The Savage Innocent

Next possession - same routine, only this time I knew Rand was deliberately tossing the ball high for an easy pick-off. Coach fumed and called Harriman over, told him to get ready to go in on the next possession and you could see the kid inflate like a Firestone. He was probably the only guy out there, God bless him, who didn't know what the fuck was going on. Rand huddled with Harriman by the bench and I could hear him working on Harriman, stoking the fires, building him up, and sure enough the kid went in and tossed a right fair post pattern to rocket named Parry and we had seven points on the board. Harriman was alright after that.

I didn't quite know what to think of Rand after that. Hell, no one did.

__________________________________

The school had a decent reputation for being a total bear academically and after the first few weeks no one doubted that in the least. Even Rand was impressed.

His parents were what you might call intellectuals. They had met at Georgetown and both had continued on to Boston; Colin Rand to the Fletcher School and Ruth Carlson to Harvard Law. The Rand kids had, as I've mentioned, grown up in Europe, Paris for the most part, and Dalton was fluent in both Latin and French by the time he was nine. His mother was a reluctant if very learned teacher with a ton and a half of time on her hands and so suffice to say academics came easily to Rand. Too, I think today most people would say he came from the deep end of the gene pool; they would be right on-the-mark with that observation.

While I did not consider myself a slouch academically, after the first set of mid-terms I found myself hovering just over the periphery of academic probation. When my father received notice of that interesting bit of news I was promptly informed there would be no problem re-enrolling at Central High come January. The problem was, well, with my less than stellar aptitude with all things numeric. Rand was in pre-Calculus and I was in Algebra II; Rand was taking Honors Physics (doing celestial mechanics, for Christ sake) and I was struggling to get through Physical Science. He soon gave me a new nick-name: Moron. It hurt. If anyone else had called me a moron I would have flattened them; coming from Rand it was an evisceration. I felt like I had let him down.

And to this day I still don't know why.

_____________________________________

Parent's Weekend rolled around a few weeks later and my mother rolled round at the anointed time – no surprise there. What did surprise me was that my sister Madeleine came with her. And here I need to digress a little.

I was kid number two, and an afterthought at that. Madeleine had been the apple of everyone's eye, doted on by one and all, the chosen one. I say this not out of jealousy; indeed I took it all in stride because I pretty much felt that way about her too. I loved her like everyone else did; everyone it seems but my parents loved her unconditionally. Unbeknownst to me my father had a little something more than an infatuation going on with Madeleine, and while she was more a friend to me than a sister she was leading a double life that had been tearing her apart for years.

Protective, nurturing, all a little brother could ask for from a mother or a sister, she was held before one and all as the very embodiment of feminine perfection. For a while I think she probably believed all the hype and nonsense. Reality collided with that worldview one rainy night in the backseat of dad's Chevy when she was a senior and the details get pretty sketchy at that point.

The summer I shipped off to Indiana marked the second year of her stay at a mental hospital in the hills overlooking Palo Alto, California. Truth be told, I had no idea where she'd been; she had "gone away to school" or some such nonsense the year before and buckets of such drivel greeted her absence that summer while I packed my olive drab footlocker. My mother had been locked away in her love affair with Jack Daniels for quite some time and so it was a bit of a surprise when she showed up without dad; be that as it may, Madeleine's presence was the stunner.

One last digression here is in order. Madeleine had just about every girl I ever knew beat hands down in the looks department. She had those Grace Kelly eyes and wavy strawberry blond hair that people stopped to stare at, and she couldn't do a damn thing about it. She was just gorgeous, movie star gorgeous. Why would someone with so much going for her be so shy and unsure of herself?

I used to ask myself that. I think that question now and bleed inside.

Why, indeed.

Anyway.

My mother was no slouch in the looks department herself; that end of the gene pool was pretty deep on her side of the family. She'd been on her way to a starring role in a minor Paramount production when she ran into my dad; he'd charmed her right out of the life she'd dreamed of and still had no idea what had happened. Dad was reputedly a damn fine lawyer so one has to assume he knew how to lie pretty well.

