CHAPTER TWELVE: Self-loathing
Two holidays passed beneath unclear skies, followed by remembrance of a boy with weak eyes.
Dante’s interim report card for the first week of December read as follows:
Math – U (unsatisfactory)
Science – S (satisfactory)
Gym – S (satisfactory)
American History – U (unsatisfactory)
English – S (satisfactory)
Too embarrassed to show Sunny yet curious about her own grades, he stood in the school lunch line wondering how to bring the subject up without tripping on any wires that would lead to exposure of his meager academic attainments. She was currently on his arm, chattering away about—of all things—a trip her parents had planned to a nearby town called Howling.
“It’s only my dad who has a business trip there,” she said, “but they both want to go.” She stood on tiptoe to speak more quietly into his ear. “And I’m trying to convince them to let me stay home alone.”
Dante watched a mischievous grin spread over her features. “Totally alone?” he asked.
“Of course,” came the girl’s far from sincere reply. “I’ll be thirteen in March. That’s plenty old enough. Don’t you agree?”
“It’s old enough but I would still worry.”
“We could talk on the phone.”
Sunny’s closest girlfriend Stacey was in line behind them. She was smiling, and her face had gone red as Sunny’s hair. But Dante knew she wouldn’t laugh—wouldn’t even speak—unless Sunny gave her permission.
“Well?” Sunny asked. And on her face waited an expression Dante could read like a book: You’d better not be okay with just the phone, Mister.
Dante wasn’t. “I’m still not comfortable with your being alone. When is this business trip supposed to happen?”
Instead of answering, Sunny smiled and put her head on his shoulder.
“You don’t remember,” he continued, sliding his arm around her leather jacket, “or you don’t want to tell me?”
Just then a girl with mousy hair and glasses passed by. Dante thought she looked familiar—then it hit him.
“Timothy,” he said aloud.
Sunny looked at him. “Who?”
By now the mousy-haired girl had reached the far end of the cafeteria. Dante watched as she disappeared around a corner and said: “Oh I was just reminded of this goofy kid I met here last year. His name was Timothy. I might have thought of him at Cedar Point, too.”
“You mean the Timothy who vanished last Christmas?”
“That’s the one.” Dante looked down at Sunny, whose green eyes had wandered to the lunch counter. A smell of lasagna hovered close. Garlic. Hot bread. “Did anyone ever find out where he went?” he ventured casually.
Her answer was flummoxing to the extreme. “Skiing I think,” she said.
“Skiing?”
“Yeah, you know.” Her arms began to move in a pantomime of one surrendered to powdery cold slopes. “Swish! Swish! Alberto Tomba. Calgary.”
“You’re telling me he went on a skiing trip for a whole year?”
“No, no, no.” She made as if to grab Dante’s nose and twist it. “His family moved north. Probably to Canada.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Timothy tried to date me last year. I turned him down flat.”
“Why?”
Sunny looked up. Like Timothy, her smile had vanished. Disappeared within cold and unforgiving features. “I suppose,” she nearly hissed, “he wasn’t good enough. Not for me anyway.”
“And I am?”
“All right, kids,” one of the cafeteria ladies said. “What’s it gonna be?”
“Two lasagnas and two chocolate milks,” Dante told her.
The lady’s round face was expressionless. “Five bucks,” she said.
“What?”
She pointed to a sign on the wall. SCHOOL LUNCHES HAVE UNDERGONE A RATE HIKE DUE TO INCREASED LABOR COST OF OUR SUPPLIERS. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
“Wow,” Dante said, reaching for his wallet.
“Tough ole world, little guy,” the lady said.
“I guess so.”
∞
As usual he was the only male among Sunny’s lunchtime entourage. They were king and queen of the court. Dante waited for his queen to sit, then placed himself beside her. From here the table fell into a clean, shallow pool of trivial banter. Silverware clanged over talk of teachers and grades, friendships and families. Dante again wondered about Sunny’s grades. Should he ask her straight out? Likely she’d be offended if he didn’t. Wonder about whether he cared enough to know.
“How did you do on your report card?” he said gingerly.
To his utter relief, she perked up in her seat. “Wanna see?”
“Of course.”
She pulled the card out of her bag and handed it to him without even bothering to unfold it. Dante opened it himself. Then his jaw dropped.
All Os for outstanding. Straight down.
“Okay,” he said to her, “I’m gonna bite. How did you do this? I mean you’ve got an O here in gym. I’ve seen you in gym, Sunny dear, and you’re no athlete.”
She looked worried. “Are you mad at me?”
“No! I’m happy for you.”
“Because I could flunk everything if you want.”
“Don’t do that.”
“See that kid over there?” Sunny asked.
