Do You Think This Is Strange? (6 page)

hello

is there anybody in there

I didn't know if it was a good poem or not—I am not a poet. But I knew it was a
short
poem, and I think that reduced the probability it was bad.

Ten years ago, she worked on a poem as I left, and I never knew what it was about, because it was unfinished when I put on my coat and left. Although she insisted on reading out every poem in a loud voice, she zealously guarded its secrets until it was complete.

I said goodbye and that I would see her later. It wasn't much, but she loved hearing those words from me, because she knew exactly how to reply. She treated it like an epiphany. Laying down her poem, she stood up and followed me to the door, then stopped, hopping up and down. Her hands opened and closed on either side of her head. My father always said that it looked like she was quoting herself.

Ten years ago, she hopped up and down, her eyes wide, trembling, barely able to contain her excitement. “GoodBYE, Freddy!” she shouted at me. “I'll see you LATER.”

On that last day, we parted like it was any other day, the only difference being that I had shown her where I lost my front tooth, and she tried to touch the gap between my teeth.

“Your TOOTH!” she shouted. “What happened to your TOOTH!”

That was the only thing different. There was no final reckoning.

She didn't know that she would not see me later. She hadn't heard her mother talking to my father earlier, like I had, and she didn't see that they both acted angry. Speaking in low sharp whispers, that rose louder and louder. Saskia didn't see when her mother said goodbye to my father, and my father said good riddance to her, and then she said he needed to go somewhere and cool off. And he said she needed to go somewhere and fuck off, and neither of them said, “I'll see you later.”

Instead, Saskia Stiles stood at the door, hopping up and down, waving as she quoted her forehead, and said “GoodBYE, Freddy!”

Ten years later, Saskia didn't say goodbye to me when I left the lunch table.

—

I folded the paper carefully and put it in my pocket. Then I stopped thinking about it. It was now time to have a discussion with Jim Worley and agree that his chair had magic powers. Then it was time to read my book.

Then it was time for chemistry class.

Mr. Pringle, my chemistry teacher, looked at me for more than ten seconds. My cut-off point is five seconds. He looked at me for twice as long as he should have. Then he looked away and said nothing, and I was left to wonder why he was looking at me. And argue with the threads that burst into my mind.

Are you about to be expelled again?

No. There has to be a compelling reason to expel me.

Did you insult him?

I don't talk to him.

Like that makes any difference. You find ways to insult silently.

Ignore. I am going to ignore this.

No, you aren't.

—

Everyone refers to Mr. Pringle as Mr. Chips behind his back. He is a grumpy man who doesn't like talking to students. As a result, we usually got along fine. I sat at the back; I did my homework, took notes, and didn't ask questions. In return, he left me alone. That was the unspoken deal.

But at 1:35
PM
, halfway through my chemistry class, Mr. Pringle looked up from his desk and stared at me. People do this to me often, and I am adept at ignoring them. But it wasn't to be the case this time. My mind was already troubled. Threads already elbowed through the door, asking questions, making guesses, explaining themselves.

I found myself reading the same page in my textbook over and over again. I wanted to lose myself in the monotony of balancing equations, but the threads were too loud.

Whither Saskia?
they said, in summary.

Why didn't she smile?

Does she remember you?

In the maelstrom of these questions, Mr. Pringle chose to look at me, and I was perturbed. His face was inscrutable. There were no telltale signs of anger, fear, happiness. His expression was unreadable.

You're not an expert on interpreting facial expressions.

I'm observing that I can't interpret his facial expression. If I could, this would be a less notable incident. Should we forget what happened the last time we ignored facial expressions we didn't recognize?

We don't forget those things.

Therefore—

Therefore, you're talking about an incident where there was a specific look on their faces. You're referring to an incident where they had expressions and you didn't interpret them.

How is this different?

Mr. Pringle had an expression that you recognized. It's an expression you've seen over and over again.

Where?

Every time you look in the mirror.

Possibly.

Indifference. You saw indifference.

I
may
have seen indifference. I may have seen something else.

You're not observant.

I am.

Says someone who stares at a clock that isn't there.

I only look at it to stop you from talking to me.

Not true. You only look at the clock because you don't want to look at anything else.

Because you won't give me peace.

Because you won't say anything otherwise.

How about I say this? Shut up.

Not productive.

I will talk to you later.

Yes. You will talk later. You will talk to
all
of us later.

“Freddy?” said Mr. Pringle, seemingly from the end of a long hallway.

I pulled myself up from the depths of my own mind to see him staring at me from his desk, with a puzzled expression.

I looked around. Everyone else was doing their homework. My pen was in my hand, but my pad was empty. I looked back at Mr. Pringle.

“Did you have a question?” he asked me.

“No.”

Don't call him Mr. Chips.

Stop it.

Really. Mr. Chips. Don't say it.

“You were looking at me,” Mr. Pringle said.

“You were looking at me,” I said and put my head down, beginning my exercises.

“Because
you
were looking at
me
.”

Mr. Chips. Mr. Chips.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Focus on the bite. Focus on the bite.

Mr. Chips.

“Well?” he asked.

“What?”

“Were you looking at me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I clenched my teeth together. “I don't know.”

“If you don't know why you're looking at me, don't look at me.”

He
was looking at
you!

“Okay,” I said.

Mr. Chips.

“Look at your homework, okay?”

I started writing quickly. Avogadro's constant. Moles. Equilibrium.

“Okay?” he asked again.

