a guest speaker for this year’s graduation ceremony. It isn’t too late to get that female newscaster. The one who reported on the big fire last year.
Phone the bishop and run interference between him and the mother who complained that her son said his teacher was forcing them to read pornography in English class: The Wars by Timothy Findley.
Have that carpet in the basement bedroom removed and figure out what type of flooring he and Walter want down there.
Manipulate the budget data so that he can find the money to deal with the graffiti in the north stairwell.
Purchase a carton of cigarettes. He is down to three packs and only if he rations will they last the week.
He tries not to pull back his sleeve to look at the glowing hands on his watch because his mother will ask him if he isn’t enjoying himself and he’ll have to stammer out, Of course, of course, I adore the dance routines! but the soon-to-be-dead boy’s principal can’t help nudging up his sleeve just once: 10:36 and 17 seconds. The soggy slice of lemon disintegrating in the bottom of his glass.
— Aren’t you having a good time? asks his mother, her icy hand clutching his.
He has to void his bladder, but he doesn’t want any of those lousy transvestites to direct their heat-seeking-missile, faux mammary glands in his direction. His bladder is about to pop when Crêpe Suzette starts a routine about how he can tell the straight men from the gays in the room by what kind of socks they’re wearing; Max feels the blood drop from his head to the soles of his feet, feels the urine suck right up out of his bladder and flood his already toxic system. Suzette moves from foot to foot to foot and calls out — Straight! Gay! (the audience laughs) Straight! Straight! Oh honey, you’re so straight! (the audience laughs again) Straight! Straight! Max’s ankle grasped in Crêpe Suzette’s hand, Suzette yanks up his trouser leg and evaluates his sock. Even though every strand of hair on his head is already white, Max can still feel his hair bleach, has a desperate child’s wish that he could just teleport out of here. Suzette shouts out, — White tube sock! Straight! and Max wants to weep. He blinks quickly to barricade the tears, he is straight, thank God he is straight, he would lose his job if anyone found out the truth, the snow razoring outside the lounge windows, and his father claps Max on the shoulder, his mother waves for another daiquiri, the dead boy’s principal sizzles in the liquid gleam of his almost-horror.
He sees the dull, damp ring corroded into the surface of the coffee table top before he even makes it completely in the front door of his house, the table his grandfather made with his bare hands from a fallen maple tree, and the surface gleaming except for the now-permanent ring just off to the left, where Walter must have set down a wet glass or a hot mug, and he wants to clutch his bare hands around Walter’s neck and squeeze, then kick him in the stomach, kick the entrails right out of him. Watch Walter sob and expire because he ruined the only beautiful family heirloom Max owns.
Max pulls off his argyle socks, brushes his teeth, pokes his scruffy toothbrush around in his mouth. He’s so angry his mouth almost locks shut while he bawls Walter out after Mass on Sunday for ruining the varnish on the coffee table, his back to Walter in the bed for the entire Sunday night, his head brimming with vermin, fucking Crêpe Suzette and his father, his father’s face practically buried between some tweaked-out faggot’s tits, his mother chewing on the umbrella from her strawberry daiquiri. And now the coffee table. Wrecked and destroyed. Just like everything else.
Monday afternoon, so abruptly it pains his teeth, so loudly he doesn’t even have the chance to take his keys out of his pocket, take off his coat, not even his scarf, he has one glove off, only one, he got to the school at 6:19 a.m., he’s been downtown at meetings all day, biting down his lunch during a bathroom break, and he just wants to decompress in the imaginary holodeck in his office, but his secretary, Joy, rushes to him, sails into his office on a punch of perfume and says, — Patrick Furey’s father called in that Patrick won’t be coming to school tomorrow, then said he killed himself this morning.
Max stops pulling off his second glove, his hand still hot from the first glove, a boy in Grade 12 killed himself, Max feels strung up by the neck. He gasps.
— How did he kill himself ? he asks Joy. — Do they know where?
— Oh, she says, a box of paper clips showering silver from her hands. — Oh. His father didn’t go into details. And she shakes her head. — Now why would that boy want to go and do that?
— Mr. Boyle, he says into the phone. — Walter.
The school week is only five hours old but already assassinated. Max hates Mondays.
Notify the crisis team immediately, then phone the parents, pass on his condolences and delicately get the facts around the death. Both vice-principals shuffle into his office. He will need the details, every one, because soon the phone calls will start jangling in, and he will have to know what the suicide has to do with his school, his staff, his student body, did it happen on school property, he has to know because he will be running the front line, dodging, catching, lobbing reporters, parents, teachers, the superintendent. He will need to know the circumstances of the death better than he knows the hairs and wrinkles on the backs of his hands. The school’s inhabitants a simmering mob. He will need to clamp the lid down on this boiling pot. He will need to burn this witch until not even ash remains. He snaps his fingers at Joy for the crisis team phone number, then immediately apologizes; she is new and doesn’t know when he is being efficient rather than rude. — I had a restless sleep last night. Do accept my apologies, Joy.
Joy’s comma of a mouth sagging open in distress, her eyes limp. He could kill this kid. What was his name? Furey. Max’s family heirloom absolutely decimated.
He will have to buy Joy chrysanthemums or a box of chocolate truffles. She sits at her desk, poking pens into a jar, her mouth melting into an upside-down U.
The smooth running of his high school disrupted, ruined— a hole punched in the walls he practically put up with his own hands.
He pulls out his chair and holds the phone number between his fingers. Fumbles his bifocals out of his pocket.
Because it might sound odd and he would never tell anyone else this— well, Walter perhaps— but a school is like a spaceship, just like on Sector Six, the best fictional example he knows of a well-run organization with a leader who is firm but personable, effective. And all the smaller parts have to work together to make the greater machine function. He is the captain of this ship, the crank in charge of the wheels and cogs. Colonel Shakira from Sector Six never has to buy Lieutenant Fong a box of chocolates to apologize for speaking too gruffly when she issues orders, but there you go.
Time for red alert.
The ringing of the crisis team’s phone burrs in his ear. He props the phone between his head and his shoulder, smooths and straightens his tie with both hands, jingles the keys in his pocket.
Tuesday he is still on the phone. He swears he never went home.
Ginger
Because people in school were spreading an inconceivable rumour.
Ginger bangs out the front doors of the school— he doesn’t care who sees him— and he slides over ice and hurdles over snowbanks all the way home. Just in case it’s true. Is it true?
—
