Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (15 page)

Having gathered his books, Brittain stops at the door. “What you all just heard out of Jody Mueller's mouth is a filthy lie. It's just one more example of what happens when you try to take the high road. You can believe it if you want to, but it's a filthy lie.”

“Well,” Ellerby says, “I won't be doing my report on shame. I could never top
that.”

Boy, today the stakes went up. Mautz barged into Lemry's class to say Mark Brittain tried to kill himself last night. Mautz looked directly at Lemry, then me, then Ellerby, and finally Jody, as if to let us know where he considered the blame to lie.

“I'm not pleased with what I saw in here yesterday,” he said after his announcement, “nor with what I've heard about what goes on in here. A sensitive boy…”

“Stop!” Lemry said, with such force that Mautz backed off immediately. “I'm not interested in your personal thoughts about suicide, sir, and you have no right to imply that the responsibility for Mark Brittain's decision lay with members of this class.”

“Mrs. Lemry,” Mautz said right back, “maybe you don't know how serious this is. Mark Brittain is lying in
Sacred Heart Hospital on the edge of a coma as a result of a drug overdose. This wasn't some adolescent cry for attention.”

“I feel as badly about that as you do,” Lemry said. “Maybe you've forgotten that Mark is a member of my swimming team, and I respect him as a student. But you are out of line in this classroom, and if you don't leave, I'll lodge a formal complaint with the Washington Education Association.”

Mautz's eyes blazed. “Mrs. Lemry, I'm the vice-principal at this school. I…”

“That's right,” Lemry said. “You're the
vice
-principal. The vice-principal in charge of discipline. If I'm having a discipline problem, I'll call you. Right now, I'd like you to leave, or I'll go to the principal's office and bring Mr. Patterson back here to straighten this out. If you'd like to talk to me during my break, that's third period.”

“You could be getting yourself into serious trouble,” Mautz said, but he looked uneasy, as if Lemry had scored.

“I want you out of my classroom,” she repeated, and Mautz turned to leave.

The guy must be unconscious. He never noticed how the class sat stunned at the news of Mark, how the breath blasted out of the room as if we'd been kicked in
the collective stomach.

“I'm sorry you had to hear that,” Lemry said the moment the door closed behind Mautz. We stared blankly back at her. “Looks like this is a good time to talk about suicide.”

She gave us a minute, then said, softly, “Let's talk.”

“Oh, God.” Jody burst into tears. “He really meant to do it. I know Mark. He really meant to do it. This is my fault.” She dropped her head to her desk, and I tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away.

“Let her be,” Lemry said. Then, “I know you think it's your fault, and I know that hurts. And it's going to hurt, there's no stopping that. But it's
not
your fault. Mark Brittain himself said we're all responsible for our own actions, and this was his, Jody, not yours.”

“But if I'd been more careful. I knew what he was like. I knew…”

Ellerby stepped in. “If you're going to assign guilt,” he said, “you can't assign it all to yourself. I've been badgering Mark Brittain for more than two years.”

“Maybe,” Jody said through more tears, “but I humiliated him. That's what he couldn't stand, to be humiliated. I went with him for two and a half years and I knew that.”

A flood of anger welled in my throat, and I thought
for a minute I'd actually choke on it:
Mark Brittain humiliated himself.
Screw Mark Brittain. He'd been cramming his philosophy down our throats as long as I could remember and now that his true colors had been uncovered,
we
were supposed to feel shitty.

Lemry slowly paced the outer edge of our circle. “Listen, a person attempting to take his own life is a tragic thing. I'm sure everyone here can think of something they wish they'd said to Mark, but none of us knew. Obviously Mr. Mautz thinks I should take responsibility because of what I let us talk about as a class. But I want no misunderstandings. I'm not to blame for Mark's decision and neither are any of you. Suicide is
personal,
and I refuse to have anyone walk out of here today without understanding that. Mark Brittain needs help; hopefully this will help him get it. He'll need understanding from all of you. He'll need to not be abandoned. But your guilt will only give him the mistaken belief that his actions were not of his own doing.”

