Thumbsucker (9 page)

The phone kept ringing and we kept ignoring it. The next thing we knew Mr. Geary was in the doorway. The desk clerk must have given him a key. He had on blue flannel pajamas with white stripes and reading glasses that enlarged his eyes.

The girls draped sheets and blankets over their bodies.

“Out in the hall, Justin. Now,” said Mr. Geary.

“I can’t. I’m not dressed.” I held a pillow against myself.

“The honor system is wasted on you people. This is outrageous. I smell dope in here.”

“Stop being such an old woman,” Heather said. “All we’re doing is having a normal slumber party.”

“How did you just refer to me, young woman?”

Heather looked at her friends as if for backup, then faced Mr. Geary square-on. “I think that what I said was: disappear, queer.”

Mr. Geary’s face went white and taut and his soul seemed to shrink away behind his eyes. He backed up into the hall with three quick steps and closed the door so hard it rattled the latch. I dialed his room repeatedly for an hour, then called again when I woke at one
A.M
., and each time I sensed the presence of his hand hovering near the receiver.

Finally, I went down the hall and knocked. Blue TV light filtered under the door.

“It’s Justin. Open up.”

“Fuck off. Get out of here.”

The bad language startled me. “Are you all right?”

“I took some pills. I’m trying to fall asleep.”

“How many pills?”

“Not enough. Just let me be.”

In the morning, when everyone gathered at the bus, Mr. Geary had shaved his hair clean off.

In the days leading up to the statewide finals, I became impossible at home. Filled up by my first-place showing at regionals, I demanded new privileges, shirked my chores, and argued with Mike about stories in the newspaper. Recognition and the decongestant pills had given my voice an authoritative ring I couldn’t get enough of.

“Don’t let the liberals dupe you,” Mike said one morning as we debated the headlines. “Organized labor’s a form of legal blackmail.”

“Blackmail. Black male. Have you ever noticed that?”

“Meaning what?”

I wasn’t really sure. In the swell and surge of my nonstop jabbering, I’d started seeing patterns in the language that struck me as significant and ominous but didn’t seem to interest other people. Therapist. The rapist. Coincidence? And why was “live” spelled backward “evil”? My oral gift had turned on me somehow.

At school my arm ached from raising my hand so often. The hinges of my jaw hurt. I couldn’t shut up. In
social studies one morning, during a lesson on life in the ghetto, I sprang from my desk to state my views and sent my chair crashing backward into the wall.

At lunch hour a man’s voice on the P.A. ordered me to visit the school nurse. She tested my blood pressure twice and took my pulse, then picked up her phone and summoned the principal.

“Whatever drug you’re on,” he said, “you’d better not be bringing it to school. I’ve ordered a locker search.”

“Go ahead. Use dogs.”

“Empty your pockets.”

I turned them inside out. Nothing but lint and change, which I let spill.

“Pick that junk up.”

“I want my coach,” I said.

Mr. Geary explained my condition to the principal as a case of prestate-tournament jitters and offered to drive me home so I could rest. In the Mercedes I thanked him for his help. Sunlight bounced and flickered off his scalp, which he’d begun to wax. He wouldn’t look at me.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“You’re a monster.”

“You used to love me.”

“Don’t be grandiose.”

“Then what was all that business about my ‘gift’?”

“Flattery. Ego building.”

“But I keep winning. There must have been something to it.”

“I made a monster.”

With the meet just two days away, I couldn’t sleep that night. At school the next morning the nurse rechecked my blood pressure and warned me that if it didn’t come down soon she’d check me into Children’s Hospital.

“The weight loss, the agitation. You’re taking something.”

I glanced involuntarily at my sock, where I’d stashed the decongestant pills. It wasn’t them, though. It was me; my mind. Maybe I really had become a monster. Maybe winning didn’t suit me, after all.

I decided to confess. “I can’t stop blabbering. It’s like I’ve turned on a switch I can’t turn off. I’m out of control.”

The nurse softened. “Close your eyes. Imagine a peaceful lake.”

Hypnosis again.

“I’m doing it,” I lied. “It’s helping.”

“Still, blue, fresh water. A sunset. Gliding gulls.”

Why were they always trying to put me under?

The finals were held on a Saturday morning at the Minneapolis Sheraton. We checked in the night before: one room, two beds. The girls had been eliminated by then.

In the soaring glass lobby coaches, judges, and students signed registration forms, consulted schedules, and filled out sticky name tags with Magic Markers. The
only student I recognized was Mark, my opponent from divisionals. He had on black loafers, gray flannels, and a blue blazer whose sleeves fell short of his wrists.

“God, how pretentious,” I said to Mr. Geary.

“The boy has pizzazz. It takes courage. Good for him.”

A dinner buffet was held in the Red Room. I got in line in an effort to seem sociable. Men in chef’s hats wielding metal tongs heaped our plates with roast beef and mashed potatoes. Mr. Geary passed by my table, ignoring me, and sat down next to Mark. I overheard him call himself “a fan of yours” and I watched the two of them instantly grow close, tilting their heads together, laughing and smirking. Mr. Geary poured Mark a glass of wine from a bottle reserved for the adults.

