Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

The school superintendent, Floyd Vermilya, had sent home a notice to parents encouraging them to celebrate life, not death, at the level of family. He had threatened suspensions. Students who ghouled their way into school with Himmel-haircuts, Himmel-overcoats, or even Himmel-like expressions on their faces could just ghoul their way out again until they were ready to dress and act like normal young people. Unfortunately, the new restrictions were hard to enforce. Himmelism had spread to both of Five Oaks’s high schools — though who would know? So many of those kids acted and dressed like that anyway. An underground goth cell had established itself there some time ago. Besides, adolescents could disguise themselves as ordinary, decent American kids and then, when school was out, turn into Himmels in the privacy of their homes. At that age, they all wore masks anyway. Masking was the pride of adolescence. Himmel-speak, the language of the dead that the Himmels had fabricated, was forbidden in the classroom or the athletic field, though none of the athletes were Himmels anyway. Probably . You could never tell. There was an unsubstantiated rumor of a Himmel sleeper-cell on the football team, the second-stringers and bench-warmers, though it strained credulity: What would a would-be dead football player say ? And to whom? Himmel-athletes didn’t bleach their hair, but many of them had the trademark blank look. And their cheers lacked conviction. The school guidance counselor had suggested to parents at the latest PTA meeting that they motivate their kids to participate in more upbeat sports activities. Playing a musical instrument, he said, might also overcome the recent community-wide tendency to morbid display.

Vermilya had told Saul, and Saul had told Patsy, that he feared national attention to this phenomenon. If that happened, if the networks showed up, there’d be no stopping it. He feared Himmel websites, Himmel chat rooms, docudramas on Himmelism. .

Something has gone wrong with our children, he had told Saul. Something is spreading, and I don’t even know what it is.

The door flipped open electronically, and Patsy walked out onto the sidewalk. She crossed the street into Governor John Engler Park, a square city block decorated with a few surviving petunias planted in an uneven row on the south border. To the north was a stage and a band-stand. Skateboarders leapt up and down the benches and roared across the proscenium. The air felt autumnal and cool. In the center of the park stood an eight-foot-high statue of the former governor, holding his hand out in welcome. On his face was a smile contaminated with a dubious affability. This statue was now permanently blocked off from the sun by the WaldChem building, under construction across the street, a bright yellow steel crane perched on the topmost beam, and by the AddiData building to the west, whose windows had the rectangular shape of the holes in IBM punch cards. The WaldChem building would be the highest structure in Five Oaks. Although the Chamber of Commerce had lobbied for its construction with the zoning board, both the mayor and the City Council had complained mildly about the architecture, which was in a downsized Black Rock style. It was considered by many to be dour and not suitable for the Midwest. It did not glorify the heartland.

In the park Patsy took Emmy out of the stroller and bounced her on her lap. She was being fussy today. “Down me,” Emmy said. Patsy let her down. Emmy walked experimentally around the bench, singing her toothpaste song. With a mild shock, Patsy saw Anne McPhee sitting on the park bench opposite her, and Anne’s son, Matt, running back and forth before her, as if he were searching for some interesting trouble to get into but hadn’t yet found it. Anne was visibly pregnant and wore a besieged expression: she was still a beautiful young woman, Patsy thought, with great features that her pregnancy had not diminished, but she seemed distracted and solitary. Her blouse was stained with apple juice. She looked used . She had a rash on her wrist that she scratched absentmindedly. Something about her suggested helplessness and excessive brooding. She waved at Patsy without enthusiasm.

Five Oaks might boast of the new WaldChem building, but it was still a city where you kept running into the same people. You would have to move at least as far away as the Caspian Sea to avoid them.

Patsy had wanted to be Anne’s friend ever since she and Saul had shown up, muddy and in shock, at the McPhees’ door after their car turned over following the party at Mad Dog’s, but the friendship couldn’t last.

The day had arrived some months back when the McPhees announced themselves at Patsy’s office at the bank, presenting their case for a home loan. Patsy couldn’t tell if they had concocted a plan to trade on what they assumed to be her friendship. Maybe so. Emory had been holding Matt’s hand, and the young father wore his baseball cap with the visor in back. He had just shaved, and he gave off a first-date odor of drugstore cologne. Very proudly, speaking in married-couple relays, first the husband, then the wife, they announced that they wanted to buy a house in a new development, Maple Meadows. They were tired of paying rent for their current house, they said. They wanted this as a real investment; it was time to build a future . They recited these sentences as if they had rehearsed them, fanfare, emphases, and all. But Patsy, as one of the bank’s loan officers, had to refuse the loan almost on the spot. They had virtually nothing in savings or collateral, and Emory’s employment as a housepainter was sporadic. He was a high school dropout. Their credit rating was dismal. When Patsy had told Anne and Emory the bad news, Anne cried. She began her sobbing slowly, then really worked up a storm of tears. It went on and on.

You tried to create a community, but money always got in the way, and finally lines were drawn. Friendship ended at the bank’s front door, at least for working people.

Like some lovers who get romantically entangled young, in high school, both the McPhees, Emory and Anne, had an intense, greedy physicality. They always reminded Patsy of two healthy animals who had mated, almost without thinking. Their stories were always stories about the body; they never got past it.

Patsy took Emmy’s hand and walked over to where Anne McPhee was sitting in the park. North of the women, on the block bordering the park in which they sat, the yellow construction crane turned slowly, lifting a steel beam. A man, small in the distance, standing on another beam and wearing a hardhat appeared to be watching them. He appeared to wave.

“Some of those construction workers get rich, if they live long enough,” Anne said. She checked Patsy out, then smiled halfheartedly. “I see we both got ourselves knocked up again.” There was a brief pause. “Congratulations.”

“I didn’t think I was showing that much yet,” Patsy said.

“You aren’t. Not in front,” Anne pointed. “Only if a person is looking. A mom would know. It’s the way you’re walking.”

“Do you mind if I sit down?” Patsy asked. She would be the soul of politeness.

“Go ahead.” Anne patted the bench. “Please.”

“Thanks, Anne.” She sat down.

“Want a cookie?” Anne pulled an Oreo out of her purse. Matt grabbed it out of her hand before curling up at her feet. She smiled indulgently at her son. “Public space. It’s free to everybody. Hey, I see Emmy’s getting real big.” Anne smiled at Mary Esther, who was folding herself for protection against strangers into her mother’s lap.

“Matt, too. Good-looking boy.” He was, of course. He looked like a three-year-old James Dean, a little pint-sized greaser heartthrob. His mouth was smeared with cookie crumbs, but he was beautiful anyway. “Where’s Saska?”