Rats Saw God (26 page)

The college winner, Isshee Ayam, came from the University of Houston. Her essay, “Reflections of a Statistic,” about growing up in the Fifth Ward, made mine sound like pinheaded high school drivel. Afterward, Sky convinced her to come speak to our class.

“But if this is any example of the work your students are doing, I don't know if I could teach them anything,” she said, nodding at me and making me blush.

“No, Steve's a special case. And I think even his highness could learn a few things from you.”

I'm afraid I glowed on the trip back to Grace. Maybe there was something I could do well. Then I thought again of Isshee's paper.

“Do you learn to write that much better in college?” I asked Sky.

“It's not so much learning as it is living. You can improve
your technique through classes and through reading, but you've got to have some truth to put behind the language. Otherwise, no one will connect to it. It's tough, for example, to write about love until you've had your heart broken.”

The next morning I read
Breakfast at Tiffany's
at the breakfast table for twenty minutes before I noticed, hanging by a Texas Credit Union magnet on the refrigerator, an article clipped from the
Houston Chronicle
about yours truly. The headline read, UH, G
RACE STUDENTS WIN
C
HRONICLE
WRITING CONTEST.
I got up and pulled off the Post-it note on which the astronaut had scribbled, “Good job!” Two photos dominated the layout: one of Isshee Ayam and her mother and one of Sky and me. I scanned the article; there was no mention of the astronaut. I guess they hadn't figured that one out. My essay had been reprinted in its entirety.

I couldn't find Dub when I got to school. She wasn't in our regular before-school cafeteria spot as far away from the Amy Grant–stocked jukebox as possible. I checked the Joshua Tree, though it was getting too cold to hang out outside. No luck. On a whim I investigated Sky's classroom. Bingo. She was hunched up over his desk looking down at a paper. Sky was pointing at a spot on the page and appeared to be explaining something.

“Hey, Dub. I couldn't find you anywhere this morning,” I said, getting her attention. I swear I said it without any attitude.

“Well, it's not like we're connected at the hip, you know. We
are
capable of going places without each other.”

“Oh, I'm sorry… I didn't mean to—”

“Forget it,” she said.

Sky had a Christmas party at his house the day we got out for Christmas vacation. The invitations he handed out a week earlier were handmade in kindergarten fashion: red and green construction paper cut into Christmassy bells and angels, ample Elmer's and glitter applied. On each he had attached a pink-cheeked St. Nick gift label, the kind that identify the giver and receiver. In lieu, he had written a quote for each of us on the label. Mine read,
“I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in fifty years what my father taught me by example in one week.—Mario Cuomo.”
Below that, he had written, “These are your Santa clauses—my yuletide gifts of wisdom.” Sky had a pretty sixth-grade sense of humor sometimes.

I offered to show Dub mine, but she said they were personal messages from Sky and that we ought to keep them to ourselves out of respect for him. I looked around the circle. Our classmates were passing their invitations around, reading their consecrated messages to one another. Fine. We'll be the faithful disciples. The invitation also included a map to Sky's house.

•   •   •

Sky couldn't afford to live in Clear Lake on his teacher's salary. His gabled house would have been an anachronism among the tracts of familiar conventionality of Clear Lake homes, anyway. Located a few miles outside the coastal side of the 'burb, it had a screen door. It had hardwood floors. Windows were raised and lowered with ropes, weights, and pulleys.

Sky had an ice chest full of soft drinks. He also had a giant
thermos full of hot, rum-free eggnog. Under the tree I saw the baker's dozen gifts, without a doubt earmarked for us students. Sure, Sky taught four other classes of students, but those were standard, mandatory English IV classes. Those present had elected to take creative writing from him. He had freedom with us that he didn't elsewhere in a school judged by its achievement test scores.

Doug showed up with a date, some sophomore from Memorial he met at a gig. I thought she was cute in a band chick sort of way. Dub didn't agree.

“He could do a lot better than her. Is she wearing anything that isn't leather? Add a belt to that ensemble and she'll start mooing.”

I excused myself to find a bathroom. Sky pointed me in a direction, but the door was locked. I followed the hall to stairs leading up. Spurred on by my full bladder, I took the stairs to a door. Inside was Sky's room. His bed was king sized with darkly stained posts at all four corners. Anyone other than Sky, I noted, would probably need a stepladder to get on it. Unframed modern art hung from all four walls, purple swirls and stick people, pieces that looked like spray-painted sections of the Berlin Wall. On his dresser, between candles of all shapes and sizes, were framed pictures of people I guessed were his family, one of him with what I presumed were two older sisters in front of a Pacer. Another gave me reason to pause. It was a wedding photo, and a clean-shaven Sky was the groom. He'd never told us he'd been married. Come to think of it, he'd never told us much about his life. Sky was a listener, the best listener. He seemed to pick up on everything. He had,
earlier in the semester, given us his home phone number in case we “just needed someone to talk to,” but any words coming out of his mouth were advice, encouragement. Philosophy—not history. I remembered him referring to a brief teaching stint somewhere in the Southeast, where he was born, before coming to Grace early in his career. That was as much as I knew about him.

