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1

UNDERAGE DRINKING
High Grove, Illinois
Eight Days Before Graduation

Before mead boards the train in Chicago’s Union Station bound for Alton, Illinois, he sells his brand- new CD player and several barely listened- to discs to Forsbeck, his roommate, to raise cash for the ticket. He then holes up in their room, sitting by the window until Herman leaves the dorm and heads off across campus for his final exam. Even then Mead is terrified that the guy will double back and follow him, suddenly materializing in the train seat across the aisle. “Where’re you going, Fegley?” Herman will say. “It’s not like you to ditch school. Could it be that I misjudged you?”
Even after detraining, six hours and twenty- two minutes later, Mead remains uneasy, nervously scanning the platform. He picks up his green- and- blue plaid suitcase in his left hand and lugs it clumsily over to the taxi stand, his right hand wrapped in an Ace bandage. He knows he is being paranoid but cannot help it. What will Herman do when he finds out Mead is gone? Will he go to the dean and rat him out? Or will he hold off in hopes that his well- laid plans can still come to fruition? Mead is betting on the latter. He believes that he knows Herman better than he knows himself. A shining example of humanity, Herman is.  The type of person who brings into question the whole notion of man as the superior species on the planet.

The cab driver is skeptical when Mead gives his destination.  “High Grove,” the guy says. “Why, that must be thirty miles from here.” He stares at Mead’s bandaged hand. But he relents when Mead promises to make it worth his while. And Mead is surprised just how easily the driver gives in, how willing this stranger is to take him at his word. It’s something Mead would not have even considered doing a year ago — or even a week ago — getting into a cab with barely a dollar in his pocket and having only a vague notion of how to pay for the ride at the other end. He wishes the driver would throw him out on his ass. Tell him to get lost. Tell him to find another sucker. Because then the world would seem right again, the stars aligning with the planets, or whatever.  Outside of the cab, the sun is setting behind a recently planted field of corn. It isn’t a spectacular dusk but rather dull. There are no clouds to catch the last rays of light, only a small circle of orange on the horizon, which, like the dying embers of a fi re, snuffs out before Mead’s eyes. A perfect metaphor for what his life has suddenly become.

“Right here,” Mead says, and the driver pulls to a stop in front of a one- story brick house. The lights are on inside, the dining room curtains glowing yellow. His parents have probably just sat down to supper. If there was a funeral today, his father will be sipping a martini and discussing the ceremony. If not, he will settle for a Coke and talk about furniture. Perhaps they will even spend a little time on the subject of next week: when they will leave, what hotel they will stay in, and where they would like to take their son to celebrate the big event of his graduation from college. At the age of eighteen, no less. Thoughts that make Mead’s stomach churn.
He rings the front doorbell, and a moment later, the porch light comes on, throwing him into the spotlight. Mead’s tempted to lift his suitcase and smash the bulb. To remain in the dark. To slip into the house through the back door and down the hall to his bedroom unnoticed. But there is the small matter of the taxi driver.

If there is any saving grace in any of this, it is that his father is the one who opens the door. His face is a mask of neutrality.  This is a man accustomed to dealing with tragedy on a day- today basis. A man who knows that, in his line of business, there is no room for getting emotionally involved. A man inured to shock. “Teddy,” he says. “What’re you doing here?” “I owe the cab driver a hundred dollars.”

His father looks past him to the curb.
“I haven’t broken any laws or done anything wrong. Beyond that, I have nothing to tell. I just want to be left alone to deal with this in my own way, all right?”

His father doesn’t answer, just looks at the waiting cab as if it might contain some explanation as to this sudden change in events.  The phone rings, waking mead up. A ringing phone can mean only one of two things: either someone has died, or it is the dean.  Mead hopes that it is the former, that someone has died. He sits up in bed and glances at his watch, but there isn’t enough light in the room to see, so he steps over to the window and cracks open the blinds to let in a sliver of morning sun. It’s 8:40. Three hours and twenty minutes to showtime. Only the star of the show is nowhere to be found, vanished from his dorm room and from the face of the campus for the second time in three months. He releases the blinds and the slats snap closed like an eyelid. Mead crawls back into bed.
Footsteps come down the hall. Click- clack, click- clack. The sound of bad news. They stop outside his bedroom door — more bad news — and Mead braces himself for what he knows is about to come.

The door opens and his mother sticks her head inside. A perfectly coiffed head with powdered cheeks and glossy lips. It is easy to picture her lying in a casket. She will look just as she does now, only with her eyes closed and her mouth stitched shut. He would give anything to have her mouth stitched shut right now.  “It’s Dean Falconia,” she says. “He wants to speak with you.”

“Tell him I’m not here.”

“I will do no such thing. He knows you’re here. For god’s sake, the least you could do is have the decency to speak with him, to offer up an explanation.”

Mead rolls over so that his back is to his mother. He does not want to talk to the dean — or to anyone else for that matter — because he does not know what to say. Where he would start. How to explain the stupid things he has done. Once he opens his mouth, he will have lost the only advantage he has and he cannot afford to let Herman get the upper hand. Not this time.  “Whatever it is that has happened,” his mother says, “it can’t be worth throwing away a college degree. Worth ruining your life.” Her voice falters. But whether she is choking up with tears or anger, it is hard to say. Probably a little of both. And Mead cannot blame her. He would probably feel the same way if he were in her shoes. But he isn’t.

