Antrim, Donald - Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

The forest floor was dark. Not much moonlight reached beneath the tangled canopy of leaves overhead. Ground-level creeping vines were everywhere, there was no avoiding them, it was a real obstacle course. The image of Meredith was my beacon. I kept thinking about how lovely she’d be, pregnant. It was invigorating, sexy in an elemental and potent way, stampeding through the thorns with a hard-on, beating a path to her. By the time I got to the car I was pretty torn up, and I felt good about it. Each scar, each bruise, each bleeding wound, was a badge signifying passion, intensity, and the untamable fires of procreative love.

I jumped in the Toyota. The streets were empty. I navigated in cool style, shifting down before banking on the right-angle curves, four-wheel drifting into the opposing lane with that satisfying high-RPM, low-gear engine whine, then easing out the clutch and accelerating onto the straightaway, surfing the whole road and going fast. I’m not, as a rule, in favor of reckless driving, speed for the sake of speed. However, it’s a good thing, from time to time, to let go of worldly cares and flatten the accelerator to the floor. Tonight the Toyota performed admirably — for a mid-price. On Main Street I caught a glimpse of the BIG WEEKEND CLEARANCE SALE! ALL MENSWEAR HALF PRICE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! sign in Dick Morton’s clothing store window, the same sign I’d noticed earlier in the day, on the way to the park; and I remembered my plan to pick up a new bow tie for school. Now, unfortunately, it was too late. The store was long closed. For an instant, cruising along at close to eighty miles per hour, I had an amusing vision of myself slamming on the brakes and skidding to a halt, leaping from the driver’s seat, hurling Martyrs Mirror through the plate glass fronting Morton’s store, and ducking in and looting a bow tie — just one tie, that’s all, in a muted paisley or classic two-tone rep stripe, or better yet a bold, high-fashion silk, something tasteful yet with flair to suit my mood. I wouldn’t even care if I got cut on a shard of window glass. Big deal, what’s another cut?

At home, the lights were on. I wheeled into the driveway and secured the hand brake. There was blood on the steering wheel, blood staining the gearshift. A warm trickle made its way down my neck. It felt sweet. I gathered the books and went around back and up the wood-plank steps to the kitchen door.

I could hear, from within the house, the deep and rhythmic pounding of drums.

“Meredith, it’s me, I’m home,” kicking open the door, marching inside. The drum tape was booming loudly enough for the neighbors to hear. The last thing we needed was a noise dispute with the Kinseys or the McElroys. Those kinds of confrontations invariably create discomfort.

But not such discomfort, I’m afraid, as that caused me by the sight of Meredith sprawled on her back on the living room floor, on the plush blue carpet, her nightgown twisted up around her waist, her arms and legs thrashing and kicking and drenched in perspiration that glistened amber beneath the living room’s low-wattage lamplight.

“Hey, Meredith.”

She jerked from side to side. Her hair was a mess. Fish bones and seashells lay in piles on the coffee table; more shells were scattered across the floor. There were so many shells. The rug was transformed — it was like a scaled-down seabed environment, a clutter of cowries and oysters and cockles and scallops that glowed liquid pink on the inside; and zebra-striped star shells, spiny-edged and no bigger than coat buttons; and top-shaped shells like iridescent children’s toys, their nautiloid exteriors gaudy with spots, speckles, and blotches.

Meredith opened her mouth. Her tongue stuck out. It wasn’t sexy, it was grotesque, and it upset me to watch it. I cleared a space and put the books on the coffee table, knelt beside her and said, “Honey?”

She was shivering and her face was white. I cradled her head in my lap. Her breasts beneath her lavender nightgown rose and fell with her breathing; her head was heavy. Fine strands of black hair clung to her forehead. I brushed the hair from her face. And I tried to avoid smearing blood on her, blood from my hands, but a little got on her cheek. I wet my shirttail with spit and wiped it away. Here in the warmly lit living room I could examine the full damage of scratching on my arms. They looked, my arms, as if they’d been assailed by frenzied kittens.

Meredith coughed a liquid cough. Her hands waved and her body trembled; her eyes opened, closed, opened. In a soft, faraway voice, she asked, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me. Pete.”

“Pete?”

“Your husband.”

“Husband?”

What was there to say to this? I stroked Meredith’s head, massaged the skin around the temples. My honey’s arms arced upward, then down, dog-paddling air in fluid, openhanded sweeps, dancing in rhythm with the drums and her own decelerated heartbeat. She stretched her legs, did a few lateral frog kicks, wiggled a bit, and sighed seductively, “Come on in, the water’s great.”

Was she kidding? What was she thinking? Had she forgotten what happened the last time I’d “come on in”? Did she want me to die?

Meredith was not, I realized at this point, as I watched her twist and roll on the carpet — she was not, strictly speaking, human.

As if to bear this out she made one of those fish faces of hers. This would be cute if it weren’t so frightening in its implications. She puckered her lips, scrunched her nose, shook her head in tiny, back-and-forth darting motions. What was she doing? Feeding? She seemed so far away. Her hand caressed my neck. Languid fingers tickling, the flick of a nail; it was pleasing and sad at the same time. I took her hand in mine, guided it searching up over my unshaved, dirty face. I kissed her palm, then opened my mouth and inserted a finger (her middle, the longest), sucking it down all the way to the knuckle. “Oh, Meredith,” I moaned — gurgled, actually; Meredith’s finger went quite far into my mouth, reached gag depth, almost; I could feel the nail poking and tickling the back of my throat, making my eyes water—“Oh, Mewedith, don’ you know I lub you?”

But she was too submerged to hear; she was out of earshot, swimming away to wherever.

“ Come back, ” I wanted to call to her.

After a while the drum tape ran its course. The hollow beating faded and ended, and the tape deck clicked off. The room became silent except for outside night sounds: a distant, shrieking seabird; gusting wind that blew a tree branch irregularly and repeatedly scraping against the back wall of the house; and, inside, the low vibrating rumble of the refrigerator motor shuddering on in the kitchen; and the sounds of our breathing, my wife’s and mine. Meredith’s breaths were the bottomless unlabored exhalations of a peaceful sleeper. My own were raspy, wheezy — I was getting some phlegm. Maybe I was coming down with a bug. What a rotten way to kick off the new school year. It’s important, during the first days of getting to know the students, and letting them get to know you, to be in top physical and mental form. Children tend to be acutely sensitive to any hint, in an authority figure, of weakness or despair; they’ll take advantage of it, they’ll be all over you. I don’t like to come off as a disciplinarian, but experience has shown that an atmosphere of order and control, established right off the bat, will prevail throughout the year, while laxity, permissiveness, any implied promise of unrealistic classroom “freedoms”—these things can be hell to correct, and can, unchecked, lead to anarchy. For this reason I typically adopt a “stern taskmaster” persona, informing the little scofflaws that they’ll have to stow away their favorite toys, the ones they’ve brought for the first day, they can forget about “playtime” for now; then giving a series of demanding in-class reading assignments, followed by a multiple-choice pop quiz on some arcane topic in history and, to top things off, hours of homework that gets graded harshly.