So along comes Mom and Madeleine and there I am on the parade ground in my dress blues looking like something right out of a Gary Cooper movie waiting to meet and greet all the assembled parents in all my wide-eyed innocence. Every pair of eyes in the Cadet Corp was, I feel quite certain even today, riveted on Madeleine. She was as always radiant, almost blindingly so, and I heard Rand mutter under his breath something about the blond on the second row.

"That's my sister, Dickhead," I replied in kind.

"Can't be," he whispered. "Nothing as fugly as you could be related to that."

I tried miserably to stifle the laugh that was just dying to rip loose; truth be told I was as proud of Madeleine as ever and seeing her after so long was like a drink of cool water on a hot August day. Rand's affirmation just made the joy I felt that much more intense.

Hell, I was happy. Happy enough to not notice my father wasn't in the stands.

_________________________________________

It was, as well, homecoming weekend so of course we had a bruising football game on the schedule for Saturday morning, and a vicious rivalry at that: fifty years in the making with a school from Wisconsin. It was late October and the air was already crisp when we took to the field, the turning leaves were at their furious best. Butterflies the size of barn owls fluttered in our guts, I'm sure, but all I could think about was dinner the night before.

Those whose parents had come had leave from our normal duties so could venture off-campus for dinner Friday night; we were allowed one guest so of course Rand was invited when it turned out his mother couldn't make it. There was a nice inn not far from school and mom had secured reservations for the weekend well in advance; their dining room was reputed to be first rate, if a little on the pricey side. Mom appeared sober; if this held the night promised to be a one to remember.

Mom came to dinner smelling of Chanel No 5; Jack Daniels had been given leave for the evening and was nowhere to be found. The menu, it turned out, was in French. Madeleine was in rare form, Rand was in heaven. Yet something seemed a little off.

Rand may have taken his eyes off Madeleine when I introduced him to my mother, but frankly, I doubt it. When I introduced Madeleine he bowed, took her hand and kissed it. Maddie blushed, a first for her in my book, and he rushed to get her chair and seat her. The dining room was overflowing with cadets and what appeared to be all the retired four-star generals then living, and both Rand and I were all too aware we were being watched and graded by people who could and would make our lives a living hell if we made a scene or embarrassed the school in any way. I doubt a fourth-year West Pointer could have done better that night.

Rand interpreted, made suggestions, championed the proper way to hold escargot, and when Madeleine made noises about needing the powder room Rand fired out of his chair so smartly he nearly knocked the thing over. He watched her walk from the table and I knew right then and there he was in love with her. Hell, who wasn't? My mother might have been amused but for the lingering malaise that seemed to hover all about her.

"I hear there's a dance after the game tomorrow," my mother said soon after Madeleine returned. "Rand, perhaps you'd be so kind and take Madeleine under your wing? There are some items I need to discuss with my son. As we're leaving early Sunday morning I'm afraid I'll need to borrow him during that time." She blinked her soft eyes and smiled easily at him. "Would you be a dear and do that for me?"

"It would be my honor," he said; Maddie and I tried our best not to laugh but mother let slip and we all burst out laughing. It was, after all, getting hard to ignore the look in Madeleine's eyes too.

When we got back to the dorm later that night Rand had mail waiting. He ripped open the letter from his mother while I undressed and hung up my uniform. I heard a sharp intake of breath and paper crumbling, turned to see Rand thunder from the room. I left the paper on the floor, looked at its malevolent form while I waited to find out what had happened. He came back a while later; he was red-faced, his jaw clenched, the muscles in his face were working frantically. All the classic Rand-signs that the shit had well and truly hit the fan.

"What gives?" I said while he ripped his shirt off and threw it on the floor.

"My mom. She's fucking divorcing dad. Says she's getting married in Florida, during Christmas break. Merry fucking Christmas!"

I nodded understanding but was speechless. Divorce in those days was still something of an oddity and I couldn't fathom what the words really meant. But I could see the cold reality of those words playing out on Rand's face in those frozen moments, and whatever it was – it wasn't pretty.

________________________________

It still wasn't pretty Saturday morning while we suited up in the locker room; the pre-game butterflies were there, sure, but something unsettling and vile was crawling around in Rand's gut and I wasn't sure he was going to make it through the day. I was pretty certain he'd gotten up in the middle of the night to throw up. Nevertheless, he was steady during pre-game warm-ups and brightened considerably when he saw Madeleine and my mom taking their seats in the stands just above the home-team bench.