She leaves the door open, her heels click- clacking back down the hall. “Give me a couple of days to get to the bottom of this,” Mead hears his mother say to the dean before clamping the bed pillow over his ears.

The six- legged creature is crouching behind Mead. He cannot see it, but he can hear it breathing in and out. In and out.  Waiting for just the right moment to pounce. It has been shadowing Mead since seventh grade, ever since he brought home that C on his report card. The creature is insatiable. Always hungering for more, more, more. Mead thought it would stay behind when he boarded the train north to Chicago for his freshman year of college. He saw neither hide nor hair of it for several weeks.  Then one evening in the library, a week before final exams, it reappeared, breathing down the back of his neck. Mead was so shocked that he scooped up his books and ran all the way back to the dorm. But it followed him and then hung around for several days — straight through finals week — before disappearing again. After that, it started showing up more and more often until, once again, it had become a constant presence in his life. It was almost as if Mead had never left home at all.  It was not until he came back to High Grove — last night — that he realized how weakened the six- legged creature had been up there in Chicago. Not until he returned to its nest was he reminded of just how powerful the beast can be when it is on its home turf.

“I’m not budging until you tell me what this is all about,” it says.

Two hours, thirty- six minutes, and seventeen seconds. Eighteen seconds. Nineteen seconds. That’s how long the creature has been crouching behind him. And in all that time, Mead hasn’t moved a muscle. But he’s starting to wonder how long he’s going to be able to keep this up. Lying motionless. His mattress, which started out feeling soft and comfortable, has turned into a bed of jagged rocks that are poking into his hips and thighs, making it almost unbearable to remain still. But Mead is afraid that if he moves, even an inch, the creature will sense weakness and be fortified in its resolve to sit him out.

The phone rings for the second time this morning, followed by a different pair of feet coming down the hall, the footsteps this time around less punishing to the ear. They stop outside Mead’s open bedroom door.

“That was the coroner,” his father says. “I have to go out.”

Mead rolls over and comes face-to-face with the six- legged creature: his mother sitting on a straight-backed kitchen chair, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at him. Standing directly behind her is Mead’s father: a tall, thin man in a black suit who could easily be mistaken for the beast’s shadow. Mead looks past the creature, as if it isn’t there, and says to its shadow, “I’ll go with you.” As they drive across town, Mead unwraps the Ace bandage from around his right hand and fl exes his fingers. The pain is far less intense than it was just twenty- four hours ago and the swelling has gone way down. It’s amazing to Mead how quickly the body repairs itself. Bounces back and keeps going. The brain, on the other hand, is a little slower on the rebound.  “How did you hurt your hand?” his father asks.

“I let my emotions get the better of me.”

“You hit someone?”

Mead flexes his fingers and flinches at the memory. “Don’t worry, Dad, I’ve got them under control now.” The black hearse pulls to a stop in front of a white colonial with green shutters. A lawn stretches out before it, as relaxed as a sleeping cat. Daffodils smile up at the sun. The house itself seems to breathe with life. It’s not hard to imagine a kitchen filled with fragrant smells, laughter floating down the stairs, a dog sleeping by the fireplace.

“Are you sure this is the right address?” Mead asks.  His father shuts off the engine. “You don’t have to come inside, you know. You can stay right here. I’ll be back in a minute.” Mead considers his father’s offer. Considers the fact that he is under no obligation whatsoever to go inside. After all, he’s not even supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be at Chicago University, standing behind the lectern in Epps Hall before an auditorium full of mathematicians, chalk in hand, discussing the significance of the spacings between the zeros of the zeta function.  Which is precisely why he has to go inside, because he isn’t in that auditorium. He’s here. In the passenger seat of his father’s hearse.

“No,” Mead says. “I’ll go.” And he proceeds to climb out.  A couple of girls come down the street on bicycles, beach towels stuffed into their handlebar baskets. Talking and laughing.  Until they spot Mead’s dad unloading the gurney. Pushing it up the front walk. They stare at the bed-on-wheels as if a dead person were already on it and come within inches of colliding with each other.

“I’m here to pick up Delia Winslow,” Mead’s father says to the dry- eyed woman who answers the front door. She nods, and Mead helps him maneuver the gurney up the steps and into the front hall. It’s a long hall lined with photographs, like an art gallery.  Cocktails will be served from three until five. Please leave all charitable donations in the candy dish by the front door.  “That’s her right there,” the dry-eyed woman says to Mead and points to a black-and-white photograph of three young women. “The one in the middle.”

“Her who?” Mead asks.

“My mother- in- law. Delia. Of course, she was much younger back then. That picture must’ve been taken over fifty years ago.” Mead leans in for a closer look. All three women are wearing gingham dresses trimmed in white eyelet collars as if they sense a barn dance in their near futures. And each one is holding a fruit pie in her left hand and a prize-ribbon in her right. The sun must have been bright that day because they’re all squinting into the camera.

“That was the year Delia won first place in the County Fair Bake- Off,” her daughter- in- law says. “She made the best cherry pies in the whole state of Illinois. Really. Delia was a genius in the kitchen.”

