The Dangerous Kind & Other Stories (11 page)

Her mouth moved but she made no sound.

“Do you read me?”

She nodded.

“I said, ‘Do…you…
read
…me?’ ”

“Y-yes.” 

He glanced at the crowd. They were watching but he was satisfied there was no way they could hear anything he said.

“I said you have two choices. You want to know what the other one is?”

She said nothing. He didn’t need her to reply to anything he said now. “You can run to old doddering Chief Rose and he’ll come talk to the sweet coach who’s great with the kids —everybody says so — and it will be a he said, bitch on wheels said situation. Then, I can assure you, at some point, something really bad is going to happen. Something so bad you can’t even imagine it yet. Something so bad, I’ll have to take some time to think it through to make sure it lasts a long time when I come calling.”

She was bug-eyed and mouthed the word “Jesus.”

“The second choice — and I bet you’re going to love the second choice — is you turn around and sit back down and let me coach your kid. It’s a long season ahead and I don’t want to hear another fucking peep from you.”

“Okay…okay.” She was shaking. A single tear slid down her cheek.

“Wipe your face. I won’t hurt you as long as you keep your mouth shut. You are a burden to all who know you. I suggest you call Dr. Circe Papua. Call her and make an appointment. She’s an excellent therapist who helps people like you. In fact, I insist you go see her or bad things will certainly happen. If you fuck up and fail to turn your life around, I’ll find out about it. I really hope you do fuck up, ATA667. I want to show you things you’ve never dreamed in your worst nightmares. I’m talking horror movie-level shit storms and rope that bites your wrists. Read me?”

She turned around and began walking back when he hit her with, “Oh, yeah, and clean up your driving. Maybe you should take a defensive driving course to remind you to be courteous to other drivers.”

She slunk toward the stands, her head down.

The rest of the practice went smoothly. He kept Chad in goal for the rest of the game and finished with passing drills. When he blew the final whistle, the humidity had taken its toll and the kids went to their parents soaking wet, their jerseys plastered to their bodies.

Jack watched Peroxide Woman go. He was reminded of Lot’s wife in the story of Sodom. When she ran, her two children in tow, she did not dare look back upon him, the force of God who had chased her away, lest she turn into a pillar of salt.

The pretty young woman appeared at his side. “Hi, I’m Gina. I’m Maddy’s mom.” Jack gave her a smile and shook her hand. I got your schedule in e-mail and I’m first to give out snacks. Any recommendations for what I should bring?”

“Something cold,” he said. “And please, no nuts.”

“You bet,” she said. “We certainly don’t want any
nuts
around our kids.” She smiled at him and, in some small seductive gesture, she touched her long brown hair and they both felt self-conscious. “And this is my mother,” Gina said.

The old woman with the stack of curly white hair and the binoculars smiled up at him. 

“Oh, hello, ma’am,” he said.

Gina’s hands flew in a mixture of signs Jack had no hope of following and after a moment both women laughed. When they looked at Jack, they gave him kind smiles and he could see the resemblance between the two, despite their age difference. The old woman must have been a beauty once, too.

“Never mind me,” the old woman said in a dysphonic, nasal voice. “I’m just an old deaf woman.” The old woman gave him a wink and clapped him on the shoulder with a surprisingly strong hand. “I can’t hear you, but I read you!”

One of her eyes was shot white with a cataract. The other was dark and pierced him with a knowing look that said conspiratorially, “Hello, brother. Does my mask look right?”

His words to Dr. Papua returned to him: “The world is divided into
three
categories: The Prey and the Witnesses. And things like me. The Predators.”

We are everywhere.

Vengeance is #1

F
act: Most shrinks—like 99% of them—are nuts. Psychos are attracted to the profession. Here’s how I think it happens: Neurotic parents breed and send their kids into therapy so they can become more like their parents. At first, nobody wants to talk to some useless stranger about why their parents hate them, but why else would parents send their to a psycho therapist? Then the kids start talking and get used to the taste of their bathwater. I, I, I. Me, me,
me!
Who can resist that?

After all that scab-picking—once the hate is really ingrained—the little patients notice that their therapist has a pretty sweet job. Psychotherapists listen to them go on about how fucked up their parents really are for fifty-five minutes at a time for a whack a cash. What real skills are required besides patience, doodling and the ability to speak the magic words, “How does that make you feel?”

