The Portable Promised Land Read online

  “She refused. So I opened the door, ripped off her seat belt, and... pushed her out.” He looked down and folded his lips like people do when they’re embarrassed. It was completely silent. Charisma had her blond hair pulled back into a long ponytail, her shoulders scrunched, her hands pressed over her chest, you know, the place people touch when they’re touched. But something made me wonder if she’d heard the story before.

  “I was just trying to save my son. He was so pure and good and I couldn’t let her take the smile from his face. Just couldn’t. He’d smiled through late feedings, dirty diapers, bloody knees, all the little traumas that kids go through. He’d smiled for four years, three months, and twelve days straight. I couldn’t let her stop that.

  “I drove off. When I looked in the back my son wasn’t really smiling anymore. His little face was kindof trembling like kids do when they’re on the verge of crying, like the earth does before a volcano. His eyes had this confused look. He’d never cried before and I think he didn’t even know what was happening to him. I pulled the car over and talked to him softly and rubbed his face, but his face kept on trembling and it just broke my heart to see him like that. I tried to think of what my wife would do and then I tried to think of what was going through her mind at that crazy moment. I realized I’d made a mess of things, so I turned around. I went back to get my wife and see if I could do something to rectify the situation with him and with her. I had no idea what I could say to make things right, but I had to try. But while I was driving back Maximillion’s face kept on trembling more and more terribly. I saw his little mouth turn downward. I saw his eyes lined with a bit of water. I made it back to the intersection where I left her. She was still there, standing by the side of the road, but then Maximillion broke and let loose this giant cry. It was the most awful sound I’d ever heard in my life. I turned around and looked back at him. I never saw it coming.”

  I’m like, Holy shit, and put my hands over the place people touch when they’re touched.

  “I heard a loud honk and went for the brakes but before my foot could touch them there was an incredibly loud thud, like a three-dimensional sound. My head whipped back. Then there were all these pea-sized pieces of glass flying through the air. The car was sliding sideways and the grill of a Jeep Cherokee was ripping through the passenger-side door. Its headlights were shining on my face. There was a giant screeching of brakes, which I thought was strange because my foot wasn’t on the pedal. But inside I was okay because my son wasn’t crying. All I knew was that my son wasn’t crying.”

  He stops. “My wife was the first person to reach us. She jumped up on the hood and leaned in through where the front windshield should’ve been. That’s when I knew something was really wrong.” He stops again. “After his funeral I never saw her again.”

  After a while someone says, “Is it hard to go on after something like that?”

  “Of course,” he says. “I feel guilty every day. I was trying to do the right thing. But sometimes, no matter how good your intentions, even if your heart is completely in the right place, bad things can happen and you’ll never know why.”

  I walk out more in love with Mr. Sage than ever. He’s so real. He’s like the only person in this little walled-off insane asylum that you can trust to tell you the things that really matter. Like, this place is a dark thought prison where we’re taught exactly what to think and he’s a little window smuggling in truth and light.

  As I’m walking back to the dorm, Peter Greenleaf comes up behind me and starts talking to me. He’s tall and cute and muscled like the boys in the Abercrombie catalog. His father and grandfather went to Cricket and played on the lacrosse team. Peter plays lacrosse, too. He never speaks in class. I wonder if his father and grandfather never spoke in class.

  “I heard how you scammed Charisma,” he says. “That was awesome!” I realize I have no idea how his voice sounds before that second.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Fuck her!”

  “Yeah.”

  “So where ya goin? Can I walk you back to the dorm?”

  “I guess.”

  “Where do you stay?”

  “Hathaway.” The boys’ dorms are these big converted mansions right on campus, but Cricket began admitting girls only like forty years ago so the girls’ dorms are these quaint little houses about 100 miles down the road from the main campus, so after a long day of class and sports, you have to walk down Squibble Road for like fifteen hours to get home. The only good thing about it, the older girls say, is that if a boy walks all that way it means he really likes you.

