The Basic Eight (8 page)

Monday September 13

Sophomore year, Miss Mills, an English teacher rumored to be an ex-nun, taught us all about pathetic fallacy: If a

character in literature is feeling a particular emotion acutely, the inanimate surroundings–you know, weather, landscape, stuff like that–tend to accentuate that mood. Thus armed to work as a literary editor, I checked the weather when I stepped outside for the bus, knowing it would tell me how Friday’s Calc test would turn out. The skies were gray, but it wasn’t raining–I figured maybe C or C+. I began to trudge up the hill, only to speed my pace up to a bleary shuffle; Adam’s tall thin shape was half a block ahead of me. I tried not to run so I wouldn’t be too obvious: “Adam? (pant, pant) I didn’t see you…”

“Adam?” I called out, ten paces behind him. Adam turned around and looked at me quizzically. It wasn’t Adam; it was Frank Whitelaw. At that very moment the clouds broke.

Frank Whitelaw took a full three seconds to look up at the sky and then back at me. If it were anyone else it would be a master- piece of deadpan timing; with Frank Whitelaw you knew that three seconds was top neural synapse speed. (I’m not sure if that biological term is correct because, as you know, I cut Biology all the time because I’m an academic flaky failure.) Frank Whitelaw was on the stage crew and I always suspected that some heavy prop had fallen on his head. Natasha’s theory was heavy drug use, and Kate’s had to do with his last name. She said anything that sounded so much like neo-Nazism was probably the result of in-breeding.

He opened his backpack and took out an umbrella. Held it up over the both of us. It was like being protected by a big, friendly ape. Outside the monsoon raged and dribbled. We struggled up the hill.

I was still dripping from the downpour of pathetic fallacy when I got my 13. At first I didn’t know what it

meant: a circled number 13 at the top of my paper. 13th place? There were about forty-five students in the class. Then slowly, the carbonation of truth burped up into the front of my brain: 13 out of 100. 13%. If there were a train wreck and only 13% of the passengers lived, it would be called a catastrophe. I glanced down the paper and saw the red checks that pointed out tiny bits of correctly attempted equations like survivors in the mud, thrashing around amidst the inked
X
’s of the bridge that, ill-conceived and badly constructed, had fallen at the first testing. Baker’s explana- tions of “the more difficult problems”–meaning there were some that were actually supposed to be
easy
–blurred by me like ambu- lance chasers as I sat gaping at the wreckage. Did they have good English Literature programs at Community Junior College? There I would be, living at home while my friends wrote cheery letters from ivy-covered libraries filled with creaky first editions.
Dear Flannery, Having a wonderful time. You would really love it here. Too bad about that Calc test
.

Given that he didn’t call yesterday and that he isn’t even in my Calc class, there’s no reason why I should have felt Adam’s hand on my shoulder, strong and comforting, but I did. It was only when I turned around that I discovered it was Mr. Baker.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. “Don’t worry, it’s only the first test.” I looked around; sometime in my daze class had been let go. “You know, I don’t think that it’s that you didn’t know the material. You just panicked. You know what you did wrong?” I let him answer his own question because the only answer I could think of was, “Think up short story ideas every day during class?”

“You didn’t follow Baker’s Rule,” he said. What was he talking about? I looked down at my book; it was covered.

“You want to hear Baker’s Rule?” he asked with what he must have thought was a winning smile. I’m sure I had on a losing frown, myself. I was too numb with failure to think of all these wordplays but I
could
have thought of them so I’ve written them in now.

“Baker’s Rule is: do
something
. Never just stare at a problem that you think you can’t solve. Do
something
. And this doesn’t just apply to Calculus, believe me.” He patted my head a little too hard. “OK, Flannery?”

“OK,” I said. Thanks so much, Mr. Baker. I feel so much better now.
Do something
. Why waste his talents on Calculus when he could be such an effective presidential aide? Next period I have to go to choir to see a man who doesn’t love me and if they get to the Cs, sing for him all by myself, and during lunch I have to track down Jim Carr and apologize for cutting Bio on Thursday otherwise he too will mortify me in front of the entire class. Hattie Lewis is now telling us that tomorrow we’ll study “The Day of Doom.” I want to tell her she’s a day late.