Lemry stopped pacing. “I don't want to sound harsh, and I know I'm probably getting ahead of your feelings, but we don't have time to process everyone's pain before the class is over. We do have time to put it in perspective.”

Sally Eaton, the girl who pickets the abortion clinic
at Deaconess regularly and who thinks Mark Brittain is the cleverest thing since remote control, raised her hand. “Ms. Lemry, I've known Mark for a long time, and he's somebody who stands up for what he believes. I think he's too sensitive for the callous way this class looks at things. Some cruel and untrue things have been said, and I think he's been treated unfairly by all of you—and this is the result.”

Lemry cut her off. “You can have your thoughts about that, Sally, but I repeat: No one is responsible for Mark Brittain's decisions but Mark Brittain. I agree we can all learn something about how fragile the human psyche is, but the lesson here is to look at our own thoughts about life and death, not take the blame for someone else's.”

Sally started to protest, but Lemry continued quickly. “You're entitled to your feelings, Sally, and I'll be happy to talk with you after class, but I won't have
anyone
blaming anyone for this in my classroom. That's final.”

Sally stood and gathered her books, bursting into tears. “That's fine. I'm dropping this class. You can flunk me if you want. This class is
mean! That's
why Mark Brittain is in the hospital!”

I thought Lemry would stop her, but she walked to the classroom phone and called the office to let them
know Sally was out of class and very distressed. She said she thought Mautz might be able to help her. At her desk she heaved a sigh. “Anyone else?”

Silence.

“One of the worst things schools do is give you the idea that they can take responsibility for other people. We want the best athletes and students and debaters to be role models—to set examples for the other kids. We pressure many of you to do that all the time. We ask for perfection—no, for a
show
of perfection. Then we're disappointed when you let us down, and even if we're not, you are. Well, I want to go on record as saying the sooner you learn you're your own life's accountant, the sooner you'll have tools to hammer out a decent life. Mark Brittain is in the hospital because he tried to poison his body. He felt bad because of
his
responses to the world, not yours. Other people may try to tell you differently, but don't let them. You won't be helping yourself, and you won't be helping Mark Brittain.”

We sat in silence, absorbing Lemry's words. That silence was interrupted by Mautz's booming voice over the intercom: “Mrs. Lemry, could you come to the office immediately, please? Thank you.”

When the bell rang, ending class, Lemry hadn't returned.

 

Workout felt strange today; Brittain wasn't leading his circle pattern, and there was no one to go after, though Ellerby and I gave each other good challenges playing games with the clock. When Brittain's group knelt to pray before the first set of two-hundreds I found myself looking away, a bit ashamed. I
could
have laid off him a little.

I meant to ask Lemry why she didn't get back before the bell, but I never got the chance.

At home, Mom said pretty much what Lemry said, but a little voice nags at me, saying I should be more careful. None of that is at Jody's expense, though. I don't think I should have stayed away from her, and I'm not going to start. Brittain did what he did at the abortion clinic, and trying to take himself out on drugs doesn't buy him any sympathy from me in that regard. I
could
do with a little less confusion.

I got a bit of a kick start from Carver, Mom's boyfriend. He listened quietly to our conversation—Jody was here for dinner—then followed Jody and me out into the garage. I was on the stepladder, pulling down some canned goods Mom keeps stored in the high cupboards, when he said it. “My father killed himself.”

“Excuse me?”

“My dad. He killed himself.”

I glanced over at Jody, then back at him. “God, man, I'm sorry.”

He smiled. “I didn't say it for sympathy, Eric. It was a long time ago, I was eight. I thought it had to be my fault; he was always mad at me—you know, because of things I couldn't do. I was halfway through a week's grounding for my grades when he killed himself. He put a gun in his mouth.”

I was off the ladder now, standing with an armload of cans, speechless.

“I was thirty-five when I finally came to the conclusion that it wasn't my fault. I'd gotten very depressed, and a guy I worked with talked me into seeing someone—a therapist who talked me into tracking down family members who could tell me about Dad. Turned out no one was all that surprised. Seems he was one of those guys who just felt bad all his life and decided to get out. His brother took me on a long camping trip into the Idaho primitive area. Three days we hiked in—I was so lost I couldn't have found my way out in an airplane—and Uncle Ned wouldn't bring me out until he was convinced I knew everything about my dad he could teach me, and until he was convinced I knew Dad wrote the end to his own story.