Her head was turned towards the lunch counter. Dante tried to draw a bead on who it was she had it mind, but all the chatter and clanging dishes made the cafeteria noisy as the forge of Hephaestus. He tried again, found nothing, and gave up.
“Which one?” he asked back.
Without turning her head, Sunny replied: “Dorky. Pimply. Glasses.”
Based on this information Dante was able to spot him easily enough. At the end of the table sat a skinny kid wearing oversized black glasses. He was dressed in what Dante considered hand-me-down clothing—striped polo, tan slacks, brown loafers. Nobody else sat with him. He ate slowly, keeping his head down. Dante felt pretty sure he didn’t want to be noticed.
If wishes were horses, kid, he thought.
“I see him,” he said to Sunny. “What about him?”
She fetched a deep sigh as if the question were stupid. “His name’s Shaya Blum. Stupid name if I’ve ever heard one. He comes from a poor family. Has no friends. Bad skin. Terrible skin,” she corrected. “His grades are blah.”
“Blah?” Dante asked.
“Average, my dear. Very average. He can’t run, throw, or catch. He sneezes in class all the time. His nose is runny. He farts.”
“What?”
“I’ve heard it. The teachers pick on him. The bullies chase him after school.” She stopped and smiled at Dante. “Get the picture?”
“He’s pathetic.”
“Bingo. And you know what we’re gonna do about it?”
Dante smiled back. “I shudder to think. But I also see those green eyes shining.”
A new voice broke into the chat. Until that point Sunny’s entourage had been talking quietly, keeping one eye on their queen yet mostly relaxed. Now, however, Stacey became inclined to raise her head. “It involves Maris,” she said.
The entourage fell silent. Sunny looked at her for a long time without speaking. Her brows were raised. Her lips were pursed. “Do you want to tell him?” she asked calmly.
Stacey shook her head. “No. Sorry.”
“Go ahead. We’re listening.”
“Sunny, it’s okay—“
Sunny’s voice remained polite, but Dante knew (and doubtless Stacey did too) where the real words were coming from. Their source, as always, was really quite green. “I know it’s okay, dear, that’s why I’m telling you to go ahead.”
Stacey swallowed. She took a drink of water. Nobody at the table seemed especially impatient for her to speak. They all waited. Sunny was holding Dante’s hand, smiling at the other girl. Whether Stacey liked it or not the stage belonged to her.
“Sunny wants to write a fake love letter to Maris,” she began, fumbling her words. “You know. With Shaya’s name on it. You know. And then…you know…like…get the whole school in on it. Like what’s going on…”
Sunny’s nails began to scratch at Dante’s skin. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Quite the reverse. She let Stacey go on with a few more you knows and likes before finally drawing the hook to pull her off.
“What my dear friend means to say,” she all but oozed with foulest sarcasm, “is that I mean to humiliate Maris beyond the realms of reckless Phaethon.”
It was Dante’s turn for a drink. He finished his milk, put it down. Would that something stronger had been in the carton.
“You want to get the whole school laughing at Maris because some doofus kid with anxiety issues wants to kiss her under the mistletoe.”
“That’s what I have in mind.”
“How will you copy his handwriting?”
“I’ve already stolen samples off his desk. He got an F on his book report for Moby Dick because he didn’t turn it in. Said he lost it. He didn’t lose it.”
Dante shook his head. “Evil, girl.”
“He has very sloppy handwriting. Just like any boy. I can’t copy it. Guess what that means?”
“Huh boy.”
“It’s all yours.” Sunny raised her fork. Daintily, she put her last bite of lasagna into Dante’s mouth. “But let me compose the letter, okay?”
So when I use it I’ll be copying two people at once, Dante thought.
Stacey raised her hand. Dante guessed that speaking out of turn once had been plenty enough for her.
“Yes?” Sunny asked.
“How will we let everyone know that Shaya wrote her a love letter?”
“I haven’t worked that part out yet. But Dante was right about the mistletoe. I want to implement this whole thing right before Christmas break.”
“No,” Dante cut in. “Bad idea.”
Sunny blinked. “Why?”
“If we humiliate Maris in front of the school, then everybody goes away for Christmas and New Year’s, they’ll have forgotten it all by the time they come back. It’ll be like it never happened.”
“Oooh. Good point.”
“Second week of January is better I think,” Dante said. His eyes had gone to the window, through which he could almost see the ensuing chaos. “Kids’ll be bored. Eager for the next big thing. And this will be big all right. If it works.”
“It’ll work,” Sunny said, cozying herself even closer to Dante’s side. Clearly pleased by his wisdom, she was smiling from ear to ear. “So!” she told the rest of the girls. “This is what we have for now: The village dork writes a love letter to a pretty pink princess; the entire kingdom gets wind of it and laughs at them both. It’s social murder. Any questions?”
They looked blank. Dante took that as a no.
