Life Is Fine Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Poems Mr. Brook Read

  To His Coy Mistress

  After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes

  Life is Fine

  About the Author

  Also by Allison Whittenberg

  Copyright

  one

  There comes a point in every relationship when verbal communication becomes unnecessary. For us, the connection was something that grew over time, but looking back, there were early clues. The first time I saw him, our eyes met and locked, and the air was charged with electricity. I didn’t even notice the glass between us.

  I had been seeing him for about a year now, often skipping school to get to him before visiting hours were up. His name was Dru. He was short (only five feet), but he had long, thin arms and large, powerful hands. But his eyes were what hooked me. They were hooded and on the small side, but dreamily deep-set. I knew he’d be happier out of captivity. He’d be pleased living up in a tree, hoot-barking in his natural element in Indonesia. Instead, like me, he’d been born in Philadelphia.

  Dru still lived with his mom. On this particular day, she was farther back in the cell and, as usual, left us alone.

  He talked to me with those eyes, those hooded eyes.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I answered.

  Dru was an ape. I’m not speaking metaphorically. I’m referring to his burnt-orange hair and his simian heritage.

  But I’m kind of an animal, too. A chameleon. I blend into the scenery. I have to. I hate attention. At school, the popular girls wear barn red lipstick and low-slung jeans. I’m always more bundled and layered than the weather dictates. I think of it as protection. My black hair hangs straight, parted down the middle and curled in just a little at the bone of my chin. I wear black or brown pants with black or brown shirts.

  The announcement came on saying that time was up.

  Dru and I bade our visual farewells.

  The gold October sun was high as I ducked out of the primate center. I bypassed the fruit bat and the flamingo. I overlooked the Komodo dragon and the kookaburra.

  Outside the zoo, the world churned and bubbled with agitation. It was rush hour. The bus stop was crowded with people. A group of girls swayed to the beat coming from a boom box. An older woman read a dog-eared Bible.

  “Damn, why you looking so evil?” A nearby toothless man tried to make me smile.

  But he only made me frown more. I hate to act on demand.

  I had a window seat. Around Girard Avenue, I looked out and saw a man peeing on a tree. He was ordinary otherwise, a young man in a sweatshirt and blue jeans. The city has a way of being so public it’s private. Maybe he thought he was in the seclusion of his bathroom. Or maybe he just couldn’t hold it and didn’t want to have to pay. A lot of stores won’t let you use their facilities if you don’t buy something first.

  The bus let me off four blocks from my house. There were For Sale signs all over my neighborhood. None of the houses were particularly big, so they weren’t much to take care of. Yet they had gotten shabbier and shabbier as the years melted on. Grids of black metal bars over the windows and doors were their only home improvements.

  Paint peeled and no one repainted. Shutters and shingles fell and no one replaced them. Then in came these outsiders, and they bought the houses for a song.

  Drug dealers cooperated with this buyout and kindly moved their business elsewhere.

  When I got to my house, I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. I hunched in the doorway before entering. I had to mentally prepare myself to go inside. When I did, CD cases snapped under my feet. Magazines, junk mail, various sections of the newspaper, and stacks of catalogs were all over the floor of the living room. There were crumbs on the end tables and scuffs on the wall. The banister needed painting.

  I would go days without seeing or hearing from my mom. On average, she worked sixty hours a week. As a consolation prize, I got Q.

  A grown man named after a letter.

  He was eight years younger than my mom and eight years older than me. He was how Mom got her groove back.

  But I’d been po’d at Q for the past two years. Mom had known him for only seven weeks before he came moving on in. (Great example, Mom.)

  Now he rested on the couch with his cotton-socked feet on the coffee table. Why wear shoes? Where did he have to go?

  As far as I could tell, he was not trained in anything. My mom was his only means of support.

  He would lie on the couch, snacking on pork rinds and Mountain Dew. The way Q snacked, he should have weighed three thousand pounds. Instead, he was wiry like a worm.

  He had a daughter somewhere I had heard him mention once or twice. I think she was five or six. Anyway, he never visited her.

  They say it’s nice to have a man around the house. Yet the last time there was a power outage, I was the one standing on a stepladder fiddling with the circuit breaker.

  The TV blared Judge Mathis. Q looked up at me icily. I glared back at him. We’d gotten out of the habit of speaking to each other a long time ago.

  I hated him.

  He didn’t contribute to the household but easily got more use out of the place than either Mom or I. He was always watching cable TV or opening the refrigerator door. He was really icky to look at. He had large pores and more acne than most people my age. But it wasn’t his downright homeliness I resented. I hated his thereness.

  Mom didn’t care how much I disliked Q. She had her own life to lead, as she told me on the occasions when I spoke with her.

  I didn’t know my father. I believed I should, for medical history if nothing else. The old saying wasn’t true. Ignorance wasn’t bliss.

