Saving St. Germ (21 page)

“The fire grows trees inside my house. See?”

Later, after bedtime stories, when she’d finally drifted off to sleep, I moved quietly around her room, picking up toys, putting clothes in drawers. I filled the humidifier with cool water, lifting it, like a transparent suitcase, back into its cradle. I found a piece of paper on the floor on which Ollie had printed her name in huge letters, along with a series of numbers. I tacked these papers on the corkboard over her drawing table and adjusted the night light: a yodeling frog in spats.

I returned to the dying fire, poked at it a bit, threw on another log, then curled up in the old corduroy-covered chair I’d picked up at a rummage sale somewhere. I was exhausted. I thought about Lucy and diamonds for a while, then Ollie. I’d come to realize that the glimpses of the working public school I’d gotten the day I went to visit Gloria Walther at Sixth Street School were glimpses of a museum. They were all museums now, the public schools. Storehouses of artifacts of a lost past, along with statues of public citizens, bronze rolls of heroes’ names, names of parents who paid for public school along with water and roads. Now, forgotten kids, children of minorities and maids, and troubled and confused children, learned their lessons in a museum, stood up to recite in a museum.

I kept seeing the private schools’ splendorous campuses—computer banks, soccer meadows, stocked libraries. A poster on the wall: an open book at the end of the rainbow,
READING MEANS A GOLDEN FUTURE.
I had to find a new school for Ollie.

I jumped as the phone rang.

“It’s Jay.”

I glanced at the hearth: Ollie’s flying house, singed, a ragged bullet hole where the ember hit.

“Hello, Jay.”

“I’ve made a decision, Esme. I want to come by and pick up my stuff and move out.”

The fire popped.

“E-Esme?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m trying ... I’m t-telling you that I’m moving out.”

“OK.”

“Jesus Christ. Is that all you’ve g-got to say?
OK
?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Jesus!”

“OK. Where
are
you? Who are you with?”

“I’m in W-West L.A at Paloma’s.”

I looked across the room to the hallway that led to our bedroom. I laughed. “Paloma.”

“Yeah, P-Paloma.”

“I don’t get it, Jay.”

“Of course you don’t get it! You would never
g-get
Paloma because she’s completely unlike you. She has
f-feelings.
Like, she took me in ...”

“To her bed.”

“Who says we’re s-sleeping together? And why are
you
p-pretending that that’s what’s bothering you? You don’t care who I sleep with. I know you still got the hots for whoever-the-fuck-he-was. Right? Paloma is a s-sweet ordinary woman, not a s-scientist or an int-tellectual. Just a good person.”

“Well that’s
insightful.
You can’t be a good person
and
a scientist. Everyone knows
that
.”

There was a long sigh.

“Esme, listen. When I’m with you I feel invisible—l-like I don’t exist.”

“Jesus, Jay, you
have been
invisible—you’re never home—you don’t talk to Ollie when you are.”

“I don’t know what to
s-say
to Ollie. She makes no sense to me.”

“Maybe you ought to try to make sense to
her
.”

Another long sigh. “I c-called to say two things: I’m m-moving out and I have some plans for Ollie.”

“Ollie?”

“I want to s-spend some time with her. M-maybe even, when things get more settled, have her c-come and live with me.”

“You want Ollie to live with you?”

Everything in the room seemed to recede: I watched the fire in the fireplace, the intricate, moving shadows of the miniature Moorish arches and columns of the hallway, the hanging plants, the bookshelves, all retreating. I was beginning to understand something enormous, something huge, a terrible shape the whole world might fit into.

“Jay? How would you take care of her? You’re at work twenty hours a day.”

“She’s my d-daughter, Esme. I can take c-care of her.”

“You’d hire a housekeeper?
Tell
me.”

“I said, I can t-take care of her. I want some time to spend with her. My time with her, un-p-poisoned by you. I want to get her some help.”

“Help?” Straight man: in the unfunniest routine he’d ever created.

“We’re talking about a child who is s-seriously disturbed, Esme.”

“Tell me what you’re planning to do for this seriously disturbed child?”

“I’m going to put her in a school for d-dysfunctional kids. I’m going to get professionals to work with her. You know, work on her speech, her p-powers of e-expression, her ... behavior.”

