The Crazy School (5 page)

The Farm was the punishment dorm. Off in the woods. It always made me think of Steve McQueen’s “Cooler” in
The Great
Escape,
only here at Santangelo they all got put on work detail instead of locked down with a baseball and mitt—plus which their parents were charged double tuition for the privilege.

Kids on the Farm weren’t allowed out for classes. They didn’t get mail or phone calls. The closest thing to leisure time was a study period at night.

“I’ll make sure you get your assignments, okay?” I said. “You won’t be able to do any writing for a bit. This’ll need stitches.

But you’ll be good as new in a fl ash.”

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The other kids were drifting toward the exit, watching for the ambulance.

Sitzman asked me if we needed anything.

Mooney was sweaty, but his teeth were chattering.

“Get me his coat?” I asked. “It’s on that bench.”

Sitzman brought it over and put it on Mooney’s shoulders, trying to keep it clear of the blood. It was one of those letter-man jackets, dark blue wool with white leather sleeves, the fuzzy fi rst initial of some other school stitched over the left breast.

I nodded at Sitzman, and he backed away.

Mooney looked up at me.

“I’m going to move around a little,” I said. “My leg’s asleep.”

I twisted to wedge myself against the wall. “Lean on me if you’re dizzy.”

“I might throw up,” whispered Mooney, embarrassed.

“No biggie. I never liked this sweater.”

He slumped against my shoulder. “So tired.”

“Put your head down in my lap if you want.”

“Yeah.”

I helped him, keeping his arm up. “This is good,” I said.

“You’re not really bleeding so much.”

Mooney asked me under his breath, “Hey, so how come you always wear such big sweaters? You should get shirts that, you know,
fi t
. We all think so.”

“I fi gure you guys don’t need any further distractions.”

He smiled. “No offense.”

“I’ll chalk it up to you being in shock,” I said. “Want to tell me why you took out the window?”

“Not really.”

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“I won’t nark on you,” I said.

He turned his head slowly so he could look straight up at me. “Serious?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Lean down.”

I put my ear as close as I could to his mouth.

“Fay’s pregnant,” he said. “If Santangelo fi nds out, he’ll make her keep it. He’s a big-time Catholic, just like her family.”

“She doesn’t want to have it?”

“I’m nineteen. Her birthday’s next week, and then we’re both old enough to walk out of here. We could manage, but not with a kid. Plus, the meds Fay’s on? She’s afraid the baby’s already too damaged.”

Lulu was walking back fast from the other end of the hall.

Mooney measured her progress. “They won’t let her stay here if they fi nd out. But she can’t go home.”

“How’d the window get involved?”

“Fay thinks Mindy knows what’s up. I just . . .” He closed his eyes. “She said maybe it was time to do a turn-in. She’s scared.”

“Isn’t there anybody you guys can talk to?”

He shook his head. “There’s you.”

Lulu stopped in front of us and crouched down. “You guys holding up okay?”

“Kinda dizzy,” he said.

“Just take it easy,” she said. “Madeline’s got you covered, and the ambulance is on its way.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Maybe ten more minutes?” She stood up. “I’m going to go see if Dhumavati needs anything for Fay. Can I bring you some water?”

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Mooney nodded.

Lulu came back with two paper cups. She gave one to me, then helped Mooney raise his head to drink.

It seemed like forever until I heard the distant siren, so faint at fi rst I fi gured it was just wishful auditory hallucination. Then the sound came clear, growing louder and louder as help raced up the long drive. The wail cut out suddenly, and everyone was so quiet I could hear the wash of tires through gravel as the ambulance braked in front of the building, then the chunk-a-chunk of its opening doors.

I heard Dhumavati say, “Shhhh, sweetie, it’s okay. Nothing to be frightened of. Help is on the way.” She wrapped her coat tighter around Fay’s quivering shoulders.

“Stay right here,” she said, giving the girl one more quick squeeze before she stood up and started walking up the hallway.

Lulu rose from the fl oor to follow.