A pretty stiff breeze was coming out of the northwest when we kicked off; the kid returning the ball stumbled and got hammered, fumbled the ball on their thirty yard line. Harriman took the offense out on the field and called the first play of the game, lined up for the snap and fell back to pass. The defense blitzed everything they had and it was a miracle Tucker managed to hold on to the ball under the wave of maroon jerseys that crashed over him. He didn't stand up when the pile cleared and remained resolutely still while the huddle formed. Finally a referee blew his whistle and the team doc ran out on the field; he worked for a moment and Harriman stood and wobbled a few steps before going down like a sack of coal. A stretcher was summoned and Coach turned to Rand. They talked for a moment and Rand looked at me and smiled; the backfield coach popped me on the helmet and told me to go in and I trotted out beside Rand and took the huddle.

He looked at me again while he sized me up.

"23 wide right, slant right, on two." He winked at me while he repeated the play. "You ready, slick?" he said while we clapped and broke the huddle.

"Betcha," I managed to croak before running up to the line.

On the snap I bolted straight downfield and faked left, then shot for the sideline and the far corner of the end zone. I knew I had their cornerback beat; all I had to worry about was their safety. As I looked over my right shoulder I caught sight of the ball; it was right there, rifling straight at my face. I jumped and turned at the same time; the ball drilled into my chest like a javelin – which was a good thing because the force of the throw knocked me into the end zone and out of the defensive safety's otherwise well-placed sights. I tumbled into the end zone ball in hand and landed on my back, marveled at the very idea of being alive on such a glorious afternoon; I lay there stunned and happy and listened to the crowd go wild. All in all, it was quite a feeling.

Rand was standing over me moments later looking down, concern clearly in his eyes.

"You all right, Moron?"

"Fine, Cheesedick. Help me up."

He smiled at me and everything still felt right with our little world.

The rest of the game was a little anti-climactic. The kids from Wisconsin put up a pretty good fight but they had never scouted Rand; in effect they never knew what hit 'em and went down not in flames, but cooling embers. It was a lopsided score and no need to humiliate them again so let's just leave it at that.

___________________________________

The gym had transformed itself for the dance into a yawning arabesque; vast billowing streamers of crepe paper hung from girders and pulsing waves of light – amethyst and vermillion clouds, really, or so they seemed – frenzied from wall to wall. Music I'd never heard before – '21st Century Schizoid Man', if memory serves – washed over a solid writhing mass of crew-cut cadets and gay young ladies in flowing gowns, and even then I knew enough about the world to understand the scene had slipped from merest irony and been dashed violently onto the wilted canvas of our night by a Dali or Hieronymus Bosch.

And my fragile sister, hanging on my arm as we walked into the darkness: Oh! How excited she was! I could not see the knife-edge we walked upon in grey twilight, could not understand she was trying – once again and as she always had – to protect me from the monsters that lay waiting just ahead, as always keeping me from seeing into the shadows that had defined our lives.

Rand was waiting for her and I'd never seen such seriousness of purpose in anyone's eyes before; he'd just had his entire world torn out from under his feet and here he was, intent and ready to create new worlds out of the stuff of shadows.

He reached for her hand and she for his, but she remained fixed to my arm and in that moment the three of us were as fused; she turned and as if to kiss my cheek and leaned close, whispered in my ear:

-"Be careful, Toddy," she breathed to me.

-"You too, Kiddo," I replied as uneasily.

She squeezed my arm and held my eyes a moment longer, then the circuit was broken and she slipped away from me for the last time and waltzed away to the funeral march of the Black Queen and the summoning of the Fire Witch as she disappeared into The Court of the Crimson King.

_________________________________

Mother was waiting for me, as I imagined she had her entire life, in the parking lot; we drove quietly to the inn and took to the very same table. She was older now, and though she wore the cares of her world easily the pain she had come to share hung in the air between us; even so all the radiant beauty that shone so brightly in Madeleine eyes could easily be traced to the soft glowing orbs and fine lips that lay before me now. She had, it seemed, great truths to tell, but she had never known how to speak even easy truths, let alone the divergent, cosmic truth she had so recently come to terms with.