Genius. Mead flinches at the sound of the word, having never before associated it with pastry. A self- important word. It brings to mind an imaginary photograph, one not hanging on the Winslow’s wall. A black- and- white snapshot of Mead standing next to the twenty- five- year- old Delia, she holding her blue-ribbon pie, he a stack of textbooks. The two geniuses of Grove County.  “Did she win the blue ribbon again the following year?” Mead asks.

“Oh, no. Delia never entered the contest again. She’d had her moment in the sun and wanted to give other women a chance at theirs.”

Or she discovered that she didn’t like it. Being a genius. Didn’t like being separated from the rest of the herd. A target for not only praise but also jealousy. Mead wishes he had met the curlyhaired woman with chipmunk cheeks when she was still alive.  He feels as if he knows her, or at least understands the ambiguity she must have felt about her genius. He would have liked to have spoken with her. He might have learned a thing or two from Delia about how to handle living life as a genius. Pastry or otherwise.

Which is perhaps why it comes as such a shock when Mead turns the corner at the end of the hall and comes face-to-face with the present- day Delia: a seventy-five-year-old woman with thinning white hair, sunken cheeks, and skin that looks several sizes too large for its occupant. A man is sitting next to Delia’s bed. He stands when Mead and his father enter the room, introduces himself as Samuel, son of the deceased, and apologizes for the stench. “We did our best to clean up my mother before you arrived.”

“No need to apologize,” Mead’s father says. “This kind of thing happens all the time.” Pulling two pairs of latex gloves out of his back pocket, he hands one to Mead. “Put these on,” he says and dons the other pair himself. The gloves are lined with talcum powder and fit Mead like a second layer of skin, but pulling the right one on over his still- sore hand hurts like hell.  Through this haze of pain, he watches as his father turns down the bedsheets — and almost gags.

Mead now wishes he had taken his father up on that offer to stay in the hearse. It’s not that Mead hasn’t seen a dead body before. He’s seen plenty of them. But those were the sanitized version of dead, already bathed and preserved. This is different.  This is a little old lady in her soiled nightgown. Mead tries to take a breath and chokes. If he’d actually eaten anything in the past twenty- four hours, he’d be heaving it up all over the deceased right now. But lucky for Mead, he hasn’t had any appetite at all since his last conversation with Herman.

“Why don’t you open a window?” Mead’s father says to him as if it was hot in the room and a cool breeze might be welcome.  Mr. Calm-Under-Pressure. Mr. Never-Let-Them-See-You-Sweat.  Mead would like to tell his father that it isn’t necessary. That he is man enough to take it. But it is necessary and he isn’t man enough. And so Mead throws open the sash and sticks his head out into the backyard, startling the pet dog who isn’t sleeping by the fireplace but watering an azalea bush. A little dog that starts barking its head off when it sees Mead. Yip, yip, yip, yip. The damned thing is no bigger than a cat. Yip, yip, yip, yip. Reminds Mead of Dr. Kustrup, the chairman of the math department, a man who confuses quantity with quality when it comes to the use of his vocal chords. Yip, yip, yip, yip. Mead sticks his tongue out at the dog. Yip, yip, yip, yip. The smaller they are, the bigger they try to sound. Seems to go for both dogs and men.  By the time Mead pulls his head back inside, Delia has been transferred from her bed to the gurney and covered with the ubiquitous white sheet. Samuel apologizes again and offers Mead a glass of water. Mead turns it down because of the look on his father’s face. It isn’t a look of disapproval — Mead only gets those from his mother — but of embarrassment. Mead knows what his father is thinking: The family of the deceased has enough on their minds and shouldn’t have to deal with the undertaker’s weak- stomached son.

The ride back into town is silent. Mead stares out the window of the hearse at the passing houses but sees instead an auditorium full of mathematicians and visiting professors squirming in their seats. Glancing at their watches. Talking among themselves.  Wondering where the key speaker is. Why the damned presentation has not yet gotten under way. Mead sees a man walking on the sidewalk but pictures instead Herman, pacing up and down the hall outside of the auditorium, watching his master plan crumble to pieces before his eyes. Mead sees Dean Falconia stride purposefully past Herman and into the auditorium, eyes to the floor, head shaking, trying to figure out what he is going to say to the scholars in the audience who made a special trip to Chicago just so they could witness — with their own eyes — the overwhelming statistical evidence that Mead has gathered that points to the veracity of the Riemann Hypothesis.  Important men. He sees Herman walk up to the dean and ask where Mead is. Sees shock register on the young man’s face as it begins to dawn on Herman that there was a third possible scenario to his plan. One that he had not foreseen.

Mead’s father turns onto Main Street and drives past a row of mom-and-pop stores. A pharmacy. A grocer. A hardware store.  A five- and- dime. Welcome to lovely downtown High Grove, a mere six hours and three decades away from Chicago. A hop, skip, and a jump into the past. The hearse then passes in front of the largest storefront in town, in front of a row of plate glass windows behind which are displayed a tall chest of drawers, a floor lamp, and a sofa. And hanging above these windows is a sign that reads: Fegley brothers Inc. Furniture. Carpets. Undertakers.  The hand-painted sign has hung there for a couple of generations. Mead’s father turns into the alley just beyond these windows and parks in the lot behind the store where Mead’s uncle Martin is waiting.

Mead slides down in his seat. Shit. He had forgotten all about his uncle, something about which he is not at all proud. Another indication of just how messed up his life has become in the past twenty- four hours. “It’s all right, Teddy,” his father says, peering down at Mead from on high, “I told him you were home.” But this only makes Mead feel worse.

