A Step Toward Falling (12 page)

I think about how my friends and I talk about weightier issues. Usually it's through music and song lyrics that we analyze to death. Richard and Barry will argue about the meaning of some obscure chorus on a Green Day song. “The guy is depressed!” “The guy is psychotic!” “Depression is not psychosis! You're conflating the two!”

Richard has been pretty open about suffering from depression in the past. For him, the worst of it happened before I knew him, when he was in middle school and spent all his time online searching for programs that would make him not gay anymore. He actually used to type in
no
more gay thoughts
on the search bar. When he finally told his parents what he was doing, the depression was more of an issue than the homosexuality. He spent a year seeing a psychologist and getting medications adjusted. Even though it gives him dry mouth and hand shakes, he still takes a low dose now because he's so scared of going back to those days.

I wonder if knowing less about your friends makes it easier in a way. Maybe my fears about what will happen with Hugh come from knowing Richard's vulnerabilities. Maybe it's even made me a worse friend.

“What if someone has a real problem—like, I don't know, their mom has cancer—”

He looks at me funny with his eyebrows up again. “What makes you say that?”

“I don't know—it's just a hypothetical. Do your friends rally around and stop by with casseroles and things like that?”

For a long time, he doesn't say anything. Obviously they don't and he doesn't talk about it. We pull into the parking lot. I get out of the car and come around to his side so I can hold Lucas's crutches for him as he gets out of the car. When I turn around, Sheila is standing behind me, holding a Slinky. “Do you guys even know how these things
work
?” she says. “It's supposed to do something but it
doesn't
.”

In class, Sheila is the queen of non sequiturs. She'll raise her hand to answer a question about ordering food in a restaurant and then, as if her mouth has a mind of its
own, she'll start telling some story about an actress on the cover of
US
magazine. How
weird
she is, and
skinny
, too. With Sheila present, class discussion can veer wildly off topic in under a minute. Because she wants to talk all the time, Mary has instituted a special plan to help her “reach her goal of being a better conversationalist.” Now Sheila gets three tickets to use every class period. Whenever she speaks off topic, she has to give the teacher a ticket. When she's used all three, she's “done for the day,” and can only talk on the same subject as everyone else. It's probably a good idea; without some system in place, Sheila is a little exhausting to be around. “Not right now, Sheila,” I say. “We're trying to help Lucas get inside. You remember how his leg is hurt, right?”

“Yeah, I don't even get why he needs those crutches. It's not like he's got a cast or anything's
broken.
”

“It's his knee and he has to be careful. He's not even supposed to be moving around.”

Lucas stands up and laughs a little sheepishly. “I'm all right, Sheila. Here, let me see that Slinky. They're not so hard.” Instead of taking it, he puts a flat hand beside hers and nudges the Slinky so it snakes off her hand onto his perfectly.

“OH MY GOD!” she screams. “HOW DID YOU DO THAT?”

“Magic,” he grins. “No, not really. That's what Slinkies do. Wait till you see one on a set of stairs. If you do it right, that really is magic.”

“Will you show me?”

“Sure. We can use the stairs down to the basement. I'm pretty sure we've got time.”

This is the most normal conversation I've ever heard Sheila have. Where she's asked a question and actually listened to the answer. Now they're headed inside and she does something equally surprising—she holds the door open for Lucas.

“Many thanks, Sheila,” he says as he crutches by her.

Of course she doesn't bother holding it for me. She probably doesn't remember that I'm even here, she's so focused now on Lucas and the prospect of watching her Slinky walk down some stairs. Still, it makes me think about what Mary said—Lucas has good instincts with these students. Different than mine, but good ones.

“This week's exercise is related to what we did last week,” Mary says to start class. “This time, I want you to start a new list where you write down one or two things that you are proud of. You might say, I'm very organized and neat. Or, I'm a good listener and friend.”

I've noticed Mary uses this trick quite a bit—in presenting an exercise, she gives examples to choose from. Once we get started, most of the class will pick one of these answers.

This time Simon surprises me. “How do you spell badminton player?”

Mary laughs and starts writing a long list of choices on the whiteboard in front. To the ones she already mentioned, she adds:
Hard worker. Good at music, dancing, acting,
and/or singing. Nice dresser. Good at drawing/painting/writing stories
. At the end of the list, she spells out
Good badminton player
and puts a smiley face next to it.

Because they have ideas to choose from, the exercise goes faster. I help Annabel write
Good lasagna maker
and I remind Francine of what she said so perfectly last week because it's not one of the choices on the board. “Remember what you told me last time? How you're a people person and you're good at helping others?” A moment earlier she'd been squinting at the board. At this, her whole face brightens. “That's right!” she says. “I am!”

When we move on to the next part of the exercise, Mary asks Lucas and me to take a piece of paper and do the exercise along with everyone else so they can use ours as examples. As she explains what we're doing, I write my name at the top and try to think quickly of two good qualities about myself. I wish I could use Francine's but I can't, so I look up at the board and grab the first two that make sense.
Hard worker
and
Nice friend
.

The next part of the exercise surprises me. The papers are meant to get passed around the room so each person can write their favorite quality about the person whose name is at the top. It's hard because some students have known one another for years and others have only just met. Mary reassures them, “It's okay to write, ‘I like the bright colors you wear.' Or, ‘I liked a comment you made last week in class.' If you're really stuck, you can pass the paper along without writing anything.”

Now I know why she included Lucas and me in this
exercise. This way, presumably everyone will get at least two comments on their sheet.

