“I’m sorry. You’ll have to help me out.”
“Al Huff.” The man’s tone was reproachful, as if he shouldn’t have been forced to say his name out loud. “Coach Huff. From St. Benedict’s? We played you twice in the state tournament, ’88 and ’89? You were such a great player, Mark. Best pure shooter I ever saw at the high school level.”
“Oh, wow.” Margo nodded in fake recognition, trying unsuccessfully to connect the Coach Huff she remembered—former Marine, lean and athletic, a motivator and disciplinarian—with the old man standing in front of her, his face bloated with alcohol and disappointment. If she remembered correctly, Al Huff had resigned under a cloud, some kind of recruiting scandal, ten or maybe even fifteen years ago. “It’s good to see you.”
“You killed us with that buzzer beater in the semis.” He shook his head, as if the memory still stung. “Just broke our backs. I’ll never forget that.”
“Coach Huff is a local legend,” Margo informed the crowd. “St. Benedict’s was our arch-rival and always one of the best teams in the state.”
A few people clapped for the local legend, but Al Huff didn’t seem to notice. He opened his arms a little wider.
“Mark,” he said. “What the hell happened? Why would you do this to yourself?”
Margo tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. Moments like this always knocked her off-balance, times when she realized that other people—some of them near-strangers—were more invested in the young man named Mark Fairchild than she herself had ever been.
“Coach,” she said. “This is who I am.”
Al Huff looked at the floor and shook his head. When he spoke it sounded like he was close to tears.
“You need help, son. You can’t live like this.”
“Thanks for your concern,” Margo said, a little frostily. “But I’m doing just fine. I’m happier right now than I’ve ever been in my life.”
As if to underline this declaration, Dumell chose that moment to arrive. He entered through the back door, unzipping his leather jacket in slow motion as he glanced warily at the old white people in the audience, and then at Margo. He grinned when their eyes met, and gave her a sheepish little wave, apologizing for his tardiness. She wanted to blow him a kiss, but settled on a fleeting smile before returning to her duties.
“Any other questions?” she asked.
*
Sanjay had warned me about what to expect on the way over, so I wasn’t exactly surprised when I walked into the Student Center and saw my face up on the wall. But it still felt like a kick in the gut.
It was crowded in there, lots of kids milling around, checking out the paintings and sculptures, all of them made by undergrads in the Visual Arts Program. Most of it was the standard crap you’d find at any high school art show—still lifes with fruit and wine bottles, self-portraits of hot girls, black and white photographs of poor people. What made it a college art show were the little cards that accompanied each item, which listed the name of the artist and the title of the piece, along with a brief Statement of Intent.
The “project” I was part of was the biggest and most eye-catching work in the show. It took up an entire wall of the gallery and was the first thing you noticed when you walked in: two rows of bigger-than-life portraits, each one with a little caption underneath. The card identified the artist as Katherine Q. Douglass, class of 2017, and the title of the work as My Call-Out Wall. The Statement of Intent read, I asked a few of my friends to call someone out for behavior that damages our community and threatens our safety. This is an interactive project. Feel free to add your own call-out to the Call-Out Wall!
The portraits themselves were pretty good—acrylic on canvas, according to the card—not perfect, but I recognized myself without any problem. There were ten faces in all, nine of them dudes, along with one unlucky blond girl, who was actually pretty cute. Two of the guys were black; one was Asian. There were no names attached to the faces, only a brief description of the offense the person supposedly committed. A ginger-haired dude GROPED ME ON THE DANCE FLOOR. The Asian kid THINKS HE’S WHITE. The blond girl LIES RIGHT TO YOUR FACE. A fat kid I’d seen around was a CULTURAL APPROPRIATOR. One of the black dudes—I’m pretty sure he was a football player—was an EXTREME HOMOPHOBE. A bro in a knit cap was a GASLIGHTER, whatever that was. Three guys were labeled RAPIST.
“I’m not sure this is legal,” Sanjay told me. “It’s got to be a violation of due process or something.”
“Whatever,” I said, because I really didn’t give a shit about due process.
“You want to get out of here?” he asked.
I knew I should leave, but I couldn’t stop staring at my face on the wall. It looked so real up there, just as real as the one I saw in the mirror every day. Even worse, I was grinning like an idiot, as if I were thrilled to be included in the art show and had no objection to the words written beneath the painting, a brief summary of my entire life:
HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.
I smelled a sharp, medicinal odor and turned to see Amber’s friend Cat standing right beside me, rubbing sanitizer into her hands.
“Wow,” she said. “Look who’s here. You’ve got some nerve.”
I was surprised by the coldness in her voice. Cat had always been pretty nice to me. She nodded toward the wall.
“I had a hard time with your eyes. They’re a little asymmetrical.”
“You did this?”
She shook her head, like I should have known better.
“I told you not to hurt her.”
*
Eve hadn’t planned on company, but she was relieved to see that the living room looked fine. The throw pillows on the couch were plump and perfectly spaced, one per cushion, exactly as God had intended. There were no slippers abandoned on the rug, no mug of yesterday’s tea or crumpled kleenex marring the pristine surface of the coffee table. Even the TV remotes—all three of them—were resting in front of the flat screen in perfect alignment, arranged in descending order of size. It was, if anything, a little too neat and fussy, as if she’d stepped inside a museum exhibit documenting the uneventful life of a woman of exactly her age and circumstances. But better that than a dirty sock on the arm of the wingback chair or a beige bra slung over the newel post.
“What a lovely home.” Margo surveyed the décor with what seemed like sincere admiration, and maybe even a touch of longing. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”
Dumell and Amanda echoed this sentiment, while Julian Spitzer lingered near the door, skateboard tucked under his arm, nodding in dubious agreement.