He slides back up, peers out the window, and smiles at his uncle, but the man does not smile back. Instead, his uncle looks straight through him, as if Mead doesn’t even exist. He opens the back of the hearse and pulls out the gurney. Mead’s father and uncle lock heads to discuss the deceased — time of death, age, approximate weight — then roll Delia onto the freight elevator.  After another short conversation, Mead’s father walks back to the hearse, peers in at his son, and says, “He’d like you to join him downstairs.”

Shit. Mead would rather his uncle find another way to get back at him. Like screaming in his face and calling him an ungrateful, self- centered, egotistical spoiled brat. At least Mead could take that, knowing that he has it coming. But this, this is beyond the realm of getting back; this is pure cruelty. “I can’t, Dad. Sorry, but I just can’t.”

His father walks back over to the elevator to relay the message.  Uncle Martin stares at Mead with hate in his eyes, then the elevator door closes and he is gone. Only then does Mead get out of the hearse and follow his father through the rear entrance into the store, stepping abruptly back in time to his childhood.  Ten thousand square feet of sofas and coffee tables and dining room suites, of bed frames and mattresses and dressers and rockers, of floor lamps and carpets and caskets, distributed over three floors. That’s Fegley Brothers. Unchanged from as far back as Mead can remember. When he started elementary school, fitted with his first pair of prescription glasses, Mead used to pretend the store was a castle and that he was the young prince who would one day inherit it. On the first floor, he would crouch behind bookcases and entertainment centers, pretending they were trees and that the forest was filled with bandits. He’d pop up from behind sofas brandishing a yardstick as if it were a sword and fight them off. On the second floor, he would jump from bed to bed, pretending that he was leaping over rivers filled with jaw- snapping alligators, then he would ascend to the third floor where the king kept all his riches, where closed caskets sat on raised platforms under klieg lights and looked to the young Teddy Fegley like treasure chests filled with gold. The only place he did not play was in the basement. The dungeon. The place where the king kept his prisoners chained to the walls and fed them only water and gruel. The place where the young Teddy Fegley’s imagination really soared.  This was where he consigned the boy in first grade who tripped him in the hall, laughed, and said, “Can you see the floor, Theodore?” And the girl who gave him, on Valentine’s Day, a shoebox containing the corpse of a bird. “Is it dead, Ted?” she said, and then ran off to join her coterie of tittering friends. But the king had the last word and he sent to the dungeon all those who dared betray the trust of the young prince.

Floorboards creak under Mead’s feet as he now crosses through the back office and peers out onto the showroom floor.  Standing in the middle of the showroom, talking to a customer, is Lenny, a balding, middle- aged man of indistinct features. A fixture at Fegley Brothers as permanent as those klieg lights on the third floor. Mead realizes, with a bit of a shock, that he doesn’t know the man’s last name. He has always referred to him simply as Lenny. A man of many talents: salesperson, deliveryman, pallbearer, gravedigger. If something needs doing, Lenny is the guy who will get it done.

“So how does it work?” Mead asks his father.

“How does what work?”

“The store. How does it work?”

“Well, customers come in, select a piece of furniture, and we deliver it to them the following day.”

Mead gives his father a sidelong glance. “Thanks, Dad, for that illuminating description.”

“I’m sorry,” he answers back. “Was that a serious question?” Mead gazes at a display of six walnut chairs seated around a matching dining room table but sees instead the dean, standing at the podium. He sees him tap a piece of chalk against the lectern until the auditorium quiets. He hears him apologize to the assembled mathematicians and then make up some excuse as to why today’s much- anticipated presentation has been called off. Mead sees the attendees rise from their seats and head for the exits. Some of them are angry, some are merely disappointed.  One of them is utterly surprised. Then the auditorium is empty.  Quiet enough to hear a pin drop as the end of one life gives birth to the next.

“Yes,” Mead says. “Yes, it is a serious question.” His father starts him off with the accounting books, with lists and lists of incoming and outgoing merchandise. With columns of numbers that need to be added and subtracted, multiplied and divided. After running through the basics, Mead’s father hands him a pile of balance sheets and asks if he wouldn’t mind looking them over and checking for errors. “After all,” his father says, “you’re the mathematician.”

Mead is offended. Is this what his father thinks he was doing up there in college all this time? Adding and subtracting simple columns of numbers? Well, he couldn’t be more wrong. Mead spent most of his time thinking in the fourth dimension, a concept around which he doubts his father could even begin to wrap his mind. But then Mead catches himself with the realization that he is directing his anger at the wrong person — again — that his father has not a clue that his request is insulting, because all he knows is this store, that furniture out there, these columns of numbers in this ledger book. And they mean as much to him as the zeros of the zeta function mean to Mead.  Meant.

“Sure, Dad,” he says. “I’d love to.” And the thing is, it actually ends up being kind of fun. Playing with numbers. Like hanging out with old and trusted friends. Everything else in Mead’s head — all thoughts of the dean and Herman Weinstein and the presentation that never quite happened — empty out to make room for those numbers. And before Mead knows it, two hours have passed and he has found a dozen mistakes that add up to over two thousand dollars’ worth of outstanding moneys owed to Fegley Brothers Inc.

