Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (10 page)

Lemry raises her hand. “Mark, take it easy. We've got a pretty orderly discussion going here, all things considered. Jody, what do you think?” Boy, there's a mischievous side to Lemry.

Jody glances sideways at Mark. “I'd like to agree with Mark,” she says, and there's a strength in her voice I haven't heard, “but every time I think something is absolute, it turns out not to be. So I guess I don't know.” If looks could kill, Jody would be meat.

Lemry scans the room. “Mr. Ellerby,” she says,
glancing at her watch, “I've never been in a room with you for more than five minutes without having to tell you to shut up. You're making me crazy.”

Ellerby smiles. “All right! I knew you cared.”

“You're wrong,” Lemry says back. “It's just that if you're terminally ill and you drop dead in my classroom, I'll have to answer to the school board. I'm too close to retirement for that. Don't ever get it in your head that I care.”

“Methinks she doth protest too much,” Steve says to the class. “But now that you've sought my opinion…” He scans the room quickly. Ellerby loves an audience. “I think this ‘When does life begin' argument is kind of cute, but it's dead end. If we let it go long enough somebody will get punched in the nose, or Brittain will have a coronary incident. No offense, Sally, but most of the right-to-lifers I know—and I know a lot of them because they call at our house pretty regularly to say how much they hate my dad—get all wrapped up with life in the womb, and life after death, for that matter, but they don't give a rip about life after
birth.
All you have to do is look around to see we've got big trouble in that area. People are starving to death all over the world. Their lives are spent trying to get something into their bellies, which they never get, and then they die.
And to tell you the truth, the people who seem willing to fight to the death, or who are at least willing to carry a poster in front of the Deaconess clinic, are politically against
giving
them anything. The second they're born, they're on their own.”

Ellerby shakes his head in exasperation. “Or take right here in this country. Take babies who aren't starving to death, but who nobody wants and are only going to make their mother's life impossible. I know this mom in my dad's church, she's had one baby who was permanently brain damaged because her boyfriend beat the kid when he was only four months old. No shit, broke his skull. She has another baby born with fetal alcohol syndrome, because she was drinking so much grieving the first baby that she marinated the second one. Now she's pregnant again. She doesn't want the baby, but she also knows if she has it, she won't adopt it out. She just can't. She just wants to not have it. She's in school and her life looks almost manageable, but she says this pregnancy will take her under. And let me tell you, I know this lady. If she says it'll take her under, believe it.” He puts up his hands. “I just don't think you can have this argument without talking about
quality
of life. Not just life. Quality.”

Sally is quiet, seems to be thinking about the
woman Ellerby described. Lemry snatches control. “So where are we?”

“If we buy into Steve's BS,” Brittain says through gritted teeth, “we're lost. The world is tough. There are strict rules. Ellerby's story is sad. But the rules here are clear. If you fornicate, you take the chance of pregnancy. If you get pregnant, you have the responsibility to have the baby. You have the
obligation
to have the baby. Ellerby said a lot about that woman, but he didn't say she didn't know how babies are made. She fornicated; she needs to step up and take the consequences.”

If I could hold back, I'd just humiliate Brittain in the pool again, but we won't be in the water for several hours and I can't wait. Brittain's “Christian way” is so goddamn unforgiving. Maybe it's because I grew up fat, or maybe it's because I grew up with Sarah Byrnes, but when he gets righteous about people having hard times, I get hostile. But I have to be cool, or Lemry will step in.

“I don't think a baby who is born as a ‘consequence' has much of a chance. Maybe an ingredient in the ‘When does life begin?' argument ought to be
want.
Life begins when you have a sperm and an egg together with some
want.
Or maybe Ellerby's right, the ‘When does life begin?' question should only be on game shows. But I know one thing. This religious argument, at least the
way Mark Brittain presents it, is one cold damn argument, and it doesn't address human pain. And maybe this is more an argument about your particular religious view, Mark, but whether we're talking about Sarah Byrnes, or a baby with brain damage, or a mother who can't face another pregnancy, you are one heartless SOB.”

Lemry cuts me off. “That's enough, Eric. That's personal. It has no place in this discussion.”

“That may be,” I say. “But Brittain argues in a way that isn't fair, either. He goes for people's open wounds, then brings God in with air support. You have to agree, there's a certain cowardice to that approach.”

