Black Mirror by Nancy Werlin
It was still amusing, though, to imagine pretty, perfect Saskia, high. Saskia, giggling senselessly, discovered by her hero Patrick Leyden in a completely wasted state. I hated her again suddenly. I hated her, and Patrick Leyden too. I hated all of them, everyone who’d been at that meeting. Yes, even Ms. Wiles! Everyone but Andy. I’d slip them all worse than marijuana if I could. They could all die horribly, as Daniel had! I’d—I’d—
And now my hands were shaking. I clenched them tightly over the Ziploc bag. This was a stupid, useless fantasy; the only person it was harming was me.
In my head Daniel’s voice gibed. Mental activity is the supreme suffering. I winced.
I ought to go and flush the marijuana down the toilet right now. Or I could give it to James Droussian for resale. I hated him too, though I did recognize that he had tried to help me in the Unity Service meeting. Sort of. Maybe this would even the score. I did not want to be in his or anyone’s debt. There was only one person in the entire world who I could stand right now, and he was retarded.
I found I was wiping furiously at my cheeks.
I felt humiliated. I needed—I really needed—
I looked down again at the two halves of Mr. Monkey. At Daniel’s Ziploc bags.
I wondered if Andy had ever gotten high. I wondered if he would like to try. I imagined us getting high together. It was the kind of thing you did with your friends, right? Share?
Andy might like it. I might like it. Daniel had liked it. Everybody liked it.
Around me Bubbe’s house felt heavy as ever. Nobody was coming up here to Daniel’s room. I could stay all night if I liked, and walk back to Pettengill in the morning for classes.
I don’t remember deciding. I got up and turned off the overhead light. I turned on the smaller lamp on the floor and sat on Daniel’s mattress.
I had once seen others do this, and it wasn’t hard at all, rolling the cigarette paper tightly around a small amount of weed, then twisting the ends. I was quite satisfied with the result. There were matches too in Mr. Monkey. Very considerate of Daniel.
He’d be laughing right now. Especially as I carefully fitted Mr. Monkey back together and set him down beside me on the mattress. Then, and only then, did I lean against the wall with Daniel’s pillows behind me.
I knew not to inhale too sharply, too deeply, at first.
CHAPTER 9
I’d never even tried to get high before, so all I knew was what Daniel had said and what I had occasionally seen. I had nothing to compare my experience to. Still, waking in Daniel’s room the next morning and breathing in the stale, sweet air (which lingered even though sometime in the small hours I’d forced the old window open nearly three inches), I decided that the marijuana simply hadn’t had much effect on me. I had not collapsed into paroxysms of giggles. And I’d had no deep feelings of relaxation; if anything, I’d remained alert and even a little tense as I smoked first one and then a second handmade cigarette. I’d been entirely focused on accustoming myself to the smell. To the tight, hot feeling in my lungs as I figured out how to inhale, how to draw in the smoke and hold it in my lungs. How to gradually exhale. I’d felt a mild pleasure at my progress. But that was it.
Maybe it was old stuff after all. Or I was immune. Or it took a few tries.
Maybe I was relieved.
Maybe I was disappointed.
I curled onto my side on Daniel’s mattress and blinked at the red neon numbers of his digital alarm clock. One good thing was that I had slept well for a few hours. I knew I ought to get up now—it was only six, but I would need to shower, wash my (no doubt) reeking hair, and put on different clothes before heading back to Pettengill. Idly I hoped there was something reasonable in my closet to wear; something warm. Of course, if worse came to worse, there was always Daniel’s wool school blazer, hanging across the room in his closet.
I wondered if Mr. Monkey would fit in the blazer’s pocket. Then I forced myself to get up and head down the icy hallway toward a hot shower.
Always before, when alone, I had walked between Bubbe’s house and Pettengill using the main roads. But Daniel had preferred the shortcut path through the woods, the one that went very near the spot at which, the other night, I’d encountered James Droussian and whoever it was he’d been with. This morning, defiantly, I took that route. And somehow I was not surprised to come upon James just before the woods ended and the smooth snowy grounds of the campus began.
