Zach noticed my surprise at his new haircut and ran a hand over the top of his head. It probably felt like velveteen on a threadbare fainting couch. “Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “Last night I decided to turn over a new leaf.” He frowned. “So where are you going?” He was standing close to me, holding the black umbrella over my head so his arm was stiff as a drying rail on which one could hang wet towels.
“Home,” I said.
This surprised him. “But it’s just getting good. Havermeyer’s dancing with Sturds. There’s mini quiche.” His bright red shirt was doing that buttercup experiment to his chin — you held it there and if it glowed the person liked butter. I wondered what it meant when red glowed there.
“I can’t,” I said, hating how stiff it sounded. If he’d been police and I’d been guilty, he would have known, immediately.
He studied me and then shook his head, as if across my face someone had written an incomprehensible equation. “Gosh, you know, I liked your speech…I mean…man.”
Something about the way he said that made me feel the urge to laugh — only the urge, though; it lost steam somewhere around my collarbone.
“Thanks,” I said.
“The part about the — what was it…when you talked about art…and who you are as a person…and art…that was so amazing.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Nowhere in my speech had art or who I was as a person been mentioned. They weren’t secondary or even tertiary themes. But then, as I stared up at him, so tall — strange, I’d never noticed the minute creases at the edges of his eyes; his face was cheating, throwing out hints of the man he’d become — I noticed perhaps that was the point; if we wanted to listen to someone, we heard what we needed to in order to inch closer. And there was nothing wrong with hearing art, or who they were as a person, or goldfish; each of us could choose whatever materials we liked for our rickety boat. There’d been something, too, in his leaning so far forward, so awkwardly trying to get to me (giving goosenecked lamps a run for their money), wanting to catch every word I threw into the air, not wanting to let one hit the ground. I liked this little bit of truth, tried to think it twice, three times, so I wouldn’t forget it, so I could think about it on the highway, the best place to think about things.
Zach cleared his throat. He’d turned to squint at something, at Horatio Way, the part where it squeezed past the daffodils and the birdbath, or maybe higher up, the roof of Elton where the weathervane pointed at something off-screen.
“So I take it if I invited you and your dad to join us tonight at the club for the roast beef buffet, you’d say no.” He looked back at me, his eyes touching my face the sad way people look out, put their hands on windowpanes. And I remembered, in the click-stutter of Mr. Archer’s slide projector, that tiny painting trapped in his house. I wondered if it was still there, hanging bravely at the end of the hallway. He’d said I was like that painting, that unmanned boat.
He arched an eyebrow, another tiny talent I’d never noticed. “Can’t tempt you? They have great cheesecake.”
“I actually have to get going,” I said.
He accepted this with a nod. “So I take it if I asked if I could…see a little of you over the summer — and it doesn’t have to be the whole you, by the way. We could decide on…a toe. You’d say it’s impossible. You have plans ’til you’re seventy-five. You have grass stuck to your shoes, by the way.”
Startled, I leaned down and wiped the grass caked to my sandals, which hours ago had been white but now were blotchy and purpled like old ladies’ hands.
“I’m not going to be here this summer,” I said.
“Where’re you going?”
“To visit my grandparents. Maybe somewhere else.” (“Chippawaa, New Mexico, Land of Enchantment, Homeland of the Roadrunner, Blue Gamma Mosquito Grass, the Cutthroat Trout, Industries, mining, silver, potash…”)
“You and your dad, or just you?” he asked.
The kid had an uncanny ability to nail every question, again and again. Dad was the first to debunk the No Wrong Questions policy thrown out to make dimwits feel better about themselves; yes, whether one wanted to accept it or not, there were a handful of right questions and billions of wrong ones and out of these, out of all of these, Zach had selected the one that made me feel like I’d sprung a leak in my throat, the one that made me afraid I’d cry or fall over, also causing an outbreak of those pretend itches on my arm and neck. Dad probably would have liked him — that was the funny thing. This one, this bull’s-eye, would have impressed Dad.
“Just me,” I said.
And then I walked away — without really realizing it. I headed up the wet hill, across the road. Not upset or crying or anything like that — no, I was remarkably fine. Well, not fine (“Fine is for dulls and slows.”) but something else — something I actually didn’t have a word for. I felt a shock from the blankness of the pale gray sky on which it was possible to draw anything, art or goldfish, as tiny or as huge as I wanted.
I continued up the sidewalk, past Hanover and the lawn in front of the cafeteria littered with branches, and the Scratch, the rain turning it all to soup. And Zach, without “Wait,” or “Where are you—?” he stayed right there, right by my right shoulder without needing to chat about it. We walked without formula, hypothesis or detailed conclusion. His shoes moved cleanly through the rain, fishtail splashes in a pond, the fishes themselves mysteries — mine too. He held the umbrella a precise distance over my head. And I tested it — because Van Meers always had to test things — inching a little outside the shelter of it, imperceptibly to the right; I accelerated, slowed, paused to wipe more grass off my shoes, curious if I could get a small percentage of my knee or elbow, some part wet, but he held it over my head with remarkable consistency. By the time we reached the top of the stairs and the Volvo, and the trees crowding the road danced, but only very slightly — they were extras after all, not wanting to distract from the leads — not a new drop of rain had touched me.
Final Exam
Directions. This all-inclusive final examination will test your deepest understanding of giant concepts. It consists of three sections to be completed to the best of your ability (percentage of Final Grade specified in parentheses): 14 True or False Questions (30 %), 7 Multiple Choice Questions (20 %) and 1 Essay (50 %). 1 You may have a clipboard to write upon, but no supplemental textbooks, encyclopedias, legal pads or extraneous papers. If you are not presently sitting with one seat between you and anyone else, please arrange for this now.