Perfect Fifths Read online

  “You know, in retrospect, she really wasn’t all that bad. She was just trying to motivate us, which is more than I can say for just about every other teacher I had.”

  “I know. And once I got to know Haviland as, like, a real person, she’s actually pretty cool in a crazy-hippie-lady kind of way. I actually felt kind of bad about nicknaming her Miss Havisham for all those years. But there was no mistaking her gratitude for the infusion of funds. Pineville had eliminated all its expendable arts programs. No more music, no more drama, and no more extracurricular writing, including her beloved newspaper, The Seagull’s Voice.”

  “And we thought Pineville sucked when we were there.”

  “I assure you that it sucks even more now. But at least I helped get the newspaper up and running again, both in print and online. It sounds totally corny, but…”

  “What?”

  “I feel like I made a difference, you know? Because for me, writing for the high school newspaper … Oh, forget it.”

  “No, I won’t forget it, Jessica. Go on!”

  “Writing for that stupid paper …” [Long sigh.] “Changed my life.”

  “How so?”

  “Ugh. I hate to even say it because it’s so … I don’t know … melodramatic. But…”

  “What?”

  “The Seagull’s Voice gave me a voice.”

  “You always had a voice, Jessica. You just weren’t encouraged to use it until then.”

  “Okay, right. It’s true that before Haviland forced me to write for the paper, I only bitched about the tragic indignities of high school life in my journals or in letters to Hope. But writing those editorials when I was sixteen, seventeen… it was the first time I found the courage to speak out loud about issues that were important to me.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Because working with teenage girls for the past two years has helped remind me how everything matters so much when you’re sixteen years old. A whispered secret is an opera. A one-word text is epic. A dirty look is drama, drama, draaaaaamaaaaa. Every minute of every day is so intense in a way that fades with time. I knew for sure that I had gotten really fucking old when thinking about all those vitally important issues from my sophomore year only made me embarrassed for my former self.”

  “‘Homecoming King and Queen: Democracy at Its Dumbest.’”

  “Oh my God, Marcus. You remember that? I barely remember that!”

  “‘Vegetable Medley Mayhem: A Food Fight Against Cafeteria Tyranny.’”

  “That wasn’t even one of my best.”

  “Your best? That would have to be the first one you ever wrote: ‘Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Just Another Poseur.’”

  “I have to agree with you on that, if only because some would say it’s still topical ten years later.”

  [Pause.]

  “Before you wrote that editorial, I thought you were…”

  “What?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “Oh, never mind my ass, Marcus.”

  “Intriguing.”

  “Intriguing.”

  “But…”

  “There had to be a but.”

  “Icy.”

  “Intriguing but icy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like wasabi sorbet!”

  “Okay, like wasabi sorbet. But after that editorial…”

  “Mount Everest!”

  “Fine. You were like Mount Everest.”

  “A polar bear! A polar bear… uh …”

  “With a Ph.D. in the semiotics of snow. Are you finished yet, Jessica?”

  “Uh … I think so. Yes.”

  “After that editorial, I wanted to get to know you better.”

  “Warm me up? Make me melt? Reduce me to a pool of, uh, intriguing slush?”

  “I’m officially ignoring you now, Jessica.”

  “No, go ahead. Finish what you were going to say.”

  “That editorial inspired our first real conversation, remember? You were limping home on crutches, and I offered you a ride home in the Caddie?”

  [Cough. Cough. Cough.] “The Caddie! How is the Caddie?”

  “The Caddie has passed on.”

  “It died?”

  “That car was almost forty years old. Its time had come.”

  “I am shocked by how sad this news has made me. You must have been devastated when it rode off into the big ol’ scrapyard in the sky. You loved that car.”

  “I did. But I’ve loved and lost before, so …”

  “So.”

  “We could have a moment of silence, if that would make you feel better.”

  “I think it might.”

  [Moment of silence.]

  “See? You can still feel things intensely. You know, even though you’re so fucking old.”

  “Har-dee-har-har.”

  seven

  (turning point of view)

  “So, Grannypants, what do you do with your disaffected youth?”

  “I’m one of those half-dozen mentors, of whom I am by far the least qualified. They all have M.F.A.s and Ph.D.s, but I’ve got the rich philanthropist friend willing to drop major coin on a whim.”

  “You’re apologizing via modesty again.”

  “Well, it’s true. My comparative lack of education is one of the reasons I’ve applied to graduate school.”

  “Really. Where? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Teachers College. It’s the graduate school of education—”

  “At Columbia. Yes, I know.”

  “Then you’re familiar with it?”

  “Yes. [Throat clearing.] I am.”

  “Anyway, we work with a school staff member; it’s usually the favorite English teacher or adviser of the school newspaper. At Pineville, it was Haviland, of course. That staff member selects twenty students—five from each grade level—to participate in a ten-week after-school writing seminar that culminates with a public reading and collection of the Girls’ work in an anthology.”

