Schooling (7 page)

20

A Maggot enters the washroom. The audience consists of a girl at the basin
consulting her program for last-minute substitutions.

MAGGONE

So this is what they teach in America, is it? Photographs of boys?

Rudely, the Maggot doesn’t wait for a response, but stops downstage for a
brief soliloquy before she goes.

MAGGONE

I have longed for a certain warmth since my days in Italy when I took to a boy named Marco. If I had the time now and did not have to rush back down to stalk the row of baths checking that girls scrub behind their ears but nowhere else well I would tell you of this boy named Marco his Vespa skittering chickens in the Piazza Nettuna as we raced for the hills.

Enter the Widow, aknit.

MAGGONE

Do you have Vespas in France, Genevieve?

ARAIGNY

I do not know what they drive now,
les gosses
, for I have not been back in such a time. Twenty years ago Paris made boys like your Marco with difficult lips and questions, hands at their eyebrows and through their hair, I remember a Jean-Pierre, I recall Sebastian, a Luc, Hubert. Heaven knows what has become of them now but I hitched up skirts to reveal showy garters, danced on tables, ran all night.

MAGGONE

(sniffing)

How very Weimar.

DEVON
(entering)

Genevieve, if I had the time now and did not have to rush away to illustrate the finer points of the color wheel, well I would tell you of a boy called Pablo. In the city of Madrid we painted together, he took me under a sheet when it rained well I don’t want to tell you at the risk of boasting but he fell for me in broken sentences.

A large hook yanks the art teacher o fstage.

ARAIGNY

In Paris I drank alcohol disguised as licorice, cursed hegemony, the status quo, belittled foreign governments for preferring intrusion to insight. I cried Revolution, if you please, let’s overthrow the state. I had some youth, some youth was mine.

MAGGONE

Oh those days. Dear Marco I penned in the best Italian I had, Dear Marco you must know that until my time in Rome, I had felt the loss of some forgotten beauty.

ARAIGNY

That sounds poetic, you must read Molière.

MAGGONE

Yes, I was nineteen. Please don’t interrupt. The loss of some forgotten beauty Marco bedazzler sphinx I think on you in my Sussex bedsit where I eat lentils under a cobweb I can’t bring down you are a monument wonder my constant heart you delighted me.

21

At night the boys arrive. Hopping, bowed legs caught by their trousers. Shadows in time. Tripping on the moonlit field, falling but never landing. In his life of twilight, Paul hops too, Y-fronts bright against the dusk. They know she is American, they angle for better light. They are naked, they are nude. She tries to capture their pale generations. Paint a wolf, watch it bite. Betts and Araigny entangled on the hockey pitch, beast with two backs. Real boys in greek surroundings. Mother, an odalisque. Fading. The guide suggests, Use more blue. Have a sense of proportion. Then alarm. Pillow trembling. Difficult to know a dream without the alarm. Stealing through the sleeping dorms. Across the deserted morning to his chemistry lab to lean against the door.

You the brat? . . . shaken awake. A tall girl stands before her, red hair, jagged, lifted by the breeze.

Yes.

Aurora . . . the girl shakes out a ring of keys, shoving Catrine aside with her hip . . . Budge . . . pushing the door open . . . Sometimes I take a quick kip here myself . . . the girl chops on the lights . . . But don’t let them catch you.

Cold. Bunsen burners patient under his windows, floor swept clean. Up front, Gilbert’s lab bench, cycloned with cleaning powder.

Aurora stops, assesses her. Men’s shoes, overtheknee socks, tuck key strung on a chain around the neck, hair. Gently, the girl pulls out the V of Catrine’s sweater and drops the key down it.

Better. Nothing pretty about an old key . . . Aurora stops at a dial on the wall, lamenting softly to herself, then she disappears through a doorway in the back of the lab calling out . . . Don’t ever expect it to be anything but fucking freezing in here.

What does he think, sitting up here facing them all. Is a question. Second row, third seat across. There she is, directly in his eyeline, unkempt, odd, brunt of his jokes, object—

You American? . . . Aurora reappears cinching a lab coat. Aust—

I’ve got nothing to say about them one way or another . . . the lab coat swamps Aurora. Not a student coat, fraying, shrunk with use.

Gilbert’s?

Got the flu . . . Aurora shakes out a student coat from a pile, crumples it into a ball and hurls it across the room into Catrine’s lap.

I hate the green ones.

Don’t wear it then.

Walking over to the sinks, she threads the sash through a slit in one side of the ugly coat.