“Well, would you look at that,” his father says, holding up the ledger book so Mead’s uncle can see it with his own two eyes, the man having just emerged from the basement where he spent the better part of the morning with Delia Winslow. His eyes are blurry and unfocused like a mole’s; his body ripe with a mixture of sweat and formaldehyde. “Look, Martin, at what Teddy did.” “That’s great,” Uncle Martin says. But he barely gives the ledger book a glance. Pushes past Mead into the bathroom behind the office to take a shower. Slams the door shut.  On his father’s suggestion, Mead heads over to the five-and-dime to pick up sandwiches at the lunch counter. As if saving the family business two thousand dollars on his first day on the job isn’t enough. As if fetching food might better salve his uncle’s still- open wounds.

His first day on the job. That’s sort of what this is, isn’t it? The first day of the rest of Mead’s life and all that crap. Wow. This is not at all how Mead thought his life would turn out — and it most certainly isn’t what his mother had planned for her genius son — but it’s okay. There are a lot worse things in this world a person could be than a furniture salesperson slash undertaker. Like for example, a parasite. As defined on page 965 of the College Edition Dictionary: par•a•site (pár e si -t), n. 1. Herman Weinstein. That’s what it says. Swear to god. Or at least it will in the next edition, because Mead intends to submit it.

The counterman recognizes the sandwich order Mead places and says, “Hey, I know who you are. You’re Lynn Fegley’s son, Teddy.”

Not in the mood for idle chitchat, Mead says, “Yes, and if you know that you probably also know how testy my uncle gets after an embalming.”

“I sure do,” the counterman says. “Your order will be right up.” Mead gazes out the window to avoid further conversation. It’s a habit he picked up in junior high, after he got promoted from fifth grade to seventh, as a way to ignore the spitballs and rubber bands that flew past his head or pinged off his eyeglasses. A way to pretend that he did not hear his peers saying things like, “Do you still wet the bed, Ted?” He has found that people tend to leave him alone when he is gazing out a window, as if they are afraid to interrupt his train of thought, as if the young Theodore Mead Fegley might be on the brink of making some earth shattering discovery. Or at least this is what Mead tells himself when he is studying alone in the library on yet another Saturday night.

Someone is chaining a green Schwinn to a bicycle rack across the street from the five-and-dime, someone with a gray ponytail hanging halfway down his back, someone who closely resembles Mead’s math professor Dr. Alexander. What did the man do, ride his bicycle all the way down here from Chicago? He must be worried, that must be it. He came to High Grove to make sure Mead is all right. To find out why he left. Mead steps over to the plate glass window and raps it with his knuckle. “Hey,” he yells, but the professor doesn’t turn around. “Hey,” he yells again and raps harder, then opens the front door and steps out onto the sidewalk. “Hey! Dr. Alexander! It’s me! Mead!” Finally, the old man hears him and turns around. Only it isn’t Mead’s math professor, it’s a middle- aged lady in trousers and a work shirt. Mead drops his arm. But of course it isn’t Dr. Alexander. How silly of Mead to have thought that it might be. After all, the professor is probably just now finding out that Mead not only skipped the presentation but skipped out of town altogether.  Disappointed, Mead steps back into the five- and- dime, letting the door swing closed behind him. He looks up and sees everyone seated at the lunch counter staring at him.

“Friend of yours?” the counterman says.

“No,” Mead says, embarrassed to have been caught making a public spectacle of himself. He snatches up the two brown paper bags on the counter and hands over the twenty- dollar bill his father gave him to pay for lunch. The counterman rings up the order and says, “Aren’t you supposed to be a genius of some kind?”

“ Ex- genius,” Mead says. “I converted back to Catholicism a month ago.”

“Excuse me?”

“Keep the change,” Mead says and hurries out of the store before the counterman can ask any more questions.  Nothing soothes the soul of the savage beast like food.  Whoever said that has obviously never met Martin Fegley. Not only does the man appear ungrateful that Mead got the sandwiches, he seems downright pissed off about it. Like the more Mead tries to please him, the angrier he is going to get. Uncle Martin unwraps his roast beef sandwich and peers between the slices of bread as if hoping to find a dead cockroach in there, something he can add to the growing list of demerits he is compiling against his sorry- assed nephew.

“So how did it go?” Mead’s father asks Martin.  “Not too bad,” he says, smelling like a mixture of Ivory soap and formaldehyde. He leans back in his chair and sets his feet up on the desk.

Lenny has also joined them for lunch. He’s sitting in a chair next to the window that separates the back office from the showroom floor, so he can keep an eye out in case a customer should come in.

“I got to her before rigor mortis had a chance to set in,” Martin says as he chews on his sandwich, “so I didn’t have to do too much massaging of the extremities. She was a little stiff around the knees and ankles, though, due to arthritis.” He takes another bite out of his sandwich, chews and swallows. “But I tell you, I’m always amazed how much blood comes out of these little old ladies. It’s as if they’ve been hoarding it, like cat food, for a rainy day.”

“I helped, you know,” Mead says. “I didn’t just sit in the car. I helped transport the body to the hearse.”