James was sitting alone on a rock. From where I stopped, a few yards behind him, I could see his profile clearly; see the way his left cheekbone stood out in sharp contrast to the background of tree bark; see the intent way he’d drawn his brows together and was staring toward the campus.
What did I have to lose? I stepped forward. I cleared my throat. I spoke perhaps more loudly than I normally would have. “James.”
He leaped off the rock and whipped around toward me almost before the first vowel sound had left my lips. Again I felt that abrupt sense of dislocation, of things somehow wrong, that I’d felt when with him the other night. But a bare instant later as he recognized me, his body relaxed. “Frances, hey,” he said affably. “Fancy seeing you here, huh? You got both mittens today?”
I nodded. I regained my own mental balance and my resolve. “I just, um, wanted to say thank you, James. For yesterday.” He stared at me, his face expressionless, and I had trouble stumbling on. I did it anyway. “At the Unity Service meeting, I mean.”
“Oh,” said James after a second. Was his body ever so slightly tense again, or was I imagining that? “Right. No problem.”
I fidgeted. There was more to say. “And I’m sorry about hitting you. I was—I’m sorry.”
He didn’t reply immediately. The moment stretched, and my stomach twisted, and once again I felt his words from the other night, his dumb, thoughtless words about Daniel. About me. And I felt something else too, something I didn’t understand, something coming from James. I thought of the way he’d jumped up from the rock a moment ago, been suddenly in my path. I found myself swallowing.
“Okay,” James said finally. But his tone was even, too even, and while it should have been enough for me to hear that one word, somehow it wasn’t. I didn’t feel forgiven. I wasn’t forgiven. I knew it.
I found myself stepping forward. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have done it.”
I searched James’s face for forgiveness and still didn’t find it. Anger flicked at me then. So the large manly drug dealer didn’t care to forgive small, weak, kitten-like Frances for slapping him? Well, he could go directly to hell. I straightened my shoulders and walked past him.
“Frances.”
I took another two steps before I stopped and turned. Now it was my turn to say nothing and look blank.
But James clearly wasn’t impressed. And I saw now that his blankness wasn’t blankness at all. It was something I recognized. Something I knew all about.
Control.
“I’m going to tell you something,” James said. “And you’re going to listen, and one day you’re going to be grateful that I told you this, because you need to hear it. For your own safety. Are you listening?”
His voice wasn’t loud. And he was standing at least five yards away from me. But I felt as constrained as if he’d been in my face, with both hands heavy on my shoulders.
I nodded like a spring-necked doll.
James said, “You believe that because you’re small and female, no one will take you seriously. The other night you assumed you had the freedom to hit somebody bigger than you if you chose. You thought it was safe. I’d never hit back.”
“No,” I said, confused. “No, that wasn’t what I was thinking—”
“Shut up,” said James quietly. “I’m talking.”
I shut up.
“Then you weren’t thinking,” he said. “Which is actually worse. In this case, you were right. I would never hit you back.” And then suddenly—without rising in volume—his voice lashed out. “But I am
In that moment, if my brother’s life had been offered to me in exchange, I couldn’t have moved my eyes from James’s face.
“It’s a dangerous world, Frances. Don’t go around thoughtlessly creating opportunities for violence. Ever. Because if you do, I promise you: Violence will occur. It will come looking for you.”
James didn’t move a step closer. It only felt as if he had.
I stared at him. I felt my rage kicking in my gut, and my despair looking for a place to go. I was full of confusion. Why had I slapped James? It had seemed clear to me at the time. I had felt that I had to do something, make something change, or I would explode—implode—
One of Daniel’s hated quotes echoed within me. One should not use violence or have it used.
Abruptly, the little scene was over. James brushed past me. He walked rapidly away, toward Pettengill. Still confused, uncomprehending, I watched him go.