Adam opened the door and called my name and I walked in and realized that it wasn’t Adam who had opened the door, it was Johnny Hand, the drunken nightclub singer and alleged choir teacher. What a powerful word,
alleged
. What an important word it has become to me. He smiled at me a little unsteadily and walked out of the little room, leaving me alone with someone else. I was pretty sure it was Adam but I’d made that mistake too many times already.

As you’ve been noticing, I hope, today’s journal entry keeps telling you that I think other people are Adam. I’ve put this in there not only to make you realize the full universality and fero- city of my love but to demonstrate the chaotic randomness of the entire crime, indeed the entire situation. In other words: Adam could have been

anyone. Our bodies, our material “selves” are, ironically, imma- terial.

But it
was
Adam. I was alone with Adam, in this stuffy little audition room. The situation felt clinical so I reacted accordingly. “Well, Dr. State,” I said, “I’ve been having this pain in my neck for going on four years now, and I think it may be high school. Will you check it out?” I sat in a folding chair.

Adam looked up from his Musical Director Notes. “Are you trying to tell me you want to play doctor, Ms. Culp?”

“Please,” I said, batting my eyelashes. “It’s
Miss
Culp.” We both laughed. I could scarcely believe how charming and flirta- tious I was managing to be. Maybe I was channeling Natasha through some incident of black magic or something.

Yes, I
really
did say that. But I was
kidding
. I have
never been in- volved in black magic in any way, shape or form
. Please write your senator. More on this later.

“I was happy to see your name next on the list,” Adam said. “If I heard one more tone-deaf alto I was going to lose my mind.” The spirit of Natasha was exorcised in one swift blow. “Um,”

I said. “Um.” Not quite as witty and alluring. “Um, I’m a tone- deaf alto, myself.”

Adam winced. “Oh,” he said. “Well, I didn’t mean–some of my best friends are tone-deaf altos.
Alti
, rather.” He grinned sheepishly at me.

“Do I need to sing in front of you?” “Are you really a tone-deaf alto?”

“I’m afraid so. Roewer doesn’t think that running the literary magazine or being in plays fulfills the creative arts requirement, so I have to do something.”

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll put you down as an alto. You don’t need to sing.”

“Thanks.” I got up to go. If he called me back, I decided, then he liked me.

“Don’t go yet,” he said, reviving my faith in a Divine Being. And no, Mrs. State, not Beelzebub. “Let’s pretend I’m auditioning you. I need some kind of break from the parade of alleged singers. Just talk to me for a minute.”

“OK.” I sat back down in the folding chair. “What should we talk about?”

“Let’s talk about that kooky dinner party. I had a great time.

Do you guys do that often?”

Kooky
? I could hear Kate screech in my head. “Well, that was the first one of the year, but yes, we do it a lot. Beats renting movies or something, don’t you think so?”

“Definitely. I just hope I get invited back.” “Well, if you play your cards right…”

“Um, listen, I feel like I haven’t been.” He cleared his throat. “Playing my cards right. I’m sorry I haven’t said anything about your letters.”

I held my breath. Sometimes it’s best to keep quiet–not very often, I don’t think, but sometimes–and this was one of them. I cleared my throat and began. “Don’t worry about it. They were probably impossible to answer–particularly the last postcard. I was, I don’t know, caught up in Italy or something. There was no way you could have answered–particularly the last postcard. I’m sorry. Summer can be so strange. It removes all context or something. It’s like being in a vacuum. I just wrote you, that’s all, I’ve been trying to apologize for it for a while but I didn’t. But I will now. Apologize, that is–particularly for the last postcard. I know that you haven’t known what to make of the letters, and I’m grateful that you haven’t told my friends that it’s been me writing them, but you needn’t worry about them–particularly the last postcard. I’ll just pretend that I never wrote to you, and you can just

pretend that you never received them–particularly the last post- card. I mean, we can still be friends, or acquaintances, or whatever we are–dinner partners–but we can just pretend all that Chianti- laced wide-eyed correspondence never happened–particularly the last postcard.” When I go to see a play and somebody makes a speech that lengthy, I’m embarrassed, and it’s a play. People are
supposed
to be making speeches that lengthy in a
play
. This isn’t a play.