I exited down the stairs without finding the bathroom. The music from
A Charlie Brown Christmas
was playing, and Sky was having people gather around the tree for the big gift exchange. He made us each open our presents one by one. Everyone received books, but each of us got a different one. He gave Doug
Hammer of the Gods,
an unauthorized biography of Led Zeppelin. Dub received a D. H. Lawrence book that we had talked about in class during a discussion of banned literature. I was the only one who didn't receive a book; instead I got an envelope. Inside was a receipt for
Anchors Away,
Grace's yearbook.

Something was going wrong, but I had no idea how to stop it. Even if I knew how, I knew it couldn't be done from my mother's house in San Diego. Long distance phone calls between Dub and me had always begun with
I miss yous
and ended with
I love yous.
Now I was always the caller and she always had to run off somewhere.

“Let's take another trip up to your aunt's cabin when I get back. It's probably cold enough now that we could make a
fire,” I suggested early on Christmas Eve.

Silence. “I'm sorry, what were you saying?”

“I said we should go to your aunt's cabin.”

“I don't know if that's a good idea. We're lucky we didn't get caught last time. Hey, I've got to amscray. Missy's here to pick me up.”

“On Christmas Eve?”

“Last-minute shopping, Sweetie.”

“You know I love—”

“I know you do. Gotta go, bye.”

I let four days languish by before giving in and calling again. On Christmas Day, Sarah had to drag me out of bed to open gifts. I meticulously unwrapped boxes of boxer shorts, colognes, and floppy disks. I moaned little thank yous.

“Someone put the Grinch out of his misery,” Sarah said between tearing open her own packages.

When I called Dub again on the 29th, I was pissed.

“So were you going to call me, ever, if I didn't call you?”

“Steve, we're not married, you know. Jesus, you freak out over the smallest things. You know we've got relatives over here. It's like a zoo. Cousins getting into all my shit. Sylvia's on my back. And now I've got to deal with you obsessing out in California. Like I didn't have enough headaches.”

“So that's what I am, a headache?”

“Oh, Steve, don't do this.”

And I hung up on her. I couldn't believe I did it. I ran out to the beach where I could cry as loudly as I wanted, and I couldn't pick up a phone to call her back to apologize.

The next day I asked if I could return to Texas.

“This is my time, honey,” my mom said. “I only get you so many weeks a year. It's just a couple of days you're talking about. You can work things out with Dub then.”

“Please, Mom,” I said desperately. “I'm not going to be any fun around here anyway. I'll convince the astronaut to give you a couple extra days somewhere down the line.” My voice was cracking and my eyes were unrehearsed watery. “Just let me change my ticket.”

“He's your father. I wish you would call him that.”

“Whatever.”

“Oh, baby, it's going to be all right.”

I arrived home sixteen hours later. It was nearly midnight. I called Dub's house from the airport. Maureen answered groggily.

“Steve, she's spending the night over at Missy's.”

I sped down I-45 toward Missy's. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I looked insane. The dark circles around my eyes aged me by a decade. My skin was clammy, and I was shaking. My heart felt like a hummingbird's. If I didn't see Dub tonight I was sure I would die.

The light in Missy's room was on when I pulled up in front of her house. I ran through the side gate and pounded on her window, calling my girlfriend's name. Missy appeared and slid the window open.

“Steve! What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? You're going to wake up my parents!”

I felt myself crying in front of Missy, but I didn't care. “Where's Dub? I need to see Dub.”

“I don't know where she is, Steve. Why don't you go home tonight. Find her tomorrow.” She looked at me, and I saw the pity. “Wait there. I'm coming outside.” But by the time she made it to her door, I was squealing off down the street to Doug's.

I should have seen it coming. All her bullshit about opposites attracting. The way the two of them fought. The way Doug treated me after I started going out with Dub. Dub making fun of Doug's date. Getting dragged to all his shows. I wasn't aware of any of the streets or turns or stoplights as I drove. When I found myself on Doug's street, I thought my heart would explode. I could hear it beating. I just knew it was going to erupt out of my chest like in
Alien
and devour me. Finding neither Dub's nor Doug's car in front of the house only amplified the ache. They could be anywhere, and I had nowhere to start looking. I put my head on the steering wheel and began bawling between screams of “Why?” That's all I could think of to say, “Why?”

I wanted to cry on my best friend's shoulder, but my only friend was Dub. I began driving aimlessly. I attempted to force rational thought to re-enter my mind. Just because neither Dub nor Doug were around, it didn't mean they were together. Or if they were together, it didn't mean they were
together
together. Mrs. Varner could have mistakenly said Missy instead of Sylvia or Rhonda. And Doug—who knew where he was at one in the morning? Who cared?

Strangely, I thought of Sky. He said he would always be there if we needed to talk. I didn't know if that meant we could drop in uninvited in the middle of the night to spill our guts, but
I couldn't think of anything else to do. I started feeling better as I made my way out of the city limits to my teacher's house. I couldn't believe I was doing it.

When I first saw it, I was momentarily relieved. Dub's Civic was sitting in the driveway in front of Sky's house. She wasn't with Doug. But what was she doing here? Did she need to talk to Sky, also? In the middle of the night? About me, maybe? I parked in the road. But why weren't the lights on? There was a glimmer, and it came from the window I figured to be Sky's bedroom.