The Book of Michael Read online

  “Screw the school!” I shouted, looking right at him. “Screw the corporation!”

  I don’t know which corporation.Any one would do, I suppose. It was the verb that mattered. Some of the other students looked at me like I was crazy. I noticed Lisa now and her look said the obvious: tone it down.

  “The greedy bastards!” I yelled louder.

  And that’s when the police arrived.

  Ten of the demonstrators dropped their signs and left. Pen looked at me as if expecting me to know what to do. Four cops were out of their cars and walking towards us, towards me.

  I’d learned one thing about being bad. Sometimes you didn’t have to do anything.You could just stand there and pose. Even if you were gutless, even if you didn’t have a cool bone in your body. People were easily impressed or intimidated just by the way you looked–if you looked like me back then. I shot a glimpse at Miranda who was looking at me. She licked her lips in a very sexy way.

  A few more cops had arrived and they were holding nightsticks but trying to be very calm. Those of us who had not fled were actually standing within a circle of policemen. There was obviously nowhere to go. Pen was looking at me like I was the one who should say something. It was now my demonstration. I looked over and saw Lisa then and was shocked that she was still here.

  A thick–necked officer stepped forward and looked at me. “What’s this about?” he said in a calm voice.

  That’s when I spit in his face.

  Chapter 5

  They arrested me and only me. And claimed that spitting in a policeman’s face was “assaulting an officer of the law.”

  “How stupid can you get?” my father screamed at me when we got in the car to go home.

  “Screw you,” I told him. I’d never talked like that to my father and should have realized I’d turned some dark corner. I was really heading down the back alley now.No more Sunday school attendance prizes, no merit badges. But I had decided I was another rebel with a cause. What about those kids in sweatshops, anyway? Who the hell else was going to stand up for them?

  The truth was I didn’t really do a lot of thinking about global issues or social problems. I was young and angry and any reason for my rage would do. The truth was it was all about me. Not kids in the Third World or any other world.

  That night I was supposed to stay in my room, but I sneaked out of there as I’d done before and I went over to Miranda’s house. Her parents were gone. She gave me a pill of something–something she didn’t even know the name of. She took some too and we got high in a weird space–cadet kind of way. Then we had sex there on the living room floor. I don’t think either one of us cared if anyone would have walked in on us, but that didn’t happen. It was great and she dug her nails into my back until I was bleeding.

  And she bit my tongue and made that bleed too.

  Afterwards, she put a frozen pizza in the microwave and it hurt to eat because of her biting my tongue. But I didn’t say that.The weird stone from the pill kind of had control of me and I started talking–saying anything that came into my head.

  “Pretty soon something big is going to happen. All those self–righteous shits like that cop, and Mr. Guy Tyson, and all those asshole teachers, and all the narrow–minded shitty adults who live in this town.They’re gonna wake up one day and find they are on the bottom, not the top.The world is gonna turn upside down and they won’t know what walloped them.They won’t be able to figure out that it’s me spitting in their face.”

  Miranda laughed and I thought she looked really cute and really sweet and I was still glowing (even while I ranted) about the fact that I’d just had sex with her, so I said, “I love you.”

  “Sex is love, love is sex,” she answered. “I love you too.” But there was no real heart to the words.They were just words. “Let’s do it again.”

  It. Again.

  Afterwards, she said she wanted to show me something and she led me to her father’s home office. He had a big oak desk and all kinds of weird stuff hanging on the walls–carvings and paintings and even some small stone sculptures that looked like they could have been ancient. “My father is a collector,” she said. “Look at this.”

  On a table was a rack with an array of oddly shaped knives. “Ceremonial knives from different cultures around the world,” she explained.

  “What’s he do with them?”

  “Nothing, silly. He collects them, remember? For my father, it’s all about ownership. He likes to possess things. It makes him feel important.” She suddenly ran to the door and turned off the light switch. The room went black.Then, just as quickly, she turned on the desk lamp and it cast a weird, eerie light on her. She was standing right in front of me now with a golden curved knife, holding it above her like she was ready to attack me. It scared the shit out of me. I took a step backwards and fell over a chair and ended up on the floor.

  Miranda was laughing now. My heart was beating wildly.

  “It was a joke,” she said, putting the knife down on the desk and helping me up.

  ***

  I was out of school for a week.Tyson had suspended me. My teachers expected me to “keep up with the work,” which I intended to ignore. I stayed home and watched TV, fooled around on the Internet and got bored, finally started reading a book that my grandmother had given me. It was an English translation of the Chinese I Ching. I didn’t get it at all at first. Something about divining your future by tossing sticks and interpreting them. Phyllis said the book had helped her when her life got complicated or difficult.

  By my third day of suspension I was bored out of my gourd. I would open the book to a random page and read what it had to say for Hexagram 28: Stubbornness will bring you alienation from your true source of help and support.

  This was wonderful news. I flipped the pages to another hexagram: Using force will lead to failure. Avoid impulsive behavior.

  Me, impulsive?

  I phoned Miranda’s cell phone. It rang.

