The Grievers (2 page)

“Make a goofy face when they do the class picture,” the kid next to me said as a wizened Noblac friar extolled the virtues of Saint Leonard’s faithful donkey, Maurice. “Trust me on this.”

“Sure-footed and loyal,” the friar said, barely audible over the clatter of slides as they cycled through the carousel. “Headstrong and determined, but never to the point of obstinacy.”

The friar’s name was Brother Timothy, and he cinched his brown robe at the waist with a coarse length of braided twine. Though he frequently referred to himself as a historian, Brother Timothy was only ever scheduled to moderate study halls and, when necessary, to sub for missing teachers. This was most likely due to the fact that his lectures invariably turned to the adventures of Saint Leonard and his donkey-cum-sidekick, Maurice. If the swim team defeated a major rival, Brother Timothy recalled a time when Maurice and Saint Leonard crossed a raging river to deliver food to starving orphans. If the football team went down in defeat, Brother Timothy reminded us that Saint Leonard had been beset by wolves on more than one occasion, but had, by the grace of God, escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. And when a member of the custodial staff passed away in the spring of my sophomore year, Brother Timothy suddenly recalled that Saint Leonard was not only the patron saint of prisoners, blacksmiths, midwives, donkeys, thieves, travelers, good fortune, and the wheel, but of janitors and food-service personnel as well.

“Just as Christ rode a donkey into Jerusalem mere days before the crucifixion, so too did Saint Leonard pass through life on the most faithful of beasts,” Brother Timothy droned that first morning as photographs of donkeys, many shot from conspicuously low angles, flashed across the screen behind him. “By the same token, so too do we expect you, the Raging Donkeys of Saint Leonard’s Academy, to meet your destinies, both in the classroom and beyond, with fixed and firm dignity and aplomb.”

“Raging Donkeys?” I said to the kid next to me.

“It’s the name of our team,” the kid said, clearly disgusted by my ignorance.

“Yeah, but why
Raging
?”

“Are you kidding? Have you seen the dicks on those things?” the kid said, raising his eyebrows in the direction of the stage where Brother Timothy stood silent behind a wooden podium, the thick lenses of his eyeglasses shining in the white glare of the slide projector. Behind him, more donkeys paraded across the silver screen, their undercarriages rendered more menacing with each shot by the photographer’s growing fondness for the close-up. “Like the man said, fixed and firm.”

The kid’s name was Frank Dearborn, and except for his crooked nose, he looked like he’d be as comfortable shouting
Sieg Heil
at a Hitler Youth rally as he was pumping his fist and chanting the school’s initials when the senior class president replaced Brother Timothy behind the podium and informed us that, as Raging Donkeys, we were nothing short of God’s gift to the world.

“Check out that guy,” Frank said, nudging me with his elbow as the houselights came up in the auditorium and the remaining chants of
S-L-A! S-L-A! S-L-A!
fizzled out like embers in a dying fire. “What’s he doing here?”

I followed his gaze to one of the tallest people I’d ever seen in my life, a skinny black kid whose arms were a good six inches too long for his blue blazer. A white sticker over his heart read
Hi! My Name Is DWAYNE COLEMAN.
That no one else in the freshman class was wearing a name-tag meant that the kid must have recently worn the same jacket to some other event that did, in fact, require name-tags and had forgotten to take it off. That no one bothered to tell him about it meant that the joke was on him and would be for the foreseeable future. Tall and black were beside the point. To me, anyway, he’d always be the only guy in the room wearing a name-tag.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I thought this school was segregated.”

“Segregated?”

“Yeah. My dad said there were no blacks here.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Where’d he get that idea?”

We were filing out of the auditorium now, and a doughy white kid whose heavy, labored breathing had been audible throughout Brother Timothy’s presentation turned to me and explained what Frank was getting at.

“I believe he’s referring to the fact that Saint Leonard’s Academy is run by Noblac Friars,” the doughy kid said. “In other words, your friend was expecting to see Noblacs today. Or, to make an obvious and perhaps unfortunate play on words, no blacks.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’re going to make funny faces when they take the class picture.”

“I think I’ll pass,” the doughy kid said. “I don’t want it biting me in the ass somewhere down the line.”

“So, what?” Frank said. “You’re running for president or something? Make a funny face for Christ’s sake.”

“My political aspirations are none of your business,” the doughy kid said, shuffling away from us when his row started to move. “But, yes, one day you will see me in the White House—perhaps not as president, but certainly as a high-ranking aide-de-camp to whomever happens to be in office at the time.”

“It’s Packer, right?” Frank said.

“Correct,” the doughy kid said.

“As in fudge?”

The doughy kid ignored the question, and though I didn’t catch the reference, I laughed when Frank nudged me with his elbow.

“Get it?” Frank said. “Fudge Packer?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Fudge Packer.”

“What about you?” Frank said to a skinny Asian kid who was shuffling out of the row behind the doughy kid. “Are you a fudge packer, too, or are you going to make faces at the camera with us?”

The Asian kid glanced back at us but kept walking.

“Yeah, you,” Frank said. “Rice Dick.”

A few seconds too late, I figured out that Frank’s fudge packer reference probably had something to do with anal sex. That combined with his calling the quiet Asian kid
Rice Dick
made me wonder whether I should distance myself from the guy before anyone assumed we were buddies.

“You’re still going to do it—right, Schwartz?” Frank said, perhaps sensing a lack of resolve on my part as we filed into the gymnasium and Brother Timothy set up his camera on a tripod in front of the bleachers. “Make a weird face, I mean. You’re cool with that, right?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Awesome,” Frank said. “I knew you were a good one.”