I left my plate and headed to the room to wash up for the dance that night. I rubbed on cologne, thought twice, and scrubbed it off. I sat at the desk to wait for Mr. Geary. I didn’t want him to find me on the bed, but when a half hour had passed I changed my mind and propped myself on one elbow on the mattress. I turned the TV on, mussed up my damp hair, and tried to think only cool and careless thoughts. It was time for revenge. He deserved it. He’d betrayed me.

An hour passed and Mr. Geary didn’t show. I opened the box of chocolates on his pillow, took a small bite from each one, and put them back.

Downstairs at the dance I spotted my coach with Mark again, huddled in a corner near the stage. From
the lively arching of their eyebrows, I guessed they were being sarcastic about the band. I asked a middle-aged female coach to dance and guided her back and forth past Mr. Geary, my hands pressed into her hips. He turned his back to us.

“I’ve heard of you,” said the woman. “You’re quite the prodigy.”

I watched Mr. Geary light a cigarette and pass it to Mark, who cupped it in one hand, stole a few drags, and exhaled down and sideways.

“Thanks,” I said. I twirled the woman, dipped her.

“Is that your coach with the fat boy? We’ve been commenting. Not exactly the time or place.”

“Ignore them.”

“It doesn’t offend you?”

“The kid’s just playing with him. Trying to psyche me out before the match.”

“They look to me like a pair,” the woman said.

I returned to the room after midnight. Mr. Geary’s bed was empty. I opened the bathroom door and snooped around. A cigarette butt turned slowly in the toilet bowl and I smelled two colognes in the air that didn’t blend well. The two red rings on the sink were wine. I sniffed them.

I ordered a pot of coffee from room service and sat up in bed until two, watching issues shows. When I heard a key in the lock I pulled the blankets up and pretended to be asleep. I listened to Mr. Geary unbuckle his belt and fluff his pillow with two or three firm slaps.

“Where were you?” I said as if I’d just awakened.

“Wasting my precious time. As usual.”

“I could have told you he wasn’t a nice guy.”

“Go back to sleep.” Mr. Geary took his shirt off.

“I want you to take back that monster thing you said. I know you didn’t mean it and it hurt me. I like being liked by people.”

“Don’t we all.”

Mr. Geary folded a pillow around his head and I sat up and poured myself more coffee. I watched the windows lighten behind the curtains. At seven-thirty, still awake, I swallowed my last two decongestant pills. The match wasn’t for another two hours, but I needed the boost. Mr. Geary woke at eight, stumbled into the bathroom, locked the door, showered for a solid hour, then shaved his scalp with his electric razor. I gave up on cleaning up and put my clothes on and went downstairs to the gift shop to find more pills.

The topic that morning was “TV News: Too Negative?” A blond girl with a daisy in her hair spoke of the need for upbeat reporting. Mark disagreed. Another boy took the girl’s side. The judges, who all looked hung over, yawned and fidgeted. It occurred to me that we were losers, every one of us, the tournament just an excuse to feel important before returning to towns that didn’t notice us.

Mr. Geary sat in a chair behind the judges’ station, a
half-eaten jelly doughnut on his lap. Whatever had happened with Mark had worn him out, while Mark seemed energized, his voice a bell.

“The human condition, as presently evolved, is not a pretty sight,” he said. “Face facts, Kim. It’s not the news that’s to blame, it’s us, the populace. Welcome to the Fall of Rome, part two.”

“I totally reject that, Mark,” said Kim. “Pessimism’s a
product
. It sells papers. The media needs to look inside itself.”

I felt the words rise up. I made my move.

“I think we’re confusing tone and content here. Content isn’t negative or positive. Content just
is
.”

“You’re missing the point,” said Mark.

I looked at my coach. He was dozing, eyes half shut, powdered sugar sprinkled on his chin.

“
Tone
can be negative, though, and that was Kim’s point. Maybe the answer is: lighten up the tone but let the content stand,” I said.

“Report on rapes and murders with a smile. That’s absurd,” Mark said.

He was right; it was. I’d cornered myself. My brain spun like a tire in mud as Mark leaned over the table and slashed away at me, his lips forming vicious shapes. I glanced at Mr. Geary for a prompt, but he was napping, his doughnut on the floor. With time running short, I tried to push Mark back and mount a defense of the nonsense I’d slipped into, but when I opened my mouth
no words came out. My throat closed tight like a fist around a coin.

When the judges called time and Mr. Geary woke up, I sneered at him and hurried toward the door.

Mark blocked my exit with his outstretched hand. “Nice discussion,” he said.

“You, too.”

“You’re good.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“
That’s
gracious.”

“Kiss my ass.”

I packed my bag, turned my key in at the desk, and stood outside beneath a dripping awning, smoking a menthol bummed from a bellhop. Gray shreds of cloud were falling with the rain.

Mr. Geary found me. “Back inside. The ceremony’s starting. Show some class.”

I grunted. No clever comeback, just; a noise. Forming whole words seemed pointless suddenly.