  “I’m in class. I can’t talk,” she said.

  It was against the school rules to leave your cell phone on or answer it in class. A lot of kids broke that rule.

  “Come over.After class. I’m going crazy.”

  “I can’t,” she said and hung up.

  I made a sandwich, watched some really bad TV, gave up and flipped open the I Ching again. Hexagram 37: Love develops where there is mutual trust and respect.

  Love equals sex, sex equals love, I heard a voice in my head say.

  I phoned my grandmother. “Phyllis, I don’t know about the book. I don’t think that I’m ready for all this old Chinese bullshit.”

  “It’s only bullshit if you insist it is bullshit.”

  “What is that? Hexagram 41?”

  “Ah, so you are reading the book?”

  “I’ve dipped into it. I just don’t think it has anything to do with me.The world has changed.The rules are all new.”

  “The world hasn’t changed,” she said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  I explained my situation.

  “Your grandfather was a policeman when he was young.”

  “I remember him telling me.There was a story about breaking up a union strike. Someone got hurt.”

  “Yes. He realized he was on the wrong side. The police were breaking up the strike. He hit some of the strikers and then quit his job after that and became a union organizer. He’d be interested, if he were alive, to hear your story. I’m not sure about the spitting though. I’ve always thought spitting is vulgar.”

  “I’ll try to be more polite next time.”

  “Whatever has been lost will return when the time is right.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Hexagram 38.”

  “Great.”

  “Would you like me to come over?”

  I thought of my grandmother having to take two buses to where I lived. “No, it’s okay. I’ll just read the book. Do you miss him?”

  “Who?”

  �
��My grandfather.”

  “Every day. He always stood by me when I did something stupid. Even when it was so embarrassing.”

  “Why do you think he did that?”

  “It was his nature.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, Phyllis.”

  “Good.”

  Hearing my grandmother talk about my grandfather left me feeling sad. Being home alone made me feel like I’d been abandoned and cut off from the rest of the world. I opened the book again to another interpretation of Hexagram 38: When you are alone, it is easy to mistrust even the good people. That spooked me a bit. I felt like my grandmother was still talking to me through the words of the I Ching somehow.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  It was Lisa Conroy.

  “I was sitting across from Miranda,” she said.“I heard you on the cell phone. I thought you might need some books.”

  ***

  The charges were soon dropped—after my father’s lawyer did some talking, after I promised to stay out of trouble, after I apologized to the cop. That was tough. And it was bullshit. I had liked spitting in his face–especially in front of the kids at school. And now I had something I had to live up to.

  Chapter 6

  The morning of my release, it took a lot of courage to simply get out of the car and go into the Burger King bathroom to clean myself up. Six months away from the world and somehow it all felt different. I felt like a person from another planet. People stared at me–it could have been my imagination, but I doubt it. My picture had been everywhere in the papers. And on television.

  The words my mother had said seemed impossible. Miranda had killed Lisa. She had destroyed my life. I locked myself in the bathroom and splashed water onto my face. Then I stared into the mirror. My mind froze.

  I stood like that for ten minutes.Then someone was knocking at the door. It was my father.“Michael, are you all right? Michael?”

  I unlocked the door. He saw the look on my face and took me in his arms, hugged me, then led me through the restaurant and back out to the car.

  When I got home, I went to my room and slept. I slept through the afternoon and through the night. I know my parents came in to check on me, but I didn’t acknowledge them. I felt like Lisa had died a second time and I felt yet again, but even more painfully so, that it was my fault.

  ***

  When I finally woke it was morning. Early morning. I felt disoriented but part of me felt good. It was good to be alive. I dressed, went downstairs, and walked out the back door into the backyard.The sun was out.There were birds singing. My mother’s flowers were blooming. It was as if nothing had changed. Life really had gone on without me. If Miranda had not confessed, all this would have continued on.Without me. I felt isolated and insignificant. But it still felt good to be alive. Good to be free.

  Free. As soon as my mind grabbed onto that word, I became confused.What did freedom mean? Could I ever really feel free again? Could I ever stop thinking about Lisa? It would always be there and so would the emerging truth about her death. And all the punishment that had been wrongfully done to me. I could never be free.

  I walked out into the yard and, over the fence, I saw our neighbor, Sutherland “Sudsy” Pinter. Sudsy had gone to school with my father.They used to be friends. But the trial changed all that. Now he was staring at me. I stared back. That’s when he turned and walked back into his house. He didn’t wave, he certainly wasn’t smiling and he had that look–he still had that look, the one I had seen on so many faces. Pure hatred. For him, nothing had really changed. He must have known why I was home,why I was released. But he was not about to let go of his contempt for me.This is what it was going to be like, I realized.

  I walked around the backyard and stopped by the maple tree. Although the tiny crosses were long gone, I knew that this was the place where I had buried our pet canary, my hamster Hughie, Ginger the family dog I had grown up with, and, most recently, Cassidy,my pet white rat. Sudsy had complained, I remember, about us burying the dog in the backyard. Sudsy was unemployed off and on and he was a real pain in the ass when he didn’t have a job. Always in other people’s business. Always having opinions, always mouthing off to my parents about something that was up his ass.