The psychos on the couch eventually become the psychos in the chair with the notebook, finally and officially cured because they are fixed, better than you, the healer. Turning patients into colleagues: That’s the greatest success the fields of psychology, psychiatry and social work are likely to achieve. 

I know. I’ve sat in enough of their waiting rooms, from Bangor to Orono and even New York once, looking at old magazines. When I started out, none of the waiting rooms needed new paint jobs. Mama started me on the shrink treadmill early. When the best and most expensive didn’t work out, she hunted through the phonebook. I’m into the Ps now.

My mother doesn’t understand the therapeutic process. For instance, we’re standing in the kitchen. Mama’s in her PJs with a coffee cup holding her up even though it’s four in the afternoon. Mama is big on appearances when she goes out the door but inside the house it’s housecoats and the fuzzy grizzly bear slippers she gave me for Christmas. She decided they were warmer and cuter if
she
wore them. Mama’s looking at me with this perpetually surprised look on her face. It’s hard to figure out what she’s thinking because she always has that bat-out-of-the-fireplace look since she tweezed her eyebrows so much they don’t grow back anymore.

She’s standing there with her bare face hanging out saying, “Oh, Georgie! I was just talking to Mrs. Whositz at the grocery store and she said her Tanya’s psychotherapist really helped with her anorexia.”

“Damn it, Mama! You were talking about me in the goddamn grocery store!”

“Don’t swear. And perhaps you could supply me with a list of places where I’m allowed to speak about my daughter?”

“Sure. It’ll be a fuckin’ short list.”

“Don’t swear.” Mama always says that in a low tone—“well-modulated” Dr. Three-Therapists-Back called it—which makes me think Mama’s back on the Valium. If you take Valium for a long time—I googled—your lungs someday don’t work anymore. So maybe it
is
a long-term solution. “Well-modulated” is supposed to calm me the fuck down but it doesn’t work. Or maybe it’s supposed to keep Mama relaxed, I forget. We’re both supposed to “self-monitor” but I don’t want to look at her and I sure as hell don’t want to look at me.

Anyway, back to my for instance: “I don’t know what you’re so upset about, Georgie! I wasn’t blabbing about
your
mental health. We were talking about Tanya’s success!”

“Tanya’s a bitch.”

“Yes, but you can be, too, dear.”

“Goddamn it, Mama! What does Tanya’s anorexia have to do with me? I don’t have anorexia. I wish I did. I tried it and it made me hungry.”

“Well, eating disorders are all on the same rainbow, Georgie.”

I should just get tips on puking from Tanya but she’s got a thing about fat girls. Can’t really blame her for that. I mean,
everybody’s
got a thing about fat girls. Especially me. I read that if you have fat friends it makes you feel like it’s okay to be fat, too. There are people who want us to accept ourselves or even love ourselves no matter what. That seems unreasonable to me. The people who say that are old fat broads who are tired of trying to lose weight and just want to drop out. Or they’re so-called experts, skinny bitches who have somebody else do their makeup. I mean, experts are ridiculous, you know? People with good genes need to shut up when they feel the urge to give weight-loss advice to the terminally fat.

I know. I’ve been over 200 pounds since I was thirteen. I don’t even know what I weigh now. I decided when I turned fifteen that I wasn’t going to look at the scale until I felt like I’d be happy with the numbers. That was almost two years ago and every time I go to the bathroom, I feel like the scale in the corner by the bathtub is looking back at me.

Summer’s coming. There’s a misery, but at least I won’t have to suffer it at school. Everybody’s been to school so you know the drill: You’re either the moose or the hunter. Guess which one I am? Yeah, fat and in high school is like walking around with those huge moose horns that don’t fit through doors.

Hey, maybe if that bitch Tanya is cured, she’ll go from skinny bitch to moose, too. We could be friends for awhile there while she’s just overweight. Then when she gets to be too moosey, I’d have to stay away from her and laugh at her in gym class and bitch her out in the cafeteria for eating something. Like I said, I can’t have fat friends. They’d make me bigger by osmosis and I
can’t
get any bigger. 

Last week I had a different kind of counsellor at school—the stupidest species. The newbie guidance counsellor scheduled a meeting with me (in my free period without even asking. Missing math would have been much better.) Anyway, this guy who used to be the phys-ed guy before he got arthritis starts asking me about my goals. 