“Jay, you don’t spend enough time with her to know if she’s dysfunctional.”

“Esme. Your d-daughter is not a normal kid—it’s
obvious
to everyone but you. She needs h-help. And, frankly, Esme, s-so do you.”

“And
you
? Do
you
need help?”

He took a breath. “P-Paloma’s giving me all the h-help I need.”

After we’d hung up on each other, I sat down again and stared at the cage of neon embers in the grate. The fire still sputtered and popped—it had a life and it was not eager to relinquish it. I sat for a long time; the fire went out and it got cold in the room. And still I sat.

D
ONALD BRANDEMAN WAS
waiting outside the door of my lab. I saw him as I came in the main entrance, and I had to walk the entire length of the hall, my heels echoing, staring at him.

He slumped against the doorframe. He was wearing sunglasses; he was trying to look like some actor or other, one of those bandanna-headed, one-earring types with dead eyes and a two-day growth of beard. He was even smoking a cigarette. I’d have found all this drag hilarious if he hadn’t looked quite so malevolent.

“Good morning, Donald.” I tried to brush by him. He straightened up and blocked the door. I smelled something—liquor? I stared into the black lenses: something twitched behind them. He wasn’t exactly drunk, but maybe
bolstered
a little—a few beers?

“I need to know my goddam grade.”

He pushed a printed form in my face. I took it from him: “Midterm Grade Report.”

“I gave all my profs a copy of this—two, no, maybe three weeks ago. And they all filled it out, every one of them, and returned it. Except you.”

“God—academics are anal, don’t you think?”

Something twitched again behind the shades. When he spoke again his voice sounded hoarse, as if he might begin to cry.

“Maybe I need to break this
down
for you, Professor. I’m on the swim team, OK? Mid-semester the athletics department sends out grade requests to all my course instructors to see if I’m keeping up my average. This form is important to me. And it’s important to my coach. Obviously, it’s not important to
you.
You never gave any of us back our tests, you never gave out midterm grades. You don’t even bother to show up for lab these days.”

“Those are really neat sunglasses, Donald, did I mention that at all? I used to have a maiden aunt—Twissy was her name, Aunt Twiss? She had a pair just like yours. In fact, she was wearing them the day she died—did I ever tell you
how
Twiss died? No? Well, she aspirated a Bac-O. You know those little sprinkly buggers on salads? She’d been trying to sniff the lettuce to see if it was fresh and she snorked one right up her nostril and it got in her lung. She started choking, making weird noises like this: ‘Snaaagh, snaaagh!’—and suddenly a big fat guy came racing over from just behind the pie rack, screaming ‘
Heimlich!
Heimlich!’ and he started hugging her like a giant vise. He cracked all her ribs and cut off her air supply. He killed her dead, Donald, that big fat guy. By trying to save her life, don’t you see. Apparently he’d only seen the Heimlich maneuver performed once in a movie and he didn’t realize he was suffocating her. Too bad for Twiss, huh? But she kept those shades on the whole time, Donald. Laid out there at HoJo’s by the pie twirler, wearing those chic babies. Like yours, Donald, as I said. It’s amazing. Your nose is kind of shaped like hers too, now that I see it close up. Stay away from Bac-Os, Donald. That’s my advice to you.”

“You are deranged, Professor.”

“I hope so, Donald. I hope so. It’s a state I’ve worked hard to achieve. Now, if you’ll excuse me ...”

I lunged for the door. He blocked me again.

“What about my grade, Professor?”

“Which grade? The A-plus you think you deserve—or the F I intend to give you?”

“F? Why would I get an F? My lab grades have been in the high eighties. What are you talking about?”

“I know very well what your lab grades have been, Donald, but you see, I grade on
attitude
as much as accomplishment and I think your attitude has been that of a really jolly serial killer. I just don’t
like
you, Donald.”

“Wait a minute! You’re telling me that you’re flunking me because you don’t
like
me?”

“Donald, you’re fast. But not fast enough.”

I winked and slipped around him. He pulled back; his face was white.

“When will I get this ... grade? So I can begin taking action?”

“I’ll just go look at your file now, Donald. This could take some time.”