Lemry hoists herself up on the desk. “This might be a good place to stop for today,” she says, but Brittain interrupts.

You can almost take his pulse from across the room, but he speaks in measured tones, looking at his watch. “Tell you what, Ms. Lemry. We've got fifteen minutes till the class ends. Let Moby and me have this out. Nobody calls me a coward.”

“It's tempting, Mark. But we're trying to look at this from a scholarly perspective.”

Mark's hands shoot up, palms out. Intensity thick enough to choke him gathers in his throat. “We'll keep
it scholarly. Agreed, Mobe? No punches.”

“No punches.”

Lemry shrugs, looking, somewhat amused, around the room. “This is not mandatory,” she says. “Anyone who doesn't want to participate may be excused. Just don't hang out in the hall.”

No one moves a muscle.

I try to take away a little of Brittain's steam. “First of all, Mark, I didn't call you a coward. I called your approach cowardly.”

“No difference,” he says. “You can't separate me from my actions. A man is known by his works.”

I shrug. “Have it your way.”

He nods as if to say, I intend to. “Number one, your argument is the cowardly one, and you have to be a spiritual coward to make it. The rules that God made to govern the world are strict, but they're the same for everyone. They don't change because some female doesn't have the brains to stay out of situations that lead to fornication. They don't change because you got born into a family with no dad, or because your father is a misguided, permissive preacher who lets you drive around in a car that screams blasphemy. They don't even change if you're scarred all over your face and hands like your friend.

“We're all born into different situations, but the word of God is the word of God and everyone has to adhere to it.
Everyone.
If you choose to have an abortion, you're a killer. If you're a killer, you're going to have a tough time staying out of hell. It doesn't matter what kind of a hard time you give me, Calhoune. How many times you trick me in the pool or mock me in front of others. When the time comes for the real judgment, guys like you and Ellerby are going to have to stand up and face your actions.” He raises his eyebrows. “
Then
we'll see how clever you are.”

Brittain's tone has a Mautz ring to it:
Let me tell you something, young man, you're not as smart as you think you are.
I can tell he's scored because the old Calhounian sweat glands are creaking open. I have to be careful not to spin out of control. “Here's my problem with your argument, Mark. I'm not a big-time Christian. I haven't spent a bunch of time locked in my room with my Bible. But when I close my eyes and imagine God the way you paint him—and Jesus, too—I just can't buy it. They'd have to be a pair of horses' asses to treat people that way, with no consideration for their circumstances. Think of any king, any president, hell, any
mother or father,
who could treat people that way. One mistake and you're out of the ball game. That
just doesn't make sense.”

“And that's my point,” Brittain says, more to the rest of the class than to me. “It doesn't make sense because Calhoune doesn't want it to make sense. If it makes sense, then he has to answer to it. He says he hasn't spent any time with the Bible. Then he shouldn't even be in this argument, because he hasn't gone to the one place where the answers about abortion are.”

“Wait a minute,” Ellerby breaks in, “I've spent a little time locked in my room with a Bible, and I think you're more full of shit than Moby does. Certainly I'm for birth control before abortion, but I'll tell you one thing, Brittain, if God kept as close an eye on us as you say he does, and if he felt the need to intervene in daily human problems, he'd put on his steel-toed holy boots and come down here and kick your butt for making him look like a mean-spirited, unforgiving ayatollah. I mean…”

Lemry breaks it off. “Listen, guys, I could watch you beat each other to death all day and never get enough, but the bell is about to ring.” Ellerby opens his mouth to continue, but she hits him with a look that has knockout written all over it. “What you've seen in here today is not unusual when we deal with emotional issues. But it dramatizes something important in looking at any contemporary American thought. No issue is
isolated. We started out talking about abortion, but the discussion quickly drifted to general beliefs. No amount of effort could have stopped that, because our
points of view
—the way we perceive things—are inextricably linked to our beliefs. If you don't leave with anything more than that today, leave with that. What I hope we can learn is to be aware of how our beliefs color what we see.”

I wanted to tell Brittain that Lemry was trying to tell him that his own little view of the universe wasn't the only view possible; that if there's a heaven, decent people all over the world who have never even
heard
of Jesus Christ would get to go there. Even if they'd made mistakes. Even if they'd had abortions.