Mooney’s eyes fl uttered open. The fi rst thing he did was check to make sure Fay was all right, then he looked up at me.

“Take care of her while I’m gone, okay?”

“Of course,” I said.

“You can’t leave her alone.”

“Listen, don’t worry about anything else, just get through all this. They’ll fi x you up at the hospital. Concentrate on that.”

Lulu and Dhumavati came back into view, holding the doors open so the paramedics could push through with a rolling gurney.

“Madeline?” Mooney touched my wrist with his good hand.

“Help us.”

“Mooney, Jesus . . . I wish I could just load you both in my car and get you the hell out of here tonight.”

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He grabbed on to me. “Don’t let them send Fay home. She won’t survive. She won’t even try.”

Mooney didn’t want to let go of me, not even when the paramedics collapsed the gurney down fl at beside us and checked his cut hand.

“Promise me,” he said.

They counted three and shunted him onto the thing, then jacked it up. The bleeding was under control now, but they’d given him a fresh compress.

He didn’t blink once as they wheeled him away—just held my gaze until I nodded.

Lulu held the door open again.

Dhumavati told her to call Santangelo and let him know she’d be going to the hospital, then she grabbed the gurney’s tail as the crew shoved through to the lobby.

I heard the ambulance doors chunk open and shut again outside. The siren powered up, loud at fi rst but fading as they raced back out through the school gates.

I turned to check on Fay, watched her get up out of her chair and fl oat over to the broken window, still wrapped in Dhumavati’s coat.

Her face illuminated by a dreamy smile, she plucked a tag of Mooney’s fl esh from the icicle tip of the biggest shard.

Then she ate it.

Lulu came back inside after she’d called Santangelo. We steered Fay toward the library’s glass doors, depositing her at the center of a worn old sofa before sitting down on either side of her. Lulu tucked her arm gently around the girl’s shoulders.

We hadn’t turned on the lights. The room’s fl uorescent panels would have been unnervingly harsh. Better the cozy 4 0

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secondhand glow from fading sun and well-lit hallway. Plenty to see by.

Fay hummed softly to herself, nodding occasionally, that dreamy smile still playing across her mouth.

She was all tiny bones and downy skin.

A watercolor girl, hazy with valium.

An ivory fawn tipped with pink and gold and mother-of-pearl. Not quite tame.

She took my left hand in both of hers and raised it up a little, running a fi ngertip across the pale blue stone in my engagement ring. “Pretty,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“A candy made from ocean,” she said.

“I like your necklace,” I said.

“Mooney gave it to me.”

Through the library’s glass doors, I watched Dr. Santangelo coming down the hall, his mouth grim in its black nest of beard. The man was a walking J. Peterman catalog, arrayed in an opera cape and a billow of Jeffersonian shirt, the latter unbuttoned low enough to reveal a dark nosegay of chest hair between his fl abby pecs.

It had grown just cloudy enough outside that he couldn’t see us beyond the hallway lights and his own refl ection. His cape lining fl ashed scarlet each time he swung to inspect a classroom.

Lulu stood up. “I’ll let him know where we are.”

Fay drew her feet onto the sofa and curled up against me.

“Bet you the sun goes out right when he gets here. Bet you a million dollars.”

“Bet you you’re totally right,” I said.

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The door closed behind Lulu, and we watched her wave to get Santangelo’s attention.

Fay lifted my hand again, started twisting the ring gently back and forth on my fi nger.

“Mooney told you,” she said.

Not a question.

She raised her head to look at me, and I nodded.

“It’s okay if Lulu knows,” she said. “Just promise you won’t tell anybody else. Not yet.”

Santangelo and Lulu were heading for us. I didn’t know what to say.

“I know it’s not like we can keep this a secret forever,” she said, “but Mooney’s so fragile right now. If I just had a little more time to help get him calm . . .”

“How long until your birthday?”

“Five days.”

“If Lulu thinks it’s okay, we’ll wait until then,” I said.

The sun dipped below a bank of clouds at the horizon.

Santangelo opened the door and slammed on all the lights.

