White Man's Problems (3 page)

Then we go to the much-anticipated sixth-period class, biology. We sit at black plastic lab tables that have holes in the middle, which I suppose are there in case we need to build something requiring a large cylindrical tube. Our teacher is Mr. Palmer, a creepy guy who is like six foot five. He is incredibly psyched to be at the frog-dissection part of the year. He gives us a big speech about the importance of what we are about to do, like we're astronauts or something.

“I have come to see frog dissection as a rite of passage for children in the public-school system,” he says. “Your time in school can be remembered in two distinct sections—dissected, if you will. There are your childhood years before you dissect a frog. At this point, you are young and immature—some of you very much so. Your bodies are not yet developed. Your minds are simple.”

He begins to go around the room, handing out the poor frogs for us to cut up. They are in vacuum-packed plastic wrappers. “Then, after frog dissection, you become young adults. You become worldlier, more experienced. Your bodies open like flowers. You begin to get complicated. You perspire more readily…”

He comes to me and Ernie first. Out of nowhere, a plan comes to me. I stick our frog in the drawer underneath the lab table. I say, “We didn't get ours.”

“I didn't give you one?”

“No.”

“I could've sworn I gave you one.”

“No, Mr. Palmer. I'm really looking forward to it, and we didn't get one yet.”

“Sorry about that,” he says and gives us a second frog.

Ernie says, “What the hell are you doing?”

I stare at him and say, “Don't worry about it. This has nothing to do with you.”

After about fifteen minutes of introductory dissection, I ask to go to the bathroom. Mr. Palmer gives me his signature hall pass, an igneous rock with a home-drilled hole for the piece of rope through which the bathroom-bound student puts his or her hand. Nutball. I put the shrink-wrapped amphibian in my shirtsleeve, having finally found a use for that button between the wrist and the elbow. It's perfect for keeping a dead frog.

You can only get away with about eight minutes on a bathroom pass from Mr. Palmer, so I know I have to move fast. I book over to A wing in three minutes and find my target: the water fountain in the middle of the hallway. I rip open the plastic packaging and place my little green friend right in the center of the drain. Thinking of Jim Brown in The Dirty Dozen, I make sure the coast is clear and get back to class.

Twenty minutes later, I sit down as cool as a cucumber in study hall. Liz walks in just as the bell sounds.

“What's up, Biz?” That's what I call her.

“Not much. I hate my mom.” She talks to me about her family a lot.

“Oh no. Something happen?”

“No. She's just a crazy French shrew.”

“At least she's interesting.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. I mean, don't you think sometimes that we're in this, like, crazy-boring, postsixties malaise of consumerism and cultural vacuity that threatens our sanity? I know it makes me crazy.”

She stares at me for a while. Then, in a way she's never spoken to me before, she says, “What are you going to
be
, Roman?”

“I don't know. But whatever it is, it wouldn't stop me from doing anything for you.”

Right on time, there is a long tone from the intercom speaker next to the clock, which means someone is being requested by the principal's office. It's like a walkie-talkie system between the front lines and central command. A voice comes on.

“Mrs. Warden, please send Roman Budding to see Mr. Fertel. Immediately.”

I'm on my feet before she finishes. My look tells Mrs. Warden that handcuffs will not be necessary. Liz, who looks a little baffled by the end of our conversation, watches me.

I usually talk to Mr. Fertel about baseball. He has a bad back, and he walks stooped over with his right hand lifted a little. He looks kind of like a chicken when I walk in. He's sitting on the ground with his back against the wall. He's famous for that. It makes his back feel better.

“What the hell's wrong with you?” he says.

“I'm sorry.”

He starts to get up, but he can't. At first, I think, “Wow, he is in bad shape.” Then I realize he's cracking up. Hysterical. Can't stop laughing. His secretary, Mrs. Shinglehoffer, walks in. She's laughing, too. She helps him up and steadies him to his chair, and then she leaves.

He tries to get serious. “Ok, dipshit. What possessed you to do something like that? I have to punish you, you know.”

