I couldn’t answer.
We sat there on the vinyl seats of the cop car, staring out the window, watching the paramedics load Helene Lancaster onto a stretcher. I saw again her blond hair smeared with blood as they covered her up.
We sat on the vinyl seats and I wanted to believe the cops would realize there was no way I could have left gas pouring out like that. And that Cal had nothing to do with it. And that the person who should really be arrested wasn’t sitting in the back of the police car. I wanted to believe that Cal would be safe, that I would be safe. I like certainty. I wanted to look at the back of Milner’s neck as he drove us downtown and feel certain that like me, he wanted to do a job he could be proud of, and that once he’d done it, if something wasn’t right he would go back and fix it.
But I didn’t feel certain at all.
Some things you can tell just by looking at a person.
Some things you can’t.
A Woe for Every Season
by Hirsh Sawhney
Dwight
I used to want to be a writer. But then life happened. Now I just teach. I’m a plain old high school English teacher. Nothing fancy, like Jenny and her academic friends — if you can call them friends, with all their backstabbing and five-syllable words. I sleep easy at night knowing I work at a real-deal public high school. Wilbur Cross on Cold Spring. I sleep easy despite the yes-men administrators and all that George W. Obama testing. But something happened the other day, a conversation with my old friend Josh Kagan. It worked me up and pissed me off. Jenny said, Talk it out, baby; I’m here if you wanna talk. I told her there was nothing to say, and she said, What a shocker. I said, Who’s being passive-aggressive now? and then took off with Ralphie. When I got home, she’d already left for the library. The next morning, she’s snoring when I roll out of bed. I go down to the kitchen and there’s a brand-new leather notebook in a red bow on the counter — a granite countertop, mind you, yet another amenity made possible by Jenny’s perfect job. A note on top says, A little something to get it all flowing. I shake my head and grin. Maybe she still cares. Maybe there’s still hope for us. But this story isn’t about me and Jenny. It’s about Josh Kagan and James Farrell. It’s about the three of us and a kid named Ink.
Me and Josh and James grew up a few miles away in the burbs. Lots of Catholics and Jews; Italians, Poles, and Irish. And then there was my sore-thumb family, half-Muslim, half-Hindu, all curry. (Yes, Jenny, self-loathing trickles through my veins.) Now I live in the Westville section of New Haven, in a sweet little Cape Cod. A $240K mortgage with $60,000 down, mostly paid for by Stale University, the imperialist overlords of Elm City, thanks to Jenny’s assistant professorship. We’ve got a hammock and a gas-powered grill, something my dad would have blown up if he’d pawed it with his immigrant hands. We’ve got a nice little patch of lawn that I cut with a hand-powered mower. And even though little Ralphie could easily do all his shitting and pissing at home, I take him for a long walk every morning. Ralphie’s our little mutt — part corgi, part dachshund, all monster. Our miscarriage dog, I call him. Like so many of the couples around us — straight, in their thirties — we got him after Jenny lost a fetus.
So it’s a Saturday, my least favorite day to walk the dog. All the doctors and lawyers and corporate warriors are out with their perfect pooches, all smiley and self-contented about living in such a beautiful area and having worked hard all week to make the world a better place. And they’re starving for small talk. But I’m walking Ralphie anyway, because Jenny’s presenting a paper at some coma-inducing conference. And who comes hulking toward me with his dopey, sweaty beast of a dog? Josh Kagan. Josh was one of my best friends between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Despite his unabating addiction to Xanax and whiskey, he has recently come into a fair amount of cash working as a foreman at a company that installs solar panels on the roofs of gullible elderly suburbanites. Ralphie goes berserk on Josh’s dumb-ass English mastiff, and Josh says something like, Guess you never ended up calling that dog trainer. I’m like, Josh, maybe if my dog cost five thousand dollars he wouldn’t bark as much, and by the way, I still can’t figure out how you managed to turn into such a fucking asshole. But of course I don’t say that. What I really say, is, My Ralphie, he’s still a bit traumatized from his shelter days. And guess what comes out of my mouth next: I say, Yo, if you got any training tips, I’m all ears. As soon as I utter those words, I want to barf my eggs and masala chai all over Josh and his dog, and Jenny’s voice starts buzzing in my head. Maybe she’s right. Maybe being the child of immigrants has me choking on my own shame. Nah, fuck her victimizing bullshit. All humans suffer, even the 1 percent.
Josh gets talking the usual sleepwalker middle-age crap. He’ll move to Canada if Trump gets elected. He tells me I should have bought a two-family house; the rental market’s gonna boom because middle-class people can no longer afford homes. And then he gets started on the topic, the one that lately leaves a lump in my throat, though I’d never say so to Jenny. He talks about his two chubby brats and how fast they’re growing up. Next comes the state of the schools, as if he’s a Noble Prize — winning educationalist. He says he hates to be that guy, but he’s gonna switch his kids to private schools. He gets that it’s wrong, but his hands are tied. I lie, tell him I get it, and this is a green light for him to putter down Racist White Guy Boulevard.
The thing is, Josh tells me, the New Haven public schools aren’t like the ones we went to; the students in these schools are different. It’s not their fault, he clarifies. It’s their families. These families, they’re not like ours. They don’t care about their kids. They don’t know how to support them. So the kids around here, they grow up like a bunch of animals.
I’m standing there staring at Ralphie, who has condescended to let Josh Kagan’s dunce of a dog sniff his asshole. And I’m absolutely livid. I’m thinking, Josh, what you’re really saying is that you think you’re better than black people, but you don’t even have the balls to say your ugly feelings out loud. I’m thinking, Do you remember how we grew up? Do you remember the things that we did? The tanks of nitrous oxide? The quarter-pounds of BC bud? What about what we got up to right here in New Haven, just a short walk away? Do you remember Ink? Do you ever think about him when you drive by the corner of Gilbert and Sherman in your tank-sized pickup? I must have started smirking or something, because Josh says, What’s so funny? I keep this all to myself though and tell him I gotta run — wifey’s waiting, or some sexist tidbit like that. As I walk away, he says, Yo, you talk to James lately?
James Farrell was the third member of our little posse, in and out of rehab for as long as I can remember. I didn’t take his last couple of calls as I no longer have the stomach for quotations from the AA handbook or pipe-dream plans. Josh tells me that James is clean. Again. That he has a good job selling insurance. He even has a girlfriend. She’s Thai and actually went to college. Ralphie’s pissing on some freshly planted petunias. I yank the leash and shake my head. The thought of James Farrell in a dress shirt and slacks makes me wanna hurl for a second time. If one of my students did what he’s done, you know what would happen to him? Kid would be rotting in a prison cell alongside ten thousand other black kids, stuck inside the slammer until he’s too old to do any good or harm. I feel like punching Josh. I’d punch James, but then I’d actually have to see him.