Martin takes another bite and washes it down with some soda.  “The other thing about little old ladies is that few of them have any teeth left. If they come to me without dentures, then I’ve got to stuff their mouths full of cotton before stitching their lips shut. So they’ll look good, you know, at the funeral.” “All right, Martin,” Mead’s dad says. “That’s enough.” “Cotton. It’s an embalmer’s best friend. Yup. Nothing plugs up the ol’ anus better than a good wad of cotton.” Mead knows what’s going on here: His uncle is trying to gross him out. And as much as he hates to admit it, the man is succeeding. In spades. Mead throws down his sandwich and storms out of the office. Pulls open the back door and steps out into the parking lot, fuming. He considers walking back to the house — after all, it’s only seven blocks away — but decides against it because the only thing waiting for him back there is the six- legged creature. Then he considers his other options and realizes that he has none. Not a one. Because of Herman.  The back door opens and Lenny steps out. “I thought I might join you for a breath of fresh air,” he says. “You mind?” Mead doesn’t answer, instead he sits down on the parking lot bench. Why there’s a bench in the rear parking lot, he has no idea. Perhaps it is here for this very reason: to blow off steam whenever Uncle Martin starts acting like an ass. How many times has Mead’s dad come out here to do the exact same thing?  Not that he ever needs to blow off steam. Not Mead’s father.  Everything just rolls right off that man’s back. It’s some set of parents Mead got. On the one hand, there’s his father with his calm, cool reserve; and on the other, there’s his mother with her high academic expectations. Shit. Between the two of them, Mead has no wiggle room to be human at all.  “So what’re you doing?” Lenny says.

“Trying to stay out of my uncle’s way.”

Lenny sits down on the bench next to Mead. “No, I mean what’re you doing here in High Grove? Ain’t you supposed to graduate next week?”

“Birds are supposed to fly south for the winter,” Mead says, “and flowers are supposed to bloom in the spring. Days are supposed to be long in summer and corn is supposed to be harvested in the fall. But I am neither a bird nor a flower nor a day of the week nor an ear of corn.”

Lenny smiles, the kind of smile someone wears when he hasn’t understood a word of what has just been said but thinks he should have. And he won’t ask Mead to repeat it because he’s afraid it will make him look stupid. It’s another habit Mead picked up in school — talking in metaphor — to deflect questions he did not wish to answer, like whether or not he had a date for the senior prom.

“You’re right,” Lenny says. “It ain’t none of my business.” And hands Mead the sandwich he left half- eaten inside.  Mead takes a bite out of it and chews angrily. “Does Uncle Martin always talk like that at lunch or was this a special performance for my benefit?”

“He has his good days and his bad.”

“Please tell me this is one of his bad days.”

Lenny stands up. “Time heals all wounds.”

“Where’d you read that, in a fortune cookie?”

Lenny smiles, then heads back into the store.  Now why did Mead have to go and say that? After all, he isn’t mad at Lenny. Shit, Mead is acting more and more like the insensitive, self- centered prick his uncle thinks he is. And he isn’t. Really, he isn’t.

Samuel Winslow is standing on the sidewalk in front of Fegley Brothers holding a navy blue dress up to the plate glass window and knocking on the door, which has been locked since the close of business half an hour ago. Mead’s father crosses the showroom to let him in and Samuel hands over the dress, saying that he’d like his mother to wear it at her funeral. The two men then head up to the third floor to select a casket. Lenny is busy pushing a broom around the showroom floor and Uncle Martin has already gone home, so for the first time all day Mead is alone.  He sits down in his father’s chair and leans back. If he were still up in Chicago, Mead would just be getting back to his dorm room, the biggest day of his life behind him. And lying there, on the other bed, would be Forsbeck, his roommate. Sound asleep at six o’clock in the evening. Getting a little shut- eye before heading out to spend the evening with a dozen or so of his best friends.  Mead glances at the phone on his father’s desk and thinks about calling his room at the dorm. About waking up Forsbeck to ask if the swelling under his eye — where Mead punched him — has gone down. Or maybe he will call Dr. Alexander instead. He could tell the professor how he thought he saw him on Main Street in High Grove with his bicycle. How Mead momentarily forgot that the professor was still limping around with one leg in a cast. He’d like to ask the professor if he is disappointed in Mead for skipping out on the presentation. Or angry. Or worse.  Lenny knocks on the office door. “I’m taking off now,” he says. “You gonna be around tomorrow, Teddy?” “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning.” He leaves by the back door.

Mead continues to stare at the phone but doesn’t make any calls. Because questions would be asked. Questions Mead does not want to answer.

On the way home in the car, Mead’s dad suggests they stop at the Elks Lodge for supper and Mead jumps at the opportunity, happy to avoid what would have otherwise been an uncomfortable evening spent in the presence of the six- legged creature.  The Lodge is nestled inside a grove of trees on the north edge of town, a log cabin whose parking lot is more brightly lit than its rooms. Mead follows his father through a lobby decorated with rifles into a smoky dining hall ripe with the smell of sweaty bodies and malt liquor. A room full of men celebrating the end of yet another workweek, escaping from the demands of their lives at least for a few hours. It is a concept Mead is all too eager to embrace: escape. Not just from the past week, but from the past month. Past year. Past decade. Oh hell, Mead would like to escape from his whole frigging life, to go back to day one and just start all over again. Maybe next time he won’t worry so much about pleasing his mother. Maybe next time he’ll refuse to skip third and then sixth and then tenth grades, because next time he’ll know better. Next time he’ll know that being the kid with all the right answers means being the kid with no friends. If only somebody had told him this before, then Mead could have saved himself a whole lot of grief.

