Werewolves in Their Youth (2 page)

“I’m
not
his friend, Mrs. Gladfelter. I swear to God. I can’t do anything.”

“Couldn’t you try?”

I shook my head. I hoped that I didn’t start crying again.

“Paul, Timothy is in trouble.” All at once her voice grew sharp. “He needs your help, and I need your help, too. Now if you come right this minute, and get up out of that dirt, then I’ll forget that you didn’t come in from recess. If you don’t come back inside, I’ll have to speak to your mother.” She held out her hand. “Now, come on, Paul. Please.”

And so I took her hand, and let her pull me out of the ravine and across the deserted playground, aware that in doing so I was merely proving the unspoken corollary that my mother had left hanging, the other morning, in the air between her and Mrs. Stokes. There was a song about me, too, I’m afraid—a popular little number that went

What’s that smell-o?

Paul Kovel-o

He’s a big fat hippo Jell-O

He’s a snoop

He smells like poop

He smells like tomato beef

Alphabet soup

because at some point in my career I had acquired the reputation, inexplicable to me, for exuding an odor of Campbell’s tomato soup—a reputation that no amount of bathing or studied avoidance of all the brands and varieties of canned soup ever rid me of. As if this were not bad enough, I had to go around with a thick wad of electrician’s tape on the hinge of my eyeglasses and a huge Western-style tooled-leather belt stuffed one and a half times around the loops of my trousers. It had been my father’s belt, and bore his name, Melvin, stamped along its length, in big yellow capital letters set amid bright green cacti, like a cheery frontier invitation for all to come and yank my underpants up into my crack. I sat alone at lunch under an invisible and mysterious hood of tomato smell—a scent dangerously similar to the acrid tang of vomit—walked myself home from school, and figured in all the dramas, ceremonials, and epic struggles of my classmates only in the unlikely but mythologically requisite role of King of the Retards. Timothy Stokes, I knew, as I followed Mrs. Gladfelter down the long, silent hallway to the office, hating him more and more with each step, was
my
only friend.

He was sitting in a corner of the office, trapped in an orange vinyl armchair. There was a roman numeral three scratched into his left cheek and his brilliant white shirt and trousers were patterned with a camouflage of grass and dirt and asphalt. His chest swelled and then subsided deeply, swelled and subsided. Mr. Buterbaugh, the principal, was standing over him, arms folded across his chest. He was watching Timothy, looking amazed and skeptical and somehow offended. Mrs. Maloney, the school secretary, who a dozen times a month typed the cruel words “tomato soup” onto the cafeteria menus that my mother cruelly affixed with a magnet to our refrigerator, rose from behind her desk when we came in, and gathered up her purse and sweater.

“I finally reached Timothy’s mother, Mrs. Gladfelter,” she said. “She was at work, but she said she would be here as soon as she could.” She lowered her voice. “And we called Dr. Schachter, too. His office said he’d call back.” She cleared her throat. “So I’m going to take my break now.”

At two o’clock every day, I knew, Mrs. Maloney sneaked around to the windowless side of the school building and stood behind the power transformer, smoking an Eve cigarette. I turned, with a sinking heart, and looked at the clock over the door to Mr. Buterbaugh’s office. I hadn’t missed the whole afternoon, after all, lying there in the ditch for what had seemed to me like many hours. There was still another ninety minutes to be gotten through.

“Well, now, Timothy.” Mrs. Gladfelter took me by the shoulders and maneuvered me around her. “Look who I found,” she said.

“Hey, Timothy,” I said.

Timothy didn’t look up. Mrs. Gladfelter gave me a gentle push toward him, in the small of my back.

“Why don’t you sit down, Paul?”

“No.” I stiffened, and pushed the other way.

“Please sit down, Paul,” said Mr. Buterbaugh, showing me his teeth. Although his last name forced him to adopt a somewhat remote and disciplinarian manner with the other kids at Copland, Mr. Buterbaugh always took pains with me. He made me swap high fives with him and kept up with my grades. At first I had attributed his kindness to the fact that he was a little heavy and had probably been a fat kid, too, but then I kept hearing from my mother about how she had run into Bob Buterbaugh at this singles’ bar or that party and he had said the nicest things about me. I stopped pushing against Mrs. Gladfelter and let myself be steered toward the row of orange chairs. “That’s the way. Sit down and wait with Timothy until his mother gets here.”