Gradually my mind cleared. My first coherent thought was that, post-grad or no, James Droussian was definitely not dumb. And then I knew something else too.
That hadn’t been a kid talking to me just now.
I hadn’t made a mistake in the woods the other night. I had seen exactly what I thought I’d seen: two men. Two men, one of whom was James.
James looked young. Looked eighteen or nineteen. But he wasn’t.
James Droussian—if that was his real name—was an adult.
CHAPTER 10
A minute later I knew I had to be crazy. Daniel’s death, the awfulness I felt—it was making me imagine things. Because really, what would an adult James Droussian be doing at Pettengill? Why pretend to be a teenager? To set up a prep-school drug business? Ridiculous.
However, as I trudged back toward my dorm, I allowed myself to linger on the drug business idea, because it didn’t seem entirely ridiculous. It was impossible not to know that at least half to three-quarters of the Pettengill student body used something, sometimes. Weed and mushrooms for the burnouts. Diet pills for girls like Brenda Delahay, desperate to get or stay thin. Steroids for the jocks. Amphetamines for some of the fiercely competitive studiers. Cocaine and meth and ecstasy for the partiers. Very few people had a real problem, of course, but there was quite a lot going on, and surely it had to be lucrative for somebody. Maybe James—
But then I just shook my head. Obviously at some level there had to be adults providing all this stuff, but they certainly didn’t need to be right at school, masquerading as students. There were plenty of kids ready to do the work themselves. And last year James hadn’t been here, and I didn’t see that his presence had changed anything. My little theory just didn’t hold water. It wasn’t even worth being called a theory.
Commentary from Daniel again. The mind creates the reality, and reality creates the mind. He’d used the aphorism mockingly, but there actually was something to this one. I was discombobulated, creating my own stupid version of reality that had nothing to do with what was real.
Feeling even more depressed than usual, I slipped back into my dorm.
I had art class that morning, with a full two hours of clay sculpture scheduled. Normally I’d have looked forward to it; to spending time doing the one thing that made me feel entirely comfortable in my own body. Not to mention the fact that it didn’t matter, in art class, if anyone wanted to talk to you or not. If you belonged or not.
But today I felt awkward. My usual eagerness to see Ms. Wiles was tempered by what had happened yesterday at the Unity meeting. The fact was—I had to face it—I’d felt a little disappointed by her. I’d have thought she’d understand, immediately, what I felt when Patrick Leyden made his suggestion. In my mind’s eye I could still see her face, hear her silence. James, Andy—even George de Witt, that Unity flunky—had said something to help me. But the woman I admired most in all the world had just sat there. Had said What an opportunity!
On purpose, then, I arrived at the art studio only after other kids had gotten there as well, so that there would be no opportunity for private conversation with Ms. Wiles. She gave me her special encouraging smile, as always, but my own returning smile felt stiff.
Still, just breathing in the air of the studio made me feel better. I pulled the unmistakable mix of fragrances deeply into my nose and lungs and identified each of them lovingly. The wood-like perfume of the drawing boards and easels, which were always being sponged off. The plastic smell of the old yogurt containers with their splotches of dried paint or tempera. The cold metallic tang of the sinks, mingled with a certain soapy-towel and turpentine odor. The wet-dog stench of one particular brand of watercolor paper, and the weirdly clean scent of wet clay. Finally, overlaying the whole room, the sneezy bouquet of charcoal and graphite.
For me it smelled like home.
I busied myself taking the wrappings off my fledgling sculpture. I could feel my hands simply aching to work the clay.
We were modeling a large bone—a plaster cast of an elephant’s femur, to be precise. It sounded dull, but once you looked closely, once you saw how the bone flowed and changed as you walked around it, how precise and yet individual was each curve and surface and angle, you realized how extraordinary a thing it was. How impossible to replicate in clay, working in all three dimensions—infinitely more difficult than working on paper, in two. And yet how irresistible it was to try.