“Your teacher was right, guys. Taking on someone
else's monsters will kill you.” He turned and walked back into the house.

“Thank you,” Jody said as the door closed, then turned to me. “He's a good one, Eric.”

 

I knocked on Lemry's door tonight sometime after ten-thirty, after dropping Jody off. “You guys still up?”

“Yup. Some of us.”

“Is everything okay?”

“You from Blockwatch?”

“No, I mean at school.”

“Come on in, Mobe,” she said, and I kicked the snow off my shoes and stepped in, handing her my letter jacket. She hung it on the coat stand and we walked into the living room where Sarah Byrnes sat in her pajamas and a robe, drinking hot chocolate.

“Ms. Byrnes and I are having a discussion on risk-taking,” Lemry said.

Sarah Byrnes looked up at me, a bit sheepishly, I thought. “We're going to try to find my mother; give her one chance to do the right thing.”

That Lemry is some kind of genius. No way I could have figured she'd pull off an alliance with the orneriest kid north of the equator.

“We've been reevaluating our lives,” she said with a
smile. “If we don't start taking some chances, we're both going to make the same mistakes over so many times we'll rot.”

I understood about Sarah Byrnes, but why Lemry?

She went on. “I'm trying to decide whether to rip out Mr. Mautz's heart, hold it a second for him to get a good look, then give him a loud round of applause.”

I flinched. “What for?”

“Mr. Patterson went out of town this afternoon, which makes Mautz acting principal for three days. He's suspended CAT class because Mark Brittain's father came to the school to complain, charging I was irresponsible in my handling of ‘sensitive material,' leading to Mark's suicide attempt.”

“To hell with Mautz,” I said. “Let's have class anyway. We'll organize a protest.”

Lemry smiled. “Thanks but no thanks, Mobe. That would be a protest orchestrated by you and Ellerby; sort of like a picnic organized by ants, no offense. Actually, I'm going to take three days' sick leave. Ms. Byrnes and I are going to Reno to try out a blackjack system she heard about in her math class.”

Reno. “What're we gonna do for CAT? What about swimming?”

“Study hall for CAT—that couldn't hurt anyone—
and John Billings for workouts. I've already written up the workouts and called John. He's willing to drive the bus to the meet on Friday, too.”

Sarah Byrnes smiled like a little kid and shrugged. “You said I could trust her,” she said. “Swim fast. We'll see you on Monday.” I had never seen her calm.

I pulled out a quarter and flipped it to her. “Put it all on seventeen black.”

I got home after midnight, and all the lights were out except in the hallway leading to my room. A note was tacked to my door:
A man called looking for Sarah Byrnes. I said I didn't know where she is, but he left a number for you to call, no matter how late you got home—482–4366. Mom.

Shit.

I took the note at its word and dialed the number.

“Yeah?”

“Hello. This is Eric Calhoune. I had a message to call you. It said I should call…”

“Yeah. Well, young Calhoune, do you know who this is?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, I assume it's Mr. Byrnes. Sarah Byrnes's dad.”

“Well, you assume correct.”

We were both silent a minute, until I said, “Uh, why did you want me to call?”

“Why do you think?”

I was scared to death, but unwilling to say anything he didn't know. “I don't know, sir. I just got home and there was this note….”

“Don't mess around with me, boy!”

I held to it. “I'm not messing around, sir. Why did you want me to call?”

He was quiet another second. Then in a low, dangerous voice he said, “Now you listen, and you listen good. I know you know where my daughter is, and you best be telling me before you hang up that phone, or I'll skin you alive, and that ain't just a figure of speech. I want no more of your nonsense. Tell me where the girl is.”

My heart hammered in my throat, my voice shaky, as if a vibrator were poised on my Adam's apple. “I don't know where she is,” I said. “I haven't seen her since right before she left the hospital. She was mad at me.”