Watching Matthew

2. All this

Matt Kolb, you’re sixteen now, a high-school sophomore in Dog River, Oregon, and I’m your twin, the dead one, following you around: invisible, impalpable, unthinkable, just a damp skin of nothing at all that sticks to you wherever you go. They have never told you about me, and you’ll never find out in this life, but you sense me out of the corner of your brain like a floater in your eyeball.

As Somerset Maugham said in another connection (or will say, I don’t care which), there are great advantages in being dead; I’m j-j-just trying to think what they are. Where I exist is outside your time, and I know things you don’t — for instance, I know we’re only three years and eight months from Pearl Harbor, a necessary event in the scheme of history, but you’re on a tangent now and may not get there.

Mother is in the locked ward in Salem and probably is not coming back. Father doesn’t go out to his lodge meetings anymore — he says he doesn’t want to leave you alone at night, but in fact he doesn’t want to leave you with anyone else either. After bedtime you hear the sounds of men’s voices in the living room, the mountain coming to Mohammed. What do the brothers do there? Mother used to pretend they took off all their clothes and danced around in their little aprons.

You make your own school lunches a day ahead of time (baloney sandwiches, an egg, sometimes a tomato). Father cooks dinner when he gets home (pork chops, hamburger, or macaroni and cheese). The kitchen knives are in the kitchen now, not locked up in the garage as they used to be.

Father leaves the house earlier than you do and gets home later; you have a house key, which you are forbidden to carry because you might lose it — you hide it under the doormat every morning. No one else comes to the house except the mailman and Mrs. Collier, who cleans once a week. And me, but I’m no company even when I’m out of the basement.

Now we’re walking up 13th Street in the damp cool of the morning, past silent houses and empty yards. The steep ascent is no problem, we’re used to that, but we’re late as usual and have to hustle. Students with cars zip past us. Father says he won’t buy a car till you’re a senior. Then it will be a family car, not your car, but he’ll teach you to drive. He wants to toughen you up, and has given you a ratty third-hand set of golf clubs, with which you dutifully trudge around the links by yourself on weekends.

Doesn’t it seem a long time ago when the whole neighborhood gathered for hide and seek under the lilacs? Or when the kids came to your lawn for the croquet? In their early teens they all grew in different directions, joined other groups, left you behind. You’re an outcaste now, a bug in the margin of the big happy class book. Against all evidence, you have faith that school will someday end. After that you will get out of Dog River, go to New York or Paris. Or Berlin, where the crazies live.

La la, la la, la. Here’s the high school, a crouching monster with two mouths like doorways, one open, one shut. Yellow buses are unloading students from the Valley, most of them Nisei. Your old classmate Roku is not among them; he lives in town now, where his father has a store. Anyhow, he hangs around with the lettermen.

Three juniors are huddled on the lawn near the entrance. One of them, Red Nichols, says “Hi, Brain,” then seizes his own pants-leg, pulls it tight, and farts. The others laugh.

You go inside to your locker. Right 17, left 31, right 10. The multiple slamming of lockers reminds you of the movie last Saturday at the Rialto, when the vast German dreadnought echoed to the tread of marching men. A sudden explosion. White-uniformed officers are racing past. “Spurlos versenkt!” Red Nichols fails in his sailor suit, punctured by flying shrapnel. Black blood pours from his nose and mouth. He holds his arms up in mute appeal, but you step over him and follow the crowd into American History.

Mr. Mueller is talking about England at the time of the American Revolution. “And a loaf of bread cost only two dee.”

You raise your hand. “The d is for denarius. It’s pronounced ‘pence.’”

Mueller smiles with pleasure. “Well, I never heard that before.”

Later somebody passes you a note. “Draconian meeting changed to eleven o’clock.” The Draconian is the school magazine; it comes out twice a year. At eleven you get an excuse and a dirty look from Mr. Phillips. You’re failing algebra, not doing the homework, which means to Phillips that you’re lazy, but those strings of symbols are Chinese to you. You made a cartoon about that for the school newspaper, The Guide; it did not amuse Phillips, to whom algebra is as clear as the alphabet.

The Draconian staff was hand-picked by Miss Fessenden, and that’s why you are on it, although Dick Mayfield wishes you weren’t. He looks annoyed when he sees you come in. Dick is a big square-headed blond in a letterman’s sweater that has three stripes and two pins. The reason he is the editor is that he likes to run things.