Headed for my locker, I pass Brittain and Jody in an animated exchange, probably discussing which level of hell Ellerby and Megan and I will inhabit.

As I dig through the primordial ooze for my Government book, a hand touches my shoulder. “You never answered my note.”

I turn, speechless.

Jody says, “Could we talk?”

“Now?”

“Not right this minute. I have class. What about after school?”

“I have to swim.”

“After that.”

“Sure. How about we go get a burger? Five-thirty? I could pick you up.”

We agree to meet at the Burger Barn, and after shyly asking me to keep our meeting to myself, at least for now, she's gone. And I stand dazed in front of my locker, having forgotten where my next class is, or what it is, for that matter.

I push through the double doors of the Sacred Heart psych ward, spotting Sarah Byrnes in her now-familiar position on the end of the couch. The on-duty nurse waves to me as if I worked here. Several patients greet me by name. On my way out I'm going to ask for a white coat, or at least a stethoscope.

“How's it goin'?” There will be no response, no head movement, nary a twitch of the eye.

“I've been better,” she says.

If my eyes popped as far out of my head as it seems, I'd have to dive to catch them.

“Don't be a jerk,” she says in a whisper, lips glued to her teeth.

“Jesus, you're talking. You're coming out of it.”

“I was never in it. Keep talking. Nurse. Don't you blow it.”

“How's it going?” the approaching nurse asks, nodding at me.

“Same,” I say back.

“Would you like some juice or something? It's snack time.”

“Sure.”

“Great. Be right back.” She walks around behind the front desk to the kitchen.

“What the hell…?”

“I needed some time off,” Sarah Byrnes says.

“Yeah, but…”

“Listen. She'll be coming right back. I'm only going to say this once. Don't you go trying to put your head together with Dale Thornton to figure out what happened to me.”

“Dale Thornton already knows, doesn't he?”

“Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. But you leave it alone.”

I want to tell her what I know, and I want to know the rest, but I promised.

“I don't know if I can still kick your ass, you lifting all those weights and swimming like there's gonna be
another flood, but I'll sure give it a try.”

I think a second. “I'll make you a deal. This has something to do with how you got up here, right?”

Her eyes slide sideways. “None of your business.”

“Well, I'm making it my business. You probably can still kick my ass, but I've been learning to be more gracious about that over my lifetime. Here's the deal. You tell me why you're here, and you tell me what happened, how you got burned, and I'll keep my mouth shut.”

“I don't have to tell you
nothin'
!”

“And I don't have to keep my mouth shut about whatever I think, or whatever I trick out of Dale Thornton.”

Sarah Byrnes stares ahead, stone silent.

“Look, Sarah Byrnes. I've proved I'm your friend. I didn't go off after I lost weight and leave you behind. I've been up here every day, even when I thought you didn't understand a word I said. I'm still with you even though I feel like a fool, knowing you've understood every word I've said over the past few weeks. You're still the person who knows me best. But you coming up here scared me. It's been like you died. This friendship thing goes two ways. You
had
to know I was dying. That's chicken shit.”

Sarah Byrnes waits as the nurse brings my juice, and a glass for Sarah Byrnes. She places a straw in each glass, then wanders back behind the desk.

“It might be chicken shit, but I haven't been
okay.
This has kept me alive. Friends aren't the same for me as they are for you, no matter how scared you were or how fat you used to be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look at my face, you cheeseball!” she spits, almost blowing her cover.

“I've seen your face,” I say back, holding my own. “What's different about it now than ever?”

Sarah Byrnes's shoulders slump, and I briefly glimpse deeper into her, past that hard crust, past her inclination to double up her fist at the sound of the first syllable of the wrong word. “Every day I live with it is one more day I've lived with it; I'm a little fuller up. Nothing changes. I have to be tough or funny every minute. If I let up for a second, it gets me. It gets me when I'm half awake in the morning and forget who I am. After all these years, I still dream I'm okay once in awhile. In fact, I dream it all the time.” She glances sideways again. “Look, ask the nurse if we can go for a walk—outside. I'm tired of talking like Edgar Bergen.” Sarah Byrnes knows Edgar Bergen from all the old television shows we
watch on cable TV. He's like the granddaddy of ventriloquists. I know him because his daughter is Candice Bergen, who I would like to own.