  “You’re pretty,” Peter says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Say, uh, ya wanna go to Miss, uh, Porter’s with me?” Miss Porter was this impossibly old woman who lived at the edge of town who every year hosted a formal dinner dance for Cricket students. It was this super classy thing where people had to act all dainty and polite and not eat with the wrong fork and do everything with exquisite manners the way people acted a hundred years ago. The thing was, you could only go if you were specially invited by Miss Porter herself or someone she’s invited.

  I think, He didn’t ask me if I had an escort. How does he know I don’t already have an escort? Then I think, Don’t go there. And when I can’t think of anything right to say, I say, “Sure.”

  “Great!” Peter says. “We’ll talk more about it later. Bye!” He turns around and starts walking back to school.

  I begin thinking about going to the dance with Peter and I see us doing some stupid stiff-spine dancing or whatever and though I know I’ll hate Miss Porter’s stupid affair, it wouldn’t be so bad to hang around this movie-star boy. What if he likes me? What’ll I do? And I smile like I haven’t smiled in years. Maybe ever. But what if he’s just pretending? What if he’s just doing this on Charisma’s behalf, to start the tormenting? What if he’s setting me up or something and then I start to feel faint and out of nowhere Paul starts up again, superloud. “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me...!”

  I can’t believe it. I start looking around everywhere like Charisma has planted some secret boombox right there to mess with me, but I know this is beyond even her so I just start running down Squibble. I drop all my books and start sprinting down the middle of the road feeling the wind in my hair and my ears, but no matter how fast and far I go the song follows me, gaining volume until I can’t even hear the wind whooshing in my ears. “And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me...!” What’s wrong with me? “Shine until tomorrow...! Let it be!” I try to think but the song takes me over and pushes at the edges of my skull and I wanna scream it hurts so bad but I can’t even consider screaming or anything because my body is kidnapped and I have no control and I feel myself collapse and lay out on the pavement and start shaking and twitching like some possessed person right in the middle of Squibble. I know I’m on the ground, I know cars might come, I know other girls will come, but I can’t get up. All I can do is sing: “I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me! Speaking words of wisdom.... Let it be!”

  This time they send me to the big hospital in town and put me in the child psych ward. They put me through some tests and give me some pills and after a while four doctors come in and tell me I have musical epilepsy, an extremely rare thing. They say it just means that in times of anxiety or whatever I have a fit and I hear this song really loud. Gee, thanks. They ask me what the song means to me, but I have no idea. I keep expecting them to be like, we’re gonna put you in a big glass case and cart you around to a bunch of medical conventions. I hear that’s what happens when you get a really rare disease. But they just say the fits should be controlled with medication and give me a prescription for Prozac. Which is alright because a bunch of girls in my class take Prozac. They bring in some lady therapist and after two seconds I can see she’s lame so I zero in on exactly what I’ve got to say to get out of there and by Sunday afternoon I’m back in
the dorm taking it easy. A couple girls come by and act unusually nice, the kindof nice people act when something really screwed up has happened and they’re trying to put a happy face on some bad stuff. But either they’re not very good fakers or they don’t really care because after a while their big happy smiles drop. First they say I’m stupid for leaving the hospital during the weekend and not skipping a school day. Then they say that Peter Greenleaf and three girls from another dorm saw my whole seizure and now the fact that “Let It Be” plays from inside my head is all anyone in school ever talks about. And then they say that at Sunday morning tea Charisma went around telling people I’m loony and I’m gonna end up in a mental institution. Just wonderful. Then Mother herself calls and says she’s all concerned but can’t leave her husband and will see me in May, which sounds farther away than ever. Then she seems to wonder aloud in this really sweet and totally passive-aggressive sorta tone if I, maybe, induced this whole epilepsy thing just to get us to come back a touch sooner and you know, come to think of it, I’ve never even heard of ear epilepsy so be a dear and tell Mother again, what exactly is this... thing? I say, “Mother, I have to go. They’re playing my song.” And I hang up.