I used to watch an American show on television . . . Aurora hands her a pair of rubber gloves . . . Did you ever see it? Out in the West. About a cowboy and his friend Kid put those on . . . leaning . . . Pass me that sponge no that one. Kid, the cowboy always said, this is your cleaning sponge, the famous line. Kid, we’ve got miles to clear before daybreak. You never saw it? The cowboy always fell off his horse. That was the big joke. Everyone was terrified of him but the man couldn’t ride to save his life. Do you ride?

I galloped across Arabia on an apple tree I led rebelli—

I do. Or did. He and the Kid could never saddle up in front of anyone. Or they would know he was a crap cowboy . . . Aurora bends to a shelf beneath the lab counter. Out comes a plastic tub crammed with test tubes and beakers . . . Always wear gloves. Dishes’ve all been rinsed but God knows what chemical’s been left on. And we don’t want our fingers to wither up and drop off. So, we’ve got our gloves, we’ve got our favorite pink sponge . . . Aurora holds it up . . . And if you’re wondering where the dishes belong, I’ll tell you as we go.

Maybe it was an Australian show.

I know the difference between American and Australian. Kid could ride anything. Once even a buffalo. That’s why they were partners, you see. Made up for each other’s lapses. That’s how it works on television.

I remember now, Miles to clear before daybreak, that was the line.

Don’t lie to me, Kid. I can spot it a mile away . . . Aurora pulls back her hair with a damp yellow glove . . . So. Let’s have the story. Photographs . . . Aurora waits, holding up her gloved hands in a presurgery position . . . How did you get them to do it?

Well . . . checking the bottom of a petri dish for a prompt stamped in the ceramic . . . My father gave me a camera for Christmas.

Don’t look so worried, Kid, you’ll give yourself wrinkles.

They came upon me . . . that wasn’t right . . . I saw them, I thought I could take a picture . . . was that it then, she thought she was Rembrandt.

Then you asked, s’il vous plaît, might they strip?

Yes. Or I didn’t say anything and they just did it. I thought, well. Well, why not.

Why not indeed . . . Aurora strips off her rubber gloves, throws them on the counter . . . That’s enough work for one day.

The girl disappears into the storeroom. A moment later she returns holding a brown bottle. Watch me be a scientist, Aurora says rolling her eyes to indicate lunacy. Uncapping the bottle, she slops the chemical onto Gilbert’s lab bench.

Isn’t that dangerous?

Risk makes it an experiment, Doodle. Aurora snatches the spatula from her astonished hand, What do you think they keep back there? Arsenic? A certain tension creeps in. Please stop, that could hurt him. Aurora uncoils the tube to a bunsen burner and fixes it to the gas line Don’t you pay attention? reaching for the lighter. Nothing happens unless you apply heat.

This girl is one loose cannon, running back for safety goggles, a real Isabelle this one, dragging a stool to stand on, this one could have you with tires down hills and into cars men flying all over the place disfigured, scarred or incapacitated unless the rolling had been her idea after all in the beginning, etc. which has not been established one way or the other but the association in terms of girls, men dead or non and out of control experiments, is simply not a good one for anyone. As Aurora continues to click the lighter, oblivious to Catrine pulling out the chopstick holding up her hair, the tumbling red meets the burst of flame in a nasty smelt, eliciting the yell What Are You Doing Kid I’m On Fire but she keeps forcing the safety goggles on over Aurora’s head even as Aurora flaps and beats her off I’ve Caught Alight, Kid Find the Extinguisher Smother Me Smother Me. Hitting Aurora on the head to squelch her hair but Aurora is laughing and falling can’t see past her hair then the bunsen tube catches and drags the fire is falling falling on both of them as they go down down it’s all girls and fires fires and girls flying hair obscuring who is who so she is Aurora and Aurora is she slipping on soapy runoff from the dropped sponge slipping and now it’s on her the flame and she kicks at it desperately because for some reason they are both snorting with laughter, incapable of stopping any sort of fire Aurora clutching her chest I’m Suffering Smoke Inhalation and the bunsen rolling rolling I’ve Got Black Lung rolling laughing rolling down a hill crawling after it over a sponge leaving its wet rectangle on her skirt down down. I’m Dying I’m Dying. The bunsen knuckles against Gilbert’s desk, flickering to a rest. Leaps of light cast shadows against the pale wood. Stretching, she twists off the flame. The air changes, the lab cold again. Throat sore from laughing or smoke. Pressing the tuck key against her skin. Slowly she stands.

Aurora remains on the floor in a cross . . . I died in fire, Kid.

I’ll Resurrect You she thinks to say later because now there isn’t time there’s a sharp rapping at the window causing them to jump up in a flurry of caught-in-the-act.

Flash.

They look at each other.

Another flash.