  Maybe my somewhere father didn’t know I existed. Maybe that was why he never contacted me with a phone call or a postcard or an e-mail. By land, air, or sea.

  I’d been up against Q for the past two years. And before Q, there was someone worse.

  Sometimes I imagined I came from a loving family. A biscuit-baking mom, a nine-to-five wage-slave father, and two sisters, one younger and one older. Or maybe they could both be younger, but not by too much of a gap. This imaginary family included a dog, a collie named Schulley. Each afternoon, my mom and dad would ask me about my day. I’d blow them off because I needed my space.

  “Honey, are you upset about something? Do you want to talk about it?” my pretend mom would say.

  “I’m busy,” I’d call over my shoulder, closing the bedroom door behind me. As for my two sisters (let’s call them Claudia and Denise), they loved me so much they were always hanging out in my room, but who had time for them? I’d be dating a cool-as-hell dropout. I’d ride on the back of his motorcycle and clutch him like a caterpillar.

  Instead of being met by my ideal family, that evening, like so many others, I was stuck heating a frozen burrito at dinnertime for my one-thousandth meal alone.

  Life was really something. I often thought maybe I should read one of those self-help books. With assisted knowledge, I might easily conclude that the first fifteen years of my life were cr
ap, but maybe, just maybe, the next fifteen years would be better.

  I needed a thing, something to lean on. I felt like abusing a drug, but I didn’t know which. Or developing an eating disorder, but I didn’t know how. Being in love with an orangutan was the only monkey on my back.

  I figured I could up my smoking habit. I pinched cigarettes from my mom. If she noticed, she never said.

  Another year down the toilet.

  I hated my life in this cluttered, hollow house. I should have had my own life, but I didn’t. All I had was Dru, an orangutan. That was it.

  two

  The next morning, I hit the snooze button seven times. The day was beginning without me, but I really didn’t care.

  I was late for school, and I was sent directly to the guidance counselor, Bowman. He was a short man, starting to go a little around the waist, but otherwise lanky, even stern looking. He sat in a green imitation-leather armchair.

  When he asked me about my poor attendance, I said nothing.

  He shuffled through my file and told me to speak up for myself.

  “I don’t have anything to say,” I said.

  “That’s counterproductive,” he said. “Just sitting there with no explanation. You’ve crossed the threshold. You’ve been absent fourteen times so far.”

  I dug in my knapsack and pulled out a cigarette.

  “Put that away,” he told me.

  I flicked my lighter till it produced a flame.

  “Put it away,” he repeated.

  “Can I ask you a question first?” I inquired, holding the fire to the cigarette’s end.

  “What’s your question?” He frowned.

  I took a draw. “Mind if I smoke?”

  He took the cigarette from my lips. He held it like it was poisonous before depositing it in the trash.

  “It’s just a question.”

  “Do you want to pass? Do you want to get through this?” He wagged his finger at me. “You keep treating this lightly and you’ll find the joke is on you. You’ll find your whole life has passed you by.”

  He sounded pissed. Like I had hurt him personally. I rolled my eyes. The last thing I needed was a five-minute father.

  “You’re right,” I said, rising as if inspired. “I’ve seen the light. I’m going to try out for the glee club, the cheerleading squad, and maybe even the football team!”

  Back in the halls, things were noisy with all the roars and rumbles and calls and cries. Kids ran around. It was all so surreal, a mosaic of faces that meant nothing to me. All my life I’d been lonely. It’s like I was genetically predisposed. I don’t remember playing jacks or marbles with anyone, even. There are some people who are popular, who everyone else gloms on to. Then there are those who are jeered at. Then there are the anonymous ones like me, who attract only sporadic concern from the guidance counselor.

  My first period was English, the easiest class in the history of high school. Krista Flanders never worked us to the bell or even near it. She always gave us class time to do homework. She was so lax, she once came to class in flip-flops, like she’d just arrived from some beach in Wildwood.

  Just as I sat down the weird girl who didn’t wear a bra walked in. She took a seat by the wall. I never knew what her outfits were trying to say. I think it’s called punk when you wear safety pins, leather jackets, tight black pants, and T-shirts with British bands on them. Blue was the color of choice for her lipstick and hair, which cut quite a contrast with her medium brown complexion.

  My eyes moved to the brainiac in the class, who sat up front and volunteered for things, letting everyone know he was in the room.

  It was three minutes past the start of class. Where the hell was Flanders?

  I kept my eyes on the door. A man strolled in. He introduced himself as Jerome Halbrook. He placed a “Mr.” in front of it. He might as well have put a “sir” before it. At least he didn’t say “I’m your substitute today.” I rolled my eyes anyway. Though elderly, he didn’t seem fragile. You know how some old people walk with a shuffle, slow-moving and sullen? Mr. Jerome Halbrook was energetic. Maybe he was prematurely gray. He was striking and of sharp construction. He had a dark oblong face, and his cheekbones elegantly jutted out.