Christ, I thought. It was like the guy was speaking a different language. Everything he said took forever to sink into my brain, and by the time I got it all decoded, I’d already agreed to hand over my lunch money, my good name, and anything else of value that I might have had in my possession, tangible or otherwise.

“A good what?” I asked, struggling to follow.

“A good Jew,” Frank said.

“Oh,” I said. “But I’m not Jewish.”

“Hey, I’m not judging or anything,” Frank said.

“I didn’t think you were,” I said, though he obviously was. “But, really, I’m not Jewish.”

“Relax, Schwartz. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I mean, I wouldn’t be—if I were Jewish. Which I’m not.”

“Then why are you getting so bent out of shape?”

“I’m not getting bent out of shape,” I said, my voice rising a full octave.

“Whatever, Schwartz. Your secret’s safe with me.”

We climbed the bleachers, and Frank wandered off, his campaign to convince other kids to make faces at the camera kicking into full gear. Three weeks later, a poster-sized black and white photo of the freshman class was hanging in the foyer outside of our cafeteria. Jaws set, lips pursed, gazes fixed defiantly on some distant, manly horizon, my classmates did their best impersonation of serious adulthood while I stood in the front row with my eyes crossed and my cheeks puffed out like a blowfish.

“
Mazel tov
, Schwartz!” Frank called across the marble foyer as I stared at the photograph, cheeks burning, the only fool to fall into his trap. “Nice picture!”

“I believe I warned you about this,” the doughy kid—whose name, I’d since learned, was Greg—said, breathing heavily as he made his way through the early morning crush of groggy boys and their overstuffed backpacks. “Now you’ll never amount to anything.”

“It could be worse,” Billy Chin said, caught up in the crush. “Everyone
could
call you Rice Dick.”

I hated Frank. I hated Greg. I even hated Billy at that point, despite the fact that I barely knew him. This wasn’t the first humiliation in my life, but it was my first at the Academy, and it was a big one. All through grade school, my thick glasses and propensity for big words made me the target of boys who were much bigger than I was and who thought that professional wrestling was real. As a result, I suffered three black eyes, a chipped tooth, a broken nose, a dislocated shoulder, a scrape running from the inside of my elbow down to my belly button, two near drownings (one in a swimming pool and one in a toilet), a mild concussion, and countless noogies, wedgies, Indian burns, and wet willies, all between fifth and eighth grade. But I was never bitter—or not entirely so—because at the end of it all I knew I’d be the only kid from my graduating class who was moving on to Saint Leonard’s Academy. To my mind, this meant starting over in a place where nobody knew me. It meant that I was making a fresh start, that I was forging a new identity, that I could turn myself into someone other than the geeky kid who talked funny and cried when other kids held him down on the ground and pressed his face into the mud. But now? After the class picture? Forget about it. Dwayne Coleman’s name-tag was barely a blip on the radar by comparison.

In my mind, I was already tearing across the hall, rolling up my sleeves and breathing expletives as terrified fourteenyear-olds dove out of my way and hid behind trash cans and trophy cases to avoid the impending Armageddon. In my mind, I was swooping in on Frank from behind, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him around to face certain doom. In my mind, I was six inches taller than him and built like a lumberjack, and Frank was begging for mercy as I clutched the front of his shirt and cocked a fist mere inches from his trembling, terrified face.

“
Horse Feathers
,” someone said.

The voice came from behind, so I spun around, impotent fists balled at my side, to find a kid whose round cheeks glowed like the moon and whose shoulders were dusted with big flakes of yellow dandruff. When I scowled at him, he made the face I was making in the class picture—crossed eyes, puffy cheeks, and fish lips—only to reveal a mouthful of heavy-duty orthodontic hardware.

“You’re doing Harpo Marx, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, feigning ennui. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“That’s pretty cool,” the kid said. “I thought I was the only Marx Brothers fan around here.”

Whatever the hell he was talking about, he was the only person in the entire school who didn’t think I was an idiot. So I shook his hand when he offered it and assumed I was supposed to laugh when the bell rang for homeroom and he took off down the hall, stooped over like a walking question mark, knocking ash from an imaginary cigar, and singing, maybe to me, maybe to himself, maybe to the world at large, “Hello, I must be going. I cannot stay. I came to say I must be going. I’m glad I came, but just the same, I must be going!”

The kid’s name was Neil Pogue. Twelve years later, he’d be the best man at my wedding. Nearly a year to the day after that, I’d get a call from Billy Chin’s mother informing me that her son had committed suicide. Outside of crying in Karen’s arms, telling Neil was the only thing I could think to do.

  CHAPTER THREE  

W
henever her mother asked what I was doing with myself that summer, Karen’s answer usually started with something vague about research for my dissertation, touched briefly on our house and how desperately it needed our attention, elided over my congenital laziness, and ended squarely on a lie that had me working part-time in a bank.

The problem with Karen’s phrasing wasn’t so much the “working” part or the “part-time” part or even, surprisingly, the “bank” part. The problem was with the preposition. To say that I was working
in
a bank was a gross overstatement that implied a necktie, a sweater vest, air conditioning, and a working knowledge of the most basic laws of mathematics. To say that I was working
at
a bank might be a step closer to the truth, but only a small step that left far too much to the imagination. I might, for example, be mistaken for someone with the requisite training to carry a gun and prevent the occasional robbery. For that matter, I might also be mistaken for someone competent enough to push a broom or run a vacuum cleaner after everyone of consequence had gone home for the day. Plausible though all of these possibilities might have been for any other husband Karen’s mother could have imagined for her daughter, they were slightly above my pay grade. The real truth was that I worked
in the general vicinity of
a bank. Or, more accurately, on the bank’s front lawn.