Four people are sitting at the table to which his father has led him. Three strangers and Uncle Martin. Shit. Mead cannot believe his father did this. Tricked him. If the man had told Mead ahead of time that his uncle was going to be here, he wouldn’t have come. No way. As a matter of fact, he can still leave. No one is stopping him. He can just turn around and walk back out the front door. After all, the Lodge is only about a mile from his house. It’s completely doable. He could just leave right now, walk home, and eat supper with the six- legged creature.  Mead pulls out a chair and sits down. “Well, well, well, would you look who’s here,” his uncle says.  “Surprised you could make it, Teddy boy.” The man’s got one hand wrapped around a beer mug, the other around a fork, a combination that strikes Mead as downright dangerous.  “Does everyone know who this is?” Martin says and gazes around the table at his companions. “Why, this here is the infamous Fegley genius. The family jewel. A freak of nature. So tell me, Teddy, to what do we owe this great honor?” Mead’s uncle is drunk, so everybody ignores him. Instead Mead’s father introduces Mead to the strangers. Sitting beside Martin is Mr. Sammons, a broad man with the body of a superhero, only older and softer in the middle. Next to him is the missus. She looks like an ex–beauty queen, her face and hair all made up as if she’s planning to attend a pageant after knocking back a few frosty brews. And seated next to the missus is this pretty blond girl, Hayley. The daughter. She looks like what her mother probably looked like before age and time took its toll, only without all the makeup.

“I know who you are,” Hayley says. “I remember you from first grade.”

“I was never in first grade,” Mead says.

“Yes, you were. I gave you a shoebox with a dead bird in it for Valentine’s Day. You know, because your dad’s an undertaker. It was a pretty awful thing to do but I was only six. I hope you can forgive me.”

Great. Of all the people in all of High Grove that Mead has to end up sitting next to on the worst day of his life is the girl who was responsible for the second worst day of his life. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific,” he says. “I got a lot of dead birds that year. Was it the robin, the blue jay, or the wren?” “I never heard this story before,” Mead’s father says.  “And you didn’t hear it just now either, Dad. She’s making it up. Or maybe she’s thinking of somebody else.” “Teddy’s right,” Martin says. “She probably gave it to the other undertaker’s son. You know, to Percy.”

Not a single person sitting at the table believes that Hayley gave a dead bird to Percy for Valentine’s Day. Not a one. He just wasn’t the kind of kid to whom other kids gave dead birds. He would much more likely have been the kid who handed them out. Besides, Percy wasn’t even in first grade the year Hayley and Mead were. He was in fourth grade.

“Congratulations on your recent graduation,” Mrs. Sammons says and reaches across the table to pat Mead’s hand. “I saw the announcement in the local paper.”

“What announcement?” Mead says and looks at his father.  “Your mother sent one in to the Grove Press,” he says. “They weren’t supposed to publish it until next week.” “Phi Beta Kappa,” Mr. Sammons says. “That’s pretty impressive.”

“And yet you don’t look a day over sixteen,” the missus adds.

“He’s eighteen, Mother,” Hayley says. “Like me.”

“Hayley just graduated from high school,” Mr. Sammons says.
“Last week.”

Everyone in the dining hall is shouting to be heard above everyone else and all the yelling is beginning to give Mead a headache. That and the cigarette smoke. A waitress drops by the table to take a drink order and Martin asks for a pitcher of beer but it is unclear to Mead whether he is ordering it for the whole table or just for himself. Mrs. Sammons orders a gin and tonic.  Hayley asks for a Pepsi. Mead looks up at the waitress and says, “Two Tylenol, please.” She thinks she has heard wrong and asks him to repeat his order. He motions to his glass, using international sign language to say, “I’ll just have water.” But when the waitress comes back, she places a frosted mug in front of Mead and fills it with beer. “I’m underage,” he says and tries to hand it back to her. “I don’t drink alcoholic beverages.” “If I was you,” Mr. Sammons shouts above the din, “I’d learn how.”