I winked again. And shut the door.

I sat in the lab for a while grading lab tests. Donald Brandeman’s average was, as he’d said, a B and I wrote that letter after his name, after some lengthy and blasphemous hesitation.

I finished the other grades; then I heard Rocky coming in. She stood in the doorway, staring at me. She looked distraught.

“Hi, Rock,” I called. Then I dropped some things. My grade book, my keys, a whole rack of tubes came crashing down.

“Jesus, how did I do that?”

She rushed over to help me pick up. Her face close up was panicked.

“Prof, what’s wrong with you?”

“Rocky, what’s the big deal? I dropped my keys and a couple of tubes. Stop looking at me like I’m ready for the psych ward, OK?”

She started to cry. Her hair fell over her face and her thin shoulders shook.

“I just saw that guy, that blond guy? Donald Brandeman? In the hall. He was on his way to Faber’s office. He said he had a fight with you and then he said some ... real terrible shit ... about you.”

“Oh yeah? I hope you decked him.”

She looked up through her tears.

“Well, yeah, actually, man, I did.”

I backed out of the safety shower, where I’d been crawling after a rolling tube, and looked at her.

“You hit him?”

“I blind-sided him. He didn’t even see it coming. I dropped him.”

She grinned, her face, wet with tears.

“You know, one of
these
.” She mimed a lightning left to the jaw. “Blam! wham! Down he goes! Man, he’s a
pussy,
that guy, you know? He sits there like
this,
holding his jaw and whining that I
broke
it and that he can’t swim anymore this semester.”

“Jesus. Between you and me, we’ve nailed this poor sucker for the semester.”

I started to laugh and then she laughed too, a little halfheartedly. Then I grabbed her by the shoulders and we looked at each other, sitting there on the floor together, and we really started going off. We laughed so long and hard that I got the hiccups and she started weeping again.

I tried to hold my breath but my diaphragm would not stop convulsing.

“Wait. Lemme get some water.”

She got up and ran me a flask full of lukewarm tap. I drank it but my chest kept heaving and she sobbed as I hiccuped. Then we started laughing again. She blew her nose as I collapsed finally on the floor, my arms and legs outstretched like a kid making snow angels—my grade book and tubes around me, hiccuping and laughing.

Neither one of us heard the lab door open. It wasn’t until Faber actually stood over us that we noticed him.

“Professor Charbonneau, have you been drinking?”

Rocky and I bounced off the same wall, then looked up in slow motion at him. It was obvious that he didn’t often encounter faculty members lying on the floor.

“No. I’m not drunk. I was just discussing [heeeekk!] ah, midterm grades with my assistant [heeeekk!], Ms. Salinas, here ... and I had a little fall [heeek!].”

Rocky and I started off again. We couldn’t help it.

He started to say something, then thought better of it.

“Could I see you in my office, Professor? As soon as you ... gather yourself up?”

As soon as the door shut, we went off again. We just couldn’t stop.

I knocked and he called to me to come in. He was still a bit shaken from our encounter in the lab, trying to appear as if he hadn’t been waiting for me. He put down the phone receiver, looking distracted, pawed through some notes on his desk—then looked up and nodded, indicating the chair in front of his desk.

I sat, hiccuping a little into my collar. His wandering eye focused on me briefly, piercingly, then rolled off.

“Esme, I’m
confused.
I’d like to leap to what may seem like a radical conclusion here and state boldly that if you need professional
help,
if you have a drug or alcohol problem, there are programs that I can look into ...”

I tried to ambush a large hiccup in my throat and made a gurgling, strangling noise.

He started to get up from his chair and the thought of the fictitious Aunt Twiss and the Heimlich leapt to mind, which made me choke more. I held up a hand to stay him and gradually got control.

“I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug user. I’m a scientist.”

“I’m sorry, I ...”

I gasped and another piercing hiccup followed this intake of breath. I swallowed carefully and continued.

“I’m a
scientist.
I know you think I’ve been irresponsible and I admit that I
have been,
in the matter of meeting my classes. I’ve been erratic in my schedule,
yes.
But I’ve been having
visions,
these last months. I feared them once but now I see—”

“I’m sorry. You’re not making sense, Esme.”