Life Is Fine Read online

  “This is what they do at concerts.”

  Amused passersby looked at us.

  “Wow! He lives here, Samara. He’s rich and he’s a substitute teacher. . . . Let’s drop in.”

  “No!” I screamed.

  “I’ll call to him. Hello! I say there, Mr. Jerome Halbrook, hello there!” Steph’Annie affected a British accent as she called up to him.

  “Steph’Annie!”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll stop.”

  We walked away from the building.

  Steph’Annie pinched my arm. “Have you called dude yet?”

  “Dude?” I asked.

  “Dude, from the fifties joint.”

  “No.”

  She screeched and said, “Somebody knows the rules.”

  “I just don’t want to throw myself at him.”

  Steph’Annie snapped her fingers. “Talk that talk, man trap. So you’ll call him tonight?”

  “Isn’t the guy supposed to be the one who initiates things?”

  “You must think you’re in one of those poems that sub brought in. It’s the twenty-first century. It’s okay for you to pursue him. Besides, you know he’s interested.”

  “I don’t know for a fact. Anyway, I don’t want to look like I have nothing going on.”

  “What do you have going on?”

  “Nothing. But I have my pride.”

  “Swallow your pride. Dial the ten digits. Don’t be coy.”

  I wasn’t used to being nice and trying to make friends. But I ended up calling him. Trying to, without the aid of that self-help book I kept meaning to read.

  “Hello . . . Jeff?” I said haltingly.

  “Samara?” he asked in a shaky, thin voice. He sounded as nervous as I was, but that of course didn’t affect my timidness.

  I wanted a cigarette badly, but I forged ahead without the vice. At the end of our talk, he asked me on a date.

  I said yes.

  twelve

  Everything was set for my first-ever-in-my-whole-life date. It was to be Friday at six. I spent the time leading up to it hoping the night would be a failure. Because Jeff was hot, I didn’t want it to work out. Dating him would be like eating ice cream; it would just be a matter of time before it disappeared. Everything taps out, and then what would I be left with? Sweet memories? Sticky fingers? Solitude again? If I liked to write, I thought I would make a wonderful Emily Dickinson. Who needs human contact, anyway?

  Mr. Brook was back on Monday. Like a pint of Häagen-Dazs Rocky Road, he stood there taunting me. At room temperature, I was the one that melted.

  “May I see you for a minute after class?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a minute after class; I have to get to algebra,” I told him, hoping to sound strong.

  “Well then.” Unflustered, he grinned. “Whenever you can squeeze me in.”

  Who was I kidding? Just seeing him filled my heart with joy. I quavered, though—why did he want to see me? I began to worry that he’d seen Steph’Annie and me goofing around outside his apartment. I thought a little more and guessed maybe it was about the last time we’d spoken when I had exploded in anger. By lunch, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I found him in his empty classroom perusing the New York Times.

  “Look, I’m sorry I spoke to you the way I did last week. I didn’t mean any of it. I know you were only trying to help.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Oh, yes, I do. I want to clear the air.”

  “The air is pretty clear, Samara.”

  “Right. Sure. That’s why you asked me to see you.”

  “That’s not why I asked to see you.”

  “Then why?”

  “Have you finished the book?”

  “Book? You mean Immortal Poetry?”

  “Yes.”

  I lied. “I read a little of it.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re savoring it,” he said, then returned to his New York Times.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  He peered at the arts section. “Yes.”

  “That’s all you wanted to ask me?” I asked. Again.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s just a stupid book. Why do you care so much?”

  He folded the paper. “I care for you, Samara.”

  “Then why did you push me away last week?”

  “Because I care for you.”

  Angry and exasperated, I decided to storm out, but before I did, I wanted to tell him one more thing. “You know what you are?” I asked him. “You are a needle.”

  “A needle can either mend or pierce,” he told me.

  “Well, you’re definitely not stitching.”

  “Let me try a new thread.”

  I turned to leave. “Save your thread.”

  “Samara—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Whatever . . . Let’s just stop it. I mean, there’s not anything between you and me, and there shouldn’t be, so let’s just stop it. Everything.”

  I was at the door, seconds away from my exit.

  “Page one eighty-two,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “One-eight-two. In the book. I want you to read that poem, when you can. . . . No rush.”

  Now I really, really, really wanted to leave.

  “Samara.”

  “What?”

  “I remember being your age. I was confused and lonely and no one understood me. I’m from the South, and there boys were supposed to play football and be interested in cars and I always went to the library. I liked to read. I remember looking at a map of the world. You know, those big ones that fold out. I stared at it seemingly for hours. Who do I want to be? Where do I want to go?”

  “You did all that studying, and you still ended up in Philadelphia.”

  He smiled. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I? All I’m saying is that if you let your dreams die, life becomes monotonous. Life becomes just one long string of Mondays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays and—”

  “I know the days of the week.” I interrupted him.

  “Life becomes bleak with despair if you let it. . . . I hope you reported him to the proper authorities.”