“Mr. B. and I will be sitting right inside his office, Paul.”

“No!” I didn’t want to be left alone with Timothy, not because I was afraid of him but because I was afraid that somebody would come into the office and see us sitting there, two matching rejects in matching orange chairs.

“That’s enough now, Paul,” said Mr. Buterbaugh, his friendly smile looking more false than usual. I could see that he was very angry. “Sit down.”

“It’s all
right,
” said Mrs. Gladfelter. “You see what you can do about helping Timothy turn back into Timothy. We’re just going to give you a little privacy.” She followed Mr. Buterbaugh into his office and then poked her head back around the door. “I’m going to leave this door open, in case you need us. All right?”

“This much,” I said, holding my hands six inches apart.

There were three chairs next to Timothy’s. I took the farthest, and showed him my back, so that anyone passing by the windows of the office would not be able to conclude that he and I were engaged in any sort of conversation at all.

“Are you expelled?” I said. There was no reply. “Are you, Timothy?” Again he said nothing, and I couldn’t stop myself from turning around to look at him. “Timothy, are you expelled?”

“I’m not Timothy, Professor,” said Timothy, gravely but not without a certain air of satisfaction. He didn’t look at me. “I’m afraid your precious antidote didn’t work.”

“Come on, Timothy,” I said. “Cut it out. The moon’s not even full today.”

Now he turned the werewolf glint of his regard toward me. “Where were you?” he said. “I was looking for you.”

“I was in the ditch.”

“With the ants?”

I nodded.

“I heard you talking to them before.”

“So?”

“So, are you Ant-Man?”

“No, dummy.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I’m not anybody. You’re not anybody, either.”

We fell silent for a while and just sat there, not looking at each other, kicking at the legs of our chairs. I could hear Mrs. Gladfelter and Mr. Buterbaugh talking softly in his office; Mr. Buterbaugh called her Elizabeth. The telephone rang. A light flashed twice on Mrs. Maloney’s phone, then held steady.

“Thanks for calling back, Joel,” I heard Mr. Buterbaugh say. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

“I went to see Dr. Schachter a couple times,” I said. “He had Micronauts and the Fembots.”

“He has Stretch Armstrong, too.”

“I know.”

“Why did
you
go see him? Did your mother make you?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“How come?”

“I don’t know. She said I was having problems. With my anger, or I don’t know.” Actually, she had said—and at first Dr. Schachter had concurred—that I needed to learn to “manage” my anger. This was a diagnosis that I never understood, since it seemed to me that I had no problems at all managing my anger. It was my judgment that I managed it much better than my parents managed theirs, and even Dr. Schachter had to agree with that. In fact, the last time I saw him, he suggested that I try to stop managing my anger quite so well. “I don’t know,” I said to Timothy. “I guess I was mad about my dad and things.”

“He had to go to jail.”

“Just for one night.”

“How come?”

“He had too much to drink,” I said, with a disingenuous shrug. My father was not much of a drinker, and when he crashed the party my mother had thrown last weekend to celebrate the closing of her first really big sale, he broke a window, knocked over a chafing dish, which set fire to a batik picture of Jerusalem, and raised a bloody blue plum under my mother’s right eye. People had tended to blame the unaccustomed effects of the fifth of Gilbey’s that was later found in the glove compartment of his car. Only my mother and I knew that he was secretly a madman.

“Did you visit him in jail?”

“No, stupid. God! You’re such a retard! You
belong
in Special School, Timothy. I hope they make you eat special food and wear a special helmet or something.” I heard the distant slam of the school’s front door, and then a pair of hard shoes knocking along the hall. “Here comes your retard mother,” I said.

“What
kind
of special helmet?” said Timothy. It was never very easy to hurt his feelings. “Ant-Man wears a helmet.”

Mrs. Stokes entered the office. She was a tall, thin woman, much older than my mother, with long gray hair and red, veiny hands. She wore clogs with white knee-socks, and in the evenings after dinner she went onto her deck and smoked a pipe. Every morning she made Timothy pancakes for his breakfast, which sounded okay until you found out that she put things in them like carrots and leftover pieces of corn.

“Oh, hello, Paul,” she said, in her Eeyore voice.

“Mrs. Stokes,” said Mrs. Gladfelter, coming out of the principal’s office. She smiled. “It’s been kind of a long afternoon for Timothy, I’m afraid.”