  I picked up a Y–shaped branch that had broken off the tree and I pushed it into the soil, a new marker for my pets. And I guess I just stood there and started to cry again. I cried for me and for the dead animals and for Lisa. And for all the sadness and hurt in the world that was inside of me. And I was sure it would never go away.

  My mother came out in her housecoat and found me standing there. She collected what was left of me and took it inside the house. She made me breakfast without saying anything and then my father arrived. He was dressed for work. At first I was shocked. It seemed way too normal. But I didn’t want to say anything about it. I knew they were trying to make everything seem like it used to be. I would fake it.

  “How are things at the office?” I asked matter–of–factly.

  He turned away and went to the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. “Um… things have changed.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Your father’s changed jobs,” my mom said.

  I looked at my father’s back. “Wow.You were there for… what?… like ten years.”

  “It was time for a change. I got tired of the insurance game.”

  “You never told me you changed jobs.”

  “Sorry about that,” my mom said but nothing more. It began to sink in.

  “They fired you, didn’t they?”

  “Not really. I decided to leave on my own.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m at a call center.”

  “You what?”

  “I answer people’s complaints about their cell phones.”

  “Jesus. Dad.”

  “It’s not so bad. But I’m still kind of new there. I wanted to stay home today but I’ve already taken time off. I really should be there today.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay. We’re all okay.”

  But I knew my dad had lost his job because of me. And it wasn’t like his old boss was going to call him up now and say: Oh, we’re sorry.Your son wasn’t guilty after all, so you can have your old job back.

  My mom poured his coffee into a travel mug and handed him a paper bag that must have had a sandwich in it. I hadn’t seen her do that since I was in grade school and she used to pack a lunch for me. She kissed him and he turned back to me. “See you when I get home. It’s good to have you back.” And he was gone.

  I stared at my eggs and toast for a few minutes until the silence made my mom uncomfortable. She sat down across the table from me. “You don’t like it?”

  I hadn’t tasted it yet. “In the backyard,” I said. “I saw Sudsy looking at me. He looked at me like I was still guilty. Like nothing has changed.”

  “Sudsy Pinter is an asshole,” my mother said.

  I couldn’t believe my mother used those words. I dropped my fork and smiled, I think, for the first time since I’d come home.

  “People sometimes believe what they want to believe,” she said. “Dr. Kaufman called. He was trying to be helpful. He said that some people would act this way. Once an idea is fixed in their heads, the facts won’t change anything. He said we should maybe go see him if we wanted to.You and me and your father.”

  I shook my head.“Dr. Kaufman believed I was guilty. He took notes about everything I told him and he made his own interpretations. He was one of them. He was like Sudsy, an asshole who believed what he wanted to believe. I’m not going back to him.”

  “He apologized.”

  “He should lose his job. He could have helped me. But he helped them.”

  “You’re right,” she said.“But you’re going to need help.”

  “I don’t want his apology and I don’t want his help. I want my life back.”

  My mom did a good job of not crying then. Maybe she was all cried out.
Maybe six months of crying had injured her tear ducts or something.

  “How’s Grandma Phyllis?” I asked.

  “Better,” she answered. “She’s been in the hospital but she’s home now.”

  I stared at her.“More secrets withheld from me.”

  My mom put her hands in the air.“You know Phyllis. She made me promise not to tell you. But she’s okay.”

  “What was it?”

  “Her lungs. Emphysema.”

  “Right,” I said. And I craved a cigarette just then for the first time in a couple of months. Despite what the other inmates were doing, while inside I had stopped smoking and stopped everything. No drugs. No drinking. I had become clean and sober, as they say. But right then I was thinking that I really wanted a smoke. And I craved a little buzz from a joint.And a beer for breakfast wouldn’t be a bad thing. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “I wanna go visit Phyllis,” I said.“I want to go see her today.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “No,” I said. “I want to go on my own.”

  Chapter 7

  It was a kind of test. Going out in broad daylight.Taking a bus. I wasn’t really prepared for it. I wasn’t really prepared for anything. But I decided to go anyway. I just knew that my parents were going to try to protect me and I didn’t want that right now. I wanted to know how many people out there were going to act like Sudsy. How many never changed their minds about what they thought of me even after the truth was out.

  The bus stopped and I got on, dropped my money in, and walked towards the back. I looked straight ahead and didn’t make eye contact. As they say on the old Star Trek reruns, “Shields up.” Being inside had trained me quite well at keeping to myself and ignoring whatever was going on around me. I was thinking this might be a way to get through the days ahead–or the life ahead.

  Some of them were looking at me. I didn’t look back. I took a seat by myself and stared out the window. We passed through the familiar landscape of my hometown and I remembered riding my bike through these streets. So long ago. If I squinted I imagined I could see myself–Michael Grove at ten riding his twenty–one speed bike, helmet on, braking at stop signs, then riding on, the wind in his face. Riding to the library or to play soccer or to a friend’s house.