You sit down next to Margaret Hicks, across from Heather Boyd and Virginia Copeland, both well-groomed seniors in pastel sweater sets and pearls.

“Well, I see we’re all here,” says Dick, “so let’s get started. Heather, do we have any new stuff to read?”

“No.”

“Okay. That’s actually good, because where we stand now, we have to turn in the whole magazine by next Friday, or the printer can’t do it before graduation week. That right, Heather?’

“Yes.”

“And, we only have sixteen pages to fill, and, what, twenty-two pages of stuff that we already decided we more or less like, not counting the contents page and my introduction that I haven’t written yet.”

“How long will the introduction be?” Virginia asks.

“Well, it depends what else is in the magazine, doesn’t it? Probably a page and a half, but I could keep it down to one page, easy. So, what the heck, call it one page for the introduction and one for the contents page, that means there’s room for fourteen pages of other stuff. So we’re eight pages over. You got the stories, Heather?” “No, I thought you had them.”

“Oh, sorry.” Dick reaches behind him, stretches easily to the bookshelf and brings back a manila folder. He opens it on the table. “Okay, here,” he says, holding up a manuscript you recognize as your own. He dangles it from one comer. “This thing I never did like, and it’s seven pages long, so there’s the problem practically solved. Any objections?”

“What didn’t you like, Dick?” Margaret asks.

“It’s crazy. Little naked people walking around on a star?” You clear your throat. “Jupiter isn’t a star.”

He gives you a can’t-believe-this look. “It isn’t? What is it then?”

“It’s a planet.”

Dick looks at the ceiling. Virginia says, “I kind of liked the little Jupiterians. I thought they were cute.”

After a moment Dick tosses the typescript onto the middle of the table and folds his arms. “Okay, tell me what you want to do.” Looked at the right way, he’s wearing a hangman’s noose that pushes his head to one side; he is dangling from a gibbet, cross-eyed, and his tongue is out.

“Let’s all copy down the names of the stories and poems and how many pages they are, and then mark the ones we think we should leave out,” Virginia says.

“Okay, fine, do it.” Dick hands the list to Virginia, who begins reading the titles aloud. You are so frozen with resentment that you put a mark beside your own story. Then the worst of the three poems, for a total of eight pages. But when Virginia tallies the votes, your story has survived. Missing are the two next-longest stories and one of the poems. That leaves two stories and two poems, and Dick’s introduction. It will be a sad little issue, just what everybody expects of The Draconian, but you are feeling a curious mixture of elation and guilt. Now your story will be part of the permanent record, where any scholar can dig it up and quote it indulgently when he writes his biography of you. Forty years ahead, when Dick Mayfield is still in jail for wife-beating and mopery.

At noon you take your lunch box out the back way to the slope above the bleachers, where if you lie flat in the grass you can’t be seen from the school above or the bleachers below. Through your mucosa I smell the cut grass, and I sample the sandwich while you eat it: white bread not quite stale, greasy margarine, lettuce, spiced baloney almost overripe.

For the hard-boiled egg you have salt and pepper shakers borrowed from the kitchen; Father would not approve if he knew, but he doesn’t, because you always put them back. The egg yolk is blue-green outside, and you’re thinking of a story you will never write, about a scientist who takes his vat-grown superchildren to another world, an empty blue-green world where they grow up wise and strong, but so godlike in intelligence that they can no longer be bothered talking to their creator. The title you are thinking of is “Promised Land.”

Then half a pickle, the emerald of vegetables.

IN THE AFTERNOON you get out of class again to work on the school paper. The Guide is put to bed on Tuesday, folded and mimeographed on Wednesday, distributed on Thursday. You type a stencil from a layout pasted up by Margaret. The stencil is a sandwich of backing sheet, cushion sheet (like angels’ toilet paper), and the blue waxy stencil itself on top. The type bar striking the stencil pushes the wax aside, leaving an impression through which the ink can ooze. When you type the wrong letter, you paint over it with correction fluid, wait for the fluid to dry, then type the right letter.

Fred Furlong, the editor, takes no part in these work sessions and is rarely seen in the Guide office, but today he looks in. “Miriam here?” Miriam Arnesen, the girls’ sports editor, a bovine blonde, is Fred’s girlfriend.

“Haven’t seen her.”

