I shot a look at Brett. He sat in his chair silently; his face was slender and delicate-looking, and I thought if it were not for the hair, eyes, nose, and mouth, his face could be a pianist’s hand. Brett caught me staring at him, but I don’t think he knew I was composing similes about his face, because he smiled at me. I smiled back. If I’d known that two months later Brett would take his own life, I would’ve cried instead.
We actually spoke the morning of his death.
“Hey, Brett, do you have that five dollars you owe me?”
“Can I pay you tomorrow?”
“Sure thing.”
People are amazingly adept at faking happiness. It’s almost second nature to them, like checking a public phone for coins after making a call. Brett was a champ at it, right up until the end. Hell, I spoke to a girl who chatted with him ten minutes before he jumped, and she said they talked about the weather!
“Hey, Kristin, d-do you think it’s a southerly wind?” Brett had a slight stutter that came and went in relation to fluctuating social pressures.
“How the hell would I know?”
“It’s p-p-pretty strong, eh?”
“Why are you talking to me, zitface?”
I don’t want to make a bigger production out of Brett’s death than it was for me. He wasn’t my closest friend or even my confidant. We were allies, which in a way made us closer than friends. Here’s how it happened:
One lunchtime a small crowd had formed a circle in the quadrangle, standing so close to each other they looked woven together like an ugly quilt. I winced in anticipation. There are no private humiliations in the schoolyard; they are all mercilessly public. I wondered who was being shamed this time. I peered over the flattop haircut of the shortest link to see Brett White on the ground, blood dribbling from his mouth. According to several delighted spectators, Brett had fallen while running from another student, Harrison. Now, peering down at Brett, all the students were laughing because their leader was laughing. It’s not that these were particularly cruel children; they’d just abandoned their egos to his, that’s all, submitted their will to the will of Harrison, a bad choice. Why groups never follow the sweet, gentle child is obvious, but I wish it would happen just once. Man, as Freud noted, has an extreme passion for authority. I think his secret yearning to be dominated could really work nicely, if he would just once allow himself to be dominated by a real sweetie. Because the truth is, in a group dynamic the leader could scream, “Let’s all give the bastard a tender kiss on the cheek!” and they’d run at the poor kid with their lips pursed.
As it was, Brett’s front teeth lay on the concrete. They looked like Tic Tacs. He picked up the teeth. You could see him struggling not to cry.
I looked at the other students and despaired that none had enough compassion to go about their business. It was painful to watch all those meager spirits harassing Brett in this way. I bent down beside him and said, “Laugh like you think it’s funny.”
He followed my advice and started laughing. He whispered in my ear, “Can they put them back in?” and I laughed loudly too, as if he’d made a joke. Once I’d gotten him to his feet, the humiliations persisted. A soccer ball came flying at his face.
“Open your mouth wide, I want to get it through the posts!” someone yelled.
It was true that his teeth looked like goal posts.
“Is that really necessary?” I shouted, pointlessly.
Harrison stepped out of the crowd and, towering over me, said, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you?”
I groaned. I had told just one person that my grandfather was slaughtered by Nazis, and I’d never heard the end of it. Generally speaking, there wasn’t too much anti-Semitism at school, just the usual jokes about money and noses, noses and money, great big noses with money falling out of them, grubby Jewish hands stuffing money into their big Jewish noses. That kind of thing. After a while you don’t care about the ugly sentiments behind the jokes, you just wish they were funnier.
“I think you have a stupid face, Jew.”
“And I’m short too,” I said, remembering that Dad once told me the way to confuse your enemies is to respond to their insults with your own.
“Why are you so stupid?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll get to that after I work out why I’m so ugly.”
Brett caught on fast and said to me, “I’m uglier than you, and I have bad hand-eye coordination.”
“I can’t run without tripping over,” I said back.
“I’ve never kissed a girl and I probably never will.”
“I have bad acne on my back. I think it will leave lifelong scars.”
“Really? Me too.”
Charlie Mills pushed through the mob and started up too. “That’s nothing,” he said. “I’m fat, ugly, smelly, stupid, and adopted.”
Harrison stood there, confused, thinking of something to say. We all looked at him and burst out laughing. It was a good moment. Then Harrison stepped toward me with the confidence of someone who has biology on his side. He pushed me, and I tried shifting my weight onto my front foot, but it made no difference. I wound up facedown on concrete. For the second time I went home with my white shirt splattered with blood.
Eddie, Dad, and Anouk were on the veranda drinking tea, looking exhausted. There was a heavy stillness. Something told me I had just missed a heated argument. The smoke from Eddie’s clove cigarettes hung in the air. As I approached, the sight of my blood reanimated them. They all leapt to attention, as if they were three wise sages who had waited ten years for someone to ask them a question.
Anouk shouted first. “Are you being picked on by a bully? Why don’t you give him my phone number and ask him to call me? I’m sure meditation would really calm him down.”
“Pay him money,” Eddie said. “Go back and talk to him with a paper bag filled with cash.”
Not to be outparented, Dad shouted from his armchair, “Come here, boy, I want to tell you something!” I walked up the veranda steps. He slapped his knee to indicate the all-clear to sit on it. I preferred to stand. Dad said, “You know who else used to get a rubbishing? Socrates. That’s right. Socrates. That’s right. This one time he was out philosophizing with some mates, and this bloke who didn’t like what he was saying came right up to him and kicked him in the arse so hard he fell to the ground. Socrates looked up at the man and smiled at him benignly. He was taking it with amazing calm. An onlooker said, ‘Why don’t you do something, or say something?’ and Socrates said back, ‘If you were kicked by a mule, would you reprimand him?’ ”
Dad broke into howls of laughter. His body shook so badly I was glad I had opted not to sit on his knee. It was bouncing like a rodeo bull. “Get it? Get it?” Dad asked me through peals of laughter.
I shook my head, although in secret I did get it. But truth be known, I would absolutely reprimand a mule for kicking me. I might even have it put down. It’s my mule, I can do what I want. Anyway, the point of the story is I got the point of the story, but it didn’t help my situation any more than Eddie’s or Anouk’s impossible suggestions. I tell you, Dad and Eddie and Anouk, the lights I had to guide me through childhood, did nothing but lead me into brick walls.
A few weeks later I went to Brett’s house. He’d lured me there with the promise of a chocolate cake. He said he wanted to try out his teeth. As we left the school grounds, he explained how, by wiring them back into his gums, the dentist had managed to prevent the nerve from dying. To finish the job he’d had root canal treatment, during which the dentist gave him lots of gas but not quite enough to make it worthwhile.