“Mr. Chips,” I said softly.

I told you not to call him that.

Mr. Pringle stood up. “
What
did you say?”

“You looked at
me
,” I said.

This time, he stared at me with a little more than indifference. But he said nothing. He shook his head and returned to his work.

One of these days
, the threads said
, you will fail to dodge the bullet
.

The evening of the day Saskia returned, Bill and I walked the trails behind the house, and he requested an accounting of my time.

“Tell me three things you did today,” he said as we walked single file up a path made rough by granite knobs, made stubborn by hemlock roots, some as thick as an arm, lacing up the path underneath.

As we walked, I took my water bottle from my belt. Bill led, at a steady pace, not looking back, waiting for my reply. He didn't wait long. He never did.

“Three things, Freddy,” he said, and his voice was irritated.

“I ate my lunch,” I said and shook my bottle, listening to the water splash about.

“You can do better than that,” he told me and turned back to look at me directly, still walking, paying no attention to the broken ground beneath him. I broke from his gaze, and he turned back to watch his footing. The forest was silent, except for the dropping of our feet, and the sloshing of the water.

“What else did you do?” he asked again. “Lunch is no longer an allowed answer.”

“I sat at the cafeteria table with someone.”

He stopped walking. His eyebrows went up. “With someone?” he said, as if he were contemplating a new postulate of science. “What kind of someone?”

At that moment, I felt my stomach tighten. I didn't want to tell him about Saskia Stiles but I didn't know why. Not knowing my own motivation is unusual and causes me alarm. But I was even more alarmed that there were no threads appearing in my head, asking
why
I didn't want to tell him.

Zero threads.

None.

Apparently, the threads in my head were quite okay with it.

“Who did you have lunch with, Freddy?” my father asked again.

“With a janitor,” I said, and I wondered if I said it too quickly and was now acting suspicious.

My father didn't answer. I held my breath for a moment but realized it was not a good long-term strategy. I exhaled in a burst and took a quick swig from my water bottle.

“A janitor?” he said, frowning. “You had lunch with a janitor?”

I didn't answer. I sloshed my water.

“Well,” he said, then closed his mouth and pursed his lips. He opened his mouth again and began to speak, but stopped. He frowned.

“What in the world did you talk about?” he asked me, at last.

“Fecal aerosols,” I replied, and flecks of water flew from my lips to land between us.

Somewhere the mountain trolls were watching, chuckling.

You pulled
that
one out of the fire
, they probably said.

Listen
: Eleven years ago, my parents started asking me to tell them three things I did during the day. Notwithstanding the few times someone was sick or the few times we were out, or the times Bill sat in the living room and watched my mother dance, one of them asked me for an accounting every single day. They thought it was good for my memory.

It's not.

I remember conversations I had weeks ago, to the word. I remember the date and time when I saw a dog with only three legs.
Three
legs. I remember the commercials that appeared in the first quarter of last year's Super Bowl, and I remember their order.

So I certainly remember what I did today. I did
many
things, and therein lies the problem. I do many things
every
day. I get out of bed. I put my feet in the slippers at the foot of my night table. I walk to the bathroom and pee. I run cold water over my hands. I wash my face. I brush my teeth. After I brush my teeth, I fart. Every time.

I put on grey underwear on even days of the week. I put on black underwear on odd days of the week. I won't wear white underpants because they get dirty too fast. My father used to yell at me when I wore white underwear.

“Jesus Harold
Christ
, Freddy!” he shouted, sorting the laundry. “Did you wipe your ass at all this week?”

“Yes,” I said.

“With what? Your underwear?”

By the time I am asked
What did you do today?
I have done literally hundreds of things. I don't have difficulty remembering what I did. I have difficulty deciding what's noteworthy enough to talk about.

When they first introduced this exercise, my parents had trouble getting more than a single unique thing dredged up from my memory. “Tell me one thing about your day,” my mother said, long ago, and I didn't like the new game. I stuffed my mouth full of whatever food was available. It was my most successful avoidance tactic to dodge questions, just ahead of closing my eyes and screaming at the top of my voice.

My mother touched my hand, her most successful compliance tactic. “Try and remember,” she said.

“I don't know.” I looked to her face for approval.

“You must remember something,” she said.

“I ate breakfast,” I offered.

“Everyone has breakfast, Freddy. Tell me something interesting.”

“Breakfast is interesting,” I replied.

My mother took my chin in her hand. “It's not interesting enough,” she told me. “Do you understand interesting?”

“What,” I said, not as a question, but a half-hearted attempt to dodge the original question. Often, such a response stopped them asking questions and started them explaining things, at which point I could stop listening. I hoped it would work this time.

It didn't.

“The word
interesting
,” Mom said. “Do you understand what it means?”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “What happened to you today that you really found interesting? But not breakfast.”

“I ate lunch,” I said.

As I grew older, I grew better at knowing which things were interesting and which things weren't. I was seven when I finally grasped that there were certain things during the day that merited remembering for the pop quiz later that evening. Infrequent occurrences were always good candidates.

“I had a spelling test,” I said.

“Did you!” My mother's eyebrows went up. She finished cutting my meat. “How did you do on it?”

“Yes!” I said, excited.

“And how did you do on the test?”

“I had a spelling test,” I agreed.

“Did you get them all right?”

“Yes!”

“You didn't get any wrong?”

At this point, I began to panic. The questions were becoming increasingly specific, and I was beginning to get confused.