  “So they’re all aspiring writers?”

  “Some are. Other Girls are encouraged to come because they’re considered high-risk and can benefit from narrative therapy.”

  “All girls? You keep saying ‘girls.’”

  “A habit. The program isn’t exclusive to girls, but, like, the vast majority of the participants are girls. As a former teenage boy, why do you think that’s the case?”

  “I don’t know. Because teenage boys are idiots? As you pointed out earlier, I would have joined because the vast majority of the participants were girls.”

  “Of course you would have! Which would have done wonders for your … What did you call it again? Your ‘poet/addict mystique’?”

  “You forgot ‘manwhore.’ But yes, it would have been great for that, only if I didn’t actually participate. I would have needed to show up at every single session for ten weeks but never say or do or contribute anything.”

  “Right! But then on the very last day, you would have raised your hand. And the room would’ve fallen silent, all eyes and ears on you. And you would’ve opened your mouth and uttered something totally random and absurd. Something like … ‘Blame Byron!’”

  “Something exactly like that.”

  [Pause.]

  “So how does your psychology background factor in to all this?”

  “It’s therapeutic creativity. Risk prevention through personal expression.”

  “Ah, yes, arts and crafts are a crucial component of any rehabilitation program. You should have seen the set of Super Mario Brothers statues I made out of Popsicle sticks.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. It wasn’t easy, because we had to use this special nonintoxicating glue substitute that didn’t stick together very well. I suffered for my art.”

  “I didn’t even know you played Super Mario Brothers.”

  “I didn’t. But others did. I knew I could trade them for contraband cigarettes.”

  “Really?”
/>
  “Yes, really, Jessica. Why do you find this so hard to believe?”

  “I don’t find it hard to believe your stories. Your stories are very credible. I just find it hard to believe that I’ve never heard them before.”

  “I guess the subject of Super Mario Brothers never came up.”

  “I guess not.”

  [Pause.]

  “So, risk prevention?”

  “Oh, right. So, humans are, uh, uniquely adapted for narrative constructions. Studies indicate that we begin to see ourselves as characters in our own life stories in adolescence, with key periods serving as different chapters. The most dramatic events are presented as the key scenes to the overall plot, the high points and low points of one’s life story. You remember the inscription to the journal you gave me? You said, ‘The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves make us who we are.’”

  “I did?”

  “You did. So you understand the concept. But storytelling not only defines who we already are, it also has the power to determine who we will be.”

  “Interesting.”

  “When faced with major decisions, adults turn to their personal historical narratives as a guide. Teenagers, however, have far fewer volumes to choose from in their autobiographical library—they haven’t lived through as much success and failure and … ugh.”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking this right from the Do Better High School Storytellers mission statement. I hate when I catch myself sounding like a PowerPoint presentation, like I’ve forgotten how to think and speak for myself.”

  “It’s okay, go on. I want to hear about this.”

  “Basically, we encourage teenagers to recount the past in a way that will help them make more informed choices in the future.”

  “What do they write about?”

  “Everything.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Uh …”

  “Not the whole thing, obviously. Just the gist.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, if it violates some sort of ethical code of confidentiality …”

  “It’s not that. It’s just. Uh. Well…”

  “I don’t want to put you on the spot.”

  “You’re not putting me on any … uh … spot. There’s no spot for me to be put on. Or, uh, rather, I mean there’s no spot on which I can be put. On which you can put me.”

  “Now you’re really talking like a bad tattoo.”

  “It’s a plague.”

  “A contagious babble.”

  “Spread by a Byronic sneeze.”

  [Pause.]

  “Okay. My favorite essay was a mockery of the genre. A girl wrote about flipping over on a hammock, falling on her face, and becoming anosmic.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She lost her sense of smell.”

  “Oh. Anosmic. Good word. Like you’re anosmic right now.”

  “What?”

  “Because of that nasty cold of yours. Which seems to be doing much better, I must add.”

  “It [sniff] comes and goes.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, the essay concluded with something like ‘She learned two invaluable life lessons from this experience. She might have lost her sense of smell, but she gained a sense of self. After all, she was never the type of girl who would stop to smell the roses, but now she wouldn’t have to pretend that she was.’”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “It’s not the best part. The kicker was ‘And the other lesson she learned was this: Never fuck in a hammock.’”

  “Ha!”

  “It’s even funnier when … when … uh …”

  [Pause.]

  “Jessica?”

  “Huh?”

  “You just kind of stopped in the middle of a sentence.”

  “I did?”

  “You did.”

  “I did. I’m so sorry, I’m just really dis—”

  “Distracted, I know. Now give me a dollar.”

  “A dollar? For what—Oh, dammit. Here it is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re still down by two.”