  I recoiled. “Who?”

  “That man who was inappropriate to you.”

  My whole body went cold. “How could you possibly—”

  “The way you reacted to that first poem I brought in.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Was that why he sicced Bowman on me? How could he know from one answer what my mother still didn’t believe? “He used to come into my room. Most of the time he’d just feel me up and kiss on me, but sometimes . . .” I trailed off.

  “How old were you?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Didn’t you tell your mother?”

  “She was hard to get to. She thought she’d hit the jackpot with him. He was an engineer. I don’t know what engineers do, but I know that’s a good job and he made a lot of money. He fixed a lot of things around the house.”

  “Samara—” he began, but I kept on talking over his words.

  “I got lucky, though. His great job ended up saving me. He got transferred to California,” I said in one breath before exiting. I went to the girls’ room to splash some cool water on my face. It was burning.

  thirteen

  Their low voices broke off when I entered.

  Q and Q’s mistress (she had on a different wig; it fit like a thick black hood around her face) turned just in time to catch me ducking into my room. I quickly busied myself. I flicked on the radio and turned the dial from easy listening to Top 40 to salsa. This station blared trumpets, trombones, maracas, and congas. It matched the fury of Q when he busted in.

  “What are you doing?” he yelled.

  I sat at the edge of my bed. Remain cool, I told myself.

  “What are you going to do?” he continued.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” I mumbled.

  He appro
ached me, drawing closer until his breath was on me. It smelled like a mixture of Funyuns and Mountain Dew.

  “It better be,” he said; then he slammed the door when he left.

  I lay down on the bed. I remembered the hospital, how Mom had cut me down before I could mount my protest.

  Mr. Brook was right. You have to make your own tomorrow. But how?

  I hated my home, but I couldn’t imagine doing what he did—going to a library one afternoon and sitting at one of those big tables, pulling out one of those huge maps and looking at it, studying it, circling which places I’d like to visit.

  Where do I want to live?

  What country of bliss?

  What is the zip code for happiness?

  The next day in class, there was a great frenzy up front. Kids were pointing to the floor, saying, “Look at them!”

  “What are you referring to?” Mr. Brook asked.

  “There’s a trail of ants!” the AP wannabe screeched.

  “Well, they want to learn, too,” Mr. Brook quipped. “Just because they aren’t enrolled doesn’t mean they can’t sit in.”

  The class laughed as they moved purses, lunch bags, and knapsacks off the floor. Some even drew their legs up on their chairs. Mr. Brook was un-freaked by the goings-on. He was such a change from Flanders. I remembered once there was a fire drill, and she was the first one out of the classroom, shoving the girl who sat by the door out of her way.

  Then again, what did Mr. Brooks have to fear? Those ants wouldn’t dare try to get up his pants legs or over his leather shoes.

  He was reading Langston Hughes with such looseness, especially the last few lines: “So since I’m still here livin’, / I guess I will live on. / I could’ve died for love—/ But for livin’ I was born.”

  “You can really rock the mike,” Steph’Annie said as she stood and started her own standing ovation. “That was like, whoa!”

  He explained that this Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, but went on to become the most important writer of something that was referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, which was a blossoming of blacks in the arts. Hughes traveled to West Africa in the 1920s, the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s, and Korea in the 1940s.

  “He must have been rich,” said the girl in front who was afraid of ants.

  “Was he in the army?” someone else asked.

  “Actually, he worked his way across the world as a ship steward.”

  “He took a boat?” the AP wannabe asked.

  “That’s the best way to go. Out there in the big blue. How many of you have ever been at sea?” Mr. Brook asked.

  A boy in a muscle shirt waved him away. “Man, that’s too much water.”

  “Yeah, we don’t even like to get in the bathtub,” someone up front called out.

  Mr. Brook got back on topic, telling us Langston Hughes wrote sixteen volumes of poems, three short-story collections, two novels, twenty plays, and more—and I thought Emily Dickinson had too much time on her hands.

  “Langston Hughes said that poetry should be direct, comprehensible, and the epitome of simplicity,” Mr. Brook told us.

  “What does ‘epitome’ mean?” asked the girl who was afraid of ants.

  I popped in on him during his free period, saying, “Leave it to you to cheer us up with a suicide poem.”

  “Samara,” he said happily.

  “That was the best one yet,” I said, stepping into the room.

  “I thought you would have recognized that poem. It was in the book I lent you, on page one eighty-two.”

  I gulped. “You caught me there. I’ll read it tonight. I promise. I mean I really promise this time.” I walked closer to him so I could get the full benefit of those blue eyes.

  “Let’s go to Ahab’s again,” I suggested. “We could catch up.”

  “I have somewhere to go after the workday,” he told me.

  “Oh,” I said, and wondered if he could tell how fast my heart was sinking.

  “I would like to go,” he reassured me.

  “But you have something more important,” I said, then immediately felt like smacking myself.

  “It’s not like that, Samara.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said quickly. “So where do you have to go?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Is it a secret?” I asked.