“Great!” Sunny said. Then, to Dante: “Finish your pineapple, dear. Vitamin C.”
∞
“Are you happy with yourself, Dante?” the old opera singer asked.
Dante listened to the clock tick in the hall of number 114 for a very long time before answering. It was Sunday morning again. At last his father had allowed him to come and visit the old man. With Janet dead what did that ten dollars mean, anyway? What was the lie all about? It had deteriorated. Turned to straw in their hands.
“I don’t really know,” he said.
“Then the answer is no,” came the other’s reply. “Whenever a man says he doesn’t know, he knows.”
“Truly I don’t.”
“You’ve just told me some interesting new stories about this girl Sunny. The trip to Cedar Point where she seemingly turned into a gorilla. A midnight phone call from her that hissed into the death of a family friend. And now, of course, you plan to help her humiliate a popular girl at school.”
Dante lowered his head. On the table were the remains of his brioche. It had not tasted good today, though the reason had little to do with Donati’s cooking.
“What does Sunny mean to you?” the singer went on.
Dante was still thinking of how to answer that when his friend started in with another of his stories. This one concerned a boy his own age who was living in rural England during the early 1980s. He was small and sickly and received poor grades at school. He had no friends.
“I am not exaggerating that last,” Donati said, looking sad. “He had no friends. Even his parents disliked him.”
Dante shrugged. “My parents don’t especially like me,” he let on.
“Not true. At least it doesn’t sound true, based on our earlier talks. Mr. and Mrs. Torn may be somewhat cold, somewhat distant, but they like you. Was your father not upset when you showed him this month’s school report card?”
He had been. Not violently so—rarely if ever did the yachtsman allow his anger to get physical, perhaps because, as Dante often suspected, he would never last long in a boxing ring. Instead his face, upon seeing the report card, became like a flag bereft of its breeze. Fallen on the pole, unable to bare its pride. Without a word he’d sent Dante to his room for the rest of the day.
Hearing all of this made Donati nod as if he’d expected no less. “Do they ever beat you?” he asked. “Call you nasty names?”
“Oh no,” Dante said. “Never even once.”
“Well then.”
“But that doesn’t mean they like me,” he felt forced to add.
A tiny spoon gleamed in Donati’s hand. With it he pushed a puddle of melted ice cream across his plate before saying: “Perhaps not. They do care about you, though. They want to see you do well. The same cannot be said for that poor boy in the English farmhouse. Oh no. Oh no indeed.”
“His dad never paid attention to him at all?”
“He paid the boy plenty of mind. To scold him. The whip him. To call him a useless waste of stardust.”
“Why?”
The opera singer looked at Dante the way one looks at an idiot. “Because he was ugly, that’s why. Ugly and stupid. Sick all the time.”
“That’s no reason—“
“Isn’t it?” Donati cut him off. “Your girlfriend seems to think it’s plenty of reason.”
Dante got the point and closed his mouth.
“It continued for years,” the other said. “The beating. The name calling. Meager meals from his mother. Classmates poking fun at him, beating him up. Then one morning when he was twelve he suffered a grand mal seizure.”
“What’s that?” Dante asked.
“The worst manifestation of what’s probably the worst disease a living being can get. Electrical impulses from the brain become blocked, rendering the body’s limbs without proper command from their control center. Everything begins to twitch violently. Or, as in the case with grand mal, the victim may actually pitch himself back and forth across a room, banging his head against walls, falling down stairs. He literally has no control of his body until the seizure stops.”
Dante knew what seizures were. Two years ago a boy in his fifth grade class had suffered one during lunch hour, falling backward out of his seat to crack his head on the cafeteria floor. It had looked and sounded horrible. No animal cooked alive on a spit could have appeared more grotesque, or with its breaking skull ‘neath the hammer of a cruel master created worse music.
“So his brain was damaged?” he asked Donati.
The opera singer’s answer surprised him. “Not physically,” he said. “After three more attacks, the boy’s terrible father finally took him to a hospital, where doctors could find nothing wrong. And indeed, even the boy did not think he was sick. He was convinced an entity from another realm wished him harm. A tall, angry man with an unkempt black beard.”
Lost in utter confusion by these words, Dante shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“A ghost, dear boy, a ghost. The boy told anyone who would listen, including his doctors, that he was being attacked by a ghost.”
“So he was insane.”
Donati laughed. “Oh, Dante. How like a common man you can stumble to be. How like a non-believer.”
“I bet his doctors thought the same thing. The dad too.”
“As a matter of fact they did. But the attacks continued, always in the middle of the night, rousing the poor boy from sleep, never during the day. This confounded the doctors even more, for seizures do not pick and choose by the moon. Before long the boy began describing his attacker in more detail. He was a tall, wide man with black hair and a black beard. He always wore a red and black checkered shirt with blue jeans and heavy black boots. And often, as he beat on the boy, he would speak.”
