Lemon (16 page)

Simon, the farmer, is getting married and old Tilly's pretty broken up about it. He invites her to the wedding but doesn't dance with her because he's too busy shtupping his wenchy wife. Dejected, Tilly heads up the road where old Hal is waiting for her. He jumps her but she fights him and he tumbles off the road, smacking into a tree. He tells her he can't move.

‘He's lying,' Kadylak says.

Hal says his back is busted. He begs Tilly to get help before nightfall because after nightfall the animals will get him.

‘Let them,' Kadylak says. Her colour's getting worse, her hands are mottled; her fingers and toes turning purple. I run and get a nurse. They wheel her to icu. Put her on a ventilator.

I'm flinging a Nerf ball around with Wackoboy when Kadylak's father shows up.

‘Where is she?' he wants to know.

I explain, watch him fall back against the wall. I tell him to wait while I find a nurse. They're all busy staring at monitors. I get loud. ‘He doesn't know what's going on! His wife's sick!'

Brenda, fast-moving and efficient, grabs my arm. ‘Keep your voice down.' She walks me down the corridor. ‘What did you tell him?'

‘I said Intensive Care. I told him about the ventilator.'

‘You shouldn't be discussing the patient's care with the parents.'

‘He wanted to know. Nobody was around.'

‘You can always find us. It's late, you should be going home.'

I leave him with her. I should be holding his hand. Kids on ventilators don't look comfortable. Beyond all the usual tubes and wires, they're getting air forced into them. The machine wheezes. Just as the air's going out and the kid starts to look half-normal, the ventilator blows another tornado into them. I try not to picture Kadylak's torment. I try not to picture her father watching her. But it's all in my head. And I forgot to give her the spinning tops.

17

‘W
hy,' demands Mr. Lund while digging around in his fanny pack for Tic Tacs, ‘did you hold auditions before we've even read the play?'

‘It was just very preliminary,' I say, ‘to help me with the writing process. I've hit a bit of a block.' I don't tell him I'm disgusted with myself and will never pick up a pen again.

‘I've heard reports that you discussed nudity.'

‘Only in the abstract, to help with character development.'

He pops a couple of Tic Tacs and fondles his beard. ‘Mr. Huff and I,' he warns, ‘cannot offer our full endorsement until we read the play.'

‘I understand,' I say. I don't tell him I don't give a goose's turd about him or Huff or my grades. All I want is Kadylak running through fields of buttercups.

I scram to the library so the maladjusted can't ask me if they got a part.

‘You must read
Clarissa
by Samuel Richardson,' Mrs. Wartowski tells me. ‘He invented the psychological novel, predates Austen.' I don't want to make her cry by asking if it's about some girl pining for some guy so I just take the book and start reading. Of course it's about a virgin everybody wants to deflower. Because Clarissa's dutiful, her grandfather leaves her all his cash and property, which puts her evil siblings' noses out of joint, not to mention her nasty parents and uncle. Being dutiful and all that, Clarissa signs her cash and property over to padre. Well, the next thing you know, he's trying to marry her off to some congenital idiot who's also got cash and property. Meanwhile her sister Bella's been getting hot and heavy with a no-good rake named Lovelace. Clarissa's been watching these goings-ons and fancies him. She starts penning him amorous letters. Old Lovelace drops Bella so he can pursue this pious, chaste virgin. Stealing her virginity becomes his obsession. You have to wonder how we went from preserving our virginity at all costs to offering it to any scuzzbag just to get it over with. Nobody wants to be caught dead being a virgin these days. A hundred years ago, if you lost your hymen you pretty much
were
dead. Lovelace writes to his pal Jack about how he's going to do Clarissa, how he despises her piety and self-importance. Meanwhile he's penning her fake love letters. The whole novel is written in letters, which I guess is what's so psychological about it. So old Clarissa, on the run from her evil
family and the congenital idiot, falls for Lovelace's lies about setting her up with a pious lady in London. The pious lady turns out to be the madam of a brothel, and old Lovelace is in the next room, clawing at Clarissa's door.

If I phone the hospital they won't tell me anything.

Old Swails is blaming Queen Isabella of Castile for the Spanish Inquisition.

‘Excuse me,' I say, ‘it wasn't like Ferdinand had nothing to do with it.'

‘Ferdinand was King Consort,' Swails says. ‘Isabella was the ruler.'