  “I guess you could say that.”

  “If it’s a secret, then you have to tell me.”

  He grinned. “I have a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Well, then you better keep it. You old people should keep on top of things.” I winked at him. As I headed for the door, I added, “I’m glad we’re friends again.”

  “So am I, Samara,” he said.

  fourteen

  That night I read Immortal Poetry, and into the next morning my head was swimming with images and ideas. On the school bus, for once I wasn’t peering out the window expecting to see a man peeing on a tree. I was so gone. Oh, Mr. Brook, Mr. Brook, Mr. Brook.

  As I entered my first-period class, I didn’t see Mr. Brook with all his debonair allure. Bowman’s bland countenance took his place. He told us he would be our substitute, and we should catch up on our studies for other classes.

  “What happened to the old dude?” asked the AP wannabe.

  “Just take something out and work on it,” Bowman told him.

  Steph’Annie’s eyes were like saucers. She scribbled in the margin of her notebook, “Where do you think he is?”

  I wrote back, “I’m going to find out.”

  I stood, inhaled deeply, threw back my shoulders, and approached Bowman. “Where is he?”

  “He’s not here,” Bowman said. He had files spread out on the desk. He was making notations in them and didn’t look up to answer.

  “I can see that. Where is he?”

  “Hahnemann University Hospital,” he said finally.

  “What!” I exclaimed.

  Steph’Annie eyed me quizzically from the third row.

  Bowman shifted his position but still didn’t look at me.

  He whispered this part. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but his cancer—”

  “His cancer? He doesn’t have any cancer,” I said loudly. “He’s fine. I saw him just yesterday.”

  Now everyone was looking.

  “That’s the way cancer works, Samara. It doesn’t hurt until it starts to hurt, and then it really hurts. He had lung cancer a few years back. It had been in remission but now it’s spread to his brain.”

  “No. That can’t be.”

  “It’s causing bleeding, and they are trying to stabilize him. Now that’s all I know, Samara.” Bowman’s eyes finally snapped to me. “Please return to your seat.”

  Instead, as if I were in a trance, I went into the hallway.

  He followed me. “Where are you going?” he asked. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  I ignored him and walked.

  “Samara, come back here.”

  I ignored his calls and continued toward an exit. I’d never tried it like this, escaping in plain sight.

  “Samara,” Bowman bellowed from the doorway. “Get back in the classroom.”

  Steph’Annie came out, squeezing behind Bowman without detection. She mouthed to me to meet her in the girls’ room.

  “Samara, if you take one more step, I will call the police and have them deal with you.”

  I stopped walking. “Okay,” I said. “Let me get myself together.” I pointed to the restroom.

  “I’ll give you two minutes.”

  I nodded and kept nodding and feigning agreement.

  “Two minutes.” He held up two fingers.

  I met up with Steph’Annie by the stalls; we ran down the back stairs and escaped into the world.

  I hated the hospital. I hated the whole lame setup: there’s never closure. First you have symptoms, then you wait; then you get the diagnosis, then you wait; more treatment, then you wait s
ome more; then if you actually have something wrong, you get a lifetime of waiting.

  I also hated Hahnemann because that was where Mom worked.

  When we entered, Steph’Annie did most of the talking. “We’re looking for Mr. Jerome Halbrook.”

  “Can you spell that?” the woman at the front desk asked. She had a definite Philadelphia accent: nasal.

  Steph’Annie took his name letter by letter and at the end told her, “We’re his daughters.”

  After typing it into the computer, she told us, “He’s in the intensive care unit.”

  “Damn” slipped out of my mouth. I was surprised I didn’t say more.

  “Where is that?” Steph’Annie asked.

  “Right next to the emergency room.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  We hurried. The click of Steph’Annie’s steeltoe boots was amplified in the bare halls.

  At the entrance to the ICU, a heavily made-up nurse with bright red lips greeted us. “Who are you here to see?”

  “Mr. Halbrook. We’re his granddaughters,” Steph’Annie said smoothly.

  In intensive care, there were no doors, just curtains that you could quickly slide open for easy access. My worst fears were realized inside. In a crisp white-sheeted bed, Mr. Brook had breathing tubes up his nose. He was on a monitor. Electronic equipment up the wazoo, and he was out cold.

  He’s going to die, I thought.

  Steph’Annie bowed, crossed herself, and told me, “Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems.”

  The curtain opened, and a mop-headed man rushed in with a stethoscope around his neck and a clipboard in hand.

  “You’re both his daughters?” he asked.

  He was accompanied by that nurse with the gardenia-red-painted lips from the hall and that nasal-voiced attendant from the info booth.

  “No, they’re the granddaughters,” the one from the hall said skeptically.

  The jig was up.

  “No, actually, we’re his nieces. And we have to make a phone call to our other uncle,” Steph’Annie told them, clutching my hand as we made our way to the curtain. “Come on, sis.”

  The regular cafeteria was closed. There was an alcove that had soft pink walls. All that was available there was a bland assortment of things soft and sweet.