As if to contradict this latter fact, Donati stopped talking. His eyes dropped to the gooey ice cream, which must have maintained its appeal, for in the next moment he retrieved a spoonful and lifted it to his mouth. All Dante could do was wait. He wanted to know what the ghost said, what fury it vocalized from the other side. Was it the secret of death? Or a portrait perhaps, painted with fierce syllables, of God himself?
Donati looked up and smiled. “Emronoh,” he said.
This confused Dante even further. “I’m sorry?”
“You wish to know what the entity said. Or rather what it shrieked as it beat the boy in his own bedroom. I can see it plainly in your eyes. It said emronoh. Over and over. Emronoh, emronoh.”
“I have never heard that word before in my life.”
“Nor had the boy. But the entity would bellow it in a rage, its eyes on fire, the blackness of its beard thick and wild, as if grown out by something from deep in the woods. The boy repeated the word to his father. By then the man wanted to hear no more. He thought his son was playing tricks to get out of his chores. He made the boy work anyway, beating him like always. And yes, his mother continued to serve him gruel. Foul slops with dirty water. That was his family. That was his life. Hounded by day, haunted by night.”
Dante found he could picture with terrible ease everything the opera singer said. It hurt his heart. “Why, Mr. Donati?” he pleaded. “Why?”
The other stared over the table with wide eyes. “But my dear boy, I’ve already told you. He was ugly and stupid. Useless.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Ah.”
“Where is this boy today? Is he still alive?”
The laugh these questions brought forth was sarcastic. More like the snort of a pig. “Still alive, yes. Surprising eh? Though certainly no longer a boy. He eventually grew into a tall man with a black beard, who often dresses in heavy checkered shirts and blue denim pants.”
“How do you know how he dresses? You’ve met him?”
“Never.”
“So what,” Dante asked, carefully as he could, “is the significance of his clothes?”
It seemed to irritate his friend. The spoon clanged as Donati dropped it to the plate. The opera singer rose, cleared the table, and carried everything to the kitchen. “Perhaps,” he called over a flow of water from the sink, “there is no significance. Perhaps I added it for my own amusement. What do you think, boy?”
“I think it has significance. But then I already said as much.”
Another clang, this one louder, though Donati was further away. “You’re being clever and foolish at the same time,” he called. “Is this yet another trait derived from trysts with that strange girl?”
“I don’t know,” Dante admitted. “Maybe.”
“What does Sunny mean to you, Dante? Can you tell me that?”
The water stopped. More clanging—lighter, musical—floated into the room. Donati was putting the dishes away.
“Strange isn’t how I would describe her,” Dante said, peering into the fire. “She’s more like a knife. A very sharp knife with no one to hold the handle.” He shrugged. “Well. Now there’s me.”
Donati came back into the room and sat down. Dante looked over the table at a man concerned as one might be for his own son.
“Are you truly willing to do that?” the singer wanted to know. “Take the handle, and cut?”
“Tell me why you mentioned the boy’s clothes. Please.”
“Had you been listening more intently you would already know. His clothes, as a man, often match the ones worn by his childhood attacker. The ghost with the beard—the beard that looked remarkably like the one this man wears today.”
“Are you saying they are the same being? The ghost and the boy?”
But if Dante hadn’t been listening intently before, it was Donati who seemed detached now. “In his middle teens the boy decided to shrug off the hatred,” he said. “All of it. From outside and in. No matter how cruelly the world treated him, he decided never to be cruel with himself ever again. It was wise. Almost immediately the ghost stopped coming. The attacks stopped. The boy let go his fear of the dark, his fear of sleep. He rose every morning, did his chores, and went to school. He spoke softly and patiently to everyone he met. He made sure to exhibit kindness, thoughtfulness. He was helpful of others. Truthful. Trustworthy. This was inevitable. Respect for himself radiated. Shined like heat from the sun, warming all it touched. During that year his grades at school went up. His father stopped beating him. His mother began serving him proper meals. Everything changed.”
“Change,” Dante intoned, “is always change for the worse.”
“Stop that,” the other huffed, scowling. “It isn’t true. Change is sometimes necessary. It certainly was in the boy’s case. He grew into a strong, productive man. A farmer like his father.”
“It sounds to me like he lay down and let the world walk on him, Mr. Donati. And hey…everyone loves a doormat.”
“He recognized,” Donati said patiently, “that a mess on the table cannot be cleaned by a foul rag. Would you care to know what the word meant? The one the ghost kept screaming in the dead of night?”
“Yes,” Dante nodded. “Please.”
“In his late teens the boy was playing guitar with a little folk band he’d put together. He remembered the word, emronoh, and thought to make it the title of