  Once I’m alone I begin thinking of where I know “Let It Be” from, because I’ve never been much of a Beatles fan, but my mind is too tired for deep concentration so I just let it roam and after a while I think, It’s Sunday. And I hate Sundays. Sundays are slow and syrupy and just overall sad. When I was a kid I used to bawl every Sunday evening because it was just such a sad time. Like, Sunday is the end of the week and a nice syrupy Sunday morning is cool, but by midday you just feel like everything is moving slow and you can feel your life slipping away and by Sunday evening you get that feeling you get at the end of something really good when you know the fun is over and it’s all just a memory and it’s time to go back to your regular lame life. Time to go back to trudging along toward your end. And if your end is getting closer and closer all the time and you can’t stop it, that’s kindof scary.

  I go to my computer to see if I have any e-mails, which is stupid because I never do but I always check anyway and amazingly, there’s one. From Peter Greenleaf. My heart just stops and I just know what the note says before I even open it: Peter’s canceling. I click on it and this is what comes up:

  Charisma,

  I’m officially aborting my little mission with the singin freak bitch. Bitch be too friggin weird, yo. I went and asked her to formal and she said she’d go and shit. But how come I turn around and she’s laying in the middle of Squib singin her stupid song all loud. Cassidy’s Rover almost ran her over! Why was it the funniest thing ever! But seriously, I can not be expected to be around a real live nutjob like that even one more time. My Dad and Grandpa told me that craziness can be caught — that’s why they separate them from the rest of society. I ain’t endin up in no loony bin, y’all.

  Stay bitchin,

  PG!

  I look in the header. It’s a group e-mail. Sent to like twelve people besides Charisma, including Amanda Virtue, whose e-mail address is like one number different than mine. And I’m crushed. Beyond played out. Totally defeated. Like Charisma and them are taking a bazooka and blowing all these ginormous holes in me. And I just wanna die.

  I knew it couldn’t be real with Peter. I knew it. I knew it. I KNEW it! And that’s what makes it so bad! Aaahhhh! All I can think about is getting a knife, so I get up and go down the hall and I know Julie Bloomingdale keeps a Swiss Army knife in her dresser and I know she’s at her boyfriend’s every free second so I slip into her room really quick and ease the door closed. I pull open her dresser and right on top, next to her little pink-faced Rolex and a necklace that says “Julie” in diamonds, there’s the red knife, so I stuff it in my pocket. Right next to it there’s a cigarette but it’s a really weird-looking one, like a retarded cigarette, and I’ve never smoked before but I think, this might be a good day to start, so I take that, too, and I walk-run out.

  I start over to Old Lake Clear, but as I’m walking around the back of the dorm, I hear two girls talking.

  “So they just kicked him out?”

  “Well, not officially....”

  “. . . Cuz that would cause a big stink....”

  “. . . All the parents would ask questions....”

  “. . . It’d get in the paper....”

  “. . . But they made it crystal. He has to leave. Pronto.”

  “Oh. My. Gawd.”

  “I wish he’d challenge them and then there’d be a big trial and CNN could come and he could stand up and say, ‘Nooo! I love her! I really, really looove her!’”

  “Ya gotta hand it to her. She always said she was gonna get him.”

  “Do not. Fuck. With her.”

  “Typical Charisma.”

  And right away I know I have to run to Mr. Sage’s.

  When I get there he’s stuffing boxes into his car and no one’s even helping him. He sees me standing there and stops.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he says. “I can’t talk to any student right now.”

  “What happened? How could you?”

  “I really cannot do this with you.”

  And I begin crying like a maniac. “I’m sorry.”

  He comes over and stretches his arms out to hug me, but stops before he’s even put a hand on me and drops his arms at his sides. “You really ought to go,” he says. “It’s best.”