The roast beef is chewy and the string beans are mushy and bland — just like in the university cafeteria — so Mead has no trouble at all swallowing them down. What he does have a hard time swallowing is the sight of his uncle, hunched over his dinner plate as if the weight of the whole world rests solely on his shoulders, as if he has cornered the market on bad things happening to good people. But it simply isn’t true. Shitty stuff happens to good people every day. Okay, so maybe Mead wouldn’t have believed that a week ago. A week ago he would have thought that people bring bad stuff upon themselves. A week ago, if you had told Mead that everything he has worked so hard for was going to add up to squat, he would have dismissed your words out of hand. He would have thought you jealous or delusional or worse. But he would have been wrong. Mead does not mean to take anything away from his uncle. The man has a damned good reason to be angry — he really does — but so does Mead.  The difference being that Mead is not wearing his heart on his sleeve, because he does not find it to be a very attractive look. He prefers to suck it up and move on. The way he did in junior high when his so- called peers Super- Glued his desktop shut. And when his father missed his fourth, fifth, and sixth birthdays in a row because of deaths in other people’s families. Mead is simply going to look upon this latest unfortunate turn of events in his life the way he has looked upon all the others: as an opportunity for personal growth. And so he resolves, as of this very moment, to change things up. To live out the rest of his life as the other half is living theirs — or, according to his SAT scores, the other ninety- nine percentile — and if that means trying new things, things Mead would never have even dreamed of trying before, well then, that is exactly what he is going to do.  Mead looks across the table at Mr. Sammons, who has locked heads with Uncle Martin to talk baseball statistics. Last week Mead probably would’ve seen an overweight individual with ruddy cheeks, suggesting a man who suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, the beginning stages of heart disease, and probably a little cirrhosis of the liver too. But now he sees a sanguine fellow, wise to the ways of the world. And so he lifts the beer mug to his lips and gets a first taste of his new life at 5.2% alcohol per volume.
Mead’s dad excuses himself to go say hello to the people at the next table. He spends about five minutes or so talking to them, then moves on to a second table. And then a third and a fourth and a fifth table, hell- bent on making his way around the entire dining hall. The man probably knows every person in this place — and on a first- name basis no less. Mead wonders how he does it, how he memorizes a whole town’s worth of names. He pictures his father sitting up in bed late at night, surrounded by dozens of high school yearbooks and the telephone directory. The man opens the directory and flips to the L’s. Runs his finger down the page until he finds the name he is looking for: Brad Lastfogel. Then he reaches for the 1969 edition of the High Grove High School yearbook and turns to the section titled music. The caption below a black-and-white photograph of eight boys and one girl reads: band: back row: e. johnson, c. thompson, r. kelley, and b. lastfogel. Bingo! Brad doesn’t have as much hair anymore, and he has put on a few pounds, but the impish grin and square jaw line are still intact. Under the phrase, what i want to be when i grow up, it says astronaut or doctor. Mead’s father crosses that out and writes in its place:

Manager and Pharmacist of Lastfogel’s Drugs.  Mr. and Mrs. Sammons’s daughter leans across the table and says to Mead, “You doing anything tomorrow?” “Yes,” he says. “Getting on with my life.” “Well, how would you like to get on with your life out at Snell’s Quarry?”

“I have personal obligations,” Mead says, “which must be met before I can indulge in the ordinary frivolities of life.” “Excuse me?”

“I can’t, I have to work at my father’s store.”

“How about after that then?”

“That won’t work either.”

“Why not?”

Mead is suspicious. Any boy in High Grove with a pair of working eyes would jump at the opportunity to go swimming with Hayley Sammons, so why is she asking him? Unless her plan is to lure him out there and then laugh at him with all her friends because he actually showed up.

“Don’t worry, Theodore. I’m not going to make fun of you or anything.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Then it’s all set. I’ll pick you up at your father’s store at five.”

Shit.

* * *

Martin sits down in the chair next to Mead. Oh boy, here it comes. His uncle has been waiting for this opportunity all day: to be alone with his nephew. Without Mead’s shield (i.e., his father) around to protect him. Uncle Martin has downed three beers — that Mead knows of — and god knows how many more before Mead and his dad arrived. Picking up the pitcher the waitress has just set on the table, Martin refills Mead’s empty mug and tops off his own. “To homecomings,” he says and holds up his beer for a toast. Mead taps his mug against his uncle’s and then knocks back half the contents in one gulp, as fortification against what he knows is about to come next.  “Thanks for inviting me to your graduation, Teddy.”

Mead looks over at Mr. and Mrs. Sammons, hoping for a rescue.  But they have fallen into deep discussion with their daughter, the three of them with their heads together, thick as thieves, like secretaries around a water cooler. “I didn’t graduate, Uncle Martin.”

“I know. What the hell is the matter with you? Do you have any idea how much it cost your father to pay for four years of college?  And this is how you show your appreciation? By walking out a week before graduation?”

“Three years, Uncle Martin. I completed all my credit requirements in three years.”

“Three, four. That’s not the point, Teddy; the point is you’re an overeducated, underachieving momma’s boy with no care or concern for anyone except yourself.”

These words fall upon Mead in a shower of spit. Placing his hand over his beer mug, Mead glances at the Sammonses once more. They have come out of their huddle and are staring at Martin with pity in their eyes, even though he is the one doing all of the name- calling. “I’m sorry, Uncle Martin,” Mead says. “I didn’t miss Percy’s funeral on purpose.”

“Funeral? There wouldn’t have even been a funeral if you had been where you were supposed to be when he drove up there to visit you.”

Suddenly sick to his stomach, Mead stands up. Fresh air. He needs some fresh air now. The floor begins to tilt beneath his feet, his brain comes loose from its moor and sloshes around inside of his skull, and between the floor and his brain Mead is finding it hard to walk. He grabs on to the backs of chairs as if they were railings on a ship at sea and makes his way across the dining hall toward the lobby. A buck’s head is mounted above the men’s room door, a doe’s head hangs over the ladies’ room.  The two stuffed deer gaze down upon Mead with indignation in their glass eyes. He pictures his own head, mounted above the door to Herman’s bedroom. Dust collects on his nose and in his hair and, once a year, a maid takes him down to vacuum him off. But the rest of the time Mead hangs there all but forgotten, Herman’s interest in him lost as soon as he was bagged.  Mead staggers into the bathroom and throws up. Maybe he shouldn’t have come home. Maybe he should have just accepted Herman’s proposition, graduated with honors, and continued on with his life. No one would ever have to know just how dishonorable it really was. No one, that is, except Mead.

Copyright © 2008 by M. Ann Jacoby