“It just happened,” I say. “I can't explain it.”

“All right,” he says. He ponders me for a second. “Roman, try to use your powers for good and not evil.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. You have two weeks of detention starting today. And I'm calling your mother.”

As I walk out, Mrs. Shinglehoffer motions me over. She looks around and whispers, “Did you hear what happened?”

“No, Mrs. Shinglehoffer.”

“Ed Lutz was the first one to the water fountain.” She's whispering, but she can't stop laughing. “He freaked out…and then…”

“What? Mrs. Shinglehoffer?”

“He…he crapped himself. Poor soul…” She grabs a tissue.

Once I get out of there, I head to my locker. Liz is waiting for me with Jane and a couple of other girls. “I heard all about it, you idiot,” Liz says.

“Pretty good, Roman,” says Jane.

“Are you suspended?” Liz asks.

“Nah, just detention for two weeks.”

Jane whispers something to her, and she and the other girls walk away. Liz starts to drift away with them but lingers for a second.

“Are you taking the sports bus, then?” she says.

I have a fit of overeager doofiness. “Yeah, I guess so. That's at four, right? Is that the bus you take? Oh right, you have cheerleading practice.”

“Usually. If I don't go to Jane's. Maybe I'll see you on the bus.”

And then she's gone.

And now I'm here, with all the AC/DC fans and Mr. Matthews, who says we can leave ten minutes early. I think he's got somewhere to go. God knows what that guy does.

***

Well, I never thought I'd come back to this, but times change. I'm in my room and it's late. Before I go to sleep, I might as well finish this story.

I get to the four-o'clock sports bus, and at first it looks like Liz won't make it. I'm feeling stupid for thinking I was getting somewhere with her. But just as the bus pulls away, she pops up the steps, heads right over to my seat, and says, “Move over, buster.”

As we ride, she tells me of the status of the cheerleading team's repertoire, which is more interesting than you might think. When she finishes, she says, “I cannot believe you did that with the frogs. That's the most wicked funny thing that's happened all year.”

“Aw, you know. Any chance to get back at them.”

“Very immature. I love it.” Then she looks at me curiously and says, “You could get into big trouble, you know.” And she gives me a friendly push. It's new, this idea of her touching me. I try to stay calm. “Hey,” she says, “do you want to come over for a while?”

Her house is one of those huge nice places with the flowers everywhere and the circular driveway, which I guess, theoretically, is for chauffeurs to drop people off, except these houses aren't that fancy. You go into one of these places and it's like the ceilings and the walls are bigger, like it holds more life or something. Definitely a place where you can get away from one another—unlike Stuckley, where we live like Japanese people getting on the subway.

I get in the house, and her mom is, like, the prettiest woman I've ever seen. Her name is Carolina, which doesn't sound that French to me, so someone in their family must be from Spain. Like her daughter, she has thick black hair, which is pulled back by a red and white polka-dot barrette. She's wearing a super-cool black dress. I guess Liz' hips are from the old man's side, because her mom is really thin. That may cause some problems later in life between mother and child, but that's a whole other road. Mrs. Tremblay looks a hell of a lot different than my mom, I'll tell you that.

“Where do you live, Romahn?” she asks. I love the way she pronounces my name, like I'm an Italian card player.

“We live in Stuckley, Mrs. Tremblay.”

“What is Stuckley? What is zees, Lizbet?”

Liz rolls her eyes. “Mama. It is the place by the mall. Where you like to go for the cheeseburgers.”

“Oh, yes, yes. Where zey have Burger King and toolayshows.” I don't know what “toolayshows” are, but Liz does, and she nods.

“Mama, we're going into the den.”

“Do you want chocalat?” asks Mrs. Tremblay.

It takes me a minute before I realize she is offering us hot chocolate. We stay in the kitchen as she makes it. Liz gets annoyed and looks at the crossword puzzle her father left incomplete on the table. Mrs. Tremblay is drinking a glass of red wine she poured from a bottle with a cork. I make small talk, but there are moments when it's impossible to understand her. Liz chimes in when I need bailing out. I ask for the bathroom, and there are two toilets in there. One just has a faucet in the middle—I don't know what the hell these people do with that. I make a decision and go American.