“Supermodel,” I said, just to watch his face work through it. He couldn’t help himself. He glanced down at my belly and made a face like he’s got gas or something.
Bitch
.

Then he asks me what I want to be when I grow up and I say, “I dunno,” and he says “Me, too,” and smiles like that’s clever instead of pathetic. He was probably relating to me at my level or some shit that 50-something guys try to do, thinking they can still be cool at their age.
Lame.

The former phys-ed teacher (I now officially refuse him any title with the term “guidance” in it) talked about safety schools and showed me a few glossy brochures to get me hot and bothered. I wonder what I’m supposed to do because there aren’t any fat girls in the brochures. There are pretty, happy black girls and smiling Asian girls with glasses and all the guys look like they’re on The Basketball Team of Vacant Smiles. No dweebs, goths or fatties need apply, I guess.

Lame-o says if I write some essays, I’d have a shot at some kind of scholarship because my marks in English are so high. That doesn’t seem all that impressive to me. It
should
come easily. Everybody speaks English here. I swim in it. If your language is whatever they speak in Malaysia and you get good marks in English, that would be worth something. 

I think about my options. I’m good with a camera. That would have been cool since I could have assistants and look like a photographer all the time. Draped with enough cameras, like a whole store’s inventory, I’d have some fat camouflage. 

I quit photography, though. I was getting some good action shots for an in-class assignment, taking photos of these two lanky girls who probably will end up as models snorting coke off each other’s ribs. Anyway, I was kneeling in front of them (it makes them look even taller) when some assholes—my so-called peers—made fun of me because my ass crack was popping from my jeans. Then I had trouble getting up quick and the boys were just howling mean. 

The teacher, Mr. Call-Me-Mike Sandling was a good guy I guess, saying “Alright! Alright! That’s enough!” 

When I looked up at him with my big, watery cow moose eyes, we both knew I wouldn’t be coming back through
his
fuckin’ door.

I wondered later if that’s why I got scheduled to see the guidance counsellor. Maybe Call-Me-Mike thought I should get some attention from the crippled up phys-ed teacher, get some guidance and maybe some diet advice so I don’t come into school one day with home-made pipe bombs strapped across my moose belly. 

I thought about the pipe bombs hard when the former phys-ed bonehead put his twisted up hand on my shoulder and says (real soulful) “You’ll figure it out, Georgie. Everybody’s got something.”

Is the Psyche 101 textbook actually called
Useless
Platitudes
? I’ll figure it out. Everybody’s got something. Ha!

“Yeah,” I said. “I can see you’ve got it all figured out.”

He grimaced, but said nothing. Then he went back in his office, shut the door, took out the pistol he kept in his desk drawer to protect himself from the black kids and hockey goons he’s scared of and put the muzzle in his mouth. He paused to roll a tear and feel bad for talking to me just before he blew his brains out. The back wall of the guidance office will always be art no matter how many times the school custodian repaints. Well, I would if I were him, anyway.

I’ve been eating more pizza rolls since my chat with the phys-ed teacher. I think what a useless bitch he is and pop another one. I think about how, even if I get some kind of bullshit English scholarship, it’s like four more years of being stuck in a bigger high school but with debt and no job at the end. Then I eat another pizza roll. Nobody’s going to give me a scholarship for going to a cabin on a mountain so I can be alone to commune with my moose brothers and sisters, watch TV, order in pizza and read
Twilight
and
The Hunger Games
and graphic novels for the rest of my life. Then I think how all life is like being stuck in high school forever and I finish the bag of day old pizza rolls. I’m sick of pizza rolls, now, but that feeling always wears off.

I guess I’m looking for a rescue helicopter to haul my moose ass out of here in a big moose net. That’s why I tell Mama to call the new therapist, the one down in the Ps. Look at me, so weak and young and full of hope, huh? I’ve seen a lot of helicopters but Moose Rescue never comes. I forget how many counsellors I’ve seen. Dad lives with his new and improved family now but Mama says he’s got excellent insurance through work so I can go get “theraped” AKA mind raped as much as I want. You’d think they’d come up with a better title.
Therapist
spells ‘the rapist.’ Didn’t they even
notice
?