I step over to the front desk to make my request, the nurse makes a couple of calls, and before I know it, Sarah Byrnes and I are in the elevator.

“Might as well trust a fat kid,” she says, when we're definitely out of earshot of the hospital. At least two inches of snow covers the ground, and we crunch over the unshoveled walk, alone in the freezing afternoon: Frost stands on the bare branches of trees like white icing.

I say, “Fat kids give you more to trust.”

“My dad burned me on purpose.”

“What?”

“Spare me the surprise, okay?”

“Okay. Jesus, you mean he poured the spaghetti on you?” It's my last lie to Sarah Byrnes. My last lie to her ever. But I have to make her believe Dale didn't tell me anything. When I saw him in my neighborhood, standing next to his junky car looking all out of place—and like he
knew
it—I knew what a risk it was for him to be there. I'd rather have Sarah Byrnes think
I
was the liar than Dale.

“There was no spaghetti. I was only about three and
a half, but I remember it like it happened this morning. My mom and dad were fighting. Real bad. Hitting, throwing things. It's the only time I ever remember my mother fighting back. Dad had her by the hair, and he was filling the kitchen sink to put her head in. I was sure he would kill her—that she'd be gone and then it'd be just him and me. I was so afraid of him.

“I was watching from this little cave underneath the stairs, where they couldn't see me. Then the sink was full. She was screaming, but it didn't sound as much like fear as rage. She kept threatening to kill him. Dad laughed and yelled, ‘Oh, yeah?' over and over, and then he pushed her head down. She kicked and I heard the bubbles, and then I had to try to save her. I ran at him, screaming, and crashed into his legs. It knocked him off a little, and he loosened his grip and my mother got away. I swung at his legs as hard as I could, over and over, but all of a sudden I was in the air, almost over his head.

“Mom got a knife out of the drawer and came at him, but he held me in front of him and backed through the open hallway into the living room, laughing. Then he said, ‘Here's your pretty little baby for you,' and I looked up and saw the wood stove coming right at my face. I put my hands out and…”

My stomach is in knots I believe will never unwind. God, I don't want to hear this.

“I don't remember him actually doing it,” she says. “When I woke up, I was in the hospital with bandages covering my face and hands, and a nurse there said I had pulled a pot of spaghetti off the stove onto myself. I couldn't talk, or even move, but I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but all I did was lie there and drift off. The next thing I knew, Dad was leaning over me. He said Mom was gone and would never be back, and that if I told what happened he'd burn the rest of me. He said he didn't care what they did to him.”

I sit hard on a cold cement bench, staring silently up at Sarah Byrnes's scarred face. Words would jeopardize the thread of trust, because they would sound fake. They would be fake. There aren't words for this.

She says, “That's it.”

I put my hand on the side of her hip as she stands in front of me, and she doesn't knock it away. She stares straight ahead into the trees behind my head, looking so tough; and so fragile. “What happened to your mom?”

She shrugs. “Gone. I never heard anything from her again. Eric, I swear to God if you ever tell anyone this, I'll kill you, but I used to sit in my room and look out the window at the stars and the moon and stuff and
imagine she was figuring a way to come get me; that one night there'd be a light tap on my window, and I'd just put some clothes in a bag and crawl out onto the limb of the big tree and slide down and be saved. I even thought she'd make me look pretty again. But my dad accomplished what he wanted when he ruined my face. Mom didn't want me anymore. I've thought maybe he killed her, but I guess I don't think so. I don't think she could have just disappeared without somebody checking. He told everyone she left.”

“Jesus Christ.”

She nods. “Yup. No shit.”

We're quiet a second or two. “So why did you come to the hospital? I mean, why now?”

Sarah Byrnes closes her eyes. “Dad was getting crazy again. I started having dreams about the stove. He held my
face
against it, Eric. He's drinking more now, and he sees and hears things. I got the same feeling I had that day he burned me, and I decided if I had the feeling it was probably right.”

“Jesus, Sarah Byrnes, why didn't you call the cops or something?”

Her soft edge instantly hardens. “What're they gonna do? Put him in jail until he dries out? Then what happens? Jesus, Eric, get an idea.”