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7

Santangelo twitched his cape and lowered himself onto the sofa, knees apart to make room for the sheer mass of his belly.

Fay started shivering again, leaning against me harder.

“Poor kid,” he said, patting her knee. “I know this must be awfully hard for you.”

She turned her face into my shoulder.

Santangelo looked from Lulu to me. “I think Fay could use a nice cup of hot cocoa, don’t you? A little break before she goes back to the dorms.”

He shoved himself upright, groaning with the effort.

“Can’t I stay here?” Fay asked.

One chubby paw emerged from Santangelo’s cape in answer to that.

Fay ignored his open palm and rose to her feet. “I like the kind with marshmallows.”

“I know,” said Santangelo. “And there’s even whipped cream.”

He wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulders to gather her 4 3

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in, a gesture of supportive concern belied by his no-nonsense grip on her closer wrist.

Lulu opened the door, kicking down its rubber-tipped stop so she could move aside to let them through.

“We’ll call the hospital and make sure they’re taking good care of Mooney. Then you can tell me all about what happened,”

Santangelo said to Fay.

“I will,” she said, raising crossed fi ngers to the small of her back as they stepped across the threshold.

Lulu shoved the glass door shut behind them, fi ghting the tension in its hydraulic arm to get the job done faster.

“Jesus
Christ,
” she said, watching them go. “Please tell me you’ve got a couple of smokes tucked into that jacket, Madeline, because I need a few blessed moments of illicit-vice inhalation after all that
drama.
”

I patted my Camel-hiding pocket. “The woods or your place?”

“The woods are closer,” she said.

We waited for Santangelo and Fay to reach the end of the hall, then hauled ourselves out a back window to make our getaway undetected.

“Why the hell I ever left the old homestead. What possessed me?” said Lulu, hunkered down Indian-style under the abandoned grape-arbor hideout we’d stumbled upon during our fi rst week here.

The structure twisted in the embrace of its gnarled vines, hung with swags of shriveling black fruit that perfumed the air with a seder-wine Concord tang. The western sky sported streaks of orange and pink.

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I shook a pair of Camels loose from my crumpled pack and lit hers fi rst.

Lulu blew a stream of smoke into the shadows. “Dhumavati told me we’d hold off on the faculty meeting until she brings Mooney back from the hospital.”

“
Fuck
me,” I said. “I promised Dean I’d make it home for dinner tonight. Again.”

“Poor Dean.”

“A patient man, as husbands go, but getting testy,” I said.

“You can’t blame him. With all these goddamn meetings, he barely sees you.”

“I got home so late last night, he said he fi gures if I stay here one more week, they’re gonna shave my head and make me sell fl owers in an airport.”

Lulu laughed. “He’s a keeper, that boy.
And
he’s got a sense of humour.”

“I just don’t want to go back to Syracuse. Took me three years to pry him loose.”

“Has he brought it up yet?”

“Any day now.”

We’d moved here to the Berkshires from Dean’s hometown when the Southern Pacifi c told him they wanted two of the rail grinders he’d designed. He’d been antsy to start work ever since we arrived in August, but the contracts had to clear layer after layer of management fi rst. When his inside-contact guy said fi nal approval was a sure thing by the fi rst of November, Dean began negotiations for shop space in a derelict factory outside Pittsfi eld. We’d met the out-of-town landlord there for a fi nal walk-through exactly a month ago—October 17, just after dinner. The Loma Prieta earthquake must have hit San Francisco 4 5

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right about when Dean and I were fi rst shaking hands with the guy.

An hour later, they agreed to meet the next afternoon to get the lease signed.

“I think that went really well,” said Dean as we drove out of the parking lot.

I’d left the radio on and was just reaching to turn it off when the BBC News announcer said, “The two-tier Bay Bridge and Nimitz Freeway have both partially collapsed, and rescuers are waiting to recover bodies from cars crushed by the quake.”

“Bay Bridge?” I turned up the volume.

“
. . .
measured six-point-nine on the Richter scale . . .” the BBC guy intoned.