A camera is being held to the window. Another flash. They run over. Brickie. Next to him, Simon Puck, a beak strapped to his nose. Brickie smiles and. Is that a wink.

Who’s that boy with the bird?

Brickie saunters back toward School House, swinging a camera, followed closely by Simon.

I don’t know. Some bastard.

Is that supposed to be funny? I should teach him who my friends are. Remind him . . . Aurora presses the lighter against her arm, clicks it.

Don’t, Aurora.

It only lights gas . . . Aurora considers the lighter . . . I was on fire.

22

Along School House corridor after the Physics she will fail for not understanding angles of light Sophie gushing But Catrine think of the ineffability of particles the sheer ungettability of chaos how disturbing that we are after all nothing more than dust. They continue on, speaking of what lies between milk and milk of magnesia. And what of nothingness? Well says Sophie If you want to speak about death, let’s talk about your moth—

Girls!

Too late, a fall of footsteps indicates Betts hot on their heels hallooing their name to reverberate hills.

Girls, may I interrupt your flattery of guitar idols for a moment to touch on matters of substance?

Sophie vaults into the washroom leaving her alone with Betts.

He gauges her . . . I understand that Mr. Gilbert has put you to some use in his chemistry lab.

Yes sir.

Wasn’t that thoughtful of him? Even dragged himself to the committee meeting with a horrid case of influenza.

She waits for what Betts has come to say.

Not many would go to such trouble for a disobedient pupil but . . . Betts steps aside to let Puck pass . . . I know that Mr. Gilbert has more patience than most.

She moves to go.

Of course—

What.

Some have it that patience is actually despair dressed as a virtue . . . Betts smiles . . . In the case of Mr. Gilbert, I mean it as a compliment. A true prince. Had he been a witness to the farce, he might feel differently.

A passel of 4Y emerges from a classroom sweeping her up in a lunch-bound frenzy, bearing her down the corridor. What rich comedy you’ve found for yourself, Betts shouts after her. She finally frees herself by the dining hall. Down the hall, Betts is leaning against the washroom window, ploughing a pen in his blue notebook.

23

Some Notes on Comedy. Beginning with the Unfortunate Predilection for the Literal. These days, so-called
realism
moves us further from truth than a Restoration piece ever did. Or a Farce. Two days ago in the staff room, Gilbert holding court among Stokes and some administrator types. Buffoon, Fool, Clown, Shepherdess. The Hero either misunderstood or out-of-his-element. Contrasts between the rustic & the estate & the pastoral escape where time is the enemy as I broached the coffee urn Gilbert waved his cup toward me in a lavish gesture of chumminess. Mistaken Identity, the Disguise. Patrick, he said with false gaiety, I was about to tell of our conversation last night in the POD room. The staff, huddled about the tea tray like tapirs at a watering hole, were eager to hear as they hoarded their tepid cups to their chests. The Handy Interruption. Turning back to his audience with studied theatrics, Gilbert said, Patrick and I were arguing about Realism. The teachers hung on his Hoax. Abstractedly, Genevieve Araigny reached for a biscuit. Coincidence. I stood to one side, fiddling with the blasted ceramic handle on the urn which always sticks. Repetition (often in threes). I refilled my coffee cup. Michael repeated in his whinny, Dramatic Realism. Another weighty pause.
I
was
for
it. They thought that terribly funny. Hoah Hoah. The Surprise of the Inevitable. Stokes laughing so hard tears gushed from his good eye. Percival didn’t seem to think it funny and moved away. The Absurd in the Plausible World. Percival knows a fraud. Then Stokes found me watching him. Well I must admit, with some disgust at the way his eye let forth a steady stream of tears. Instead of tragedy’s Catharsis we get the Clarification. Stokes wiped away his tears, I believe Michael offered him a handkerchief. Stokes said, By the way Patrick, what is it that has Simon Puck from 3X wandering about the school with some sort of proboscis attached to his face. A Misunderstanding. Leaving it to me though Percival was standing directly beside me nibbling his Rich Tea like a mouse. Why me, given as I was not the one chosen to direct a school play. Not enough time allotted to address the Play within the Play, that would mean devoting a large portion of my lecture to Shakespeare. Percival, I said as nicely as the situation allowed which wasn’t so very nice at all, I think Percival will alert you to the fact that young Puck’s become taken with the Aristophanes. I laughed because Stokes did but then he instantly stopped, leaving me laughing alone. A Subtle Melancholia.
Get the beak off that boy
, Stokes said in a steely undertone. With that, he turned back to Gilbert and some story Gilbert was always telling about his father. The comic moment born of self-delusion or cross-purpose. Concluding with the idea that the hero often becomes the villain, the villain emerges as the hero.