‘He was as rabid a Christian as she was. There wouldn't have been a Holy War if it weren't for Ferdinand.'

‘What brings you to that conclusion?' he says, switching to Prince Charles mode.

‘Women didn't lead troops.'

‘
She
planned the campaigns.'

‘Yeah, but only Ferdinand was dumb enough to carry them out when they were short of cash. Genocide costs money. The Christians had blown entire kingdoms on trying to eliminate the Muslims and the Jews for centuries.'

‘How does this make Ferdinand responsible for the Inquisition?'

‘He was chomping at the bit even though Isabella said, “Whoa, boy, we're broke.” She was supposed to get some cash when she married the creepy old King of Portugal. But King Enrique III, her sleazebag half-brother, found out she'd secretly married Ferdinand and went ballistic. He took away all the towns that were her only source of income. You'd think that would have cooled his jets but Ferdinand went on a killing rampage anyway.' This, of course, brings to mind Clarissa's situation when she refuses to marry the congenital idiot. Her father disowns her, leaving her destitute. All through history girls have been forced to marry hideous men or be left with nothing.

‘Don't forget,' I say, ‘Isabella was the one who sponsored Columbus. She must have had some smarts, even if she was a Jesus freak.' I have to admit, she's not on Drew's Extraordinary Women shelf, probably because of all that Inquisition torturing and murdering.

‘Can we talk about something else?' Kirsten asks. ‘This is like, totally depressing.'

‘What do
you
want to talk about?' I ask her.

She twirls her hair, thinking hard. ‘I don't see why history has to be about people killing everybody all the time.'

‘What should it be about?'

‘Art, and I mean, like, palaces and stuff.'

‘They had to kill people to pay for art and palaces and stuff,' I explain. ‘Henry VIII attacked all the monasteries so he could top up his treasury. His soldiers were raping nuns.'

‘Could we stay inside one century for once?' Swails asks me. ‘Last time I looked we were discussing the fifteenth.' He hates the way I jump around.

‘It's all the same stuff,' I say.

I'm pretty sure old Swails is a wife-beater.

‘I asked for extra butter,' I say. The attitudinal Muslim server sneers at me and I want to throw a burqa over him, see how he likes it. How are you supposed to tell all those covered women apart? I read somewhere that Afghani kids cling to their mothers because if they lose sight of them they'll start chasing after some other covered woman. You've got zip peripheral vision in a burqa. The women are constantly tripping in the bombed-out streets. Plus they get headaches and chronic neck pain from the weight of the fabric.

I phoned Connie Sheep's Ass, got her voice mail. She sounds like a putz. I didn't leave a message.

‘Did you study for Swails' test?' Tora asks me. She, of course, is studying.

‘Negative.'

‘So you don't know who Catherine of Aragon's parents were?'

‘Isabella and Ferdinand.'

You have to wonder why the Muslims and the Jews, since they've both been persecuted forever, can't get it together to form an alliance and blast the Christians. If they bombed the Christians instead of each other, they could take over the world. The way I see it, Christians have been top dog way too long. Old Isabella was only obsessed with discovering the Americas because she wanted to convert the pagans to Christianity. If you think about it, all Christians have ever done is invade, spread disease and exploit people and resources. Marco Polo was different, of course, hanging out with the Mongols, learning their language. He even started bathing regularly instead of stinking up the place. He couldn't get over how Kublai Khan let religions coexist, didn't run around slaughtering people if they didn't believe in
his
god. Nobody was starving in China and the roads were paved with stones. No wonder old Marco didn't return to muddy, bug-infested Europe for twenty-five years.

I phoned Connie Sheep's Ass because I was feeling guilty about ignoring her after reading about that Jewish writer going up the chimney and her daughter carrying her papers around for sixty years. I'll get over it.

Rossi swoops to our table. ‘They're Twittering that I'm having sex with Babineaux.'

‘Are
you having sex with Babs?' Tora asks.

‘No way.'

‘You seemed interested.'

‘Particularly in his ambidexterity,' I add.

‘I wasn't serious.' Rossi starts nibbling on a Boston Cream she'll puke up later.

‘So, just ignore it,' I say. Cyber-bullying is pretty common. People make up all kinds of stuff.

‘It could get him into trouble,'Rossi says. ‘Remember when Kirsten got everybody to agree online that Ms. Egan molested her?'

