I’ve got room for guys who are willing to work at it. Thing is, I can’t figure out any more—if that’s you or not.”

He lets out his breath at last, but slowly, slowly
Keep it neutral don’t beg.
“I’ll work,” he says. “I want to work.”

“Okay, then. Better plan to stay after. We’ll see if we, can get your timing back. No, not today—” as he starts for the pool “—start tomorrow. Go take a shower now. And get to bed at a decent hour, will you? You kids stay up till all hours and don’t take care of your bodies....” His tongue clicks again, this time in dismissal, and Conrad heads for the locker room. He is shivering
Never hit it off with the guy not even before he is too brusque too all-knowing there is only one way to do everything only one main street.

 

 

In the car on the way home, Lazenby says, “Salan’s a damn, picky bastard. He drives me nuts.”

“Everything drives you nuts,” Stillman says. “The day is not complete without Lazenby telling everybody what a fucked-up state the world’s in, right?” He turns around. “What d’you think, Jarrett? Danoff and Edge look pretty good, huh?”

Danoff and Edge are sophomores. They swim the free style. They have beaten him in practice every day for two weeks. There is a sudden, electrical silence. Lazenby says, “They’re not that good, Kev.”

“No? They look pretty damn good to me.”

 

 

Lazenby drops him off and he lets himself in with his key. The house is dark. Silent and empty. He hangs his jacket carefully in the front closet and goes upstairs to his room. He sets his books down on his desk and stands, looking out the window from his tower of safety. Idly, he opens the desk drawer, sifting through a pile of papers: old stuff, schedules, letters, scraps of notes written long ago. Funny she has never cleaned out this drawer. He should do it, maybe sometime he will. Fingers ruffling, touching suddenly the glossy and slick surface of a photograph. He pulls it out looking quickly along the bottom of it in white letters FIRST PLACE MEDLEY RELAY TEAM. Lazenby. Buck. Himself in the middle. Arms around each other, grinning at the camera, all confidence
On the main street:
He snaps the drawer closed. It is like the hole in your mouth where a tooth was and you cannot keep your tongue from playing with it.