there, a student center, multistory dorms. The hills are perhaps its most distinguishing feature, and the muscles in my thighs are burning by the time we circle back to the fountain in the heart of the campus.
There’s a north breeze, and we have to stand upwind to avoid getting showered. The tile bottom glitters with coins.
Robert fishes in his pocket for some pennies and hands me one. He shrugs and grins at me. “Make a wish.”
“Okay.” I squeeze my eyes shut and make a wish, then toss the coin in. He smiles and does the same.
“So what did you wish?” I ask.
“Can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”
I laugh and start to turn away.
“I wished that my dad would be dead when I get home.”
That stops me. I search his eyes in the bright sunlight.
“What the L-M-N-O-P, huh?” he says, and smiles, but it’s a pained look.
“Yeah. What the L-M-N-O-P? You don’t mean that,” I say, but I suspect he does.
He shrugs. “I cannot tell a lie.” He kicks lightly at the bricks around the fountain with the toe of his athletic shoe, then grimaces, and I see his eyes are glistening. “I just want it all to be over, you know. The people always in our house, the smell, the resentment. Yesterday a priest came and gave my dad last rites.”
We sit down on a bench a few feet away from the fountain. One thing I’ve learned working with kids is this: When they want to talk, you shut up. I twist on the bench to face him and prop my head on my fist. He watches a mockingbird land in the mist from the fountain, flutter its wings some, and then fly away.
“I know he’s my dad and all,” he says finally, “but I feel like he’s just this thing that sucks all the oxygen out of the room. Like the world has stopped spinning and it can’t start again until he’s gone.” He folds his arms across his chest like he’s cold and tells me about the chicken soup.
“I just wanted to rip that oxygen tube away from his face and replace it with a pillow and just hold it down, you know. You would think he’d want to make sure that I was going to be okay, that his affairs were in order so we wouldn’t have to untangle everything after he died. But all he can think about is himself. It’s as if I don’t even matter. And they talk about him like he’s such a hero. I don’t understand any of it. And I can’t stand the way everyone acts like my mom is some bad person. She’s not.”
I rest my hand on the back of his neck. He slips into silence, as if he can’t handle any more naked honesty today.
“You hungry?” I ask after a while. “I know a little place. Great Mexican food. I’m buying.”
Robert
We leave my car in the lot and he takes me a few blocks down the street to Jack in the Box. I have my first good laugh of the day.
We take our tacos, onion rings, and drinks to a table next to the window.
“So,” I say, tipping a wrapper down and allowing the taco to slip out a couple of inches. “What do you like about being a teacher?”
“Hmm. That’s a pretty complicated question. Definitely not the pay. Definitely not the adoration of hundreds of teenagers. How about summers off and pizza or Chick-fil-A five days a week, thirty-six weeks a year.”
“Well, at least you’re honest.” He smiles at me and I feel myself go a little gooey inside. “But you don’t buy school lunch,” I remind him.
“Oh, yeah. How do you know that?”
“Because you have a five-quart cooler sitting on the floor next to your desk every day.”
“Five quarts, huh? That’s a little anal, don’t you think?”
I shrug, a little embarrassed. “The real question is”—I spin an onion ring on my finger—“what’s in it?”
“The real question?”
“There is some speculation.”
“About what’s in my cooler? Really? So what does conventional wisdom say?”
“It’s pretty much an even split between peanut butter and jelly and some kind of tofu crap. I peg you for a peanut butter and jelly guy.”
“Jif. Creamy. And jam, not jelly. Peanut butter on one slice of whole wheat, jam on the other. Eaten whole.”
“Who’s anal now, Mr. Mac?”
He grins. “Can I ask you a favor? Can you stop calling me Mr. Mac? It sounds like you’re talking to my grandfather. And, anyway, my last name is Mick-Nelis, not Mac-Nelis, like Mick-Donald’s.”
“It’s not Mick-Donald’s.”
“Sure it is. That’s how you pronounce the M-C.”
“Oh, really? Then why don’t they serve Big Micks instead of Big Macs?”
He looks at me a moment, then laughs. “Okay, you got me there. How about we just dispense with the whole issue and you call me Andrew.”
Andrew? “What happened to Drew? It’s, uh, on the school Web site.”
“Okay, then call me Drew.”
“No. I think I’ll call you Andrew.” The name feels a little foreign on my tongue, but in a good way; it’s going to take some getting used to.
“So, are you really considering Sam Houston?” he asks me.
“No.”
His eyebrows shoot up at my admission. I don’t give him a chance to follow up. “I’m going to LSU. Premed, then medical school.”
“Wow. That’s a big deal.” When I scoff, he follows up with, “You don’t seem too happy about that.”
I shrug again. “It was kind of decided for me. My grandfather left me a trust when he died. I’m the last of the Westfalls. He expected me to carry on the tradition. It’s been understood that I would become a doctor since I was born.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Does it matter?”
“I think so.”
“No premed, no medical school, no trust. No trust, no funds for college.”
Andrew leans back in his chair and studies me. I have a feeling I’m about to get a lecture, so I change the subject. “You wear an OU T-shirt on college day. Is that where you went?”
“Yep, I’m a Sooner. The pride of Oklahoma.” He scoops up the trash from the table and pushes it through the swinging door of the receptacle a few feet away, then sits back down. I glance out the window at the fading light. I don’t want to leave.
“Do