Ms. Egan was gay and gave Kirsten lousy marks and sent her to the office whenever she was late, which was all the time. You don't do this to a queen bee. Even with the allegations unproven, Ms. Egan's career took a dive. There's no question Kirsten has leadership skills.

‘Why don't you stop reading what she's writing about you?' I suggest.

‘Because it's there. Everybody's reading it.'

‘Not I,' Tora says.

‘Nobody cares, Ross. You've got this idea that people give a shit. They don't. They don't even give a shit about Kirsten. They trail her because it's easy, it means they don't have to think.'

Before she became a boy toy, Rossi was an artist. Her favourite painter was David Milne and she tried to paint like him with lots of specks of colour. He did a painting the night his son was born that had huge snowflakes in it. Rossi went wild over the painting because she said it breathed joy. She said Milne was always trying to breathe paint onto paper. I got her a book on Milne, which I read since she just looked at the pictures. Old David never recovered from the carnage he saw during World War I. He was commissioned by the Brits to paint what he saw, charred bodies on tanks and all that. When he came back he moved to a cabin by some lake and never talked to anybody, only his wife and kid in the summer. He said you have to make your own small world perfect in an imperfect one. Even though he had to crap in the woods and haul water and eat fried eggs and potatoes every single day, the cabin was his perfect world.

‘I hope this means you're not going to Nicole's party,' I say.

‘Why wouldn't I?' Rossi demands.

‘Because they're spreading lies about you!' I almost shout.

‘And they've all seen your twat,' Tora adds.

‘Don't use that word, that is a
disgusting
word.'

‘Okay, so they've all seen your vagina.'

‘Shout about it, why don't you.'

‘Seriously, Ross,' I say, ‘I think you want to go for damage control here.'

‘If I don't show up, they win.'

‘Win what?' Tora asks. ‘A trip to Vegas?'

‘I have my dignity,' Rossi says.

‘What
dignity?' I immediately regret saying this because the daycare kid I used to know shows up on Rossi's face. ‘I mean,' I backpedal, ‘dignity is something you feel yourself. It doesn't matter what other people think.'

‘You
care about what other people think. That's why you wrote the play.'

I gobble the last of my Sour Cream Glazed. ‘I didn't write it.'

‘What do you mean you didn't write it?'

‘I quit.'

She looks as though somebody's just died. ‘They all think you've written it.'

‘Won't they be surprised.'

‘You got them to do all that stuff to audition and there's no play? They're going to be like, totally pissed off.'

‘So don't tell them. I'm not telling them.'

‘What about Huff and Lund?' Tora asks.

‘What about them? They just want me to do the work so they can punch out on time.'

Tora stares at me, looking like the shrink she's going to be once Creative Writing goes bust. ‘You're planning to drop out, aren't you?'

‘It's a possibility.'

A few weeks ago I asked Rossi why she doesn't paint anymore. She said, ‘What for?'

‘For yourself. Milne did it for himself. The most he ever got for a painting was five hundred bucks. Everybody was chasing the Group of Seven, they didn't give a rat's fart about Milne.'

‘I'm no David Milne,' she said and I wanted to shout, how do you know unless you work at it, work at
something
besides getting butt-scratchers to notice you? But I knew I wasn't exactly a great example of a hard worker.

‘Kirsten's going to murder you,' she says.

‘Tell her to make it quick.'

Naturally there would be a lockdown on the day I want to leave early to check on Kadylak. Some borderline cases started brawling. The cops say it wasn't gang-related, just some boys doing the payback thing. A bystander tried to intervene and got knifed. We were slipping on his blood in the hall. I had to keep reminding myself it was real. We're not allowed to leave the classroom. It stinks of vomit, thanks to one of the concussed girl jocks. Everyone was hysterical at first, yammering on cells to anybody who'd listen, including the press, acting like it would be a miracle if we made it out alive. After calling the
TV
stations they called their mothers. Nicole keeps coughing and snotting in my direction. Which gets me thinking about the Black Death killing Alfonso. Isabella was next in line for the throne unless Enrique managed to snuff her. You have to wonder about all those royals smoking their siblings. Elizabeth I never named a successor because she knew it would mean the successor, or the successor's backers, would plot to kill her. Same with a husband. She figured once she'd popped a child, the husband would off her so the kid could rule under Daddy's control. What's so great about control is what I'd like to know. Why can't we LEAVE EACH OTHER ALONE?