“How is Virginia?” said Mrs. Stokes. She still hadn’t looked at Timothy.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” Mr. Buterbaugh said. “Just a little shaken up. We sent her home early. Of course,” he added, “her parents are going to want to speak to you.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Stokes. I saw that she was still wearing her white apron and her photo name tag from her job. She worked at the bone factory out in the Huxley Industrial Park, where they made plastic skulls and skeletons for medical schools. It was her job to string together all the delicate beadwork of the hands and feet. “I’m ready to do whatever you think would be best for Timothy.”

“I’m not Timothy,” said Timothy.

“Oh, please, Timmy, stop this nonsense for once.”

“I’m cursed.” He leaned over and brought his face very close to mine. “Tell them about the curse, Professor.”

I looked at Timothy, and for the first time saw that a thin, dark down of wolfish hair had grown upon his cheek. Then I looked at Mr. Buterbaugh, and found that he was watching me with an air of earnest expectancy, as though he honestly thought there might be an eternal black-magical curse on Timothy and was more than willing to listen to anything I might have to say on the subject. I shrugged.

“Are you going to make him go to Special School?” I said.

“All right, Paul, thank you,” said Mrs. Gladfelter. “You may go back to class now. We’re watching a movie with Mrs. Hampt’s class this afternoon.”

Mrs. Maloney had reappeared in the doorway, her cheeks flushed, her lipstick fresh, smelling of cigarette.

“I’ll see that he gets there,” she said—uncharitably, I thought.

“See you later, Timothy,” I said. He didn’t answer me; he had started to growl again. As I followed Mrs. Maloney out of the office I looked back and saw Mr. Buterbaugh and Mrs. Gladfelter and poor old Mrs. Stokes standing in a hopeless circle around Timothy. I thought for a second, and then I turned back toward them and raised an imaginary rifle to my shoulder.

“This is a dart gun,” I announced. Everyone looked at me, but I was talking to Timothy now. I was almost but not quite embarrassed. “It’s filled with darts of my special antidote, and I made it stronger than it used to be, and it’s going to work this time. And also, um, there’s a tranquilizer mixed in.”

Timothy looked up, and bared his teeth at me, and I took aim right between his eyes. I jerked my hands twice, and went
fwup! fwup!
Timothy’s head snapped back, and his eyelids fluttered. He shook himself all over. He swallowed, once. Then he held his hands out before him, as if wondering at their hairless pallor.

“It seems to have worked,” he said, his voice cool and reasonable and fine. Anyone could see he was still playing his endless game, but all the grown-ups, Mr. Buterbaugh in particular, looked very pleased with both of us.

“Thank you very much, Paul.” Mr. Buterbaugh gave me a pat on the head. “Remember to say hello to your mother for me.”

“I’m not Paul,” I said, and everybody laughed but Timothy Stokes.

When I got home from school my mother was down in the basement, at my father’s workbench, dressed in the paint-spattered blue jeans and hooded sweatshirt she put on whenever it was time to do dirty work. She had pulled her hair back into a tight ponytail. Normally I would have been glad to see her home from work already and dressed this way. One of the sources of friction between us, and among the various angers that I had supposedly been attempting to manage, was my dislike of the way she looked as she went off to work in the morning, in her plaid suit jackets, her tan stockings, her blouses with their little silk bow ties, her cabasset of hairsprayed hair. In the days before she went back to work my mother had been a genuine hippie—bushy-headed, legs unshaven, dressed in vast dresses with Indian patterns; she was there to fix bowls of hot whole-grain cereal in the morning and to give me a snack of dried pineapple and milk in the kitchen when I came home. Now, every morning, I fixed myself a breakfast of cornflakes and coffee, and when I got home I generally turned on the television and ate the box of Yodels that I purchased at High’s every day on my way back from school. But my pleasure at the sight of her in her old, ruined jeans, patched with a scrap of a genuine Mao jacket she had bought as a student at McGill, was diminished when I saw that she was dressed this way so that she could stand at my father’s workbench and toss all the delicate furniture of his home laboratory into an assortment of battered liquor cartons.

“But, Mom,” I said, watching as she backhanded into a box an entire S-shaped rack of stoppered test tubes. The glass, in shattering, made a festive tinkle, as of little bells, and the dank basement air was quickly suffused with a harsh chemical stink of bananas and mold and burnt matches. “Those are his experiments.”