  “This conversation isn’t over yet.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “How’s it going so far?”

  “What? The conversation?”

  “Yes. The conversation. Are you enjoying yourself?”

  [Pause.]

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I am, too.”

  [Pause.]

  “Is it going the way you thought it would?”

  “No … and yes.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I didn’t really know how it would go, but in that unpredictable sense, it’s going exactly as I thought it would.”

  “I’m in full agreement.”

  [Long pause.]

  “Now look what’s happened.”

  “I know! Our in-the-moment analysis of our conversation brought it to a dead stop.”

  “Let’s avoid getting meta-conversational again. Let’s just talk.”

  “Sure. Let’s just talk. There’s just one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I totally forgot what I was talking about. I lost my train of thought.”

  “You were talking about the girl who had never fucked in a hammock.”

  “Right, her. Her …”

  “And the essay was funny because …”

  “It was funny because, uh, she had never even kissed a boy when she wrote it. Hey, excuse me for a moment, okay? I’m just going to check to see if I missed any calls.”

  “Are you expecting to hear from someone?”

  “Sort of. Maybe. But… nope. No missed calls.”

  “Do you need to make a call? I don’t mind.”

  “Do I need to make a call? Uh, no. It’s fine. I can wait. It’s … perfectly fine. Perfect.”

  [Pause.]

  “Do they only write personal essays, or … ?”

  “No, no. We do exercises in all kinds of forms and genres. Nonfiction, fiction, screenwriting, poetry. But as an introductory writing exercise, we ask them to recount a turning point in their lives.”

  “Like the classic first-person college application essay.”

  “No, actually. The first-person essay has become such a cliché, you know? By the time they hit high school, they’ve already written so many first-person turning-point essays that they’ve run out of turning points. That’s why we make them write that first assignment in the third person.”

  “Third person? Why?”

  “Brace yourself for another two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar word.”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “The average sticker price of four years at an Ivy League college.”

  “Oh. Okay. Consider me braced.”

  “Prosopopoeia.”

  “It sounds just like the last quarter-million-dollar word.”

  “That was ‘prosopagnosia.’ This is ‘prosopopoeia.’”

  “Well, no duh.”

  “‘Prosopopoeia’ is a literary device in which a writer speaks as another person.”

  “Okay.”

  “Research has shown that when you tell a story in the omnipotent third person, it creates a buffer between the narrator and the character in the story, even when the story is autobiographical and the protagonist is a version of yourself. Still with me?”

  “I’m still with you.”

  “That shift in point of view helps painful stories feel less painful. You become an objective observer of all the Sturm und Drang and not the unfortunate person going through it. Therapeutically speaking, we hope the writer can actually learn something about herself and how she goes about making certain life choices … Ugh. I’m sorry, this is all from the mission statement again.”

  “Gimme a dollar.”

  “Dammit. Here you go, Marcus. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  “Thank you. What a shame. You were o
n such a roll.”

  “Now we’re even. Deadlocked.”

  “It’s not a game, Jessica.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Oh, well, I suppose it is.”

  [Pause.]

  “I was waiting for you to call me the Game Master. Were you tempted to call me the Game Master?”

  “I judiciously refrained. That’s so senior-year-of-high-school, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve evolved.”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve totally, totally evolved. I’m, like, way, way more mature than to resort to high school taunts.”

  “Even for nostalgia’s sake?”

  “Especially for nostalgia’s sake. Now, what was I saying earlier?”

  “The third p—”

  “Oh, right. The third person. We call this writing exercise the turning point of view. The change in narrative perspective triggers an internal psychological shift that allows you to see past decisions in a whole new way. It’s similar to when you see a friend making a huge mistake and it’s just so obvious.”

  “Yet at the same time, you’re blind to your own foibles.”

  “Right.”

  [Pause.]

  “What about happy stories, Jessica?”

  “Happy stories?”

  “Yes. Happy stories with happy endings.”

  [Long sigh.] “Unfortunately, Marcus, there aren’t enough of those. But…”

  eight

  (doth protesting)

  “Hold that thought—now I’m vibrating. Let me see who it is. Oh, never mind.”

  “Who was it?”

  “No one I need to talk to right now, either.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Do you remember meeting my roommate, Natty?”

  “The freckle-faced little boy from Alabama?”

  “That freckle-faced little boy from Alabama is all grown up. He’s a Rhodes Scholar.”

  “That child is a Rhodes Scholar? Oh my God. I’m so fucking old.”

  “You’re old? I’m ten years older than my lab partner. She barely remembers boy bands.”

  “That is a serious gap in her knowledge. How did she even get in to Princeton?”

  “I know. She knew very little about the rivalry between the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. I had to educate her.”

  “That’s important work.”

  “Indeed.”

  “So you and Natty are still friends.”