“What postcard? I didn’t get any postcard,” he said. “I just got two letters, very nice letters, and I wanted to thank you for them.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Did you send me a postcard, too?” He stood up and walked over to me. In another world, I could have just leaned in and kissed him. Perhaps it would have made a difference. I could have moved fast. Instead I just thought fast.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought I did. But I wrote so many postcards.”

“I didn’t tell anybody you wrote them,” he said, “because I thought that people would think they were love letters.” He moved his hands slightly, palms up, in a gesture that meant I don’t know what. “
I
thought maybe they were love letters.”

Now it was his turn to kiss me, don’t you think? “I thought that maybe they were love letters.” Distantly, a sound of warm violins. He steps closer. Slight swelling (of the music, of course). And then a kiss. It didn’t happen. I couldn’t stand it. “I thought that maybe they were love letters,” and then nothing.

“Maybe they were,” I said, and I stood up myself and left the room. I wanted to slam the door, but it was one of those public- school doors that just wheeze closed.
Swish
.

The rest of the choir looked up at me for a second. “Next!” I called off-handedly, and strode out the door.

It is the moment that followed–the end of fourth period on Monday September 13th at Roewer High School–that the loudest birds of the gaggle of attending quacks have proclaimed to be the impetus for what has been called everything from “a series of unfortunate behaviors” (Dr. Eleanor Tert) to “the most bloodthirsty of teenage acts I have ever discussed on my program” (“Dr.” Winnie Moprah, the degree is honorary from a school of dubious academic reputation). Tert’s book
Crying Too Hard to Be Scared
says:

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of this psychosexual voyeuristic moment in Culp’s adolescence. [What rubbish! Of course she could overemphasize the im- portance of it. What if she said: “This psychosexual voyeur- istic moment in Culp’s adolescence was responsible for world hunger”? That would be overemphasis, wouldn’t it? That’s what’s wrong with the coverage of my story: not so much bias as
inaccuracy
.] Imagine Culp, in the aftermath of one of the first moments of sexual awakening in her argument with her eventual victim [again:
inaccuracy
. He was
not my victim
.], wandering in a sexualized daze to the office of a teacher whom she trusted, seeking advice and counseling [
inaccuracy, inaccuracy, inaccuracy
]. Yet when she walks in she finds her teacher betraying her trust, indeed the very trust of the teaching profession, locked in an embrace with a student [
inaccuracy
]. It was the ultimate betrayal for young Culp, and triggered a horrific, though slightly

delayed, response–much like Poe and his mother’s death as discussed in my first chapter [horrific and not at all delayed amounts of
inaccuracy
].

And even putting aside facts for a minute, Dr. Tert’s description has serious
semantic
problems.
Embrace
is too elegant a term for what Carr was doing. Just about the only accurate thing Eleanor said was that I walked down the hallway and into a classroom. Unlit Bunsen burners and half-dead tadpoles and faded color posters of the digestive system all greeted me, but Carr was nowhere to be seen. Off the main classroom was Carr’s office, which we weren’t supposed to go in because it contained danger- ous chemicals. I heard a scuffling from it, like a rustling of paper. “Mr. Carr?” I called out, cautiously, and put my hand on the half- open door.

“I don’t know,” I heard someone say, softly.

“Mr. Carr?” I asked again, and pushed the door open all the way.

Mr. Carr was in one of those phony white lab coats that biology teachers wear in an apparent effort to look like they’re in an as- pirin commercial. At first it just looked like he was standing there, grinning at his desk, but when I followed his gaze I saw the teaching assistant half sprawled on the blotter, watching him warily. He leaned in and kissed her again. His hand was on her skirt, high up. She said, softly, “I don’t know.” It was not a coy “I don’t know.” It was a wary “I don’t know.” It was not “I don’t know, why don’t you choose the position?” It was “I don’t know if I should be in this position.” He leaned in and kissed her again. I didn’t move. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t supposed to be happening at all. Talk about dangerous chemicals.

“Come on,” he said, somewhere between seduction and irritation. The teaching assistant’s eyes were half closed, but she saw me anyway. “Ohmygod!” She sat up suddenly and bumped her head