She ordered tea but I could see the hesitance, the doubt that shook her very soul. We ordered dinner in silence, the air between us grew charged with dread and she looked away constantly as if looking for someone or something to simply carry her away – again.

When at last I could stand it no more I looked at her, held her in my eyes.

"Is it Dad?" I finally said. She looked down at her hands crossed in her lap, then up at me.

"We're getting a divorce," she said quietly and looked quite startled when I laughed. "What's wrong with you!" she said as she wiped away her tears.

"My God! It's contagious!" I gasped between great gut-washing roars. I could just see Mother's sidelong glances, could just feel her questions and her embarrassment through the candlelight, and I caught myself just as the edge drew near.

"Todd!" she whispered angrily. "Get a hold of yourself!"

Her words were like a slap on the face, the bark of a drill sergeant; I sat upright, shoulders square, eyes straight ahead, my mouth a dead line of moral rectitude.

"Stop it!" she hissed. "You're making a fool out of both of us!"

"Is everything alright, Ma'am?" I heard a familiar voice and turned to see Sergeant-Major Shipman standing over us. His hand was on my right shoulder, the firm pressure reassuring. He was looking at my mother, his hand kept me from standing.

"Yes, yes," she said at length. "We... we just have difficult ground to cover this evening." She had turned her eyes with full effect on Shipman and was waiting to gauge her success – but it never came. Then he turned to me, his eyes stern and fair and full of compassion.

"Hold it down, Corporal," Shipman said. "Get control of yourself. Now."

"Yes, Sergeant-Major!" I said as quietly.

He walked back to a table across the room, took his seat beside a staggeringly wondrous Japanese lady.

I groaned: "Oh, no."

Mother laughed easily now; she'd easily won at least a partial victory. "Will you get in much trouble?"

"That's a fair guess, Mom. Yeah."

"I'm sorry, Todd. Really. For everything."

"Forget it, Mom. Okay? My fault." We looked at one another, took the measure of our resolve.

"What did you mean when you said 'contagious'?" she asked, her eyes almost happy now.

I told her about Rand and his parents and about the death of his brother and soon her eyes drifted far away while she listened to echoes of other sadnesses.

"He seems like a very sweet boy," she said finally.

"Sweet? Rand?"

"Don't you think he's nice?"

"I don't think either of those words come to mind, Mother; no, not at all."

"Oh? What word would you choose?"

"Clarity," I said quietly, my eyes locked on hers. "Or maybe purity."

"Purity?" She looked up at me, the question burning now in her eyes. "Why 'purity'?"

"I don't think he's ever lied, Mother."

She nodded, turned away. "That you know of, anyway." She said those words with quiet desperation lingering over her head; they were almost an abdication, if not part of a larger quest for absolution.

"No, I think you're missing the point, Ma'am. I don't think he lies. Ever."

"Ma'am? Todd? You called me... Have I lost even that now? Have I lost you, too?"

In the splintered silence that grew between us I wanted to leave, to leave and run far away, and I think she sensed the impulse within that fragile moment and she reached out for me one last time. At least I think that was what she tried to do. But you see, I was ready for her...

"Mom, is there really anything we need to talk about now? I'm not sure I'm up to it right now." That wasn't really true, and I knew it. I wanted to lash out at her, I wanted to hurt her, because she had ruined everything. She always had. In that she had been most consistent.

"I'm sorry, Todd. We have a lot to cover tonight. And not just the divorce."

I looked at her; her lower lip was trembling now, no longer the soft, inviting weapon she had wielded so effectively, for so long. There were no chance diversions in the offing, only the vast plain of truth she had turned her back on all our lives and I had just backed her up against the last wall there was between us.

_______________________________

I don't know how long we talked. Well into the night, anyway.

We talked of things I had never known, the terrors down the hall Madeleine had always shielded me from. Of Dad and his unusual tastes, his love of all things Madeleine; of how my mother had denied it all, run from the truth that suffocated, wrapped it in bright paper and put a Christmas bow on it year after year until the lie had become so practiced it came as naturally as breathing.