We get our hot chocolate and go into the den, which is a big room with tons of books, a piano, two couches, a coffee table, white marble ashtray, and a deep-brown shag carpet. It looks more like a place to have tea with the Black Panthers than a place for kids to hang out. We plop down on the couch, and Liz sits facing me with her back against the arm and her legs crossed in front of her.

“Let me read your palm,” she says, reaching out to grab my hand. I shift toward her till I am up against her legs. I'm still trying to stay calm, trying to not think about where I am right now and the eight thousand ways I can make a goddamn fool of myself with one wrong move.

“Your life line is long…” She is really focused, like a doctor going over an X-ray. “But something happens right here, in the middle.” She holds my palm up to my face. I have no idea what she's talking about. Me, Roman Budding, confused by two beautiful French women within twenty minutes. More importantly, though, the reading is finished, and it's not clear where, exactly, my hand should go. Right then and there, I realize I don't know how much longer I can live with myself without at least
trying
something. So I interlace my fingers with hers.

She doesn't scream. In fact, she seems to be fine with it. We sit there and don't say anything for a while. I can't resist rubbing my thumb up and down her ring finger once, but I stop because I don't want to call too much attention to the fact that she is holding hands with me. I'm scared she will wake up any second, come to her senses, and pull her hand away. But she doesn't.

She breaks the silence by pointing at my jeans. “What happened?” My pant leg has run up, and the burns can be seen.

“Oh God. Wrestling,” I say.

“What do you mean?” She is giggling a little, which is very cute.

“Ugh. It's the worst. Getting smothered by Peter Logatelli trying to sit-out.”

“How do your legs get burnt?”

I look around and see an opening on the shag beyond the coffee table. “Here, let me show you.” She follows me over to the carpet. “Ok, you're me and I'm Peter. You start off like this.” I show her how to take the bottom position, on hands and knees. Then I loop my arm under her waist and hold her left arm above the wrist. She smells incredibly great. She has a green sweater made out of fancy wool, which is softer than my pillow. It bunches up above her waist and I can see the top of her panties: orange and very distracting. They're sticking out of her corduroys, which are a different color green and go nicely with the sweater and her flowered shirt. And, of course, I look real quick at her butt, the derriere extraordinaire.

“When the whistle blows, you're supposed to stick your right leg out like this.” I guide her hips very gently to show her the proper form of a sit-out. “Then you just sit down. On your butt. There.” And with that, she's sitting, facing away from me. A perfect sit-out. I am on my knees behind her with my arms around her waist.

She turns her head. “Like that?”

Her face is right in front of me. I kiss her. It's easier than saying hi in the morning or trying to think of how to make her laugh in study hall; easier than trying to find her alone at her locker; easier than saying the right thing to Jane, hoping she will relay it to Liz; and it's easier than sticking a frog in my shirt. It's the easiest thing in the world.

“Show me again,” she says and gets back on her hands and knees.

Once we are in position, I say, “Wait for the whistle.” She thinks this is funny. She tells me I am tickling her.

“Lizbet! Romahn! What ze hell are you doing?” It's her mom. She's one big flambé of cigarette smoke, polka dots, and red wine. She is mad and more confused than we are.

After a few awkward moments trying to explain American wrestling and why such a thing would be practiced in the public schools, Carolina starts to come around. I even show her my burnt shins in an effort to dig myself out. But I think the sight of me pulling up my jeans is the last straw because she says, “Ok, well, Romahn, you are a very nize boy.
Très
funny. But I sink it iz time for you to go,
non
?”

She offers to drive me home, but I say
non
. “But, you live, like, four miles from here,” Liz says.

I am pretty touched that she can even estimate it. “It's two point six miles, actually,” I say. “But I'll be fine. I like to walk.” I don't exactly want to get in a car with Mrs. Tremblay, and neither, I assume, does Liz, who shrugs and then smiles at me before I go.