“You could tell them what really happened.”

“Right. Why would I be telling it now? It's been fourteen years. They're sure gonna believe me. Besides, just after it happened some people tried to get the state to believe it couldn't have been from scalding water, but I was afraid to talk and that ended it.”

“Yeah, but it ended because you didn't tell them.”

The spell is broken, Sarah Byrnes's interior is closed for the day, and I'm angry because my need for revenge on her father is what closed it. “Look, Eric,” she says impatiently. “Don't ask me a bunch of questions. I told you because you said you'd keep quiet. Don't make me regret it.” She looks away. “Or
you
will. I came to the hospital to think. I needed to get away before something really bad happened. I'm old enough to get away now. I've always known I'd have to. It's just hard, looking like this….”

“Yeah. Listen, Sarah Byrnes, what do you want me to do?”

“For right now, don't tell them I talked, but that you think the walk helped. That you want to do it some more. Then all you have to do is keep your mouth shut. I mean it, Eric. You can't tell your swimming friend, or your coach or your mother. Nobody. You said you wanted to prove how good a friend you are. This is your chance. You tell nobody.”

“Okay.” I know what Sarah Byrnes is doing. She has to have control because of how big this is. You don't let something this big out unless you have it on a leash. It would eat you alive.

 

It's after midnight. I'm in my room, staring at the ceiling, lost in the 1960s with the Lovin Spoonful. Do I believe in magic? they want to know. We'll see. I've been thinking about what a huge risk it was for Sarah Byrnes to tell me her story; not about the story itself, which is certainly bad enough, but about how scary it must have been to let me see her like that. Scared. Vulnerable.

I wanted to get off by myself afterward, just to consider things, but I had my date with Jody, and only a natural catastrophe would have kept me from that.

This was a
strange
date. In the beginning Jody seemed as removed as ever, except she sat on my side of the booth and her hand touched my leg enough times to kick start me pretty good. Not that I'm complaining, but the Burger Barn is a local hangout and Brittain's friends could have easily seen us—that is, if they weren't joining hands in a circle at the Church of Jesus Christ of All The Good Guys, praying for me to drop fifty pounds the hard way: in a leper colony. But Jody didn't seem to mind whether anyone saw us, and believe me, if she
didn't mind, I didn't mind.

“So,” I said, after we had ordered, “what did you want to talk to me about?”

She smiled. “Get right down to business, huh?”

“I've been real curious all afternoon. I mean, I don't get invited out much.”

She smiled again. “Did you have guesses?”

“Yeah,” I said, running my hand over the back of my neck, “I guessed you'd developed a brain tumor. Then I guessed you were writing a research paper on Chunko Swimmers of the Western Hemisphere. Then I guessed…”

“You've been busy.”

“I have been busy. Then I guessed those weren't good guesses, and decided to just come out and ask.”

“Tell me what you think of Lemry's class.”

I said, “I think it's the best class I've ever taken. It makes me think. Sometimes I hate that, but mostly I don't. Why?”

“I'll bet you think I hate it.”

“If I had to bet a month's pay one way or the other, that's the way I'd go.”

“I'll bet you think Mark Brittain and I think exactly alike about everything we've covered so far in that class.”

Now I smiled. “That's crossed my mind, but I'm
getting the feeling you're about to tell me how full of shit I am.”

She smiled back. “You're so full of shit.”

“That's what I thought. Exactly
how
full of shit am I?”

“I had an abortion.”

Jesus.

“Surprised?”

“Naw. Girls are forever asking me out for a burger so they can tell me about their abortions.” I paused a minute. “Was it Brittain's?”

“Yeah. It was Mark's.”

“Does he know? I mean, he knows, right?”

“He knows.”

God, put
that
together. Mark Brittain. What a hero. Broke major blood vessels in his neck and eyes today in class preaching the evils of fornication and all the time he's been a fornicating fool.

“I almost spoke up in class today when he got so excited, but it's not something I want the world to know.”

I swatted the thought of what all this meant about Jody and Mark out of my head like a mosquito off the back of my neck, because that could make me seriously depressed. Plus I found myself genuinely curious. “What does he say to you? I mean, after an attack of
hysteria like he had today, what does he say? He has to know how chicken shit that is.”