It's not easy, though. There are some people in the class who have never spoken, meaning it's impossible to comment on anything except their appearance, which doesn't seem right. Luckily, I start with my old pal, Harrison. For him, I write: “You are very smart, plus you have a very cool way of memorizing the Billboard chart.” In the second week of class, he told me his secret—that everyone in this group was born within a few years of one another, meaning he hasn't memorized sixty years of Billboard chart toppers, only five years' worth.

“Still,” I told him, “that's a lot.”

“I suppose,” he said. “But five years is a lot less than sixty.”

After I finish mine, I lean over to Sheila's desk and see that she has written nothing on hers. “What's your favorite thing about Peter?” I whisper.

“I don't know,” she moans. “This is
hard.
”

It
is
hard with Peter, who is one of the quiet ones. It's hard to know how much of class Peter follows because he always looks as if he's staring off into space.

“I guess I like his taste in music.”

“Good—write that!” I say. “Have you talked about it?”

“I can hear what's playing in his earphones. I like most of it. Not all of it.”

I've heard about autistic people having special skills, but can Sheila hear music playing in another person's earbuds this well? I push the paper to my desk and check to see if Peter needs help. He doesn't. He might not talk much,
but he has the smallest, neatest handwriting I've ever seen from a boy. He's also grasped the basic idea of assignment.
Amelia is nice with red hair
, he's written.

“Great job, Peter!” I say and touch his shoulder, which makes him flinch in surprise.

As the papers keep moving around the circle, I help Sheila write something for Amelia (“Her hair is really thick”) and for Simon (“I use to be in love with Simon but I'm not anymore”). I write my own notes and eventually, with much cajoling and assistance, every paper makes its way around the circle.

After break, Mary tells us that we're not quite done yet—there's one last step to this exercise. She wants everyone to read over his or her list and make different marks beside the comments that 1) surprised them the most, 2) they agree with the most, 3) they want to work on doing more. A few protests ripple through the crowd. Thomas slumps onto his desk and says he's too tired for anything like this. Simon says he can't read anyone's handwriting.

Mary waits for the talking to stop. “Let me tell you the reason we're doing this. You already know the first thing people notice about you is that you look and act a little different than other people. You can't control that. What you
can
control is the
second
thing they notice about you. You can make sure it's something you like about yourself and something other people like about you, too.”

Mary's right about this much: they do look different in one way or another. Simon wears bright, Day-Glo-colored T-shirts, elastic-waistband pants, and Velcro strap shoes. Francine carries a fuzzy panda-bear backpack. Ken wears
a variation of the same outfit every week—a motorcycle decal shirt with sweat pants. Whenever he gets nervous about standing up in front of the class or doing a role-play, he stretches the waistband of his pants out and tucks his T-shirt in. Mary's also right about her second point. Now that we've been coming here for more than a month, that's not the first thing I notice anymore. I know these people well enough now to say that Sheila, with her J. Crew wardrobe, might look the most normal, but is actually the most challenging to have a decent conversation with. And Simon, who looks the strangest, is probably the easiest. Or at least the one most likely to understand a joke and make a funny one himself.

Now I suddenly like this exercise a lot. I look down and reread my own sheets. I have a few surprising ones:

        
I really like your purse.

        
You're the funniest person I have ever met.

        
You should be on TV.

        
You make me laff.

It occurs to me that before coming to this group, I've never thought of myself as a particularly funny person. Funny is reserved for Richard and Barry, who quote long stretches of dialogue from
The
Simpsons
or
Anchorman
. Funny people work hard for their title. I wonder if it is a measure of the relatively easy audience this group is that someone has called me “the funniest person I have ever met.”

Pretty soon there's no time to think about it because everyone needs help with this assignment. I bend down beside Simon's desk while Lucas pulls a chair over and sits beside Francine. I hear him explain softly to her, “Which one says how you'd
like
people to see you?”

The question is too abstract. Lucas thinks for a second. “How about this? Which one do
you
like the most?” She points to something.
“Really?”
Lucas says. “Your favorite thing about yourself is your pink socks and your barrettes? I think you've got better things on there.”

They both read her sheet. She points to a different one and looks at him. He reads it and nods. “Exactly. That's the one I would have picked, too. Now draw a star next to that.”

As we move around the room, I can't help imitating the way Lucas helped Francine. Thoughtfully, respectfully. As I circle around the room, I stop by his empty desk and read his list when no one is looking:

        
You have nice jean pants

        
You are very big.

        
Your leg is hurt.

        
I lik you but I'm also Scared of you. Thats why we ar not friends.

Lucas looks like a football player. Everything about him is big—his chest, his neck, his hands. If you don't know him at all, he
is
scary to imagine becoming friends with. If you know him a little, in the context of our school,
where football is an obsession and the players all celebrities, it's even scarier. It occurs to me, though—none of these comments say anything about Lucas personally. They're all about his size, his looks, or his injury. If he had to pick his favorite, what could he choose? There's nothing here.

Because we were helping other people, I didn't bother to write anything on his list. Now I pull out my pen to scribble quickly:
You have good instincts and you're a nicer person than I ever expected you'd be.

I reread it and consider crossing the whole thing out. I don't know if I've said too much or too little because I'm not sure what, exactly, I want to say. I think I want to say:
You've surprised me, in the same way some of our classmates have surprised me. The way Belinda surprised me all those years ago by being so good at theater.
I hope I haven't embarrassed myself or, worse, said something inadvertently unkind:
You don't seem like a nice guy; I'm surprised that you are.

Once we're back in our seats, I watch Lucas read the new item on his sheet, but he doesn't look at me or around the room to figure out who wrote it. It's pretty obvious. Chad isn't here and Mary hasn't moved from her desk for this exercise. It has to be me, but he doesn't seem to register that.