Fred comes farther into the room, smiling. He is a good-looking boy, dark-haired, wearing a beige cashmere sweater. “Matt, I hear you’ve got a good story coming up in the Draconian. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“We ought to talk sometime. You want to come over after school today?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Here’s the address.” He hands you a card. “See you later.” He waves and is gone.

You have a feeling something is happening that you don’t understand. Fred is out of your class in two senses: he is a senior, two years ahead of you, and his family is one of the richest in Dog River. You have a box Brownie; Fred has a movie camera.

You go back to your typing, make two errors side by side, correct them badly. The center pops out of an o; the stencil is mined. You start another.

Miriam Arnesen comes in and deposits something in the wire basket. She is large and pink, with Valkyrie braids and pale eyelashes. “Have you seen Fred?” she asks.

“Yes, about half an hour ago. He was looking for you.”

Her smile is slow and placid. “Oh, well, he’ll find me.”

Suddenly you wonder: what if Fred gave you a false address, so that he and all his friends can laugh at you tomorrow? Your heart is thudding. “Miriam, do you know where Fred lives?”

“Sure.”

“What’s the address?”

“One ten Churchill. Why?”

“He asked me over there after school.”

“Mm.” The slow smile again. “He must really like you.”

“I don’t know why — what he wants.”

She shakes her head. The braids swing. “I don’t either. Why don’t you ask him? Bye-bye.”

When she is gone, you find Churchill Street in the Dog River map. It is on the ridge at the northwest end of town, about a mile from here.

At four o’clock you’re standing in front of your open locker, dithering about the lunch box. If you show up carrying it, you may look ridiculous, but if you leave it, there will be complicated adjustments to make. You take the lunch box with the feeling of a decision postponed.

At noon the sky was clear, but now the sun is only a yellow stain on a high blanket of cloud. The long parade of students thins out as it passes the Heights business section with its sandwich shops and candy stores. Presently you are walking alone.

Ahead of you the street rises gently to a ridge of low houses. You hide your lunch box in a culvert; you can pick it up on your way back.

One ten Churchill is at the top of the rise, a big gray one-story house, with white trim and black carriage lamps. Nowhere is there any sign of age or wear. Geraniums in green wooden planters are on the porch, azaleas in mulched beds in the lawn. A young maple has shed a few premature leaves. Two cars and a lawnmower are visible through the open garage doors. You step up on the porch, lift the brass door knocker and tap. Fred opens the door smiling. “You made it,” he says. “Come on in.” The living room has a waxed wooden floor, rag rugs, a beige davenport and armchair. Fred waves you to the chair, then drops on the davenport with his arms behind his head. He looks at you with a secret smile.

“You’re a loner, pretty much, aren’t you, Matt?”

“I guess.”

“No friends in school?”

“One or two. Not like your gang.”

Fred’s smile widens. “Those kind of friends. They hang around because I can take them on my father’s boat in Yachats. Or I buy them little things. It’s easy to make friends when you’ve got money.”

“I guess.”

Fred shifts on the davenport. “What will you do when you get out of school?”

“Go to New York. Be a cartoonist.”

“Seriously?”

“Maybe art school first.”

“I envy you. It’s college for me, then I go into Dad’s business. You know, anybody can add up numbers, but art is a gift, isn’t it? Suppose I offered you a whole lot of money, would you trade me your gift?”

You shake your head. “Money would be nice to have, but.”

“Too bad.” He stands up. “Like to see the house?”

You follow him through a house that is empty and silent. Dining room with a long polished table, sideboard, candles in a silver holder. Kitchen, yellow walls, black floor.

“Where is everybody?”

“Dad and Mom are in Seattle. Mandy’s home sick. She’s the cook. I’m on my own. Come on, I’ll show you something else.”

You go out through a recreation room — ping-pong table, dart board. Behind the house is a wide flagstone patio, then a little strip of lawn. Other houses, other back yards, are spread out below in descending tiers.

Fred reaches up to curl his fingers around a limb of the young oak near the edge of the lawn. A falling leaf hangs in midair. “Look,” he says.

Below, a silver skin of light covers the rooftops, the empty streets. You can see all the way to the horizon and beyond. Not a creature is stirring. The world has stopped, and it is empty. You think about the novel The Purple Cloud — what it would be like to be the last man on Earth.

All this I can give you, Fred says.

You look up at the sky for help, but no one is there.