  All I can think is that Mr. Sage’s leaving is a Really Bad Thing. Like in the movies when something totally sad and wrong and unreversible happens like someone my age dying of cancer or someone going to jail for life for something they didn’t do.

  “Just tell me something,” I say. “Please? Just one thing? You are the best person I know of in this school. I know you’re good, Mr. Sage. I know it.” But then I’m like, how do I know that if he did something with evil Charisma? How can I know what’s good and what’s evil if things like this happen? How am I supposed to know the order of the world? “But, Charisma? If you’re good then how can you end up like this with your son gone and your wife gone and you gone?” I am really crying now. I can barely understand myself through the tears and sobs and everything.

  “If you can have all sorts of bad things just happen to you, then what hope is there for someone like me?”

  He stands straight in front of me and puts a hand lightly on my head and says, “Listen. There are no easy answers to any of this and I don’t have the time to talk to you the way you deserve. I really have to go right now. But remember this: life is what you make it. If you don’t have happiness and peace inside of you then you won’t be happy any place. But if you do have happiness and peace inside of you, then you’ll be happy anywhere you go.” Then he says bye, doesn’t hug me, stuffs the last two boxes in his car real fast, and drives off, down Squibble Road, and out of my life. So I start walking to Old Lake Clear thinking, I’m a good person but I’m just not a happy person. Am I doomed to be miserable everywhere I go forever?

  I get to the clearing over by Old Lake Clear and of course no one’s around and I sit down under a big maple tree and I decide I’m gonna have my cigarette and then I’m gonna cut off my thumbs. I decide to do this because at Cricket I stick out like a sore thumb and since I’m kindof useless in the whole world, like a loose string on a sweater, what does it matter if I pick myself apart? What do I matter?

  I sit back against the tree and light the cigarette like I’ve seen kids do a million times and put it to my lips. I cough pretty hard with the first couple of puffs but I keep putting it up to my mouth and pulling in and blowing out like the smokers do and next thing I realize I’ve been just kindof laying there in a haze for a long time. My body is totally loose and all I wanna do is sit there and think. I forget the cigarette is in my hand but when I remember I can’t find the energy to pull my hand up to my mouth again.

  I start to see the world really clearly, like from an alien spaceship’s perspective,
and all of life seems really silly. All the little patterns that humans get into, all the judging and hating and making certain people important and others not important, it just suddenly seems so stupid. And I look up at the clouds. They seem to be going somewhere. Where are they going? Do they know something I don’t know? Do clouds judge each other? What is the criteria? Size? Shape? Wispiness? Do they have eyes? If they don’t, then how do they know what to think of one another? Do they find ways to hate each other? Or do they just be together?

  And then my song starts up again. “When I find myself in times of trouble.. .” but this time I’m totally happy for the company and I think it’s nice to have my own private jukebox, even if it only plays one song, and then I remember where I know the song from. “Speaking words of wisdom.... Let it be.”

  It’s a day back when I’m living at home with Mom and Dad, a Sunday morning and I go and sleep in the bed with Mom. I crawl into the bed way early in the morning and snuggle up under her and she wraps herself over me without even waking up and I feel really home and I hear someone walk in the room and I open one eye and Dad is sitting in his chair in his morning robe just looking at us girls sleeping there together. He winks at me and I wink back at him. He turns on the radio and “Let It Be” is the first song that comes on and I close my eye back and he just sits there and watches us for a while and everything in the world is exactly where it belongs. A month after that they send me to Cricket and the next thing I know they both turn into these completely different people that I don’t even recognize and they’re never together anymore and they never have anything nice to say about each other and then the old house is gone and we’re all never together again. But none of that matters. I have this souvenir from that good day always with me now and I can listen to my song and close my eyes and remember back to what it was like sleeping in the bed with Mom, curling up around me without even waking up, and I can feel the way I did that day any time my song comes.