It is a powerful, heartbreaking tale, even interpreted in comic-book form by an eleven-year-old. An eleven-year-old whose multiple stick figures look like a caveman’s interpretation of a spider orgy. Cory Kurtz has no talent. Sure, he’s eleven, but I have more faith in his absence of talent than Constantine had faith in God. Every time I look at his attempts at art I think, He’s going to make a great accountant someday, the kind who never tries any funny stuff because he has no imagination. That last judgment I may have to reassess because the illustrations he has mounted on poster board before the class show an abandoning of realism so bold that if I didn’t know the source I’d assume it was intentional. In an effort to negotiate his lack of skill, I’ve allowed him to create his images using collage instead, and little Cory Kurtz has seized the opportunity to populate the entire island of Malaga with images of mixie action superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Lots of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnsons. Many different images of his head, from many different photos, all cut and pasted and put on coat hanger bodies. Some with long penciled hair and circle breasts, as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson transgenders for the role. In this dystopian vision, our hero has been cloned and trapped on the nineteenth-century New England island, where he roams among mansions which, due to lack of perspective, seem smaller than him.
“I wanted to make sure that you could see they were all related,” Cory responds on inquiry.
“Okay. So, the houses—” I begin, and really what I want to talk about is the word perspective and remind him what I’ve been trying to tell him for months, but Spider takes over.
“The houses, they’re a bit grand. I’m pretty sure this one here is Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. On Malaga, there were more traditional, solid homes, but many of the people lived in poorly insulated shacks. Because they were broke.”
“I wanted them to be living large. That was important to me,” Cory shoots back.
“Well, that’s understandable. But it misses the point. If they could afford grand mansions like this, they would have never been wiped off the face of the map.”
“Come on, anything can be wiped off the map,” I have to jump in. “There are tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, wars. And that’s just the physical; the emotional is worse. You can be in love with someone — or at least have deep, heavily weighted feelings for them — then, poof, it’s all gone. Nothing left. Everything can be erased in an instant and you will never even see it coming.”
The class just stares at me. A bunch of kids, they don’t understand me, my ennui. They’re still at the beginning, they don’t know it all ends in excrement. The teens, you’d think, would at least suspect this outcome, but they’re silent as well. Kimet doesn’t say a word. I would think he’d be able to relate given his parents’ divorce, but restraint keeps me from saying this out loud. They all want to leave, I see. They’re even packing their bags — have we pushed through another hour of class? But I was just getting started.
In my hand is an envelope, in that a card, and on that a bunch of writing. It was delivered to me by my daughter, just before class, with enough time to open it if I could have brought myself to do so in front of everyone. The writing on it is not my daughter’s, but Sunita Habersham’s. Sunita Habersham, who has not talked to me in five days, since the night of our group date. Sunita Habersham, who responded to a text two days after the event with, Sorry, been busy, and nothing more. Just those three words. It’s not that I haven’t seen her — I do nearly every school day, when she walks by me nodding hello like I am just another virtual stranger on a world covered with them. Not that I don’t hear how she’s doing nearly every day from Tal, because she’s doing wonderfully. She’s a wonderful mentor. She’s Tal’s favorite dance teacher ever, favorite adult, favorite human being in every way. Sun is in Tal’s school-day life, completely. She has left mine, equally so.
“Look at the Malagans!” I implore the room, yelling it. Some of them, they startle. I don’t care. “Look at them! Can you see them? No, you can’t. Because they’re gone. That’s life, kids. It’s all destined for nothingness, eventually.”
Spider waits till everyone’s left the classroom to talk to me. “You’re off your game, man. Your head’s in your heart. You either go work this out with Sun, or you got to shut up. Like, forever, and never say another word. I don’t know, we’ll tell the kids you’ve gone mute or something. You’re too horrible like this,” is pretty much the gist of it and it’s not particularly helpful or insightful given how little Spider knows. That I cried like a pathetic wreck on the suspect shoulders of Director of Services Roslyn Kornbluth, for instance. He doesn’t know that. Possibly, Sunita Habersham does. I don’t care at this point, or I’m willing to believe I don’t. Tal is sitting on the steps when I open the art trailer’s door. Her dance gear is still on, not the clothes she was wearing when I drove her to school.
“Did you read the note?” my daughter asks me. I didn’t. I just saw the handwriting on the front of it.
“Why are you serving as UPS on this thing?”
“But did you read it?” I didn’t, so I finally open it up. There’s no detailed explanation of Sun’s behavior. But also, no formalized rejection either. Just a few lines in the middle of an otherwise blank card, and boxes to check off.
I’m sorry I’ve been distant, but I needed to think. And I would really like it if we could talk. When is good?
Tonight
Saturday
Sunday
In Hell
“So what are you going to say, Pops?” Tal asks.
“This was private. Why did you read it?”
“Because you’re miserable at home, and she’s miserable at school. So now I’m getting two kinds of miserable. And I like her. I told you.” Her eagerness, at bringing Sunita closer into our lives, is both annoying and a strong motivation to continue trying. I make a point of dramatically removing a pen from my back pocket and showing it to my daughter. Then I mark off the appropriate box and, with increasing flourish, place the note back in its envelope before I hand it to Tal.
“She’s not your new mother, you know?” I say this mostly to myself, but it sounds like a dig at Tal. “She’s just your teacher, and a friend of your father’s,” I add, softening my tone to the point, I fear, of being patronizing.
“This is why you’re alone,” Tal tells me. Then adds, “Besides me.”
—
I get some pasta, use a lot of olive oil, throw in some grated parmesan, chives, all so that when you stick the entrée next to a decent bourbon, it looks like I’ve spent the appropriate amount of time for someone who only kinda gives a shit. I am serving my ambivalence. It’s absent my libido, which has retreated from frustration. I am cured. Or if not cured, in remission, overcome by the other demons that plague me. I have digested this, the idea that Sun is connected to another man, and I find myself at ease with the concept. Racially even — I push my finger into my lizard brain and say, What about a white guy? and to my surprise find little extra resistance. After the idea of sexual ownership is stripped from my expectations, after the begrudging agreement that I truly don’t want to own her, I’m left with a new, theoretic openness. But this man, Elijah. This horrid, coveting, appropriating, ball of self-love shaped like a man. How could she love such a man? How could she even be who I think she is, and have chosen such a despicable partner?