  A few students snickered when they saw him. Dignity intact, he stood proudly at the board.

  He wore schoolteacher regalia—a suit and a tie. It occurred to me that he was the only one in the building with a tie on. The principal, Lauter, went only as far as a blazer and jeans. And with those, Lauter left his shirt collar open so his bull neck could breathe.

  This Mr. Jerome Halbrook passed out a sheet of paper with a poem on it. We neeeeeever did poetry with Flanders. I didn’t think we were missing anything. Poetry was pointless. At least fiction could be turned into a movie. I looked at the clock—only nine minutes down.

  Did he really think he was going to occupy us for the whole period with this drek? He asked us to read the poem to ourselves. After we read the poem silently, the sub closed his eyes as if he were about to pray. Then he opened them and began reading aloud. He was a great reader. There was a deep, silken quality to his voice, crawling inside each word, each syllable.

  The title of the poem was “To His Coy Mistress,” written by someone named Andrew Marvell. It was written as a conversation, though only one person was talking. The main character in the poem, a man, was trying to get a woman to have relations with him. She was shy, and the poem insinuated that she’d never had sex before. She was called “coy” because she was scared. She was also young, I guessed about my age. She was told by her pursuer that life was short, and that if she did not give in right now, she might not have the chance again.

  “Carpe diem. Seize the day!” the sub gushed, and he repeated the last line of the poem. “ ‘Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run.’ ”

  I really didn’t know high art, but I hardly found this profound. Beauty crumbles into death, and that’s what all the makeup ads in those shiny women’s magazines never tell you. . . . They try to make you think face cream will stave off the inevitable. A woman is like a flower. Everyone’s interested in her when she’s young and perky, but when she’s old and brittle, one touch and the petals fall, and no one sends her instant messages anymore. Blah, blah, blah.

  The substitute kept lauding the classic construction of the poem. Its ingenuity.

  Then he went on and on and on and on and on about this being not only one of the best poems ever written, but also his personal favorite.

  I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “He’s just trying to get into her pants,” I blurted out.

  Every head turned in my direction. There was a splash of laughter.

  “What is your name, young lady?” the sub asked.

  “Samara,” I answered.

  “Well, Samara, can you go further with your thought?”

  The class was still looking at me hard. I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I had any friends to lose. “It’s obvious that the girl is underage and this old dude is just trying to jump her bones.”

  “Are you quite certain, Samara, that that is all this poem is about?” he asked me.

  “I’m certain that old men want to sleep with young girls,” I answered.

  With that, the class was really going, and I figured why close the barn door now, the horse is gone. “Why is the girl ‘coy’ in the first place?” I asked as I pointed to the word on the page. “Maybe she’s just not that into him. She has every right to keep her ‘quaint honor’ and he has no right to suggest that ‘worms’ will ‘try’ her ‘virginity.’ ”

  “Don’t you recognize symbolism?” the brainiac in the front row said to me.

  “Virgins are people, not symbols,” that weird girl by the wall said.

  “You’re both taking it too literally,” the same boy said.

  “The poem says ‘let us sport us while we may,’ ” I argued.

  “Yeah, marry the first bum that comes along an
d live in a trailer park,” the weird girl said.

  “It’s a carpe diem poem, what else is it supposed to say?” asked the brainiac. “It’s just like that other one. You know what I’m talking about—” He gestured to the sub. “It starts, ‘Gather ye rosebuds.’ ”

  “ ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.’ ‘For having lost but once your prime / You may forever tarry.’ ”

  “What’s ‘tarry’?” a girl in row three with her hair in a loose knot asked.

  “Wait,” the smart guy answered. “The poet warns the girl that she may be waiting forever.”

  “Talk about a full-court press,” the weird girl said. “These horny guys will have you believing they are the last men on earth.”

  The class really laughed at that. Laughter hung in the air like smoke. Some people clapped. We never had a discussion like this with Flanders.

  “Back to the poem, what if I were to tell you that this poem alludes to the great era of exploration in England and the popular fascination with the East?” the sub asked.

  For the next several minutes, our words chased down that alley. We spoke of how at the time of Marvell’s poem, which was published in 1681, the sun never set on the British Isles. That tiny country was able to stretch its tentacles of influence to affect the entire world.

  But it wasn’t long before our textual analysis swerved back to the idea that the poem is really about sex.

  “The feeling of bliss can disappear, and what is left is your heart, which contains your true feelings,” the AP wannabe said.

  “All the poem talks about is the beauty of her skin and her body,” the weird girl said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “It’s just a game he’s talking. This man desires something, and he will do anything to get it.”

  “That’s right,” I agreed.

  “Like an animal hunts its prey,” the weird girl insisted.

  The substitute’s eyes glinted with satisfaction at all the discussion he had inspired.

  “Just like an animal will do when it needs to eat and get its prey to satisfy its hunger. This man wants the mistress to satisfy his desires,” I said.

  The bell rang. Time was up already.