I squinted at the model femur, and then at my own copy. My femur was coming along, I thought. I was behind the rest of the class—the week of sitting shivah for Daniel had of course cut into all my schoolwork—but here, at least, I’d have no trouble catching up.
Ms. Wiles was walking around the room, pausing at each student’s shoulder to observe and make suggestions, and then raising her voice to talk more generally to the rest of the class. As I listened, as I worked, I felt myself soften toward her. She was always so fascinating.
“Working with sculpture, you can really begin to understand that making art is all about seeing clearly. Look, people. Look. That’s the key to everything. The young Picasso was told he should break his right hand, so that he would be forced to rely more on his eyes, not on his hands. An extreme idea, but you get the point. If you don’t look, you can’t do.”
Earlier in the year Ms. Wiles had shown us pictures of some of Picasso’s work. Comparing his early paintings to his later stuff, it had been a little hard not to think that Ms. Wiles was crazy. In those early pictures Picasso not only saw well, but it seemed to me that in a way he saw better than he had later, when he was so acclaimed, when he took to drawing blue cubes, to stacking facial features vertically. His early portraits were alive with realism, with accuracy. I loved them.
And yes, as Ms. Wiles pointed out while showing us slides, Picasso’s Guernica screams the agony of war—but that was emotional truth on the canvas, not physical.
I said that to Ms. Wiles privately. That was the first time we’d ever talked alone; I’d crept up after class, unable to resist. “Ms. Wiles? I don’t really get what you were talking about.”
She’d smiled at me. “Frances, is it? What didn’t you get?”
“Just … about seeing. What’s wrong with Picasso’s early stuff? I mean, I get what you say about Guernica. I really do. But I’d say that Guernica was done with the heart, not the eyes.” She’d listened so attentively that, despite myself, I found I was growing more and more passionate. “I mean, if we’re going to talk about body organs. Art …” I stumbled a little, trying to explain my thoughts. “Art should be done with hands and heart, not hands and eyes. That’s what Guernica is. Because nobody else could see what Picasso saw. Right?”
“Well,” Ms. Wiles said, “until he showed us all how to look.” And as she smiled at me, I had a glimmer not only of what she meant, but, more importantly, of the pleasure of being able to discuss such things, seriously, with an adult who also cared about them.
I bit my lip. “Oh,” I said tentatively.
&
I had had another class, but I hadn’t cared. “Oh, yes,” I’d said eagerly. “I have time.”
Now, as she talked, I built up the clay base of my sculpture, then slowly walked around the plaster model trying to see it. What you looked at straight on wasn’t what you saw when you tilted your head to the side. The shapes flowed into each other and then into something else … but it was all part of a whole. It all came together.
I went back to my own femur. I smoothed its long central line. I tried to shape the bumps of its connecting joints. I looked up at the model; down at my work. Up, down. Up, down. My hands moved.
You don’t watch your hands while you work. You watch the model. Your hands work on their own. And it’s best if you don’t think too much about what you’re doing. My mind drifted.
Seeing clearly. I thought I understood a little better now. In life I’d seen Daniel my way. I’d thought he’d been happy, but he had been unhappy enough to kill himself. If I’d looked better, I might have seen—Guernica in his face? Maybe?
Was that what Ms. Wiles had been driving at about Picasso? If you think you already know what you’re looking at, then you can’t possibly see that something else is really there?
I worked on my femur. I felt its shape beneath my palms. I looked at the model, not at my clay.
Ms. Wiles came up behind me, and I felt myself tighten. Under her eyes I worked the clay. I smoothed out the central bone line again. Reshaped the joint that gaped open on top. Then I stepped back and looked.
Somehow my poor femur had gone all wrong.
“Frances?” said Ms. Wiles gently.
I turned.
Her voice had dropped to a level low enough that only I could hear it. “You’re angry at me?”
I shrugged.
“Please don’t be,” Ms. Wiles said. “Would you like to have tea with me later? This afternoon? My place?”